Eight Perfect Hours: The hotly-anticipated love story everyone is falling for in 2021!

by Lia Louis

  Clay and Sam stand up as we approach the table and God, why does Sam have to be so tall and why does his tired, didn’t-get-much-sleep-last-night face and dishevelled bed-hair make me want to bury my face into his neck? And yup, just like that, my hunger pains have disappeared completely. Can’t-eat, wanna-puke love … No, no, shut up, not now.

  ‘Eh, see, this is nice and cosy,’ says Clay, his lips pale, his eyes bruise-like with the rings of someone hung-over and still drunk. ‘How’s it going, Noelle? And is this your …’ He eyes Sam for a moment, then me. ‘Your …’

  ‘This is Ed,’ I jump in.

  ‘Her date. Her helper. Her slave.’ Ed grins and holds his hand out.

  ‘Ah, I should’ve known a queen like this would have a slave. Have many.’ Clay winks at me, a teasing blue eye, and they shake hands roughly. I can feel Sam’s eyes burning into me, but I don’t dare look at him, into his eyes, at his lips, the ones I was kissing last night …

  ‘Morning,’ says Sam, and Ed holds out his hand, ever cool, ever confident. ‘I’m Sam.’

  Ed shakes his hand, but his brow creases. ‘Sam,’ he says. ‘Oh – you’re … shit you’re – no way – I know you.’

  Sam doesn’t react, he just looks at him, and I don’t think I have ever seen Sam stone-faced before, but he is. Right this moment, he is. His jaw set, his shoulders are back. What is Ed talking about? He knows him? ‘You do?’

  Ed laughs, but his cheeks pinken. ‘Yeah, I – your dad. You brought your dad into rheumatology. Few weeks ago. We – we had a chat.’

  Sam nods, but he’s still standing tall and rigid. Sam’s tall, yes, but standing like this, he looks enormous. ‘That’s right. I remember.’

  ‘You’re Frank’s doctor?’ I ask.

  ‘No,’ cuts in Sam before Ed can reply, then Ed clears his throat, a balled fist at his mouth.

  ‘No, no that’s Pragya, isn’t it – Doctor Laghari I mean?’ he says.

  Sam nods once.

  ‘I filled in on her surgery,’ says Ed to me, then he turns back to Sam. ‘And how is he, your dad?’

  ‘Frank? Yeah, he’s good.’ Sam smiles a tiny smile as Clay laughs, and says, ‘Holy shit, so you’re a doctor? Oh …’ Clay downs a shot of espresso. ‘Let me scoot round there and we can all sit—’

  ‘Actually,’ says Sam, ‘we’re kind of done anyway, right, dude?’

  Clay pauses, fixes his eyes on Sam. ‘Um.’ He looks down at the empty espresso cup in his hand. ‘Yeah? Yeah, I guess if you want to …’

  ‘You don’t have to go …’ I start, although I really don’t mean it, because I’m relieved I haven’t got to sit at the table with both of them. My head feels fit to burst, to explode all over the restaurant like a detonated pumpkin. Ed and Sam have met. They’ve had a chat. Sam thinks Ed is a twat. I’m not exactly a body language expert but that much is clear.

  ‘No, no,’ says Sam, ‘we’ve taken up enough space for long enough and they’re super packed so …’

  Ed nods and holds out his hand again. ‘Well, it was good to see you again,’ he says, laughingly. ‘The world’s never been so small, eh?’

  Sam gives a nod, then looks at me. ‘Good luck today, Noelle,’ he says, and before I can even register what just happened, before I can take in the icy, icy stare from Sam to Ed, they’re gone.

  I tried. I tried really hard, to sit with Ed, in the loud, overbearing dining room of the Balmoral, but in the end, I couldn’t. I stood up – frankly, in the manner of someone having an adverse reaction to a drug – and my chair squeaked suddenly on the hard, shiny floor. ‘Sorry,’ I said, as Ed looked up from his newspaper. ‘I need to check something. With Martina. Can’t sit still.’ And thankfully, he seemed to buy it. He didn’t seem to notice my flusterment or the fact I was the colour of the white marble floors or that I pushed a slice of toast around my plate like it was a bathroom tile and not food. He just said he’d go up to the room and pack, ready for our train. And I’d torn outside, as if the hotel was filled with twenty-foot-deep water, and the outside was air.

