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Saying very little, though he has never known himself to be so attentive, so desperate for another sentence, so surprised by the words she chooses.
and she wonders, as her feet pound the belt, why she is always trying so hard. Who she is trying for. Why everything matters, all of the time.
How intensely she listened, and held all that he had to say.
He doesn’t try small talk. Doesn’t ask her about school or subjects or being a twin. He asks her, immediately, why she rarely sleeps, and this is what does it; this is what catches her, places him in her sphere in a way she wasn’t ready for.
Felt.
This, he comes to realize, is one of her recurrent words. This girl with that voice, and all of her ohs and maybes.
Rosie doesn’t say it, cannot bring herself to speak. And that, she knows, is answer enough, as well as spectacularly inconvenient.
I like the quiet, she says, and he nods, like he gets it, and he’s making this whole thing harder just by being him, and understanding. She has never known a person like him. Never felt like she’s known someone, for so long, when she hasn’t.
Also felt.
Come on, Roe, Will says, a half laugh caught in his throat, and it is the first time he calls her that, the first time he shortens her name to something that nobody else has ever, or will ever, call her.
He looks straight at her. You said you think about me, he says. She nods, once, when she realizes it’s a question. Turns out I think about you, too, he says. On my bike. And at the garage. And when I’m cooking, and running, and trying to sleep. His eyes are like fumes; they fog up the room. And that’s new for me, he says.
Josh could hear her through the wall. Saw her, once or twice, and accepted it, and didn’t try to change it, or mock her, or question what she was doing. But he asks her, now and then, if she’s all right. Something she forgets to ask herself.
Think less, he says. I can’t, she says. Try. Will. Yes? We’re not meant to be doing this. What, dancing in a car park? You know what I mean.
Rosie, he says. Relax. That’s like saying: Will, be unattractive.
I mean it, he says, dragging his feet. You see things, Rosie-Roo. You know things, because you watch. All the important things.
It wasn’t for me, Rosie says, and it is bold, in front of his grandma, and again, she is a complete and utter surprise to him.
Don’t miss out on something good, simply because it’s different. I didn’t raise you with thoughts like that in your head, did I? No, he says. Well, then. Go. Eat canapés and apple tarts. Fall for the nice girl, for once.
Perhaps you have no time for girls, she says. But you have time for the girl.
He wonders, vaguely, if he’ll regret it, but turns to see Rosie at the table with her rained-on hair and her swollen eyes and knows he would swap her for Thailand tomorrow, and the next day, and he can make a decent pad thai, anyway, and the world isn’t going anywhere, right, so he puts it from his mind.
And Rosie, too, takes the way out, because it is less complicated, and because too much has happened for them to undo,
Exist, in tandem, and ask nothing more of each other.
He listens to her breathing and thinks of her awake and looping, obsessive and hurting and trying to cope, and the love he feels is bigger than anything he’s felt before, bigger than his anger and his pain, his desire and his fury, and this, to him, is entirely new, and the right thing, he knows, is to keep it to himself.
She thinks she loves Simon, and she knows he loves her, but sometimes she wants him to look at her like he could eat her; wants him to touch her in a way that means she feels wanted, instead of just cared for. But he sips wine and talks and smiles with all his teeth and passes carrots across the table.
I’d say you just love the idea of her, then, she says. You’re pinning everything on something you’ve never even had. Something that’s not real.
I just think, she says, and she stands up, takes her empty coffee cup to the side, that you only get one life, you know? So what’s the point in spending it miserable, or inert?
She does not feel satisfied, but she feels safe and calm and poised, and that’s okay, because that’s what she’d needed. What she needs.
So he keeps the photo on his phone, a reminder of the good things, the light things, that they must not share.
He knows this thing between them will always hold some temptation, some kind of magnetic pull that neither of them can quite break. An addiction, he thinks, as he descends, passes another lone hiker who nods to him, says morning. And like any addiction, you have to learn to manage it.
I don’t need to know any details, Jen says. But I can see it in your face, Will. And at the risk of sounding like a goddamn diva, she says, her eyes flaring, I just, you know. I want someone to look at me like that.
Yes Jen
You’re a lot of things, Roe, he says. But sad? No. No way. Even after everything, you’re a light, Roe. A goddamn beam of light.
It is like being at school again, the pull and the fizz and the heat of it all, when it is just them, in a different decade, the way they always were.
It is unsettling, being so stimulated, so eaten up with desire, for a woman he really cares for. He wants to shield her, and shelter her, but let her find her own way, too, with certain things.
I wish I’d done everything on earth with you, she says. The street is quiet. No cars, or closing doors. Just them, and her voice, on the linen-dry wind. It’s not mine, she says. The quote. But it’s beautiful, isn’t it? He nods, but barely, because he is not used to such talk. And I feel it, Rosie says, still with that smile of hers. I was just thinking that I feel it.
His steps are long and sure, even in his heavy boots. The boots she knows and loves, somehow, and how can you love someone else’s shoes, she wonders, as she watches him ascend. When she is close, he hears her and stops, one floor below. Holds her still in his eyes, and then shrugs, like the eighteen-year-old version of himself. Wolf teeth. Unshifting gaze. Sorry, he says to her. What for? For taking so long, he says.
Actually, Will, Simon says, it’s the kindest thing anyone’s done for me in weeks. I’ve been getting a whole lot of nothing from everyone. Old friends, and colleagues, and family members, who are scared to even look at me, and don’t know what the hell to say.
But he will never apologize, for her.
A lot of things, Roe, he says. You’re indecisive, for one. You let other people choose for you, over what you want, and that’s not just sad, Rosie, it’s fucking spineless, which is the opposite of what you actually are. And you have this false perception of what’s good and, I don’t know, proper. Like it matters. You don’t live your life the way you should. You never speak out, to anyone, least of all your mother, who frankly could do with being put straight. You don’t sing, anymore. You deny yourself everything. You rob yourself, Roe. Every second of every hour, you’re forcing yourself into
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But in spite of all that, Will says, there is not a single thing wrong with you, Roe. With any tiny part of you.
No. I tried to be a nice guy, just your friend, or whatever, but I can’t. I’m sick of waiting, and hoping, and thinking about you all the goddamn time. Not just these past few months. Ever since that bonfire.
Just figure out what you want. And I’ll go and do the same.
Somewhere along the way, things happened, or they didn’t. So he swims, and he works, and things are.
the peace he’s made with the things he did and the people who left and the way the sun keeps rising, regardless.
He misses some things. Some people. Knows, though, that that’s just the way of things, and he prefers the balance, the rest, unexciting and mundane and, it turns out, all that he seems to need. And good butter, of course. Decent coffee. He was raised by a woman with priorities.
I don’t want to shoot for things that bleed me dry, anymore; I want things that fill me up, and I don’t care what they are, as long as you’re there, and I’m there with you. I want to make you breakfast, Will. Meet you at home, every day, and share car keys and toothpaste and surprise you with birthday candles.
But I wish I’d just stopped, for one damn second, and realized I was trying to do the right thing for everyone else, which just made everything wrong, in the end, you know?
There is only what happens, he tells her. What is and what isn’t.
