She nodded her head slowly, smile still on her face even as thoughts ran behind her eyes. ‘So… does that mean we can only do that when I’m having a panic attack then?’ she asked after a second, trying and failing to be casual. ‘’Cause, you know, it’s not like it was all that bad.’
‘Well, I dunno. I’m sure there might be other times that might warrant it,’ I mused, playing along with her.
‘Like?’ she asked, eyebrows scrunching together as she pretended to be confused, like she couldn’t think of when that might be.
‘Oh, you know. Special occasions, birthdays, Christmas and the like. And maybe when we’re happy, or sad, or when it hits us that we’re here, that we’re alive.’
‘Like now?’ she asked, voice barely any louder than a murmur.
‘Like now,’ I confirmed, speaking just as softly.
She didn’t say anything more past that, just leaned up and pressed her lips to mine again, once briefly, and then again, firmer.
I didn’t have to think about what to do then; it wasn’t awkward in the way I’d often worried it would be to kiss a girl. Then again, I’d never really given any thought about kissing this girl – which, now that I thought about it, didn’t entirely make sense really.
But, after that lone thought had passed through my head, there was nothing else. My mind went blank and my body acted on instinct, hands going to her waist and pulling her in close as her hands moved from their position behind my neck to thread through my hair.
Alia must’ve been doing the same, not thinking just allowing her subconscious to take control, because there was no hesitation on her part either, nothing to say she was second-guessing herself. And I knew for sure that, had she been thinking about what to do in a moment like that, she’d have been as awkward as I would have been.
But neither of us were.
Why should we be when we knew each other better than we knew ourselves? Why should I worry about what I was doing, what I should do with my hands or how to hold her? I’d spent my whole life with this girl, spent hours laying with her and talking, sat with her through laughter and through tears. Hell, I’d even been woken up by her sneaking into my room after a nightmare back when I’d been staying at the Sharma house, still shaking from it when she’d opened the door.
Why should either of us need to think about it then? When we could read each other like open books, could read the cues in every action, what was there to be worrying about?
We didn’t need to think, not once, because this was the most basic thing in the world really, the two of us. Being with Alia, it was like breathing; it was something I’d been doing my entire life and never had I stopped to think about it, how it worked, why I did it, I just did.
I didn’t need to know how it worked, why it worked or where the directions came from, just that id did and somehow, even with how complex it actually was, it made a simple kind of sense.
And in that moment, everything made sense.
Chapter Twenty-One
I keep saying it but, things that feel like they should make everything different never really do.
Things didn’t change much at all between me and Alia after that – except the fact that I was allowed to kiss her now. Of course, there was the teasing from her family as well, not that they hadn’t always teased us, but it was different now. It wasn’t to annoy us or make us blush, roll our eyes or go on the defensive anymore. Now, they did it because, to use Anjali di’s words, sometimes it just couldn’t be helped.
One thing that had changed was that Alia was more willing to listen to me now. I wasn’t crazy enough to think that it had anything to do with me being her boyfriend – as girlish as it might sound, even thinking that made me grin like a fool; Alia wasn’t the type to ever let a guy control her, be it her dad, her brother or her boyfriend. No, she listened to me now because it made sense to her, because she understood that when I told her to relax and take a breather or reminded her to take her medicine, it was for her own good. She’d known it before too, known that I was only looking out for her but now it had finally sunk in.
She stuck to all the plans we’d come up with over summer, took her medications consistently, tried to stress less, even tried eating more of the ‘heart-healthy’ foods the doctor had recommended – though she complained constantly that they couldn’t even come close to ma ka haath ka khana. She still had to go for regular check-ups, both with the GP and the cardiologist, and the dizzy spells, chest pains and plethora of other symptoms hadn’t cleared out entirely but they were becoming less frequent, less severe. The doctors seemed to think she was doing everything right and I started to hope that she really might be okay.
Alia’s change in handling her condition was only one of the many changes that happened in those weeks. While nothing had changed between the two of us, we’d both definitely changed. Alia had become a little more light-hearted, stopped looking at the world in terms of all the things she couldn’t do, saw more than just the dangers. As for me, I stopped being so guarded all the time, let people actually see what I was feeling on occasion, laughed more freely and even let myself cry in the emotional parts of films.
One of the biggest changes though was the one that I hadn’t realised had happened.
Somehow, without either of us noticing, we’d fully grown up, become all the more responsible. It was proper weird to realise it because we’d always been older than our ages, grown up fast, but in a very different way. Before, it’d been about understanding what the adults were talking about, being able to look after ourselves, not relying on anyone else to do things for us and, for the past few years, looking after Zia. It had been waking up with the alarm and getting ourselves to school on time, doing our work without reminding, learning how to make our own food and cleaning up after ourselves, keeping the house tidy too. Now, it was thinking ahead, preparing for the future, for the unknown.
According to Jaya aunty, it’d been happening for a while now but I only noticed it the day Alia said to me she wanted to write her will and my only response had been to say okay and sit down to write mine as well. It may seem slightly nuts for two eighteen-year-olds to be making wills but both of us had significant enough possessions that it made sense to make sure we had everything in order, just in case.
