The Friendship Fling

16 thunderstorms and aeroplane wishes

16

thunderstorms and aeroplane wishes

Ava

Where the sunset earlier painted the sky with vibrant streaks of pink and orange, now it’s the colour of the pot of water you use to rinse the paintbrushes.

‘London’s so radiant at night.’

‘I think that’s light pollution, Finn.’ We make our way along the river again, heading back the way we came towards Vauxhall station.

‘But knowing the stars are there. It’s comforting,’ Finn says distractedly, his face turned upwards in the direction of a twinkling light.

‘And that’s an aeroplane.’

‘I’m trying to muse and you’re ruining it. If you’re not going to say anything profound, be quiet.’ His mouth twitches as I laugh, and he adds, ‘Where’s your imagination, Ava Monroe?’

‘Probably tucked away with my zest for life.’

‘You’re missing out. It’s fun to dream.’

‘Yeah, well, my dream right now is to get home. So I’m walking,’ I say in response, running across the road while the traffic light’s still green and bypassing the Tube station entirely, with the intention to walk all the way home. I’m granted a few moments of quiet before Finn catches up.

‘And I’m accompanying you.’

‘This feels like stalking.’

‘I’m not letting you walk home alone. If you don’t want me to join you, that’s fine. Tell me to leave and I’ll call you an Uber instead.’ My face scrunches into a scowl and he shoots me a self-satisfied smirk when I don’t reply. I dart across another road and the smirk turns into a sigh. ‘Why do you have no regard for your life?’

‘What can I say? I like to walk on the wild side.’

‘I’ve literally never heard a less true statement.’ He removes his glasses and cleans them on his shirt before returning them to his face, and I can tell he’s about to spill yet more Finn fun facts. ‘Did you know the crescent moon sits at a different angle depending on where you are in the world?’ I know by now that his did-you-knows come with immediate follow-ups. ‘Here it’s vertical, like a letter C, but in some places it’s more like a U. I think it’s cool.’

‘Are nerds allowed multiple specialist subjects? I thought dinosaurs were your thing.’

He shrugs. ‘Dinosaurs are one of my things. But I fucking love space. For almost the same reasons. Millions of years packed into a single fossil? Infinite galaxies stretching further than we can even fathom? Sign me up. Remind me of my meagre significance.’

Dust motes cloud my brain, as if a door has just been opened in a room long since abandoned. I don’t need any more reminding that I’m just a speck in the universe, at the mercy of its every whim. Don’t need reminding how grateful I am that it listened to me when I begged, can never forget that I owe it something, everything, even now.

I attempt to pull myself back. ‘Aren’t space and dinosaurs kind of a conflict of interest? The asteroid, et cetera.’

‘Too soon, Ava. Too soon.’ We walk quickly towards Stockwell, and I’m glad that for the most part it’s too dark for him to see my face or be distracted by much of our surroundings. ‘By the time my mum met my stepdad I was already a walking dinosaur encyclopaedia and needed a new interest, so my stepdad taught me about the solar system. He has this massive telescope that I think has now lived on almost every continent.’ He looks up again at the beige, starless sky. ‘I know it sounds trite, but I just like knowing that when I look up, it’s the same sky. Especially because my family is on different continents. All of us, all over the world, watched by the same stars.’

There it is. The open door. It disturbs a memory I’d forgotten about, tucked away in a box I don’t open anymore. It tumbles out of me, overflowing before I get the chance to slam it back inside. ‘When my brother was in hospital a few years ago after some complications with his cancer treatment, we weren’t allowed to visit overnight. I’d always tell him to look outside and find the moon, because chances were, I was looking at it too.’ Out of habit, I search the sky, but the moon’s hiding tonight. At Finn’s silence, it occurs to me that I’ve shared a piece of information I hadn’t intended to.

He gives me a long, searching look. ‘I bet he’s glad he has you.’

My eyebrows pull together. ‘I’m glad to have him. ’ Finn goes to interject but stops himself, then nods at me to continue. ‘I mean, sometimes I think that if he weren’t my brother, I’d probably kind of hate him. He can be a little arrogant and almost always gets what he wants. But I guess, after everything he’s been through, maybe he has the right to believe in himself more than the average human.’ My eyes dart around the sky, searching for even a sliver of moon. ‘He’s probably a better person than me in almost every way. The world would be a much darker place without him.’

