by Holly Miller
We spend the morning on the beach, walking hand in hand like we’ve been together for years. Snatching glances at each other, stealing kisses against trees. At midday we drive to a local café, where Finn makes a valiant attempt to order lunch at the counter in Latvian.
“What did you ask for?” I whisper, when he joins me at the table I’ve bagged.
He laughs. “I have absolutely no idea.”
In the end the food is excellent—two mountainous salads, drinks, and cakes stuffed with cream. We follow it up—unwisely, perhaps—with an afternoon dip in a river nearby. And when the light begins to dim, we drive deep into the pine forest on the trail of capercaillie, windows wound down low. And though we don’t find the bird we’re looking for, and we nearly get the car stuck doing a twenty-point turn, we can’t seem to stop laughing and I can’t help thinking, I could really fall for you.
Still, I’m trying hard not to expect anything, because there’s a tiny part of my heart that will always belong to Joel.
* * *
• • •
Twenty-four hours later, at the airport in Riga, I feel elated to glance down at my phone and see a message from Finn:
Hey Callie. Haven’t done this in a while (!) so not quite sure what the rules are here . . . BUT can I just say it was amazing to meet you and I would love, love to see you again. If that appeals.
Then another message pings through:
To me this felt . . . well, pretty epic.
And another:
(Should add that if it didn’t to you—no hard feelings at all! But here’s hoping.) x
Then one more:
Okay, shut up Finn. Gonna let you catch your plane now. Safe flight, travels, everything. Speak soon, I hope x
I think about switching off my phone, waiting until I’m home and a few days have passed before responding. But after five minutes or so of smiling to myself and rereading his messages, I realize I don’t want to.
So, as they’re calling my gate, I tap out a reply:
Amazing to meet you too. A meet-up sounds good. Your place or mine?! x
80.
Joel—two years after
Kieran stops by a garden wall, either for a breather or to throw up. I guess I’m about to find out.
“What the hell’s happened to you?” he wheezes.
I take advantage of the break. Lean down on my knees, let my lungs fill. They’re burning a bit, but it’s a good kind of burn. Like the kind you get with happy tears, or laughing till it hurts.
Tonight’s the first of what I’m hoping will be regular Wednesday night runs together. Kieran’s brought Lucky with him, the dog we saved that Kieran eventually adopted. (Sadly, my other canine charges are all too old to join us now.)
I glance at Kieran. “Could ask you the same question.”
“Oh, cheers. Kick me while I’m down.” His face is red as rhubarb, skin slippery with sweat. “I’m dying here, mate.”
I channel Steve. “Pain is just weakness leaving the body, you know.”
“I tell you what I do know,” he gasps. “You’re a smug—”
I laugh. “Sorry. Couldn’t help myself.”
We resume the jog. I could go a lot faster: a better diet, training sessions with Steve, and regular surfs with Warren have done wonders for my cardiovascular system. But I’m enjoying tonight’s easy pace because it’s a chance to talk to Kieran.
Steve, Tamsin, Warren, and my counselor all reckon the time is right.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said to me, a long time ago.”
“Was it when I agreed to come running with you?” Kieran growls. “Because I take it back.”
We come to the end of the road. It runs into a car park with a view, and it’s late, so the place is empty. There’s a bench nearby, looking out across Eversford. You can see the river from up here, and the church spires. Across the sea of rooftops there’s a smattering of attic windows, lit up like tiny life rafts.
Though it’s November and the air is alive with ice, we’re both warm enough to take five minutes out. So I sit down next to Kieran, who’s already sprawled against the back of the bench like he’s been shot.
Lucky settles on the ground next to us. He’s barely panting, the athletic bastard.
“I’ve been thinking about coming back to the surgery,” I say carefully. “If you’ll have me, that is.”
Kieran hauls himself into a sitting position. “Amazing. Of course. That’s brilliant news.”
“I’d need to look into training.”
“Already done it, mate, eons ago. I’ll e-mail you. What made you change your mind?”
I finally filled Kieran and Zoë in on my dreams this summer, over pints at the pub. I was twitchy and clammy-palmed, afraid of saying what I couldn’t take back. But they seemed to accept it fairly readily (with any lingering doubts seen off pretty quickly via an introduction to Warren). The relief I felt was visceral.
I stare down at Eversford. It’s a map of moving lights and brightly lit smoke from industrial chimneys. “Fitness. Sleeping better. Getting out of my head. Realizing that hiding away doesn’t help.”
Still, it feels like grief to me that Callie and I can’t be sitting here together. Self-improve until you’re flawless, but if the person you love is nowhere to be seen, something will always be missing.
Not that it was ever really about me. If Callie’s happy now, with eyes firmly trained away from her fate, that’s all that matters.
Kieran smiles slyly. “So you’ve not . . . I mean, this isn’t to do with a girl?”
“Nah.”
“How long’s it been now—two years?”
“Yeah.”
“You ever hear from her? Callie.”
I shake my head.
“Stalk her?”
