Forever is Now

DAY ONE 2

Summer Taylor-Braddon : Firstly, thank you so much, everyone, for coming into the studio at the weekend—I really do appreciate it. And I know it hasn’t been easy to find a time when you’re all free.

So, three guests have joined us. Would you like to introduce yourselves?

Hana Burton : My name is Hana Burton. I’m Summer’s best friend.

Julia Rivers : Julia. We, uh, were friends.

Ashley Kincade : And I’m Ashley.

Adelaide James : We hadn’t agreed on others coming into the first session.

Summer Taylor-Braddon : If only I talked, people would accuse me of lying. Bringing in more voices makes it better, right? Anyway, don’t get jealous. You’ll have a chance next week to bring in whoever you want—if you’re still on talking terms with them?

Anyway, thank you for coming in, Hana, Ashley, and Julia. So I’ve just got to the point where Ruari and I broke up, just when I was leaving for university. I’d like to stick to a roughly chronological timeline for everything if we can, so can you tell us about this?

Hana Burton : Well, uh, I was surprised. Like, really. You and him, you’d seemed so perfect for each other. Like, when we were at school, you just started getting closer and closer, and it was obvious to all of us that you were meant to be together.

You’d sort of do this—we called it ‘their dance’. Not an actual dance. Sorry—I don’t know who I direct this to. Direct address of third person.

Summer Taylor-Braddon : How about you pretend I’m not here and just talk to the viewer?

Hana Burton : Okay, so it’s like if Summer came into the room, Ruari would turn his body toward her. Wherever she walked, he’d turn to face her. And the same with her too. They were, like, drawn to each other. So aware of where each other was, even if it was subconscious.

Julia Rivers : We thought they’d have got together in year 12, but it took a bit longer. Was really great when they were though—even if they thought they’d hidden it from us well enough.

Ashley Kincade : Yeah, there was no hiding it. They were just meant to be together. And that’s why we were all surprised when they called things off.

He was proper cut up about it, too. I mean, I’d assumed it had been Summer’s decision, but he said that he’d made the choice—seemed to think it was the best thing. Yet he talked about her nonstop after. Proper lamenting. We were worried about him.

Hana Burton : Summer didn’t—talk about him, that is. I mean, Julia and I tried to get her to talk—we were worried about her, too, you know? But she just closed up completely. We didn’t really hear much from her after she went away to London.

Adelaide James : And what about you, Julia?

Julia Rivers : We figured she was moving on. Like, she was tagged in so many photos of nights out, so we thought she was doing okay. She looked like she was having fun.

Ashley Kincade : Ruari wasn’t though. He told me he shouldn’t have let her get away like that. He should’ve held onto her. He was... he sort of became colder. Before, he’d always laugh, but he didn’t. Not in the year that followed. Whenever he and I met up—which, I mean, we tried to do every month—there was always this wall up around him. It felt like he was keeping me at a distance, and I knew he was hurting. But I didn’t really try hard enough to get him to talk. I mean, we’re blokes. We kicked a football around, drank pints in the pub, but we never really talked.

But I knew. Of course I knew. Everyone who looked at him knew.

Hana Burton : The thing about Ruari is that he’s vulnerable. He always has been, but he’s not the type of person to open up about it.

Ashley Kincade : Not to us anyway. It’s the kind of thing he would’ve told Summer about—you know, if it wasn’t her that he’d broken up with. If it had been some other girl. Because those two, they’d been so, so close.

But then he, like—well, it was almost like he had no one.

He started drinking more and more. I’m not saying he was an alcoholic or anything, but he definitely liked a drink. We’d usually have a couple pints, you know, when we met up, but I remember one time—I think it was March, maybe late March—and I arrived at the pub and he’d already been drinking there for a while, that was obvious. He had all these empty glasses on his table, and he looked kind of sheepish. Embarrassed. You know, that I’d seen them.

But he still ordered two more, maybe three.

Julia Rivers : He called me once, when he was really drunk. Like, slurring his words.

Hana Burton : He did?

Julia Rivers : Yeah. I’m still not sure why. I couldn’t really make out what he was saying. I just messaged Ash and Dante about it. Figured you’d make sure he was okay. It wasn’t like the six of us hung out anymore.

Adelaide James : And was Ruari okay?

Ashley Kincade : Don’t know. I didn’t get that message until later, from Jules. And by then, I think Dante had gone round his house . [He sighs] Honestly, I was having my own relationship problems. This girl I’d met a few months ago. We’d had a massive row. And so when I got the message from Jules, I just didn’t really take it in. It didn’t seem important to me.

