I know five important, unforgettable, life-fucking details regarding one man; one man who I was so sure would be another name added to a long string of inconsequential flings.
‘Oh, to be young,’ people say, telling you to enjoy your 20s. People say to live fast, do everything while you still can, make memories. ‘Mistakes are okay!’ they preach, because you’ll look back and laugh anyways. They never say how badly those mistakes hurt as you’re making them.
There are five things regarding Regulus Black that ruined me. The only five things that mattered anymore. Some had shocked me, when I found out. Some I still think about daily, and some I can’t bear to dwell on at all.
One:
His last name was Black, same as my best friend. Sirius Black had been my closest confidant and partner in crime for the better half of my life. We told each other everything. Many times, while we were in school and shared a dorm, he snuck over into my bed and he told me things he’d never told anybody else. I did the same. We were attached at the hip.
I never met Sirius’s family. Not back then. Sirius’s mum was inches from being institutionalized and his dad sounded like the crossest man to ever live. The Blacks were rich, richer than my family by a good portion. Their money ran so deep and traced so far back that they still hung a family crest on a banner in one room in their manor. Manor. I grew up richer than most, but we were never so pompous as to call our three-story in the suburbs of London a manor like Orion and Walburga Black did.
Sirius didn’t speak about having a brother often, but when he did, it was a tricky subject; I learned to shut up and just listen whenever his name was brought up. Sirius had a lot to say about Regulus, but he never stood for bad things being said by anybody else. Sirius himself might have agreed but I still wasn’t allowed to say anything. He sometimes told me things he missed about his brother, too, but all of those details pertained to a Regulus so far removed from the Regulus I ended up getting to know that they don’t count.
Imagine my surprise when I met Regulus Black for myself, years after those secret-swapping fests. I didn’t recognize him because he was nothing like the awkward, know-it-all, mama’s-boy brat that Sirius had complained about. My Regulus was a tall and measured man with a good taste in coffee and an even better taste in books. He smelled like expensive leather and the color purple.
I never told Sirius about Regulus. I never said a word when I fucked my best friend’s brother, accidentally fell in love with him, ruined his life, and stood by as he ruined mine.
Two:
He was engaged to a woman by the name of Bethanne Striker. She was American. She might have been more indifferent to Regulus than he was to her, but it was hard to tell, because both of them could hardly have cared less. Regulus once confessed that he knew more about her financial accounts than he did about her personal life. ‘It’s the way these things are done,’ Regulus had said calmly when I protested one night.
Everything I gathered about Bethanne only made me sad. She was top of her class at Harvard Law, and was featured in multiple magazines for her dozens of scholarly accomplishments. I had ordered every single magazine and ripped her pages out. Somewhere in my flat was the stack of clippings that I keep, even now. I don’t know why. In them I learned that she grew up split between Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and Paris, France. She attended finishing school. Her sister took her own life when they were teenagers. Her parents expected the world of her. The one time I’d ever met her in person was like meeting a celebrity I'd been worshiping, and Sirius had been gobsmacked at my lack of personable charm I usually slathered on at any old social gathering like it was my second nature.
The engagement had been called off when Regulus declared himself in love with a man. The engagement had ended because of me. In my deluded sense of morality, I'd convinced him love was the only thing that mattered in marriage, and in doing so was responsible for the start of his societal ruin.
Three:
Regulus fell in love with me first. I was a bookseller on the cross street of nowhere-special and who-cares when we met, and he was an uppity museum curator. He was busy looking and didn’t doddle or peruse like the usual customer. I asked him what he was looking for. He replied with Tender is the Night, and I'd known it immediately because it was F. Scott Fitzgerald. I stuck it in a paper bag and sent him on his way.
He came by more after that, but never for more than three minutes or so. Everytime he was prepared with another title and author for me to find him, more and more obscure, like a test, and once I even thought he might be a secret shopper that my boss had sicked on me. After the seventh or eighth book I managed to keep him by asking about the last book he’d bought. We book-clubbed it after that; I always made a point to read the books he bought so we could chat about them. I made every first move in our entire relationship.
And yet, he claims he fell first. Either way, I fell harder, so the proverbial egg was on my face. I can’t talk about this at length, because it makes me more angry than anything in the world.
Four:
I never went to Regulus’s flat. I never even saw a picture. At the time, I lived in a top-floor unit on Cornelia Street in South London, and it was everything I ever needed and more than Regulus had ever wanted.
We sat atop the roof and talked ourselves to sunrise on too many nights to count, always accompanied by a fancy wine Regulus brought that I couldn’t begin to pronounce. He made me a night owl. I kept the habit for years after.
My sitting room was small but cozy, with a soft rug underfoot and so many throw pillows on the couch that you had to toss a few to the floor every time you wanted to sit. There was a fireplace that I only ever used with Regulus, because he did stuff like that. He tended fireplaces and drank expensive wine. He played house while it was fun, and walked away when it got complicated. I know he misses my sitting room, though. He loved that damn fireplace. I joked that I'd have to build him one when we lived together, but it wasn’t a joke when I said it, not until he laughed and I pretended like that’s how I'd meant it all along.
The kitchen was where I had the most dreams that included Regulus. It was a kitchen with plenty of room to dance in, long counters for involved recipes I’d never thought of making before, and a grand table Regulus taught me how to properly set. In the corner, tucked away from guests, was an expensive coffee maker I’d gotten from my parents as a housewarming gift when I'd first moved to Cornelia Street. I make my own coffee on it every single day. Every morning without fail I reach for the sugar. I don’t take sugar in my coffee. Regulus did. Regulus took two spoonfuls and a hearty dash of creamer.
I think I dream of Regulus the most in the kitchen because it felt so domestic. It was my favorite version of him: Ordering me around in the morning, still in his pajamas, eyes full of sleep, and none of the weight on his back that accrued throughout the day. Those mornings were just for me and him, before the world got to us.
My bedroom…
Fuck this.
The point is, I never saw Regulus’s flat because maybe he didn’t want me to, but I also never pushed, because we had it all at mine. I didn’t think it was necessary. Now I understand that it wasn’t just his flat he wouldn’t show me, and not just my flat that I offered too much of.
Five:
Regulus Black left town with nothing but a letter to prove he’d ever even been there to begin with. He took everything he'd ever left at Cornelia Street, which was impressive, because by the end he’d become a huge chunk of the whole atmosphere of the place. It must have taken him hours. I left for work at the bookshop just past nine, and by five, I almost could have convinced myself I'd imagined Regulus in his entirety.
The letter was brief, but it was the only thing I had left aside from magazine scraps of a woman he barely even knew and a picture of us I had printed out and planned to give him for our anniversary. It would have taken place three weeks from then. It was tucked into a copy of Tender Is the Night with a romantic note I'd written blissfully unaware of what simmered under the surface (a goodbye like a headshot from behind, because he didn’t even have the guts to look me in the eye.) The irony of our perpendicular notes did not escape me.
Five things. That was all it took to break love, if it ever was love. I had been so positive at the time, and I still kind of am, because if it wasn’t love, if it was all counterfeit from Tender Is the Night all the way to that final letter, and I couldn’t get out of bed for less than love, I’m mortified.
Five things. That’s all it came down to. That’s all it took to bring down Perfectly Fine James Potter. I haven’t been back to Cornelia Street since. I haven’t spoken Regulus’s name since. I haven’t been quite myself since.