“Er—”
“Online, online,” Kieran says quickly.
“Oh. No.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” He stares down at Eversford. “You’d only end up torturing yourself. That’s the problem, these days. You can never really escape your past because it’s all there online every day, staring you in the face. You looking, then?”
“For what?”
“Someone else. I can hook you up, if you like. Zoë knows loads of people.”
“Thanks,” I say, feeling a bit blank inside. “But you’re all right.”
“Joel,” he says. “How long are you going to wait?”
Six years, Kieran, I could tell him. Callie’s got six years left. I can’t even think about dating properly again yet. Maybe I never will.
But how do you explain that flings and chance encounters are all you’re really capable of, without sounding like a snake?
By my side, Kieran’s still breathing hard. “Can’t believe I can finally stop worrying about when I’m going to get my best vet back.”
“Get your breath back, did you say?”
Kieran snorts. “Ha. The job does come with terms, you know.”
“Such as?”
“Such as no sarcastic comments about your boss running slower than your average ninety-year-old.”
“We can fix that,” I tell him. “I know a guy.”
* * *
• • •
That night, I dream about Callie again. And it’s a dream that floods me with joy, brings me slowly round with a smile on my face.
Three years from now, early in the morning. Callie’s on a bench halfway along a promenade, eyes glimmering from beneath the brim of a knitted hat. Her gaze has drifted out to sea, and she’s swigging intermittently from a travel mug.
It looks like a seaside town. There’s a hotel in the background, lightbulbs strung between lampposts. She must live there, I guess, unless she’s visiting. But there’s no luggage with her, and she’s alone.
Alo
ne except for Murphy by her side and the double buggy by her feet.
She’s rocking it gently back and forth, with a smile that tells me her heart is full.
And to know that, so is mine.
81.
Callie—two years after
I hate leaving you,” I say with a sigh, as I’m getting ready to catch the train back to Eversford on a sodden Sunday night in late November.
“Then don’t.” Finn’s topless on the bed, fresh from the shower and smelling of citrus soap. Propped on one elbow, he’s pretending to watch me pack, though the look in his eyes is a full invitation. I’m half-tempted to give in and kneel beside him for a kiss before remembering that I really do have to go. Kissing Finn on a bed without it turning into something more is, as yet, unheard of.
He sits up. “I’m serious. Move in with me, Cal. You and Murph. Come on, this is crazy, all this back-and-forth. Move to Brighton. I love you, why not?”
Why not? would be Finn’s epitaph, I think. That’s just the way he’s been brought up. What’s the worst that can happen? Worry about it later. It’s better to beg forgiveness than ask permission. He says yes to everything, turns very little down. So different from Joel, and his quiet, understated reserve.
And so different from me too—Finn’s my opposite in many ways, though being with him has made me more adventurous by default, I think. We’re always out, these days, and we probably overspend on adventures, like skydiving and gig tickets and invites to overseas weddings. He drove up to see me on a midweek morning once, threw me a surprise birthday party when we’d been together just a few weeks. Finn has the whole world on speed dial, can make friends in an empty room.
People keep telling me it’s good to be with someone who balances you out. You can’t be all yin and no yang, they say. And I’m sure they’re right.
Sometimes I find myself wondering what would happen if Joel and Finn met—whether they’d be wary of each other or hit it off straightaway.
But, like Joel, Finn is thoughtful too, always interested. He listens to what I say, rubs my feet while I talk, remembers the small details—that I prefer coffee on top of milk, love raspberries and Ryan Gosling, never remember my umbrella, can’t stomach tequila.
All the ways he reminds me of Joel are comforting, and all the ways he doesn’t are charming. Like his unexpected passion for acid-house music, the library of nature books even bigger than mine that takes up almost his entire living room, that he can tolerate Scotch bonnets without so much as blinking. He has a gift for naming birds in flight—seriously, any bird—plus a secret and much-underrated talent for baking. He’s passionate about local and regional politics too, in a manner that makes me think of Grace.
This isn’t the first time Finn’s asked me to move in. His argument is that he owns his flat, so it makes more sense for me to live here. It’s set back from the seafront, on the top floor of a large Regency apartment block. The proportions are minuscule, but we’re only minutes from the sea. We can see it, just, from two of the rooms.
And I do love it here. I adore throwing open the windows, listening to the seagulls, breathing in the salty air. My memories of the first few weekends I spent here are deliciously primal—we barely left the bedroom, resurfacing only to eat or drink, pee or shower. We consumed everything in the flat—why waste time shopping or eating out?—took semi-ironic bubble baths, worked our way through everything on Finn’s iTunes, laid our heads in each other’s laps, and talked about the future.
It’s been only six months, so, yes, we’re moving fast. But fast can be exciting—like when a plane’s about to take off, or a roller coaster plummets. Scary, but exhilarating. Finn told me he loved me after only a fortnight, so when he brought up the idea of moving in together just a few weeks later, I shouldn’t have been surprised.