The last sentence comes out like a hiccup. It’s been a while since I’ve even let the concept of Max’s absence enter my consciousness. I shake my head to dislodge the thought, but it gets caught on my brain’s edges, just like it always used to. The thought ricochets, one crack on a sheet of ice echoing its threat across a lake. I take a few breaths, avoiding eye contact to mumble, ‘He’s okay now, though. You met him. You saw that.’

Max deserves every moment of okay he’s been given. He’s alive and happy and the gratitude I feel for that is so visceral it hurts almost as much as the fear of losing him did. But still, occasionally, if I’m not paying sharp enough attention, the thoughts seep in. The awful what-ifs that kept me up at night all those years ago.

As if he can see inside my brain, see the swirling wisps of smoke darkening through the window, Finn stops on the pavement. ‘Hey.’ He waits a long time for my eyes to lock on to his. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine,’ I say instinctively. I am fine. I am. We’re all okay now that Max is too. But something in the way Finn waits for me to elaborate lets me know he doesn’t believe me. ‘I promise. I know how to handle myself.’

I look ahead, aware of how deeply I’m breathing, how I’m clenching my hands into fists in an attempt to stop them shaking, fiercely hoping the wound in my heart doesn’t reopen at the mere memory. My life has been blissfully uneventful over the past few years, and with that, there’s been nothing to complain about. Nothing to worry about.

In reality, it wasn’t until the dust settled after everything happened that I realised that maybe I needed some comfort too. That I’d spent so long trying not to need it, to be the one my heartbroken parents relied on, that by the time I realised I did need comfort, there was no point. Because what should I need comforting about now, if I got my brother back in the end, just like I begged for?

By the time I meet Finn’s eyes again, warm and dark under the glow of the streetlights, the old need rises to the surface. He unzips me with that single look.

Before I have time to register what he’s doing, he pulls me against him. For a split second, I don’t react. But I realise that some of the weight pressing on my skull is lifting at the feel of the warmth of his body against mine, so I wrap my arms around him and breathe him in, a weirdly reassuring concoction of swimming pools and spicy cologne that shouldn’t make sense but somehow does. I’m allowed to take the comfort for tonight, I think.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers into my hair. I don’t know if he’s apologising for how I feel, or for the fact he’s broken our unspoken no-direct-contact rule, but I don’t mind. Briefly, I remember what it felt like to be a child, when a hug was enough to make everything okay.

And with every inhale, each corresponding exhale pushes the coils of smoke clear from my vision. In, out, in, out, until the fog has lifted entirely. For now, at least.

I don’t know how long we stand there. It’s long enough for me to realise he’s sturdier than I expected; broad shoulders that I’d thought were just an optical illusion from the baggy shirts he always wears, strong arms clutching me as if he’s worried I’m going to float away. It’s long enough for me to register that it’s been a long time, to the point where I’m sure I should pull away. And it’s long enough to notice something else, a decidedly solid something pushing against me.

‘Finn,’ I murmur into his shoulder. ‘Please tell me that isn’t your penis.’

I feel him laugh more than hear him, and he steps back, severing whatever force was keeping us together and bringing me back to reality. ‘I forgot, I have a present for you.’ He reaches into his impossibly large trouser pocket and pulls out a familiar-looking item. The cider glass from the bar.

Something twists in my stomach. Maybe it’s the alcohol. Maybe not. ‘You stole it? For me?’

‘For you,’ he confirms, handing it to me with a flourish as we slowly start walking again. The likelihood of me dropping a glass is high at the best of times, let alone when I’ve had a few too many drinks, so I clutch my contraband against my chest as we inch closer to Stockwell.

‘Thank you.’ For the glass, for not making a big deal out of the few pieces of information I shared, for taking away some of the weight without even knowing. I set out to lighten the mood. ‘Didn’t know you were such a bad boy.’

There’s a pause, until he replies, ‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Ava.’

I raise my eyebrows in disbelief. ‘Tell me something else I don’t know then.’

‘That,’ he runs his hand through his hair and looks up, like he’s searching for answers in the sky, ‘would defeat the purpose of there being things you don’t know about me.’

A huff escapes me and we keep walking, and my inhibition-less self asks a question, hopefully one that doesn’t send me crushed against his chest again. ‘Do you think I spend too much time alone?’

‘I think we could all do with being a little more selective when it comes to choosing who we spend time with.’

‘When you said earlier that you got a job interview, was it at the UN by any chance? Because that was a lesson in diplomacy. And complete bullshit.’

‘I just mean,’ his head tips back on a laugh, ‘that we should be focusing on quality over quantity.’

