Chapter 9 #2
The darkness doesn’t feel heavy anymore. The bed doesn’t feel empty. And I am not going to examine why the sound of Tom Darcy saying goodnight is still vibrating somewhere in my ribcage, because that examination leads somewhere I am not prepared to go.
Chips sighs in his sleep.
I turn over and press my face into the pillow and tell myself to stop thinking.
It doesn’t work.
I lie awake for a long time, and the thing I think about – the thing I keep coming back to, circling like a moth around a light it knows is dangerous – is not the phone call. Not the months that have been passing while I’ve been metaphorically sleeping through life. Not the grief.
It’s quiz night. Tom’s face, inches from mine.
His hands on my waist and the warmth of him and the beat – that single beat – where the air between us changed into something I didn’t recognise.
I’d pulled back. Or Brynn had arrived. Or both, I can’t remember the order, but there’d been a moment where I hadn’t pulled back, where I’d stayed, and something in me had been—
What?
What had I been?
I don’t know. I fall asleep not knowing, which is worse than not sleeping at all.
I wake to sunlight and Chips demanding breakfast with escalating urgency.
‘All right,’ I tell him, stumbling out of bed. ‘All right. Stop it.’
He doesn’t stop it. I feed him anyway.
The morning routine is grounding – coffee, shower, the process of turning myself into someone who can face the day.
I open the café on autopilot, and I’m halfway through the first latte when I catch myself standing at the counter, coffee cup paused in mid-air, replaying the sound of Tom’s voice saying goodnight.
I put the coffee down. I finish the latte. I do not think about it again.
I think about it twice more before ten o’clock.
The breakfast rush is steady. Bill and Frankie come in at their usual time, argue about the crossword, leave a tip they pretend is accidental.
Tilly settles into her window seat. A few tourists drift through, asking about vegan options and WiFi passwords.
I move through it like breathing – the work I know, the rhythm I trust – and if my hands are slightly less steady than usual, if I keep glancing at the door like I’m expecting someone, nobody mentions it.
At ten, Brynn arrives.
She’s not in her work clothes, which is unusual – Brynn lives in her blue overalls to the point where I’m not sure she has anything else.
Today she’s wearing a jumper that might actually be new, her hair down instead of its usual practical braid, and there’s something about her face – a brightness and a tiredness layered on top of each other, like someone who’s been up all night feeling too many things.
‘Coffee?’ I ask.
‘Please.’ She slides onto a stool. ‘And whatever pastry has the most sugar in it. I need sustenance.’
‘Big morning?’
‘Big night.’ She accepts the coffee and wraps her hands around it like she’s cold, even though it’s May. ‘Kit proposed to Isla.’
The words take a moment to land. ‘What?’
‘Last night. After we all left the pub. He took her down to the harbour – you know that spot by the boathouse, where the lights reflect off the water? He asked her. She said yes.’
‘Oh my God.’ I’m smiling before I’ve decided to, the kind of smile that takes over your whole face, making the muscles ache so much they no longer feel like yours, and the happiness is real – completely, uncomplicatedly real. ‘Brynn, that’s wonderful. That’s—’
And then the hollow arrives. Not after the happiness. Not instead of it. With it, simultaneous, the way grief always arrives – right in the middle of the good thing, sharing the same breath.
‘That’s so lovely,’ I finish, and my voice only wavers on the last word, and I don’t think Brynn notices.
‘Kit’s been planning it for weeks,’ Brynn says. ‘He asked Maisie for permission first, did you know that? Made a whole thing of it. Asked if she’d be okay with Isla being her stepmum officially. She said yes and then asked if this meant she could have a bigger bedroom.’
‘That’s very Maisie.’
‘Extremely Maisie.’ Brynn smiles, but there’s something underneath it – something I recognise because I’m an expert in the art of smiling over the top of complicated feelings.
She wraps both hands more tightly around her mug and looks at the steam rising from it.
‘It’s good. It’s really good. I’m happy for them. ’
‘But?’
‘There’s no but.’
‘Brynn.’
She looks up. Her eyes are tired and bright and she doesn’t say anything for a moment – just holds my gaze – and I can see her deciding what to let out and what to keep.
‘It just makes you think,’ she says carefully. ‘About choices. About people deciding what they want and then actually doing something about it, instead of just—’ She stops. Picks up her coffee. Drinks. ‘Never mind. I’m tired. I haven’t slept.’
I don’t push. I know the shape of a person holding something they’re not ready to put down.
Brynn and Jude – whatever it is, whatever it might become – has been hovering between all of us for months.
He’s leaving for university in September.
She’s staying. Neither of them has said anything, and everyone can see it, and none of us are going to be the one to say it out loud.
‘For what it’s worth,’ I say, ‘I think figuring out what you want is overrated. Most of us are just stumbling around hoping we trip over the right answer.’
‘Is that what you’re doing? Stumbling around?’
‘I’m the queen of stumbling around. I’ve made it an art form.’
She laughs, and the tension breaks. ‘You’re a disaster.’
‘I’m a charming disaster. There’s a difference.’
‘Is there?’ She says it the way Tom said it last night – the exact same cadence, the exact same two words – and for a second I feel the echo so strongly that I have to look away.
I text Isla while Brynn finishes her coffee: CONGRATULATIONS!!! I’m so happy for you both. Tell Kit I’ll only threaten him a little bit about treating you right. xx
The reply comes almost immediately: Thank you!!! Still can’t believe it. Maisie’s already planning the wedding. She wants a bouncy castle. Kit said no. I said maybe. We’ll see who wins.
I smile at my phone. Kit and Isla, choosing each other. Making it official after everything – the decade apart, the coming back, the learning how to be brave enough to stay. Maisie getting a stepmum who loves her like her own. A wedding. A baby. All of it.
I put the phone down and wipe the counter and my hands are busy and my face is smiling and underneath it the hollow is there – quiet, patient, the shape of a question I keep pretending isn’t a question.
What would it feel like to be chosen?
The thought arrives and I put it away. Fast. Before it can settle.
Brynn leaves. The lunch rush starts. I throw myself into the work because work is the thing I’m good at – the sandwiches and the coffee and the customers and the particular rhythm of a day that asks nothing of me except that I show up and keep moving.
I don’t think about last night. I don’t think about Tom’s voice in the dark saying I’m always going to pick up the phone.
I don’t think about quiz night and his face close to mine and the word I’d tried to say – favourite – and the way it had caught in my mouth and then I’d changed tack to talk about Peter.
I don’t think about Kit on the harbour, getting down on one knee.
I don’t think about what it means that the person I called at half eleven, when I couldn’t sleep, when the dark was too much, when I needed a voice to hold me steady – was Tom.
I just work. And the hours pass. And eventually the hollow quiets to something I can carry.
That’s grief, I tell myself.
I’m getting less and less sure that that’s what it is.