But, I mean, it was fine. Not like he’d done anything stupid.

Hana Burton : It doesn’t feel right, talking about him like this. It doesn’t feel right talking about any of this...

Summer Taylor-Braddon : Do you want to stop?

Hana Burton : I... I don’t know. I don’t want to speak ill of him. I mean, we shouldn’t, right? But Ruari wasn’t right then. He was a mess. Drunk most of the time. My mum thought he was buying drugs, too.

Ashley Kincade : No, he wouldn’t have done that.

Julia Rivers : Well, we don’t know, do we?

Ashley Kincade : All we know is that Ruari was a mess back then. He really needed Summer.

Summer Taylor-Braddon : Okay, thank you—that helps set the scene. I will take over again now. [Sounds of papers shuffling ] So, Ruari and I reconnected a year later. It was the summer of 2014, and I was close to dropping out of university, finding that academia just wasn’t right for me. He’d just finished an apprenticeship. And it was all totally unexpected—for both of us.

[ She takes a deep breath ] It was stormy that day, and I—I still find it weird talking about this. Because this is part of the story where it’s all about my sexuality and... I just feel like, I’m ‘outing’ myself again. Though of course it’s not like when you did that for me, is it, Adelaide? What? No comment here? Cat got your tongue? Wow.

Hana Burton : Uh, Summer, do you want us to leave, if you’re talking about this?

Summer Taylor-Braddon : Nah, it’s fine. But, see, Adelaide? That’s what decent people do. They think of others.

Anyway, the advisors I spoke to recommended that you were all here when I talk about this for the first time. They said that because asexuality is not often talked about and there’s an air of mystery about it, that it would come across—what was it? More authentic? If I spoke about it casually for the first time in this project, with friends present. That then it wouldn’t seem like this big secret or something that should be hidden away and not talked about in front of others.

Ashley Kincade : As long as you don’t get too soppy on us with your love story. [ He laughs ]

Summer Taylor-Braddon : [ She clears her throat ] So, in the last year in London, I’d started to find out about queer spaces, because my roommate Charlotte had joined the LGBTQIA+ society at uni, and she’d dragged me along to the socials. I learned about asexuality at one of them, from a pretty cool guy with spiky purple hair. And I started wondering, Is this me?

With the first year of my undergrad studies out the way, I returned to Devon, dropped my suitcase off at Mum’s new house—she’d just had to move because the downstairs had flooded, but the landlord had another property vacant that she could move into—and so there I was, arriving at this strange new house. She’d left the key under the mat at the back of the house for me, and although I’d seen photos of which would be my room, it didn’t seem right for me to go and settle myself in. I needed to be shown.

I had about an hour before I guessed she’d get in, and so I sat at the kitchen table, my phone in hand. It was reassuring, seeing the familiar marks on the kitchen table—ink stains and water rings from mugs of hot drinks placed on the wax surface when one of us had forgotten to use a coaster—but it was also eerie. Looking at the pale-yellow tiles over the sink. The much bigger room. The built-in fridge and dishwasher with their matching aluminum finishes. It didn’t feel like home, so I did the thing I’d grown accustomed to doing of late, when I was anxious.

I was Googling on my phone, and I’d been researching more and more about asexuality, feeling like it was a safe and welcoming space that might just help me. Might explain me. I wasn’t broken. But I was still skeptical, reluctant to use the word. Probably because of the negative connotations—I’d seen some talk of it in the forums. How people laughed at asexual people, sometimes. Saw us as plant-like, not human. Something wrong with us.

Wrong with our thinking, our feelings.

I don’t really know what made me do it, but I found an ace dating site, while sitting in this kitchen that both felt familiar and not, and ten minutes later, I’d made a profile. Filled out a little info. I was still feeling embarrassed though, so I didn’t use my real name as my username. I was Folkloric Girl. I still don’t know why I chose that. But I intentionally chose a pretty blurry photo, worried that someone in real life would see it, recognize me, and know my secret.

Then Mum was back, and it was all hugs and kisses and coffee-making and Summer, you really must try one of these Danishes I just picked up. My new room was pretty cool, too. Mum had unpacked my things for me and it looked like a back-to-front version of my old room.

I liked it, and I thought that the summer holidays might be okay. A couple months here, while I decided what to do—if I would be going back to Kingston.

Of course, I was going to be avoiding Ruari. Julia and Hana knew that. That was a given. We’d decided we wouldn’t be meeting with any of the guys. Just the girls, again. But my friends weren’t back yet. Hana was going to Disney Land Florida with her family and Julia was visiting somewhere in Italy with her roommates from uni. She’d shared halls with some pretty posh kids, and they’d even paid for her plane tickets out there.

