Chapter 50 Twenty-six years old
Twenty-six years old
Kath
I’m thinking about how much I love you.
The words repeat round in my head.
I keep trying to take them in, not sure I’ve even heard them right. Did he say that, or was it just my imagination?
“Sorry?” I ask.
“I love you,” he says again. “I’ve always loved you. Even when I did everything I could to forget you. It was never enough.”
My heart starts to pound. I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want him to see all the emotions rushing across my face. Instead I stare at the painted ceiling and the glow of the water being reflected upwards.
“But what do you mean by that?” I ask. “As a friend? As something else? I need you to explain it to me.”
“As more than a friend,” he clarifies. “I’ve always loved you as more than a friend. And I really want us to be more than just friends, if that’s still something you want. But if you don’t I promise to never bring it up again. It’s your choice Kath, always your choice.”
For half a second, something wild and weightless blooms in my chest. The feeling terrifies me and I crush it down immediately, like touching a flame and yanking helped my hand away. Because I’m not sure what I’m hearing is real.
“After Rio, this is pretty hard to hear. I’m not a saint, Sam. It’s not that easy to forgive someone when you tell them that you love them, only to have your heart broken.”
The words wobble more than I want them to. But they’re true. He did break my heart. And it hurt for years. Hurt in a way I wasn’t sure would mend.
He looks pained. “I wish more than anything that I could take it all back. Not just Rio, but everything after. All the things I said to you when we fought. They were about me. Not you. Never you. I’ve spent my life hoping, wishing, you’d fall in love with me.”
I suck in a breath. The words of our fight have lived in my mind rent-free for years, how he said I’d waited half my life for him.
“I can’t… I won’t go through something like that again.
You really hurt me, Sam,” I tell him. “You threw everything I told you about how I felt back in my face, and it destroyed me.”
“I’m sorry.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “I know you are, but I need to work out if that’s enough.”
Sam may have brought me back to myself again. He might have helped me process the last few years, and reconnect with my friends, but another heartbreak would be too much. That week in Brazil was one of the best of my life. Followed by some of the worst months of my life.
I loved him so much. I still love him. But those years without him were awful. There’s a part of me that almost feels like I’m betraying myself, to still love him after everything he did to us.
He opens his mouth to say something, but I cut him off.
“If you have any doubts, you have to tell me now. Because I promised myself all those years ago that I would never cry over you again. And I meant it. We’ve only just managed to mend what we lost, and I won’t risk our friendship again. I won’t be willing to fix it again.”
His face flashes with shame. “My life would have been infinitely better with you in it for the last five years, and the only person I have to blame for that is myself.” He takes a deep breath.
“So no, I don’t have doubts. I know that I don’t have to pick between you and swimming.
I never did. I was just too scared and anxious to realise that. ”
I scan his face. I still want to know that he really means it. That I can trust him not to drop me, that he won’t convince himself that he’s not good enough again, that he’ll finally choose me the way I always used to choose him.
“What’s done is done,” I say. “But I need to know that if we do this, you’re all in. Because you aren’t swimming now, but what happens when you start again? What’s different now?”
He opens his mouth, but I duck under the water to give myself a moment. It’s all happening so quickly. All I wanted in that summer of 2016 was for Sam to tell me he loved me back. Now he’s saying it. But it’s years too late. Years and years too late.
The water presses in around my ears, dulling everything, and for a second my body doesn’t know whether to float or sink. I’m trying to untangle my emotions. Am I even ready to take that leap of faith again?
The answer’s there. I know it is. It’s there in the way I’ve missed him, in the way that he’s the first person I want to talk to, the way that he helps me carry the weights I didn’t even know I was holding. The way he’s worked so hard to show me that he’s changed.
We’re both different to the people we were when we were twenty, but the way we’ve changed complements one another rather than pushing us further apart.
“Kath,” he says when I resurface. “If you give me one more chance, I can promise that I won’t ever back out of this.
I’ve done enough therapy to realise what I really want.
I’m not the person I was before, I’ve learnt enough about myself to know the bad habits I can fall into and how to avoid them. I would never do that to you again.”
He takes another deep breath. “Please just let me prove that I deserve you.”
I know this is what I’ve wanted for years. But diving into it feels harder than I thought it would. He doesn’t rush me with my response, simply treads water beside me. Maybe the answer isn’t as hard as I'm making it. What am I proving by denying what I really want?
Because deep down I know what I want. It’s Sam. It’s always been Sam.
Time to be brave, Kath, I tell myself.
“I think I’ve loved you since I was a teenager too,” I say eventually. “But it took me years to realise it.”
I realise that I’ve been drifting closer over the last few minutes. And suddenly I’m only centimetres away, and it feels like the most natural thing in the world to lean forwards and kiss him. And when I do, it feels like falling, and like coming home. He tastes of chlorine and toothpaste and Sam.
“I’ve missed this,” I whisper to him when we stop.
“I missed it too.” His hands trace my collarbones. “I won’t mess this up again, Kath. Please believe me. I’ll grovel for an eternity. I know I have to make this right.”
“You don’t need to grovel,” I tell him. “You just need to promise never to push me away again. No matter what happens.”
“Pinky promise. And you know that those are binding,” he says as he leans forwards and catches my lips again.