The Long Version

I'm on the last bus and I've gone past mine.

I'm going round the loop again, which is a thing I do now.

And I rang you for no reason, which I never do,

and you picked up first ring, which — yeah. Noted.

And you said "you alright?" and I said "yeah, good,"

and then I sat there with my whole face doing something else.

And I nearly said goodnight. I had it lined up.

And I don't know what happened. It just came out sideways.

So I said: "Actually — hold on."

And you went quiet, in the way you go quiet, and you waited.

Do you want the short version or the long one?

'Cause the short one's fine and it's what I've been doing,

and I'm quite good at it now, I've had the practice —

but the long one's got some stuff in it.

And you said, "Give me the long one."

You said it straight away.

You said, "Give me the long one, I'm not going anywhere."

Yeah — I clocked it in October, I just didn't have the words for it.

Wasn't that you seemed sad, man, it's that you went quiet in the ways that were yours —

you stopped sending me the stupid videos at two in the morning,

stopped arguing with me about films you haven't even seen.

That's the tell. Not the crying. Nobody's crying.

It's the nonsense going missing. That's how I knew.

And I sat with it. And I said nothing. And I'll tell you why, 'cause you deserve it:

'cause I didn't want to be wrong and make it weird between us,

and 'cause I've been taught to wait to be invited in,

like grief's got a doorbell and you don't just walk through.

And 'cause — real talk — I've been doing the same thing to you.

Same "yeah I'm good," same three notes, same flat delivery,

I know your "yeah I'm good" 'cause I've got one that matches it,

we've been passing the same lie back and forward for a year

like it's a ball, like it's a game we're both winning,

and neither of us dropped it, and that's on both of us, so—

give me the long one. Go on. Bus is going round again anyway.

Do you want the short version or the long one?

'Cause the short one's fine and it's what I've been doing,

and I'm quite good at it now, I've had the practice —

but the long one's got some stuff in it.

And you said, "Give me the long one."

You said it straight away.

You said, "Give me the long one, I'm not going anywhere."

I don't want this to be a big thing.

It's not a big thing. It's a phone call.

I've got no news. Nothing's happened. That's what's embarrassing.

Doesn't have to have happened.

...Right.

Say the first bit. Don't do the whole speech. Just the first bit.

Okay.

Okay. So. Since about the summer—

And it took the whole loop. It took two loops.

And the driver clocked me and said nothing, which was decent of him.

And you didn't fix it, and I didn't ask you to,

and you said "yeah" in the right places and that was the whole medicine.

So: the long version.

Turns out I had one.

Turns out I've had one for about a year.

Right. Saturday. My place. I'm cooking, badly.

You don't cook.

I'm learning. It's a whole thing. Bring nothing, you'll only judge it.

Yeah, alright.

And oi —

What?

Get off the bus.