* * *
• • •
I still think of Joel sometimes, especially when I’m back in Eversford. I’ve even ventured into the café a few times, sat in his old window seat and ordered a thick slab of drømmekage. I’ve thought about how he is—whether he’s happy, what he’s doing now, if there’s been any change to his dreaming. Dot’s assured me he’s not been in since we broke up, so I don’t need to panic about running into him. Which is good, because I have no idea what I’d do, or what I’d say, if I did.
Occasionally I find myself questioning if I did enough—if perhaps I should have fought harder—for us. Maybe he needed more from me and I let him down, failed him when it mattered most.
But then I run through all the reasons we let each other go, and I try to feel at peace again. Let it settle back down, the sadness that sleeps quietly inside me.
Slowly, I come to realize, Joel is strolling away. And in his place stands Finn, a lighthouse of a man, committed to loving me one hundred percent.
* * *
• • •
“Champagne?” Finn calls from the kitchen.
The bottle in the fridge is an expensive one, Finn’s birthday gift from a jet-setting uni friend who always does her shopping in duty-free.
Because I’m moving to Brighton. I said yes. In the end, I couldn’t think of any reason to keep saying no. Six months is long enough, I reminded myself, and Finn says he’s got plenty of contacts who can help find me a job (which I don’t doubt). I’ll miss Mum and Dad, of course, and Esther and Gav and their gorgeous new baby, Delilah Grace. But they all adore Finn, so I’m sure they’ll be thrilled. And, in the end, Finn’s right—all the back-and-forth was starting to seem slightly crazy. Because I want to be with him. I do. How strongly I feel about him . . . it’s nothing short of chemical.
So I said yes, and the joy on his face could have lit up a continent.
He reappears in the bedroom now, a T-shirt on like he thinks the occasion deserves that level of formality, at least. He’s brought the bottle with him and two glasses, pops the cork. The champagne erupts all over the carpet, and I laugh as he swears, chuck him a towel from the pile on the bed. Murphy, who comes with me whenever I’m here to stay, sniffs the wet patch suspiciously.
“Well,” Finn says, as he passes me a full glass, “let’s just say, I’m really glad I stumbled across you on a beach in Latvia, Callie Cooper.” We toast and I take a sip. It’s fresh from the fridge, sumptuously cold.
I look into his pool-blue eyes. “Me too. You were an excellent find, Finn Petersen.”
“These past six months have been the best of my life,” he says, his smile filling the room.
I smile back at him. “I’ll drink to that.”
* * *
• • •
In the small hours of Monday morning, something shakes me awake. I had to catch the late train back to Eversford last night because until I can make the move to Brighton, normal life must resume.
I pull on a hoodie, head out into my cottage garden with Murphy at my heels, and blink into the dense blackness of the sky. I can’t see any stars tonight, maybe because of light pollution, or maybe it’s cloud.
There’s a cloud inside my mind too. It’s not guilt, exactly—more a sense of quiet unease.
I’ve never betrayed Joel by telling Finn about his dream, and I don’t intend to. But if we’re committing to a life together, I can’t help wondering if Finn has a right to know.
Trying to picture how he would react, I find myself imagining he’d simply laugh it off. It’s not that he’d trivialize it—more that he wouldn’t dwell on something he couldn’t change. His view of life is laissez-faire, philosophical. He doesn’t worry too much about money, or being punctual, or what other people think of him. I already know he’d see no need to get to the bottom of the thing, shine a torch into all its dark recesses. He’d accept from the start that no answer exists—or, if it does, that it’s as ephemeral as air.
I could have one year left, or ten, or fifty. Finn and I are creating our own future now, and the idea of th
at dwarfs everything. Joel’s dream has already started to dissipate, slip slowly into the shadows of my memory.
No. I won’t trouble Finn with something that seems less and less palpable with each new day that dawns.
When we first met, Finn asked why Joel and I had broken up. I told him, quite truthfully, that we’d wanted different things. Finn smiled in recognition, said the same thing had happened with his ex. And then we carried on walking, and we never discussed it again.
82.
Joel—three years after
Give me two more!”
“No, I hate you.”
“Two more! Come on!”
I can tell Steve won’t be releasing my ankles until I’ve squeezed out two more sit-ups. Torso burning, I oblige. Then I collapse in a pool of sweat and resentment, start groaning loudly about canceling my membership.
“Yeah, yeah.” Steve shoves a water bottle in my face. “You want easy? Stay in bed.”
“Wish I had,” I growl. Rejecting the water, I roll over. Do my best not to throw up.
Steve agrees to suspend the sadism for five minutes while I catch my breath.
“How was it, then?” he asks me.
“How was what?”
“The spa, you idiot.”
I got back this morning from the wellness retreat, the one Callie bought me the now long-expired voucher for. The place is still going strong, squeezing juices for people with bad habits, massaging their vital organs. There was yoga and meditation. Acupuncture, some chanting. A couple of ceremonies involving bare feet, and a bit of halfhearted clanging.