So this gave me two weeks to myself. Just me and Mum. A chance for me to decompress and decide what I was going to do. I really didn’t want to go back to Kingston in the autumn. In fact, I couldn’t really think of anything I dreaded more—other than bumping into Ruari in the Post Office or the Co-op or something.

Mum and I drew up so many pros and cons charts that summer, about uni, staying at Kingston, leaving, transferring somewhere closer, doing a different course, taking a gap year—I didn’t even know that was possible mid-studies, but apparently it is. Just called something else though.

And it was mid-August, just as we were about to go out to go and meet Hana and her mum for coffee, when I got the notification from the ace dating site. Someone had liked my profile. Someone had sent me a message.

My heart pounded, because as soon as I saw the username, I knew. GraniteMan. Oh, I haven’t told you yet about that—so Ruari was obsessed with Dartmoor. He’d done Ten Tors when we were at school and his Duke of Edinburgh awards had involved hiking on the moors too. He’d become really fascinated with rocks and geology, and we spent a few days in the local museums, researching it all too. I’d light-heartedly called him ‘Granite Man’ and then it had kind of stuck.

So, when I saw this username, of course I thought it was him.

I felt so sick as I clicked onto the message.

Fancy seeing you on here.

I flushed too hot, then too cold. My clothes suddenly felt too small, too tight around my abdomen, and my underarms and back were slick with sweat.

Was this a joke? Were he and his mates laughing at me, having found out my deepest secret? The one secret I wasn’t ready to share with anyone. Because, well, I still didn’t quite understand it myself. I still felt embarrassed.

This is what you get for putting it online though , the voice in my head told me.

I didn’t reply to him. I convinced myself that it wasn’t him. That it was some other person from school, someone pretending to be him, playing a joke on me. Other people must have found out that I called him Granite Man.

But the next day, he messaged me again. He asked why I’d blocked him on Facebook and Instagram—I hadn’t, I just had deleted my accounts. It was too painful seeing him tagged in photos—expeditions and walks on the moor, training days with the army, coffee catchups, that sort of thing. He was asking why I’d deleted him though. He was always so full of questions.

I ignored his messages on the dating site—until I couldn’t. Him, in the doorway of Mum’s new house. Looking, so... the same. There was light misty rain sitting in his dark hair, on the lenses of his glasses. He looked a little taller than I’d remembered. I’d always thought we were the same height, but apparently he was now about two inches taller than me.

He’d also changed his style of clothes. I loved how he’d wear band shirts before, with dark jeans and chunky army-style boots. But now he was dressed more smartly. Not a suit, but casual smart. And I realized I didn’t know what he was doing now. For work, for fun, if he was with someone.

Seeing him again was like a huge chasm inside me was opening up, ripping my insides apart. I gasped and gasped, and yet his first words were, “You look well,” before he then laughed and said how formal that sounded.

I didn’t think I looked at all well, because I was pretty sure I was having some sort of asthma attack. I grabbed hold of the doorframe to steady myself and a splinter dug into the fleshy pad of my thumb. I pulled my hand back quick, eyes focused on the shard of wood, because that was easier—anything was easier—than looking at him.

As I carefully, cautiously, pulled the splinter out, I summoned up the courage to speak. Because it was courage—that was what I needed just to speak to him. “What do you want?” My voice shook.

“You,” he said simply, and I guess I knew that this was the moment. The romantic moment in some many romcoms and heartfelt romantic films where the couple finally realize that they need to be together. That they can’t live without each other.

I don’t remember which of us moved first. But then we were touching, hugging. His arms locked around me and I breathed in his scent—his deodorant hadn’t changed—and being with him, well, it felt like home.

We didn’t kiss or anything. No hands roaming under clothes. It was... chaste. Sweet.

I invited him in. We sat six feet apart in my mother’s living room, separate chairs for Mum had had to get new ones. The sofa that Ruari and I had snuggled up on in the old house and been damaged by the flood. I stared at Ruari’s feet as we sat there. He’d taken his shoes off and his socks had a hole in.

“How’re your parents doing?” I asked.

Hurt flashed onto his face, just for a second, but it was enough. Then he shook his head. A smile plastered its way across his face. “Good.”

I’ve always known when he’s lying. Always. And I told him that, and he just... well, he crumpled.

I don’t know which of us moved first, again, but we met in the middle of the living room, reaching for each other.

“It will be okay,” I whispered, as I held him, as he held me.

“It will be okay,” he said.