‘And yet, here I am, with you.’ I shoot him a grin.

‘Hey, you asked me to join you tonight.’ He raises a hand in surrender. ‘I initiated nothing.’

I purse my lips. ‘How much have you had to drink? I’d never do that.’

‘Admit it, you like spending time with me.’

‘Perhaps like isn’t the word,’ I stomp my way along the pavement and he follows, ‘but I don’t dread it as much as I expected to.’

‘Was that . . . a compliment?’ He steps in front of me briefly and even in the dark, I can see his eyes are alight.

‘It was compliment-adjacent. And if you tell anyone, I’ll deny it.’ We keep walking, and every time we pass under a streetlight’s glow, I catch him glancing in my direction. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

‘Like what?’ He snaps his head forward, the corner of his mouth lifting.

‘With those eyes.’

‘Sorry. I’ll try to look at you without my eyes next time.’

For a while, all I can hear is our steady muffled footsteps, until a different sound joins the mix; the quiet pitter-patter of rain, barely even a drizzle.

But the moment Stockwell Tube station comes into view, the heavens open with a roar, the long-brewing rain finally tumbling from the sky in sheets and breaking the suffocating heat. We scoot to stand under the station’s overhang with fellow late-night rain-avoiders and watch as people open up umbrellas and lift hoods or, in most cases, continue walking down the street unfazed.

‘How far do you live from here?’ Finn calls over the din of cars splashing along the road, their lights bouncing off the wet tarmac like neon signs.

‘A six-and-a-half-minute walk.’

‘Thank god, thought it might’ve been seven.’

‘Well, I’m walking. My bed is calling.’

I step out into the downpour and immediately regret it, but it’s too late to go back. Within a minute, it’s soaked me through, every step accompanied by a squelch of my boots. A car comes dangerously close to driving through a puddle and coating me in dirty road water, but I manage to avoid it. Or rather, Finn pulls me out of the way, somehow more aware of me than I am. By the time we hit my street, the rain’s slowed back down to a drizzle, and I realise that if I hadn’t been so impatient, I probably could’ve avoided getting drenched. I snort at the thought, and then I look at Finn and even more laughter bubbles out of me.

‘Sorry, did you drown ?’ I manage to squeeze out between splutters.

This is not the same ironed-shirted man who strode into the coffee shop with Julien and Rory that first evening. He puts his hands on his hips, glasses tucked in one fist in a futile attempt to keep them dry, rainwater dripping from his head to his shoulders, shirt slicked to his chest. He looks like he’s just emerged from the sewer. But the surlier his expression, the more I laugh, and eventually his face splits into a grin, his own laughter forcing itself out in sharp bursts.

‘Remember when I ranted about London’s unjust rainy reputation earlier?’ he says. ‘I fear I may have unlocked something.’

He shakes his head to dislodge some water and I notice the rain’s brought out the texture in his hair, curls collecting droplets like dew in a forest.

‘Oh my fucking god ,’ I say, leaning one arm against a garden wall to keep myself upright as the torrent of laughter rolls through me. ‘You look ridiculous.’

He feels around his torso for any piece of fabric that might be dry. Eventually he lifts his shirt to ineffectively dry his glasses on the waistband of his boxers, and my eyes cling to the strip of skin it reveals. When he returns his glasses to his face, he takes a step back to look me up and down. ‘I look ridiculous? I am the one who looks ridiculous? I cannot wait for you to get to a mirror, you bedraggled little gremlin.’

‘Fuck off,’ I say, noting how my hair is plastered to my head, fringe devoid of any kind of volume, skirt entirely stuck to my legs as we start walking again. We make it to my building’s entrance and I turn to him. ‘I’m sorry you got drenched while you were trying to be nice walking me home. It was kind of you.’

‘Your standards are extraordinarily low,’ he replies, swiping away a droplet making its way down my forehead to my eye, so fast I almost miss it. But I feel the contact long after he’s put his hand back in his pocket. Before I have the chance to decipher it, out of the corner of my eye I spot something.

‘Look,’ I say, pointing to the sky, where a red light flashes; the last flight of the day coming into Heathrow. ‘Shooting star?’

‘You’re learning,’ he replies, a smile pulling at his cheeks. ‘What are you gonna wish for?’

‘I can’t tell you, obviously.’ We both look up and close our eyes. Or at least, I close them for a second, because I soon realise I need them open if I want to stay upright. I take an inadvertent step to the side when I try to right myself. ‘Done.’

