Chapter 11
EMMA
‘I think we should stop meeting up.’
I stared at Nick for several seconds before what he said sank in.
‘What, for good?’
‘Yes.’ He was looking everywhere except at me, and I felt a spark of anger flare through me.
‘You don’t get to decide that.’
Finally, he met my gaze. ‘It’s wrong, Emma. We both need to move on.’
I searched his eyes, his face. ‘Did you meet someone?’
‘What? No!’ He was so outraged it was clear he was telling the truth. But obviously something had happened, and I wasn’t letting him off that easily.
‘How did your date go then?’
He shrugged. ‘It was fine. We’re not seeing each other again. What about yours?’
‘Pretty much the same.’ I shuffled slightly closer to him and he flinched. ‘Why are you being like this?’ I said.
‘I’m not being like anything. I thought we’d agreed that we both need to move on, that’s all, and we can’t exactly do that if we’re still meeting up all the time. So I just think we should call it a day.’
‘Is that really what you want?’ My chest felt tight at the thought of walking away from here and never seeing him again, and I couldn’t catch my breath.
He didn’t reply for a long time and I was beginning to wonder whether he’d heard me at all. I was about to say something else when he finally spoke.
‘It’s not what I want at all. But I have to.’
I put my hand on his arm and he flinched again. Was it because of the usual spark, or was he repulsed by me?
‘Please tell me what’s happened,’ I said.
Slowly, he turned his head. His eyes were heavy with sadness. ‘I made a mistake,’ he said. I waited. He looked back down at his lap and drew in a long breath of air. ‘I went to see you.’
I felt my heart skitter, and my skin fizzled. ‘What do you mean?’
He cleared his throat. ‘I walked past the open-air theatre.’ He looked at me again and I knew what he was going to say before he said the words out loud. ‘I saw The Importance of Being Earnest.’
‘April 1999,’ I whispered, and he nodded. I pulled my hand away from his and wrapped it round myself. ‘And now you’re freaked out because I’m only seventeen in 1999. Am I right?’
He nodded. ‘You were with your parents,’ he said. ‘You’re a child.’
‘But I’m not. I’m not a child right here, right now, where we are.
Together.’ A thought occurred to me then.
‘I nearly looked for you the other day but then changed my mind because I remembered how much you were against it. But if I did find you now, I’d still be an adult and the age gap wouldn’t be weird then. ’
He shook his head. ‘It just felt so wrong,’ he said, softly. ‘I shouldn’t have gone.’
A silence fell between us. If Nick really meant what he said, that he didn’t think we should see each other any more, then he had to be the one to get up and walk away.
But he stayed.
The space between us felt charged with energy. I tried to imagine coming back here one day and him not being here. Tried to imagine him never being here again, never seeing his face again, and it made me feel overwhelmingly sad.
‘I came here,’ I said.
His head snapped round and I looked at him. The lines etched into his forehead, the dimple in his chin, and I longed to reach out and press my hand to his face. I held myself back.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I came here the other day just to see how it felt without you. I wondered whether I’d feel you here at all.’
‘And did you?’
I shook my head. ‘No.’
‘I came too.’
‘When?’
‘A couple of days ago, just before my date.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know what I was expecting, but I felt nothing out of the ordinary either.’
‘I can’t stop thinking about you.’ I’d been wanting to say it since we arrived, but Nick had thrown a curve ball into the conversation.
But if he did still want to stop seeing me, I needed to tell him how I felt first. That he filled my thoughts all the time, that when I was at work talking to clients he was on my mind; that when I’d been on the date with Aaron I’d wished it was him opposite me instead.
That he was the first person I thought about when I woke up in the morning and the last person I thought about as I fell asleep at night.
‘I sometimes try and picture you in the house,’ he said.
‘I do too.’
I felt him shift beside me so that our thighs were almost touching. The air crackled.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said.
‘Let’s have a date.’
‘What?’
I still didn’t dare look at him, but this was what I’d come here to say today, and I wanted to get it out before I changed my mind.
‘We tried dates with other people and they didn’t work.’ I took a deep breath. ‘I kept thinking about you the whole time, which meant that no matter what poor old Aaron did, it would never be enough. Because he would never be you. So, I thought, why don’t we have a date together. Right here.’
‘Here?’
I finally turned to look at him. ‘It has to be here, we can’t be together anywhere else.
But if we do it one evening when it’s dark and everyone else has gone home then we should have the park to ourselves.
And I know we see each other here anyway, but a date would be different.
It would be more special.’ I looked down at where our hands sat beside each other’s on the bench and I inched mine closer until our little fingers touched.
He moved his on top and linked it through.
I shivered at his touch and looked up to meet his eyes. ‘So, what do you say?’
He hesitated, and I held my breath, expectant. Then he said:
‘I say yes.’