[ She clears her throat ] We fell in love, again, quick, hard. And it was easier this time, like we were on the same page. It helped that we had, technically, reconnected on the ace dating site. We both knew each other’s secret.

I mean, at first, I had still been cautious. Wondered if he really was. Because I guess all the toxic masculinity ideas had really got to me and I was looking at Ruari, wondering how someone who looked so masculine with his beard, so full of testosterone, could well, not be interested in sex.

He spoke about it once, a few months later, how he hadn’t been sure, thought he was broken. That he even went to the doctor. That they offered him therapy. It made him feel like less of a man, until he went to the therapist and was told nothing was wrong with him. Being asexual is not being broken. It’s not being wrong. It’s not being abnormal.

Being asexual is natural.

“We must’ve known, both of us before,” he said, that day in my mum’s new living room. “Subconsciously. We’re just meant to be together.”

It was easy after that. I didn’t have to be worried, didn’t feel like I’d inevitably be pressured into sleeping with him to keep him. It was just such a huge relief. We’d found each other, and we were the same.

September was coming around though, and I knew I needed to make a decision about whether I was going back to London. Ruari was now working in the Museum of Dartmoor Life, in Okehampton, and I wanted nothing more than to stay here. But Mum did keep saying that I couldn’t stay for a boy. That Ruari was a decent boy and he’d wait for me.

But I didn’t know if I wanted to go back. I didn’t want to put distance between us again, because it was unlikely he’d be able to afford to travel to London to see me. His mum was in a rehab program, but his dad had moved back in with him. Mr. Braddon was drinking a lot, barely working, and all of Ruari’s income was going to keep their household afloat.

I didn’t want to put pressure on Ruari to spend money on train tickets or driving lessons, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to come back every weekend to see him too. And the thought of not seeing him, of us being apart for any longer, really tore through me. It felt like a gaping wound inside me.

So I suspended my studies.

I moved back home, full-time. I got a job, waitressing in a café in Red Lion Yard.

And I started writing too. Mainly because I was bored at first, during the times when I’d be waiting for Ruari to finish work. I started writing these stories. Just silly little things. I hadn’t really written or read much outside of academic work when I’d been at university, but this really allowed me to find myself again, my love for stories.

Over the next few months, years even, life was perfect. It was November 2015 when I got an agent for my books. Six months later, she phoned me to say she’d got a publisher who was really interested. I had a call with the acquisitions editor, and I actually felt like I could be a proper writer. I’d already decided then that I’d hyphenate mine and Ruari’s names, for my pen name—Summer Taylor-Braddon—as there was already a Summer Taylor writing, and it felt so exciting. Just knowing, you know? Some people find that weird that I chose to use both our names like that, before we were married—before he’d proposed. But we knew we were going to be together. We knew it in our souls.

And a week later, my agent had the deal memo come through for my first book. This was Swept Away . Contract negotiations began, and then five months later, I was able to sign the contract and announce the deal.

I was going to be a traditionally published author, and nothing felt better than that. Well, that and having my life sorted. Being with Ruari. My man.

I think that’s the happiest time of my life. Those few years. Because Ruari and I moved in together pretty quickly too—first into Mum’s house in 2015, then into our own flat in 2016. It was on the road to the castle, a cottage that had just been converted into three different flats. We had the top floor, but also a room at the bottom of the cottage that had its own staircase, so we had our own front door there too. It was pretty cool. And of course it was really close to where Ruari was then working—at the castle itself. I guess I should explain about the castle too.

So it’s the ruins of a medieval motte and bailey castle. I think it was built some time in the eleventh century. It’s now managed by English Heritage, and that’s how Ruari started working there. At first, I think he was just doing tours of the grounds for visitors, but then he got more involved in English Heritage’s other historical sites on Dartmoor. He’d got his driver’s license by then, so often he was leaving quite early in the mornings, out on the moors for most of the day. There was an archaeological dig or something going on at Grimspound, and he was so excited to be able to work on that. It wasn’t exactly geology—or what he’d thought he’d want to do—but it was Dartmoor, and it really got him into prehistory. Bronze Age stuff. He did these, uh, YouTube videos about it, and they actually really took off. Like, loads of people were watching them.

He started an online archaeology degree, and I’ve honestly never seen him light up so much. It was amazing—his enthusiasm was contagious. That’s why one of the protagonists in one of my books ended up being an archaeologist. It was kind of like this joint project that Ruari and I had going on. And it was great. The flat wasn’t that big, but we had a second bedroom, and at that point, while we were working on that book, we had it as an office. A massive table in there—almost as big as the room itself, and we could only just fit in two chairs. We’d have all these archaeology and Dartmoor books piled up on the table, and notebooks everywhere, and we’d both work there. Me writing, and Ruari studying.