I realise with sudden clarity just how close we now are. Two Finns swim through my blurred vision, an unreadable expression on both of his faces. But I can see his chest rising and falling, see the bob of his Adam’s apple, see the trails of rainwater dripping from his hair down his face.

My eyes refocus and then there’s only one Finn, wordlessly waiting, eyes dark and careful, supercharging the air simply by being this close. Static crackles between us and every cell in my body is set alight under his gaze.

There’s thunder, too. It rumbles through me; its weighty roar pounding in my ears and drowning out every coherent thought. I don’t know if it’s the alcohol pulsing through my veins or some other force at play, but one of my hands finds its way to his arm. My eyes drop to his lips. They’re close, too. My breath catches as I incline my head, and I dimly register that he tilts his too, and the static frenzies as we draw closer together, millimetre by torturous millimetre.

But then, the lightning strikes.

‘No,’ he whispers, warm breath hitting me before the meaning of his word does.

It’s amazing what two letters can do to your self-esteem, even amidst the stormy depths of intoxication, and I blink a few times and take a startled step backwards.

‘Oh.’ Nothing more intelligent comes out, and my cheeks flame with embarrassment.

He looks at me, pleading. ‘I’m sorry, I just – I don’t think it’s a good idea right now.’

I back up, feigning a brightness I know sounds fake to both of us. ‘It’s fine, don’t worry. I’m sorry. That was – yeah.’ I gesture vaguely back the way we came. ‘You should go home before the rain starts up again.’

‘Are you sure?’ His brow furrows from behind his rain-streaked glasses.

‘I’m sure. Thanks again for walking me.’ He nods, and I’m inside my building before he’s even started walking away.

I blearily open my eyes and in my half-conscious state conclude that if I don’t extract myself from my duvet’s sweltering heat within the next three seconds I may actually die. I ungracefully free myself from the twisted covers before getting out of bed, tripping on a pile of clothes on the floor and stepping out into the great unknown.

‘Morning, sunshine!’ Josie calls brightly from the sofa, where she’s listening to what sounds like a self-help podcast on nurturing healthy habits. When I don’t respond, she says, ‘Been reminded you’re not twenty-one anymore?’

‘Get a hobby,’ I bite back, and her snort accompanies the rest of my perilous walk to the kitchen.

‘I didn’t hear you come home. Thought it meant the date with the quizzing guy had gone well. Which, I’ll be honest, was unexpected. But maybe he was a dark horse.’ After multiple futile attempts to figure out where to press on the handle-less cabinet doors, I open the dishwasher instead, grabbing the first vessel I can find to pour myself some water: a mug with ‘hot’ embossed in Braille. Once I’ve downed its contents, I fill the mug once more and head towards Josie and Rudy on the sofa, where I’m hoping some canine energy will revive me.

‘The date?’ she prods. I try to stay as still as possible, the comforting feel of Rudy’s fur under my hand.

‘The date was . . .’ I rack my brain for details to give her but everything’s a blur that I need to reorganise into something that makes sense. ‘It wasn’t great. He was kind of intense. But I ended up bumping into Finn.’ She sits up and the sudden movement makes my hand fly to my stomach, as if that’ll help settle it in any way. ‘I have him to thank for my current state.’

Her eyebrows raise a fraction of an inch and she asks, a picture of nonchalance, ‘And you stayed out late with just Finn? Again?’

‘Yes?’ I reply, at the exact same moment a murky memory of what happened at the end of the night flashes across my brain. The rain, the electricity, and the violent embarrassment. Shit. He was being a good friend and I was ready to fall all over him. What was that? I need to lie down again. ‘I’m going back to bed.’

‘But we haven’t finished this conversation,’ Josie whines, and I can’t tell if it’s disappointment or glee in her voice, but I’m too hungover to figure it out.

Desperate to hunker down under my duvet and hide from the consequences of my own actions, I grab my phone from the bedside table to check for notifications – it has a full battery; good to know that even drunk me is technology-dependent enough to put it on charge – and lie down. Between the hangover and the raging carousel of my turbulent thoughts, being horizontal helps.

On my screen is a single text from Finn.

finn: Alive?

I stare at it for what could be a few moments or ten minutes before replying.

ava: negative

Three dots appear on my screen straight away, and a beat later a message comes through.

finn: On a scale of 1-10, how fresh do you feel?

ava: can the scale be 0-10?

finn: Sure

ava: then 0

The three dots appear again, before disappearing and reappearing three more times. Finally, they stop.

finn: Can we talk about last night?