Aunty and uncle had both pretty pleased with us when we told them what we were doing. They sat down with us, talked us through it, told us what we could and couldn’t put in a will.
The absolute biggest change, the one that shocked me the most, came just about two weeks after results day.
It was a Saturday, a day as normal as any other. The two of us weren’t doing much, just lounging about at my place, watching TV. With it being the weekend, there’d usually be a little monkey running around, making us play pretend or begging to watch Paw Patrol, but her parents had taken her to the zoo so, for once, we were free of responsibility for a bit. We made snacks, grabbed chocolate and sweets from their hiding places in the high cupboards and set ourselves up in the sitting room, piling blankets and pillows on the floor to make a fort before switching the TV on and scrolling through Netflix for a while before deciding on a Doctor Who marathon.
As always, Alia had about four other things she could do with her; I was the one with ADHD but she couldn’t sit with her hands still. For the first few episodes, she didn’t reach for any of her books or laptops, though she did have a pair of knitting needles in her hands but that she could do without paying it any mind.
We were a few hours in, about halfway through Boom Town, the eleventh episode of the first season, when I realised that I couldn’t hear the quiet click of the needles anymore. I looked over to where she was say and saw she’d abandoned the knitting ad was sat with her legs pulled up in front of her, notebook balancing on her knees with a pen in her hand, frowning at the page in front of her. ‘What’re you doing?’ I asked.
‘Making a list,’ she said, sounding pretty distracted.
‘Of?’
‘Stuff I need to do,’ she told me with a shrug.
‘What, you mean like a to-do list?’ I questioned, confused; Alia had never gotten along all that well with to-do lists.
‘No, I mean like a list of things to do before I die,’ she deadpanned with an eye roll.
Maybe I overreacted a little to that but, given the circumstances, I’d think it was probably understandable. ‘That’s really not something to joke about,’ I snapped, pausing the TV.
‘What?’ she asked, looking up from her book abruptly like she was just now properly tuning in to the conversation.
‘Dying. It’s not something to joke about,’ I told her, speaking through gritted teeth. ‘Especially given your condition.’
‘Jai-’
‘No!’ I exclaimed, cutting her off before she could tell me I was overreacting. ‘No, I am not overreacting. You are underreacting!’ I snapped. She stared at me in disbelief, more than a little shocked by my yelling at her; yelling at Alia was something I just didn’t do. I ranted, sure. I got mad sometimes, traded sarcastic remarks with her often, but I had never, ever outright yelled at her.
Any other time, the look on her face would have made me shut up but I was way too angry to even consider it then. ‘You have a life-threatening disease and here you are joking about dying like you’re discussing the weather,’ I accused.
Unable to just sit there any longer with all the frustration bubbling inside me, I stood up and begun to pace. ‘It’s not a joke Alia, it’s not a fucking joke.’
‘Jai, just listen –’
‘Why?’ I demanded, cutting her off again. ‘Why the hell should I listen? So, you can tell me that I’m being stupid, reading too much into things. That it was just a joke? Well I’m not listening, not this time.’
That pissed her off. Badly at that.
Propelled by her anger, she got to her feet too, coming to stand directly in front of me. ‘What the fuck is your problem Edmonds?’
‘My problem?’ I repeated. ‘My problem, Sharma, is that you never take anything seriously!’
‘I never take anything seriously?’ she questioned incredulously. ‘I’m sorry, this coming from the boy who has always let everything slide off, put everything off till the very last second?’
‘Are you seriously comparing my study habits to the blasé attitude you have about your life?’ I asked, actually unable to take her seriously.
‘Well, it’s true isn’t it?’ she questioned defensively. ‘It’s what you do.’
‘Me procrastinating on my school work – which is only because I have an inability to recognise a deadline until it’s staring me in the face – is nowhere near you joking about death!’
‘You’re overreacting just a little don’t you think? I mean, sure, maybe you’re right, maybe I shouldn’t go making jokes like that but, newsflash for you Jaival, I don’t always think about every single way my words could possibly be taken!’ she snapped.
‘Well maybe you should!’
‘Why? Because you’re too fucking sensitive for your own damn good?’ she demanded.
‘I’m not too sensitive,’ I refuted, ‘you’re just not sensitive enough!’
‘Maybe that’s because I just don’t care! I just really don’t give two shits. So I have a heart disease. So it could probably kill me. That doesn’t mean that I give half a crap about some stupid jokes and, guess what Edmonds? I’m the one who’s bloody affected!’
‘You’re not the only one,’ I returned, seething. ‘You are not the only one affected by this.’
‘How am I not?’ Tell me. How am I not? I’m the one who’s heart gets weaker the more it beats, the one who has to live knowing that, at any time the heart failure that seems to be under control could go getting worse again. I’m the one who has to walk around with a ticking time bomb inside me, the one who has to take a dozen medications every Goddamn day, the one who’s been told that my days are numbered and there ain’t a damn thing that I can do about it,’ she exploded, shooting daggers at me from her eyes.
‘That doesn’t mean you’re the only one impacted.’
‘But I’m the one that affected the most,’ she countered.
