He smiled, that perfect smile and she felt her heart flutter, like it had that first time on the balcony when he’d appeared with that bottle of wine and a whole load of bullshit. They’d seen through each other’s masks that night, and they’d created who they were together.
‘So you and me,’ she said, ‘we’re okay?’
‘We’re better than okay, we’re us,’ Kit grinned, pulling her close.
And as Kit kissed her on the dry grass of the estate where she had spent so many years as a child dreaming of escape, Chelsea thought that this moment was probably the most perfect moment of all. Until the group of teenage boys started catcalling, and both she and Kit broke apart, just in time to say in unison, ‘Oh fuck off!’
And even that was perfect.
Epilogue
‘So, I think I’m gonna go to Oxford,’ Jermaine said thoughtfully, chewing away on his third piece of pizza, his eyes still glued to the massive amount of food splayed across the table.
‘Good choice,’ Kit laughed, ‘I know some great people who went there.’
Chelsea rolled her eyes and reached for another piece of garlic bread. ‘Anywhere you want to go is fine, Jay, the point is you can do whatever you want. You want to be a kickboxer or a bank manager, you can do what you like, okay?’
‘And what about me, sis?’ Tyler grinned standing on a ladder and affixing a new light installation in the gallery, a mirrored contraption that seemed to refract the light around the room, like they were sitting beneath stars. ‘Do I get to be whatever I want and follow all my dreams?’ His voice was mocking but he smiled, holding his clasped hands up to his cheek like a Disney princess.
‘You get to be a bespoke designer electrician, because you’re going to make a sod load of money and you’re bloody good at it. Sorry, no more dreams for you,’ Chelsea laughed and stuck out her tongue.
Celia grinned up at Tyler on the ladder. ‘Well, that told you.’
‘Go on then, Princess, what are you going to be?’
She swished her blonde hair and laughed. ‘You know, I have no idea. And I don’t really care. I just want to be happy.’
‘Is it hard to be happy now, with that holiday home in Italy and that pretty brown pony then?’ Tyler grinned at her.
‘I don’t have to hold this ladder, you know!’
Chelsea and Kit shared an amused look, leaning towards each other. ‘Do you think we need to be worried about that?’
‘Oh, absolutely,’ Chelsea laughed, kissing his cheek.
These nights had become more frequent, having the boys down for the weekend and spending time with them, letting them get to know Kit and their friends, seeing what they did at the gallery. Jermaine joined in one of her dance classes, and he looked like he would burst with pride when she told him how good he was. Sure, they did normal things, took them out around London and to all the sights, but it was these evenings at the gallery that she loved most, where Evie would make a jug of Sangria and Mollie would bring out cake and cupcakes and they’d listen to Ruby’s albums, telling stories about her. Ty even surprised them with the story about Ruby turning up one day, when they found out Chelsea was going to uni, and giving him thirty quid and a jumbo-sized bag of Haribo.
‘She’d just handed me this stuff and walked away,’ Tyler had laughed, ‘I was a kid, I thought it was the best thing ever.’
Some of the songs had been too raw to listen to up until then, the ones about being left behind, about the guardian angels who did bad things, or the men who had their legs broken. The subtle small shards of Chelsea’s life intermingled with her own. And then there was that one line in that one song that she always noticed, leaning her head on Kit’s shoulder as everyone chatted around them. They’d heard it together, that night they went back to his and talked till morning, listening to Ruby Tuesday and crying over the mistakes they’d made, talking about where they wanted their lives to go, what they wanted from each other, who they wanted to be. She lifted her head from Kit’s shoulder, and saw him mouthing the words along with her, his blue eyes meeting hers softly:
You be you, baby, all of you. And I’ll love you just the same.
CARINA™
ISBN: 9781474056120
Nice Day for a White Wedding
© 2016 A.L. Michael
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