He laughed.
I hated that he still knew me.
This person who had been my best friend for a time.
The match to my petrol soaked paper.
A waiter appeared, materialising from nowhere, probably taught that skill at the Hogwarts Waitering School.
“Can I get you a drink, madam?”
“A martini. Dirty. Thank you.”
Callum turned around and squinted. “That’s new.”
“Lots of things are.” I sat down in the chair next to him, both of us looking at the sea instead of each other. “Let’s talk about Africa. Not what happened.”
Not the last time I saw him, when he looked at the heart I held in my hands and walked away. It hadn’t been my heart.
It was his.
“Why? What happened, Wren?”
I shook my head. “Africa. Harare. Zimbabwe. Kenya. Tanzania. Marrakesh. Tell me about them. The reservations and parks. Have you been to them before?”
“Yes. The countries. I’ve been to two of the parks and volunteered there. Raised Free is amazing. The work they do with baboons – it’s gold.”
“Where else. What will I see?”
For the next hour, while the sun started to settle below the horizon, he told me about Africa. The animals, people, the heat and the sun, the monsoons and the sky at night with the million millions of diamonds. He told me stories of giraffes and painted dogs, elephants and birds of prey, of rituals and cultures.
We didn’t talk about us.
The beautiful boy who had taken me for coffee after a lecture, the man-child who had become a centre of gravity for all those around him was still there. The person we’d all fallen in love with despite him not being able to love himself.
“What’s your favourite part?” It was still hot, despite the night having been pulled over us.
“The sky. The African sky. No matter where I went it just seemed huge and the stars were always there. Made me feel like I was this small, minute particle in the grand story that was the world, not even a letter on a single page.”
“And you’d like that?” I laughed quietly.
He smiled. “It’s a calming feeling. Like actually, it doesn’t matter, because whatever happens, the world will keep turning. The shit that can happen, it’s just that – shit, because tomorrow morning the sun will still rise, even in London, and people will wake up and get on with life.”
“We used to talk like this.” The words were out before I could stop them. “I remember after me and Jonah split up and I was crying my eyes out, you told me what Marie always said to you.”
“Go to sleep because things will always seem better in the morning.” He said the words first.
I nodded, my second martini nearly gone. “It was generally true. I still felt like crap the next day, but not as bad.”
“Marie always talks sense.” He licked his lips, a habit I remembered he had, a nervous one. “I missed you. Afterwards.”
“I know. It wasn’t the same, that last year.”
“It wouldn’t have been anyway. We were on placements.”
“It didn’t matter. I couldn’t call you. You weren’t on my doorstep with pizza when I was pulling an all-nighter to revise.”
His smile was wry, as if I didn’t know all of it, which I probably didn’t and never would.
