‘You have a phone you’re glued to all day. Google a plumber. I’m off the clock. It’s my birthday.’
Erin gawks at me like I’ve started speaking Spanish. Then she disappears. ‘Right. Fine. Jesus.’
The window slams shut, and silence returns to the garden. I swear, I feel sick. I’m vibrating with the inaction.
‘See? Better.’ David unlocks his brakes. ‘I’m going inside. It’s Baltic out here. You coming?’
‘In a bit.’
He turns and pauses at the door. ‘Stop trying to be the dyke, man. Let the tide come in and see what happens. Nobody’s gonna drown.’
The sliding door clicks shut behind him.
I sit in the gathering dark as the spring cold seeps into my bones, but I don’t move. I have no strategy, no next phase. I have no defensive line to set, no attack to launch. Twenty-five years old, and every pocket, every drawer, every room in me has been cleared out. I let myself feel the loss.
I miss her so goddamn much.
It’s not a poetic ache, it’s physical deprivation – like dehydration or hypothermia. I miss the sound of her laugh, the way she snorts when she finds something truly funny. I miss her kisses and her touch. How she challenges me.
I close my eyes.
I’m sorry.
A short buzz against my thigh, but I decide to ignore it. I can’t be arsed right now. It’ll be the team WhatsApp group or a random birthday GIF from Aunt Angela.
It buzzes again. A single follow-up vibration. I let out a weary sigh and pull my phone out of my pocket, intending to silence it.
The screen lights up the dusk with two notifications. The sight of it trips a breaker in my chest. Everything stops. Breath. Heart. Logic.
Marzipan:
Happy Birthday, Bear. Are you free on Tuesday night?
Chapter 26
Ava
The cinema is empty. That’s because I bought out the entire evening screening. Principal dancers get paid well enough to have one spectacular lapse in financial sanity per calendar year, and this is mine. Also, I’m out of options, and this is the only gesture I could think of.
I’m wearing his hoodie. The heather-grey one I took from Oban and never returned, because the thought of handing it back felt like losing a limb. The sleeves drown my hands and the hem grazes mid-thigh over my tights. Deep in the cotton fibres, there’s still a trace of him. I pull the cuffs over my hands because it’s the only thing keeping me from walking out of here before he arrives.
If he arrives.
He might not come.
I walked out of AxeVenture with the pieces of his heart in my fists because accepting that another human being puts me before anything else, even himself, felt like standing on stage without skin. Unsurvivable.
I wasn’t protecting him. I was protecting myself from the day he’d discover what everyone figures out eventually: that loving me is too hard.
My knee bounces. Up-down, up-down. The old metronome. I plant my boot heel into the sticky carpet and hold.
He’s a no-show. Ten past the hour. And why would he come? I know I wouldn’t. Today is the first of April so maybe he thinks it was an April fool’s day prank.
I stand up and grab my bag. This was silly. Grand gestures are for people who haven’t burned the bridge. I made a horrible mistake, and I will have to live with it for the rest of my life.
I get up and turn to the aisle.
The double doors swing open. Foyer light spills in, a golden column across the floor.
