18
“Tilda and Dan seem really cool,” Miles says.
We’ve just left the pub and are walking the darkened country roads back to my parent’s house. Stepping out of the pub was like stepping off the plane in Spain on the first day of your holiday; like walking in treacle when you hoped for ice cold water.
We let Tilda and Dan get in the taxi and agreed that waiting for another would take longer than the walk. The deep blue of the mid-summer night makes it difficult to see much and I am relying on muscle memory to get us home.
“They are,” I say, concentrating on my feet. The open air seems to have magnified the alcohol in my system and I’m finding foot placement much more difficult than I usually do. Which is to say, it’s nearly impossible.
“Tilda seems just like Emme, from what I’ve seen of Emme in our insane marketing group chat,” Miles continues.
I snort, and look up at him, “Yeah,” I say, “Maybe I have a type in my friends. Though let’s hope not boyfriends,” I add quietly.
He snorts, “Yeah, sorry for calling Caleb names. I doubt Dan expected that,”
“Please, never apologise for calling Caleb anything. Honestly, he’s such a prick,”
“On that, Del, we agree,” he says earnestly.
We walk in silence for a few minutes and I am wondering at how clear and bright the stars are here. I miss them when I’m in London. Of course, looking up at the stars means I’m not looking at my feet and I stumble. Miles catches me and then chuckles.
“Sorry,” I mutter, “Usually we bring torches to light the way. And I probably drink less,”
He laughs again, taking my hand and then turning on the flashlight on his phone, “Sorted,” he says, and then he adds, “I was impressed with how many pints Tilda drank. She seems so delicate,”
I snort, “Oh yeah, petite, adorable, like a pixie, but drinks like a fucking sailor. It’s the northern in us,”
He laughs, and we’re silent for a few more minutes. It’s not an uncomfortable silence. Or at least, outwardly it’s not. Inwardly, the crazy, anxious woman has realised Miles is still holding my hand and is overanalysing everything from his grip strength to whether he thinks I am incapable of walking on my own.
An exceptionally horny little beast, somewhere in a dusty corner of my brain has also noticed that his hands are big and soft. They envelop mine completely and it feels nice. The beast thinks they would feel even nicer on my waist and hips and yeah… I would agree with it but I’m trying very hard to ignore it.
“How far is it home?” Miles asks, breaking the silence of the night around us.
“Oh, it’s gonna take us about half an hour, sorry,” I say, directing him onto another dirt track that I know by heart now.
He nods, “Perfect amount of time for twenty questions,” he says, and I can hear the smile in his voice.
I grin up at him, “Okay, I’ll answer first because I’m too drunk to think of any questions that are nearly interesting enough,”
He grins, “Okay, Dellie,” he says, smirking, “Why Dellie?”
I laugh, “Tilda had real issues saying my name when we were kids,” I explain, “She’s Matilda, which I think is probably just as hard as Delaney for a two-year-old, and I mastered that. Anyway, our mums got sick of her calling me things like ‘Daney’ and ‘Del-Ani,’ so they suggested she call me Dellie,”
He chuckles, “Delaney is a bit of a mouthful,”
I use our linked hands to smack his stomach, and then freak out a little. I’ve just drawn attention to the fact we’re still holding hands and I would rather like him to continue holding it, so I don’t want him to suddenly realise and pull back. It’s my hand now.
“What happened on the school trip to Holy Island?” he asks, not dropping my hand and, evidently, not having a total fucking meltdown every time we move like I am.
I turn to him, mouth open in shock, “You bastard,”
He snorts, “Sorry, I had to. The way Tilda kept alluding to what you had done on Holy Island is so intriguing,”
I laugh, “Okay, but you’re not allowed to judge me,” I say, knowing that I am blushing.