  I stand now, against the cold, ornate walls of the hotel. I need to think, but I can’t seem to grasp a thought long enough to understand it, and I can feel my heart rate quicken – a freight train, going so fast, it’s just a blur on the horizon. I fix my eyes on the huge window of a shop opposite and inhale, hold, exhale, inhale, hold, exhale. Why does this keep happening? The gasping for breath, the racing heart. It’s as if I am still and stationary and the whole world around me is on fast forward. Panic. Panic like I used to, when I lost my way. Last time, a kind mental health nurse had suggested I wasn’t listening to myself – I wasn’t digesting something I was feeling, not looking it in the eye. What is it? What is it I’m feeling?

  Confusion. Overwhelmed. Like I want to withdraw from Ed because something niggles at me when we’re together and I don’t know what it is. And Sam. I want to run towards him and away all at once. And questions. So many questions flood my brain, squash into every crack. If I’d have gone to Oregon with Ed, would I have met Sam? If I’d never gone to the time capsule event, would I have taken the job at Frank’s? Would I have met Sam for the first time then? Or would we have chatted in the hospital waiting room? Would we have even talked at all? Magnets. The same planes. Meant to be? ‘I’d mention your soulmate …’ Daisy’s voice drifts through my mind, ‘but I don’t want to make your eyes roll so much they get stuck in the back of your head because you want to be able to look at him. Because he’ll be totally hot. Charming too. And so tall, he’ll give you a neck ache.’

  My phone buzzes in my pocket, my shallow breath deepening again, slowly but surely. It’s a reminder. It’s ten to ten. I need to go back and put the final touches to the flowers and put them on the tables, at the ends of the pews, deliver the bouquets. That is what I’m here for. Candice and Steve. Everything else will have to wait until that long train ride home. I can’t have a mini emotional meltdown now. Not here. Not today.

  I wander back through the doors of the hotel, my feet squeaking on the polished floor. And then I stop. Because Ed and Sam are by the elevators. They’re talking – well, Ed is, and seriously and quickly, and Sam’s jaw is set again, and he nods, once. Ed is bent close to him, like he’s explaining something complicated, all hand gestures and serious eyes, and I know all his faces – well, most of them. I know when he’s sad, or he’s angry, and he looks – stressed. Irked. Are they arguing? Why would they be arguing? Did Sam tell him that we kissed? No. No, surely not, why would he do that? Life is not a Nicholas Sparks novel.

  ‘Um – hello?’ I call, and although it’s loud and bustling in the lobby, with voices and music and telephones ringing, they both look up. Ed’s face breaks into a huge, too-big-to-believe grin. Sam gives a barely there, shadow of a smile.

  ‘Hey you,’ says Ed. ‘Just catching up. Talking about climbing. Mount Hood.’

  I look at Sam, who dips his head. ‘Yeah,’ is all he says.

  ‘So, I’ll go and get the bags together,’ says Ed with another big smile and that weird look again in the eyes – what would I have said that was, when we were together, that look? A secret, maybe. Something he’s not telling me. ‘Meet you over in the stockroom?’ Ed looks at us, to and fro, then disappears into the lift, leaving Sam and me alone in the lobby, a stretch of shiny floor between us.

  ‘What were you two talking about?’ I ask. Neither of us move.

  Sam puts his hands into his pockets, his shoulders stiff, but that stone-faced jaw relaxing. ‘Just climbing. Dad. Stuff.’

  ‘Stuff?’

  Sam nods, then his face softens. ‘Are you OK?’

  I shrug, feel emotion bubble up inside me. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘No. No. I don’t know. Can I say ish?’

  ‘You can say ish,’ repeats Sam sadly, but he doesn’t smile this time or say anything else.

  ‘So you two met already,’ I say.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t say we met, we just––’

  ‘Do you think I was mean
t to meet you, Sam,’ I say, words rushing from my mouth. ‘The more I keep thinking of everything, the more I’m here, the more I’m with you––’

  ‘Noelle … ’

  ‘Don’t say that it’s random. You know it isn’t. I think we were …’ I realise my voice is too loud, and I step closer to him, lower it, shrink the words small, so they’re just ours. ‘I think we were meant to meet. If Ed and I hadn’t broken up, if I had moved to Portland––’

  ‘If.’ Sam takes a breath. ‘Noelle, I drove myself crazy with ifs for such a long time and I can’t believe in ifs and signs and––’

  ‘But why? Why can’t you just say it is?’ He says nothing, but my mouth keeps moving because of course it does. ‘Why can’t you just see that this is fate or at least might be––’

  ‘Because I can’t.’

