What Bex Was Asking

The backdrop had been painted by six people with seven opinions about blue.

I could see the exact point where they had stopped agreeing. A tower rose from one section in a shade that belonged to a brighter, more optimistic town. Beside it, the cloth puckered around a seam repair made with thread too heavy for the weave.

Bex met me in the church hall with a sewing box.

“Just the corner,” she said.

“I remember.”

She went to warm up with the others. I unpicked the damaged seam, reinforced the weak area and added a short fabric tab to distribute the pull. It took twenty minutes. The repair was good. I should have put down the scissors.

Instead I looked at the blue tower.

The paint supplies stood open on a nearby table. I mixed a little of the darker blue with the brighter shade, tested it on a scrap and began blending the left edge. It was a small improvement. Once I'd started, the next wrong patch became harder to ignore.

Bex returned after rehearsal and stopped beside me.

“What are you doing?”

“Making it match.”

“I asked you to fix the seam.”

“I did. Look.”

She didn't look at the seam.

“The tower was mine.”

I put down the brush.

“Oh.”

It was a small word for the size of the mistake arriving behind it.

“I thought you wanted the whole thing to look better.”

“I wanted it to stay up. We painted it together. It's supposed to look like us.”

“The colours don't—”

“I know the colours don't match perfectly. You don't need to discover that for me.”

Around us, people were packing shoes and water bottles. Somebody began playing an exaggeratedly sad tune on the hall piano until another person told them, correctly, to stop being a nuisance. I wanted everyone to leave. I also wanted a witness to explain that I had meant well, as though intention could repaint the original tower.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

Bex nodded without immediately making me feel better.

I offered to mix the brighter colour again. She said she would do it herself tomorrow. That hurt, which was a selfish response to being told the person whose work I had altered wanted to alter it back.

We carried the sewing box into the little kitchen. The drawer held spoons from several decades, none belonging to the forks. Bex put on the kettle.

“I like that you're good at things,” she said. “I don't need every thing I make to become a reason you're good at them.”

“I wasn't trying to show off.”

“I know. Sometimes it's worse because you think helping means making yourself responsible for the whole room.”

I leaned against the counter.

“If I can see something wrong, it's hard not to fix it.”

“Maybe ask whose wrong it is.”

The kettle clicked off. She made tea, putting too much milk in mine because she was still annoyed and therefore not concentrating on my preferences.

“My room's confirmed,” she said.

“For September?”

She nodded. “Small. Expensive. Apparently the window sticks.”

“I could—”

She looked at me.

I shut my mouth.

Then we both laughed, reluctantly at first and properly when I saw how close I had come to offering a building repair as a response to my best friend leaving.

“I want you to visit,” she said. “Not because you could mend the curtains. Because you're my friend.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

I didn't answer quickly. Somewhere along the way, usefulness had become a reliable substitute for asking whether people wanted me there. If I could fix the curtain, there was a reason to keep inviting me. Reasons felt safer than affection, which people could change without submitting an explanation.

“I think I forget,” I said.

Bex put her cup down and bumped my shoulder with hers.

“Then we'll practise. Beach. Now. No tasks.”

“I've got the frame—”

“Still there tomorrow.”

We bought chips and sat on the low wall above the beach. Bex told me which people from the programme she had found online and why their apparently effortless success made her want to throw her phone into the sea. I told her about Eli and the sawdust, leaving out enough pauses that the conversation sounded more competent than it had been.

“He listens,” I said.

“To hinge specifications?”

“To me.”

Bex went quiet for a second, then smiled.

“That seems promising.”

A gull landed near our chips. We both moved the bag at once and knocked our heads together. I laughed so hard I cried a little, which was useful camouflage for a feeling I hadn't been ready to name.

We stayed until the chips were cold. Nothing was repaired. The afternoon mattered anyway.