We probably should talk about it. It’s the adult thing to do. I put on my big-girl pants and type out my suitably grown-up response.

ava: nope x

To my unimaginable horror, a notification for a FaceTime appears on my screen and my clumsy, hungover fingers accept it. Finn’s face fills the frame and I pull my duvet up so that only my eyes are visible. He, on the other hand, looks fresh as a daisy – crisp white T-shirt, hair damp from the shower. Wasn’t he drinking as much as me all night? Life isn’t fair.

‘Why not?’ he says straight away, no time for pleasantries, leaning his phone against something on his kitchen counter. I watch him move around to make a coffee, opening cupboards and taking milk from the fridge.

‘I’m embarrassed.’ My reluctance to admit it coats every syllable.

‘Why?’ he persists, before muting the microphone as his coffee machine extracts.

I take the time to think of a response. I’m not used to people wanting to get to know me, or me wanting to get to know them. He listened to me and showed me he cared, and I don’t have much experience in the way of good friendships that aren’t Josie, so I misinterpreted the signals and the way his proximity made me feel. Also, I was drunk.

He unmutes himself, picking up his phone and mug and bringing them both over to what must be the living area, which gives me a pixellated glimpse at the upper half of his flat as he walks. It occurs to me that seeing Finn in his own space is strangely jarring. Until now, it had never crossed my mind to imagine him existing anywhere other than the work/bucket list bubble I’d placed him in.

‘Because,’ I begin, choosing my words delicately, ‘we’re friends. I’d never act like that sober, I promise. I’m not about to start throwing myself all over you at every opportunity.’

A strange expression crosses his face but it’s gone before I can decode it, and then he says, ‘Okay. Let’s just forget about it. But before we do, I just wanted you to know that it wasn’t like I didn’t – it’s not that I don’t think you’re—’ He pauses and a cleft forms between his eyebrows as he tries and fails to come up with an ending to his sentence.

I didn’t know he was capable of being this awkward, and I can’t help but laugh. ‘Finn, I was drunk. So were you. Nothing happened. It’s really not a big deal.’

Because imagine we’d kissed. Imagine we’d done more than kiss. And then imagine still seeing him every day at work. Nope.

‘Right.’ I don’t know what to make of the expression on his face before he starts talking again. ‘I want to tell you something. You know I mentioned I’d been considering a job in San Francisco? That role is what I got an interview for. That’s what my mum was trying to call me about last night.’

My heart seems to skip a beat, but my brain convinces my mouth to say, ‘That’s amazing. Are you excited?’

At my enthusiasm, his cautious expression is overtaken by the easy smile I’m familiar with. He tells me about how much he wants this job and everything the move entails, and suddenly I’m even more glad he had the sense to pull away last night. I’d almost forgotten he’s intending to leave in a few months. And I could’ve ruined this tenuous friendship we have, all because he flirts with everyone and I was feeling weird and drunk and hormonal.

He finishes talking about everything he wants to do in San Francisco and sips his coffee patiently for a few moments before saying softly, ‘I really like being your friend, you know.’

The comfort of his honesty curls around me, much softer than I expect it to be. And maybe having a screen between us makes me bolder, because I admit, ‘I like being your friend too.’

The air feels heavy, like there’s too much static lining the airwaves between us, left over from last night’s storm, so I’m grateful when he breaks into a chuckle and says, ‘Was that another compliment? I need to start stacking them up. They’ll be worth something someday.’

‘You deserve it after last night. Hanging out with drunk me is probably the worst thing ever.’

A smile tugs at his mouth when he speaks again, setting his coffee down. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself, it’s just as bad when you’re sober. Like when you’re the world’s grumpiest barista at seven thirty in the morning.’

‘Kick a woman while she’s down, why don’t you?’

‘Or when you’re obscenely pessimistic in mundane situations that don’t affect you whatsoever.’

‘Been holding that in for a while?’ I ask, eyes wide, and his phone shakes in his hand as he erupts into laughter. As the sound spills through my speaker, it unlocks something inside me and I can’t help but join in. By the time we stop, he takes his glasses off to rub his eyes, and they’re still creased at the sides when he looks at me.

‘Oh Ava,’ he picks up his drink and takes another slow drag, ‘there’s a lot more that I’ve been holding in, trust me.’

I don’t know what to make of that, so I simply say, ‘I miss when you spent your days only being nice to me.’

He analyses me over the top of his mug. ‘No, you don’t.’

I wiggle under my duvet and sigh in agreement. ‘No, I don’t.’