We were so happy in that flat. Yeah, we lived there for, well, all the time until... well, until he went missing. I couldn’t really go back there after what had happened, so I moved back into Mum’s, but sorry, I’m jumping ahead, aren’t I?

Hana Burton : Well, perhaps now would be a good time to ask you more about romance when you’re asexual? I know when we talked yesterday, you mentioned some things that you specifically wanted to address. And you told me to ask you them.

Adelaide James : Hold on, I’m the interviewer here.

Summer Taylor-Braddon : Yes, well you are an interviewer—but I don’t exactly want you of all people asking me these questions—and I believe you’d already got a lot of things you want to talk about later. But like I said, this is my session today. I’m leading it. You’ll get to talk on Monday.

So, the misconceptions about what asexuality is and isn’t—because people often think that you can’t be truly in love if you don’t have sex. Or if you don’t experience sexual attraction. They see us as... lacking.

I am going to tell you about specific occasions.

So, setting the scene: We were lying in bed, one morning, semi-naked, cuddling. People always assume I mean something sexual by this, but it both is and it isn’t. We were barely clothed, and feeling Ruari’s skin against mine felt good—so reassuring and safe and calming—and I just wanted that closeness. That feeling of security. And the pressure of his body against mine was like an antidote I never knew I needed. Skin-to-skin contact, like, it’s always really made me feel safe.

“I love you,” I whispered to him. It wasn’t the first time we’d said it, but I still got goosebumps at the way it made me feel, voicing this declaration, cementing this bond that we had.

He smiled, made a pleased sound in the back of his throat, and then kissed me. I shut my eyes as we kissed, as the kiss got deeper and deeper, and his hands roamed over my hips. I rubbed his back, and we were pressing against each other so hard, like we could truly melt into one another.

I was completely and irrevocably in love with him. And it’s weird how I always thought about that, when we were kissing, when we were cuddling in bed like this—how certain I’d feel. When, maybe just hours before, watching TV on the sofa or maybe the next morning, eating breakfast, I’d think about what love was and worry whether this was it. Was I feeling it in a correct way? Was it supposed to be something more? Something exciting?

I read a romance novel once that really made a big deal of the instant attraction between the main couple. How the girl had that ‘spotlight’ moment where she just zeroed-in on the guy who’d be her love interest. How she couldn’t wait to touch him, to hold him, to kiss him. How complete she felt just seeing him, knowing that he existed.

I can’t pretend that I don’t still worry about this—that I’ve never had a moment like that. Even with Ruari, it’s been slow to build, from security and stability and friendship. That trust wasn’t instant. I didn’t fall in love with him at fourteen years old, even though everyone refers to us as high school sweethearts. And I never had that ‘spotlight’ moment, where it feels like a light has been shone on him and everything else has dimmed in comparison.

But then I remember what those books are describing: sexual attraction. And I’m asexual. Ruari’s asexual. What we have is enough, and it is real, and it is ours, and there’s not a wrong way for us to be in love because I know that we are in love, I feel it, even when we’re not cuddling in bed.

Even now, knowing that he and I cannot be together anymore—that too much has happened, Mia has happened—I still know I am deeply in love with him.

I still have the same worries—and at twenty-three, I knew I was in a healthy relationship when my biggest worry was that something would happen to him. That Ruari would die. That he’d go for a long drive to visit his family and he’d have an accident. That I’d get a knock on the door, answer it to find a policeman. Maybe two. Hats in hand, somber eyes.

“I’m so sorry, miss,” the policeman would say. Or maybe it would be a policewoman. They’d look at me with sad, sad eyes, and I’d gulp and I’d know.

They’d ask if they could come in. I’d show them into the living room. It would be too hot, and I’d be sweating as they’d make me sit down.

“I am afraid I have some bad news to tell you.”

Their eyes would be so so sad, and I’d see it all in my head—really play it out, this whole scenario. It would make my chest hurt and my heart hurt and my soul hurt. Whenever I thought about it, I’d feel it like it was real. My eyes would mist up and sometimes I’d actually cry. Sometimes I’d get a huge pain in my head, and it would feel like my insides were crumbling.

I knew at twenty-three I could not live without Ruari.

I needed him. I couldn’t be without him.

I was going to spend the rest of my life with him.

Then Ruari proposed. January 2017. It was actually the day before Swept Away released. And that was the start of it all—the Hell that followed.

But anyway, we’ll take a quick break now.

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