I wonder if he’s right, if I will start seeing signs in everything now—a low mood, a shed tear, a prolonged pause. Is our life together destined to become one long series of second guesses?
The room becomes quiet as a canyon.
“You don’t have to stay,” he says eventually.
Tears swarm my eyes. “With you?”
He nods.
“That isn’t what I—”
“I know. But I need you to know that... you don’t have to.”
“I want to stay, Joel. Because I love you.”
We share a look a mile long.
And then, “I love you too,” he whispers.
I stare at him. After all these months, he’s finally said it back.
Though his eyes are glazed with tears, he doesn’t look away. “You’re right,” he says. “What’s the worst that can happen now? I was stupid not to say it before. I love you, Callie. I love you so much. I always have.” He encircles me with his arms, presses his face against my neck and murmurs it over and over, against my flushing skin.
•••
That night in bed my hands find him, desperate to stop us spiraling off onto opposite flight paths. His mouth is on mine straightaway, fierce and tender all at once. But it’s a sad sort of tenderness, the kind you see in black-and-white films. Like we’re kissing through the open window of a steam train, just before the whistle blows.
66.
Joel
It’s early October, a fortnight since my return from Cornwall. For the past few hours, Callie’s been at dinner with Esther, Gavin, and Ben.
I backed out at the last minute, claiming a headache she didn’t buy for a nanosecond. But I’d been struggling all day. On top of everything else, I was still feeling unsettled by a dream I’d had about Buddy a few nights previously, falling off his push-bike.
“We’re still a couple, aren’t we?” she asked me, thirty minutes before leaving the flat. She was half-dressed in front of the mirror, her hair in rollers. I was sitting on the bed behind her. I’d have forgiven her for wondering, as she looked at me looking at her, if what we had was nothing more than an illusion. Something she could see but felt cold to the touch.
“Of course we are,” I murmured. Still, where was the evidence? Every day I wait and hope for something to change, a solution to present itself. But nothing ever does.
“Then I’ll stay at home with you.”
“No, I want you to go.” Because I did. I wanted her to have fun, forget everything that’s going on. I didn’t want to drag her down with me.
I guess she must be having a good time. It’s midnight, and there’s still no sign of her. No messages to say she’ll be home soon.
I’m shivering in the garden on the phone to Warren, looking back at the flat. Our flat, where we’d started making memories. There’s a singlelight on in the kitchen, throbbing orange like a dying flame. Above ours, Danny’s windows are dark and still.
“I dreamed about Callie.”
“I’m sorry,” Warren says.
“It’s not good.”
Warren clears his throat. “You know when she’s going to...?”
“Eight years,” I manage, before my composure landslides.
He just lets me cry for a while, supportively silent as a helpline volunteer.