  ‘But why? I feel – something––’

  ‘Noelle!’ A shrill, excitable puppy dog voice cut right through mine. Candice calls across the lobby from the open double-doors behind me, a golden croissant balancing on a small white plate, her hair in rollers, a dressing gown tied at the waist. ‘Mum. Mum!’ she says turning. ‘This is Noelle. This is my florist!’

  Sam smiles at me softly. ‘Go be with your people,’ he says. Then he leans and presses warm lips to my forehead. ‘I’ll see you soon.’

  And I know now, that I will. Regardless of everything, of every if in the world, I know that I will.

  When I let myself into the hotel room, Ed is on the phone. He quickly hangs up.

  ‘It was uh – Mum,’ he says, rolling his round eyes. ‘Droning on again, about Dad’s seventieth. Did I tell you I’m not allowed a plus-one––’

  ‘Ed, Candice has asked me to stay,’ I say into the quiet room. The TV on the wall is just an inch away from mute, a football commentator barely audible, a footballer rolling around clutching at his leg. ‘For the ceremony and the reception.’

  Ed’s brow creases, his lips turn down at the corners, as if trying to work out an impossible sum. ‘But our train is in two hours.’

  ‘I’m going to get the sleeper train home tonight.’

  Ed scrunches up his face as if he’s just stepped in something disgusting. ‘Nell, sleeper trains are grim––’

  ‘I want to take the sleeper train,’ I tell him. ‘I’m being paid and I can afford it, and I want to stay.’

  Ed turns his phone in his lap, breathes a noisy inhale through his nose. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘Course, Nell. You should stay,’ and the look he gives me makes me want to cry. I see Ed. I see the boy I fell in love with, the man I flat-hunted with, the man I loved with every piece of me for so long. ‘Are we OK, Nell?’ he asks feebly.

  ‘I don’t know.’ The words catch in my throat. ‘Maybe – maybe you coming here with me was too soon.’

  He looks down at his lap, rubs a rough hand over his face. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘OK. So, I’ll go then. Get the train?’

  I nod stiffly.

  ‘All right then,’ he says defeatedly. ‘OK.’

  I feel numb as I walk back down the corridor away from Ed, as I take the elevator down, as I cross the lobby and walk down the aisle between lines of white, uniform chairs – everything prepared and lined up, ready for guests and moments to be made, my flowers, the backdrop of so many memories forever.

  I push open the storeroom door, switch on the lights, and I’m almost winded myself, at the sight of everything I’ve done. The floor is brimming with colour, a sea of pearly cream petals and powder blues, like blueberry swirled yogurt. The flowers – my flowers, all neat and waiting patiently in their big silver buckets. They look exactly how they did in my head, in every daydream I ever had about doing this. I’ve done it. I have actually done it.

  I jam open the door of the storeroom, and quickly, but meticulously, pin flowers to every aisle seat’s edge. I carry table arrangements to the Holyrood room, I buzz and fizz as I place them down, as Martina, the wedding planner, gawps at them, takes photos. This is what I want, I think, as I deliver the bouquets to Candice and the bridesmaids, watch their eyes light up, watch them hold these beautiful puffs of hydrangeas to their stomachs. I want this. A life of colour. Sam’s right. It could all be over in a heartbeat. And I don’t want to wait any more.

  Later, I head back into the dark, empty storeroom. On the back of the door, there’s a Post-it note: ‘Proud of you,’ it says. ‘Love, Sam x’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  ‘Of course you were meant to meet him in fucking America.’ Charlie looks to the ceiling. ‘Jesus guide me, we’ve been saying this for ever. The traffic jam, the hospital waiting room – none of it is a coincidence, my friend.’

  ‘But what does any of it even mean?’ I ask. ‘Theo? Honestly, it’s a mess. I’m a mess.’

