‘Yeah, I guess. I just… Andy’s brilliant, but he’s a real straight down the line guy. You know, black is black, white is white. I just don’t think he’ll believe me, even if I could prove it to him the way you just did with Rachel.’
‘You never know,’ I said. ‘He might surprise you.’
He looked at me and I shivered under his gaze. ‘Yeah, he might.’ His gaze became more intense and the shiver turned into a swirling in my belly as he reached his fingers towards mine, which were resting on the bench between us. I held my breath as they slid closer, and then, finally, with a crack and a feeling like being hit by lightning, he curled them round mine. The outside world receded, the sides of the bandstand shrinking around us so that it was just the two of us here, in this one moment in time.
I imagined closing the gap between us and pressing my mouth onto his, the feel of his lips warm and soft against mine and?—
‘Do you mind?’ he said, breaking into my thoughts.
‘This?’ I said, indicating our hands, and he nodded. ‘No,’ I said, simply. ‘It’s nice.’
‘Good.’ He moved slightly closer and I could feel the heat from his thigh. My skin where our hands touched hummed and crackled with a feeling, soft and gentle like TV static turned down low. We sat for a moment and watched the world go by. It had all been such a whirlwind over the last few days I’d hardly had time to think. But now, sitting here, hands intertwined, I allowed myself to imagine what it might be like to be with another man.
Greg and I had been together for almost a decade. We’d been very different, but we balanced each other out and it worked.He grabbed life by the horns, never let anything faze him or get him down. Sometimes it was exhausting, but it was good for me when I was younger. Greg helped me to grow, come out of my shell and see what the world had to offer me. He always described us as two sides of the same coin, and that was how it felt, most of the time.
Other times, I found his lust for life exhausting, and craved some downtime. He loved being with other people, said yes to any invitation. Sometimes, I wished it could just be me and him. Because the times when it was – the times when he was usually restless, wondering what to do next – were my favourite times.
After ten years together Greg and I knew each other inside out. I knew that he preferred his coffee with cream and liked tea so strong a spoon could stand up in it; I knew what side of the bed he liked to sleep on, that he would always choose to take the stairs rather than the lift because when he was eight he’d got stuck in a broken-down lift and wet himself; I knew when he was sad or stressed and that he believed that nothing he ever did would ever be good enough to please his father. When he died, I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to speak to anyone again, let alone meeting and getting to know someone completely new.
And yet now here I was, sitting with this man I knew very little about, having feelings I never imagined feeling again. Although I didn’t know him well yet, being with Nick already felt calmer than being with Greg had ever felt. There was an energy about him that was soothing, gentle, and I wanted to get to know him better.
‘I’ve been trying to work out whether there’s any way we can control this,’ Nick said, suddenly.
I looked round at him. ‘What do you mean?’
He rubbed his face. ‘Have you thought about what this means, that this is happening to us?’
‘Of course,’ I admitted.
‘Me too. A lot. I keep thinking that it makes no sense, that things like this don’t happen outside science fiction films. And yet here we are.’ He looked at me. ‘Do you ever think perhaps we were meant to find each other, for whatever reason? That the universe wants to bring us together?’
I stared at him. ‘This is exactly what I’ve thought,’ I whispered.
He smiled. ‘Well, if we’re right, then surely there has to be a way for us to actually make it happen. I mean, it would be a pretty cruel twist of fate if the universe let us meet but then kept us apart forever, wouldn’t it?’
I smiled. ‘And have you worked it out yet?’
He shook his head. ‘Not yet. But I hate not knowing whether I’m ever going to see you again every time we part. Therehasto be a way.’
I looked down at the bench, my fingers worrying at a loose piece of wood. ‘I have had an idea,’ I said.
‘Go on.’
I raised my eyes to look at him. ‘I could look for you in 2019.’
‘No.’ The word shot out like a bullet.
‘But—’
‘No, stop.’ His voice was harsher than I’d heard it before and I stiffened. He softened. ‘Sorry, Emma. But I’ve already thought about that and it’s a definite no for me.’
‘But why? I mean, I know you said you’d be older than me, but it would only be fourteen years and that’s not much.’
He shook his head. ‘It’s not that.’ He let out a long breath of air, his cheeks puffing outwards from the effort. ‘What if something terrible has happened to me in the last twenty years or… what if you can’t find me at all?’
It took a moment to realise what he meant. ‘You mean, what if you’ve died.’
He nodded. I swallowed.