“Hey, this is twenty questions,” he says, “No judging is allowed,”
I grin, “Okay, so we went over there for a school trip to see the Lindisfarne Gospels, right, and all day all the teachers kept going on and on about how we had to be back at the coach for a really specific time,” I start, “Looking back, as an adult, I now understand it’s because of the causeway, and you have to make it across within the safe crossing times otherwise you end up stranded and floating I imagine,”
He nods.
“Anyway,” I continue, “While we were there, there were a tonne of other school trips too, and we all had our uniforms on, and there was this other school also wearing royal blue and, well, I’m an idiot. Basically, I got caught up talking to this girl I met who had been to another causeway in Ireland and I was so invested in her story I just kept walking with her, and I followed her to her bus and got on it,”
In the glow of his torch, I see Miles looking like he’s holding in a laugh. “And then?” he asks, smirking down at me.
“Well, then there was uproar, obviously,” I say, “One bus was missing a kid. We were all in royal blue so they knew someone had gotten mixed up, but when I say we were all in royal blue, I mean like ten different schools had royal blue uniforms and we were all waiting to get back across the causeway. The safe crossing time was closing quickly, they didn’t notice me on the wrong bus for a while, I hadn’t clicked that I had to get back on the bus I came on, and me and my friend who had been to another causeway kept discussing why we weren’t moving,”
Miles starts to laugh.
“Long story short, we missed the safe crossing time and the teachers from both schools had to call all of the parents waiting for us to tell them that we had to wait for the tide to go back out,” I say, “Do you know how long it takes for a tide to go back out?”
Miles is still laughing, the torch light wobbling in front of us with the effort, but he shakes his head.
“Six hours, Miles. It takes six hours.” He chortles and I shake my head at him, “Anyway, Tilda loves to bring it up,”
“Was Tilda not on the bus?” he asks, in between laughs.
I snort, “She was with Dan, ”
“Oh, wow,” he says, his laugh stopping short, “Have they been together that long?”
I shrug, “I mean, we were nine then, so not officially. But pretty much, yeah,”
He laughs again.
“I get pretty in my head about things,” I say, without stopping to wonder whether this is even something he needs to know, “About acting embarrassing and stuff, like my anxiety is off the charts. But that was like episode one of a lifetime of doing dumb shit,”
He grins, “I don’t think it’s embarrassing,” he says, “Hilarious, yes. Adorable that you were so interested in her story you just didn’t even notice, but definitely not embarrassing,”
“I am still a bit obsessed with causeways,” I admit, wondering if he’s making fun of me. Everyone who knows that story thinks I’m weird for being so invested in causeways, but they’re fucking fascinating!
He nods, “I’ve never been to one. But they are mad. I mean, imagine living somewhere where your connection to any other land is determined by the fucking sea. That’s some mythological shit right there,”
“Right?” I say, “Thank you! It’s fascinating. But Tilda always calls me weird for being so obsessed,”
He frowns, “Well, I think it’s weird not to be obsessed with really cool stuff like that,” he says, and in the amber glow of the torchlight, I believe he actually means it.
I grin, “Nine-year-old Delaney is doing a happy dance right now,” I say, not adding that twenty-seven-year-old Delaney is also doing a happy dance, albeit, in her own head.
He grins, “Okay, next question,” he says.
He continues to ask me questions about my life, laughing when I tell him about slipping off a diving board while trying to show off for a boy I liked, and laughing even harder when I tell him about the incident with the roller skates, the ice, and the trip to A&E. But all the way through it, all I can think about is that he didn’t think my causeway obsession was embarrassing.
In the grand scheme of things, it’s not a huge deal. But the child in me—the one who thinks she’s really weird and whose mum tells her she’s just not as simple a child to raise as her sister—is crying happy tears that someone else is on her side about the fascination of the causeway. That Miles, too, might have sat on that bus, caused all that drama, and not really understood why everyone was mad because did you know that the tide just cuts you off from the rest of the land?
Sometimes, that kid inside is the one that needs soothing, and Miles is doing it. Without even realising it, he’s accepting the weird little ginger kid with arms and legs she can’t quite control and a fascination with the most mundane things.