‘You’re telling me you’ve never looked? Not once? Not even when you were angry at me for leaving, you didn’t want to laugh at me from afar,’ she added good-humouredly.
‘I was angry you’d left, Nina, but whatever else you think I felt back then and every day since, I can almost guarantee you that you’re wrong. I’ve never wanted to hurt you. Not ever.’
His words lodged in her heart as though each were a broken piece of glass from the jar. ‘I never wanted to hurt you either.’
He launched past her again. She’d put the rice in the gently simmering water in the pan and yet again the bubbles had reached the surface and were beginning to spill over.
She groaned at yet another cooking mistake. ‘That hob is way too temperamental.’
‘Sure it’s not user error?’
‘Careful, or no chilli, you’ll have to order in.’
He put a hand against his heart as though wounded, but then looked right at her again and said seriously, ‘I promise you. I haven’t opened the jar, Nina.’ He turned down the heat beneath the pan of rice. ‘Doesn’t need to be any higher than that.’
‘We’ll see.’
When the moment hovered between them he told her, ‘We always said we would never open that jar unless we were together.’
Nina picked up the orange vessel. She never would’ve imagined sitting here with Leo and doing this, not in a million years. But after all this time it suddenly felt right. ‘We’ve got fifteen minutes to wait for the rice, barring any more emergencies, how about now?’
‘Let’s do it.’ He followed her over to the coffee table where she knelt on the stripy beach rug beneath its feet. ‘Are you sure about this?’
‘I’m sure.’ She unscrewed the lid and pushed the jar in Leo’s direction while she picked up her glass of wine.
‘No, you go first,’ he laughed.
She hesitated only for a moment and then put her free hand inside, not once breaking eye contact with the man she’d shared so much with, and it was as though they were those two little kids again, with nothing but adventures on the beach, ice-cream flavours and a burgeoning romance on the horizon to look forward to, no matter what their worries had ever been at the time.
Nina managed to open up the folded piece of paper one-handed. She half expected the words to have faded but they hadn’t, and when she read them she laughed so hard she almost slopped her wine.
Leo rescued the glass from her hand and set it ontothe coffee table. ‘We don’t want to ruin your new rug. Now what’s so funny? Hope the laughter isn’t at my expense.’
She covered her mouth with her hand for a moment and then told him, ‘This wasn’t the first worry I wrote, not even the second, third or fourth, but it seems apt to pull it out now.’ She showed it to him and with a squeal, shut her eyes as he read it out loud.
‘My best friend is a boy.’ And this time he put down his own glass. ‘I assume this was me you were referring to.’
‘Of course it was. But I went through a time when I thought I was weird not having a special friend who was a girl. I wanted to fit in, be normal and sometimes other girls would laugh at me for hanging out with a boy at the cabins. They’d tease me about it. Later it didn’t bother me one bit, but at first it really did. I thought I was weird like they told me I was.’
‘Well I suppose they were right about one thing …’
‘Hey!’ She punched him gently on the arm.
‘Right, my turn. Let’s see if I can do one better.’ He dug in a hand, rifled around as though he was digging into a tombola to draw a winner for the grand prize.
He unfolded his selected piece of paper. ‘This was one of my worries … a serious one …’ He cleared his throat as if to make a grand announcement and read, ‘The chippy on the pier stopped selling the big pickled onions.’
Nina’s laughter burst out once again. ‘Now that really is a first world problem.’
‘In my defence, I was addicted to them.’
‘They gave you stinky breath.’ She used to refuse to kiss him after he’d eaten one even though she liked them too, with the justification that consuming one for yourself wasway different from the aftertaste left lingering on someone’s tongue.
She reached out and plucked another memory and they kept them coming – ‘I’m not sure if this is me or you.’ She passed the paper to Leo.
He looked at the writing. ‘Mum and Dad keep arguing.’ He pulled a face. ‘That could be either of us couldn’t it? I can’t make out if it’s my writing or yours either.’
‘Given my parents divorced I’d say it’s me.’
