Chapter Seventeen
Ollie
‘Where have you been?’
I hear Liv’s voice before I see her. I haven’t taken my coat off yet and it’s nearly half-six. She’s at the top of the stairs, looking down at me.
‘I took Aury to the station.’
‘Why?’ she asks, looking concerned.
‘Because it’s dark and it’s London,’ I tell her. Liv knows what I mean.
‘You’ve not taken me to the station when it’s dark,’ she points out.
‘Yes, I have.’ It’s true. I have.
‘Not recently.’
‘I’ll always walk you down, if you ask me to. And it’s crazy early out there. We didn’t see another soul.’
‘Why didn’t you sleep in with me last night?’ she asks.
‘I needed to be up early and didn’t want to wake you,’ I try gently.
‘You got up early to walk Aurora to the station?’
‘Yeah. No. I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to apologise for being a bit shit.’
‘That’s what you needed to be up early for? That’s why you didn’t sleep in with me last night?’
‘No,’ I sigh. ‘I need to get to my classes too, obviously.’
‘Oh,’ she says.
We stand there for a moment, neither of us quite sure what’s going on with the other. I’m not sure I know what’s going on with me, either. Maybe it’s Aury leaving. It’s bugging me. I’m finding uni really hard too, but you don’t see me dropping out.
‘She’s really going to do it then? She’s really quitting uni?’ Liv asks, as if reading my mind.
‘I guess so,’ I reply. I lean back against the front door and look up at her.
I’m not sure I ever know the right thing to say to Liv.
Or to Aury. As evidenced by our almighty row earlier this week.
But I should be able to say what I think to Liv, without her flying off the handle or being passive-aggressive.
It’s normal, though, isn’t it? Isn’t it normal to feel anxious in a relationship?
I wouldn’t know, because I’ve never been in one before.
Liv is my first proper girlfriend. I feel I’m doing something wrong, constantly.
But she doesn’t say. Other than that time when she sat me down and told me to pay more attention to her or lose her.
Oh, is that what this is? Is it happening again?
Is it being said, without being said? I can pull this back.
‘It’s going to be so weird without her,’ Liv says.
‘She says she’s going to keep living here.’ I don’t want to talk about Aury now. I think we should talk about us, only I’m not really sure how to slide that into this conversation.
‘But she’s hardly here anyway,’ Liv points out. ‘It’s been the three of us for ages now.’
Liv’s right. It has. We can’t drift apart now. We’ve done so well. We’re tight-knit.
‘Everything’s going to change, isn’t it?’ she asks mournfully.
‘What? No. Come here.’ I hold my hands out to her and Liv moves towards me down the stairs. ‘Why do you think everything’s going to change?’ I ask as she reaches me.
In her pink fluffy dressing gown she looks vulnerable and petite. Her wide eyes look up at me.
‘I think everything’s going to change anyway,’ she says. ‘I can feel it. Aurora’s leaving to become some hotshot model, and it won’t be long before Ben and I will be finishing uni and going out into the real world, and I’m not ready.’
‘You don’t have to be ready yet,’ I placate her. ‘You’ve still got time.’
‘I know,’ she says, looking up at me. ‘But this year’s going to go really fast.’
‘No, it won’t,’ I soothe.
‘It will. It always does.’
I can’t hang on any more, so I cut to the chase. ‘I want to know if I’m doing OK?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Us. Am I doing OK now?’
Liv narrows her eyes as if she doesn’t understand what I’m saying.
‘You’d tell me – if I was messing this up. Messing us up.’
‘You’re doing fine,’ she says, still looking confused.
‘Because … after you told me off—’
‘Told you off? No, that’s not quite what happened, is it?’ Liv says. ‘I just wanted things to feel normal between us. We seemed to be going at different paces.’
‘You said I was going at the speed of a glacier.’
‘Actually I said glaciers move quicker.’
I smile. ‘We’re arguing about this now?’
‘We’re not arguing, are we? We’re having a conversation,’ she replies.
‘OK. Great.’
‘Tell me you love me,’ she asks, a desperate look in her eyes.
‘I love you,’ I reply.