‘No, you’re not. You’re really not,’ I denied, no longer shouting. My anger had gone from explosive to something simmering beneath the surface in a matter of seconds and we both knew that, really, that was so much worse. ‘It’s your body, yes. You’re the one who’s medicated, yes. You’re the one who has to sit through doctor’s appointments, who has to suffer through the physical pain. But I’m the one who has to watch, who has to sit by and see you be in pain and see you scared, see you act like it’s nothing. And, in the end, I’m gonna be the one who gets left behind.’ By the time I’d finished speaking, I wasn’t angry anymore, not really.
I watched the anger leaving Alia too, her whole body deflating. ‘You’re dying Li,’ I stated, voice cracking. ‘You’re dying. Tu mane mukine haylijawanu cho. You’re gonna leave me and here we are, shopping for uni and you’re making to-do lists while we’re watching Doctor Who.’ She chuckled at that and I had to let out a watery laugh too because it sounded so ridiculous.
Without a word, she stepped closer, her arms winding around my neck as my hands automatically made their way to her waist. She kissed me then, soft and gentle and loving and over way too soon. ‘I love you, Jaival Ryan Edmonds, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I’ve not got all that long left and that I dragged you along into this mess. And I’m sorry that I’ve asked you to lie for me, to hide from my family – your family.’
‘I’d do it over again, all of it, in a heartbeat,’ I told her. ‘’Cause I love you too, Alia Rahul Sharma, and I’d do anything for you.’ She smiled at me, bright and pure as I’d ever seen and, before I could really make the decision to do it, I was kissing her.
It wasn’t really something we’d done all too often but still, this was different from every other time. I couldn’t tell you what exactly it was but there was definitely something inexplicably different about it, impossible to pinpoint.
Whatever it was, it kept me from pulling back, from stopping my hands from wandering, kept me from stopping her as her hands drifted down to the hem of my t-shirt, slipping underneath, her fingers ghosting over my skin.
The logic that usually made me pull back, take a breath and say we should stop, shouldn’t let things go too far, too fast, that was gone.
I didn’t stop and she didn’t pull back and, next thing I knew, we were going up the stairs to my room, both of us laughing a little giddily as we crossed through the doorway and tumbled onto my bed, limbs tangling and breaths mingling.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Though falling into bed with my best friend definitely isn’t what I would have called the definition of normal, the real change came afterwards.
It was quiet in the room, silent except for our breathing. For the first time in months, my brain was pretty much empty.
Well, okay that was a lie really because it was filled with thoughts of the girl lying next to me but, for once, they were peaceful thoughts, not the mess that usually clouded my mind.
‘D’you remember when we were six and I dared you to jump off the top of the climbing frame at the park?’ I asked after a while, the memory coming to mind out of nowhere.
‘Yeah. And then you clambered up there next to me and jumped too,’ she recalled, chuckling fondly at the memory, not questioning my nostalgia at all.
‘And we got grass stains on our joggers and Jaya aunty so knew what we’d done.’
‘But we told her we’d been rolling down the hill and she acted like she believed us,’ Alia finished for me. ‘What about that time when we were nine and di took us to the cinema and let us both get sweets and slushies and we were both so hopped up on sugar after it, she decided not to take us home until after the sugar rush wore off?’
‘And she told us if anyone asked why we were back so late it was because she wanted to check at HMV for a CD before we came
home. Even took us into town and let us go pick out toys at the Disney Store just to make sure we’d stick to the story,’ I remembered with a laugh.
‘I remember, when we got back home, she was so scared mumma would tell her off. Both of us coming back holding new toys and all. But ma just gave her this smile and told her to set the table for dinner,’ Alia said softly, the entire tone of the conversation changing. ‘I asked her ‘bout it a few years back; dunno why, just randomly. She told me it had cost about a month’s worth of her paper round money for us to go that day. Papa had offered to drive us, take us to the cinema near here but she’d told him it wasn’t playing there – she’d not even checked really but it was Saturday lunchtime and, with her taking us out and bhaiya meeting his mates, the store was short staffed – dad din’t really have the time. Ma always used to feel bad about keeping us holed up at home on the weekends so di figured she’d free them both of the worry for a while. She told me that bhai’d already been heading down to Leicester anyway, he had some footie game or something, so it was easier for us to just catch a lift with him and get the train back. But the cinema tickets, snacks, bus tickets, train tickets and a trip to town… even back then, all that didn’t come cheap. And with the way ma’s always told us to watch where we spend, not to overdo it, she thought she’d be pissed. But she hadn’t been. I guess, somehow, mum’d known why she’d done it.’ It wasn’t hard for me to figure out what she was getting at with the story; after all, when you put two and two together, you can only ever get four, right? And connecting the story with the thoughts in her head was as easy for me as primary school maths.
‘They’ll understand Als,’ I assured. ‘They’ll know why you hid it.’
‘Will they though?’ she asked, almost timidly.
‘They’re your family and they love you. They might not like the fact that you didn’t tell them but they’ll understand. Just like aunty knew why we lied when we were six and just like she understood why di did what she did when we were nine.’
Have a Heart Page 12