Narcissist.
‘So?’ she says.
‘So?’
Mark lifts his head from the pillow and sits off the side of the bed with his feet on the floor, phone pressed to his ear. The clock on his dresser indicates it’s three-twenty in the morning, he lets out a muted sigh.
‘So, do you think you are?’ Rachel says, the line’s a bit rubbish so her voice crackles as she talks.
‘I don’t think so, no,’ he says.
‘Bullshit, we all are, that’s what I’m trying to say. The way we all act, it’s dreadfully narcissistic. That’s social media’s fault.’
‘So you’re calling me a narcissist.’
‘I’m calling everyone a narcissist.’
Through the phone he can hear her re-shuffling and the sound of a can being opened. She takes a sip and he holds the phone away from his ear, much too tired to even consider the thought of drinking alcohol.
‘Look at the symptoms of narcissism,’ she says.
‘I don’t think symptoms is the right word.’
‘Shut up, you know what I mean.’
There’s a loud thud then and her voice goes slightly muffled. For a moment he stares at himself in the mirror opposite. The rolls on his body accentuated by his poor posture, he tries to suck them in, before realising that she can’t actually see him, then releasing again. Her voice is clear now.
‘Sorry I dropped my phone,’ she says.
He releases a small laugh, ‘How much have you had?’
‘Not too much. Just enough.’
Someone’s giggling in the background, and then Rachel places the phone to her shoulder, and he can hear her telling them to go away.
‘That Liz?’ he says.
‘She’s asking me for a condom.’
‘Who’s the lucky fella?’
‘Marcus.’
She says this like he has any idea who Marcus is. Mark assumes he must be a university student, though that’s the only real character trait he has to work with. He doesn’t bother to ask if Marcus is a new friend or not, he’s having sex with Liz tonight so he poses no intimate threat.
She coughs down the line, then says, ‘As I was saying. Sense of self-importance, sense of entitlement, living in a fantasy world. All signs of narcissism.’
’And?’
‘And look at what people post all over their Instagram. Only someone with such a grandiose sense of self-importance thinks I wanna see what they had for dinner last night.’
‘Doesn’t make them a narcissist,’ Mark says, then adds, ‘You can’t just call everyone you don’t like some complicated psychological term.’
‘If it walks like a duck.’
‘I preferred you before you went to university.’
They laugh together and she takes a sip from her drink. He holds no grudge against Rachel for waking him up just to engage in such meaningless conversation. He’s used to it. In secondary school, she was always like this, keen to spout about some controversial topic to make her seem more interesting, only to back peddle when she actually offended someone. In Sixth Form, she formed these topics into concrete opinions about the world, and Mark never really cared to think about whether he agreed or not.
Once, they were sitting with Adam and Lucy discussing an upcoming election and she said, ‘It’s just pork-barrel politics isn’t it really. They’ll stop caring about us after the election.’
Frankly, Mark said, ‘I don’t know what that means.’
She giggled a little bit then and was like, ‘Oh sorry.’
After, she reached over and placed her hand on his thigh, an action that reeked of subtle patronising undertones.
‘So, how’s Anna,’ she says now, her voice gradually sounding more slurred.
Mark dislikes her line of questioning, he can sense the route it’s taking, but answers anyway.
’She’s okay, yeah,’ he says. ‘What about you, anyone on the go?’
‘Me and Liz had a bit of fun the other night,’ she says candidly. ‘That’s about it.’
Her lackadaisical attitude and openness towards sex is something he finds quite exciting. Never has he known a girl to openly admit so much about her personal life to anyone who asks.
He’s thinking about it now, he didn’t know she was bisexual and it entertains him to consider, ‘Sounds like a good time,’ he says.
She exhales forcefully, ‘I’m joking you nob.’
‘Oh, right.’
‘Unfortunately, I’m still waiting for some prick who doesn’t like me back.’
Mark feels uncomfortable at this and reaches for the glass of water next to him.
‘Come on Rachel, you’re drunk.’
‘And?’
‘Are you sure you want to say this?’
‘Just because I’m drunk doesn’t mean I can’t reminisce about how good the sex was.’
He coughs, possibly as some way to verbally tell her she’s going over the line, possibly just because he drank a bit too quickly.
‘It only happened twice,’ he says.
‘Have you told her yet?’ she says.
She can sense in his voice that he’s uncomfortable and there’s a sort of awkward pause now, but it’s short enough that Mark can get away with claiming it was just lag on the phone line.
‘No.’
There’s another pause now, longer in duration.
‘Are you going to?’ she says.
‘Do you want me to?’
Rachel laughs then, ‘Ask me in the morning.’
The casualness in her response seems to have defused a lot of the tension and Mark lets his shoulders relax, then lays back down on the bed.
‘I’ve got an early morning,’ he says.
‘Sure.’
‘Speak to you tomorrow?’
‘Sounds good.’
‘I’m glad you called,’ he says, but she hangs up the phone as he’s talking.
Mark opens up Instagram, Rachel’s recent picture tops his feed and he laughs to himself. He likes it, then comments, ‘Narcissist.’