  ‘This means you’ve always been linked to him,’ says Theo as if he’s just told me something as simple as he needs to purchase a loaf of bread. ‘From birth, most likely. And there are probably moments you were meant to meet before. It’s more than just the hospital and his dad’s flat. More than just the traffic jam.’

  ‘Totes,’ says Charlie, bouncing a gummy, dribbling Petal on her hip. ‘Isn’t that right, my girl? Is Auntie Noelle meant to be with tall, dark and rippling wet at the top of a mountaintop Uncle Sam?’

  I groan. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  ‘You’re meant to be together,’ says Theo, a miniature cucumber in his hand, which he crunches into a second later. I remember Charlie for a moment, back when she first met Theo, saying, ‘He eats these little cucumbers the way normal people eat like, a Twirl or an Alpen bar. It’s so Greek and exotic.’

  I groan again, bury my face in my hands, rest my forehead on the countertop. ‘Then what’s the point of Jenna? What’s the point of Ed?’

  ‘You weren’t ready?’ offers Theo, the way someone offers an answer during a quiz.

  I shake my head. ‘I don’t believe that. Me and Ed – we had so much and … well, Sam’s been with Jenna forever and she helped him through everything, and that’s where he is now – well, will be, two weeks on Monday.’

  ‘Where’s he going two weeks on Monday?’

  ‘Twentieth of October,’ I say. ‘Their anniversary. They’re having a meeting with their bloody couples counsellor. Like Steve and Miranda in Sex and the City. On the bridge. Make or break. To decide.’

  I haven’t heard from Sam since the hotel. I punched out numerous text messages to him on the way home, watching the dark night rush by from my tiny little box on the sleeper train. But I didn’t send one of them. And neither did he. I don’t know when he goes back to Oregon, to Jenna. I don’t know if he’s working, or how long he was in Edinburgh for after the event. I didn’t see him, nor Clay, although I looked for him, every single time I ducked out of Candice and Steve’s beautiful wedding. I kept imagining, what it might be like, to see him standing across the lobby again, in that suit. To cross the floor, take his hand …

  ‘She cheated on him and he loves you,’ says Charlie factually, reaching over and taking the rest of Theo’s cucumber. ‘Don’t forget those minor details.’

  ‘He doesn’t love me, Charlie,’ I say. ‘OK, can we talk about something else?’

  Theo nods gently, a soft, therapist’s smile on his face. ‘Let’s talk about Charlie’s birthday.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ says Charlie clapping. ‘How do you fancy going glamping? Oh, come on, Nell, don’t give me that face.’

  ‘The bugs––’ I start.

  ‘There are no bugs in January.’

  I laugh. ‘True. But nobody camps in January––’

  ‘But they do glamp.’ She reaches over and squeezes my arm. ‘ Come on, the little huts are even heated. And that’s plenty of time to sort stuff for your mum. And we might have to share a bog, but there is heating and a bed.’

  I fold my arms. ‘And this is what you want to do for your birthday?’

  Charlie nods. ‘I made a list,’ she says sheepi
shly. ‘Of all the things that are authentically me. Alan, my therapist asked me to. And being outside, camping, adventures, hikes … that was on there. Oh. We could do a hike soon too.’

  ‘Then it’s a deal,’ I say. ‘Glamping, hikes … sign me up.’

  ‘Don’t you remember we were meant to go camping,’ says Charlie. ‘You, me, Ed and Daisy. After you guys finished college. I was going to bring that bass player. The one with the arms. Remember? Soz, Theo.’

  Theo laughs, rubs at his thick black beard.

  I nod. ‘I do remember.’

  ‘Maybe you can bring someone,’ says Charlie. ‘Sleep under the stars.’

  I groan again. ‘Oh, yeah like who? Who would I bring? The Storm? Gary at number twenty-one? I mean, I could bring Ed but you might drown him in a nearby stream.’

  ‘Oh, you know who I want you to bring.’ Charlie giggles, thumbing the charm hanging from a choker at her neck – a plastic cocktail glass today, complete with umbrella.

  ‘Oh, sure, hi, Sam, I know you’re about five thousand miles away doing a Steve and Miranda with your long-term cheat of a girlfriend, but fancy coming to shit in a local port-a-loo in the woods, with me?’

  Charlie throws her head back, laughs throatily at that, as the bell above Buff’s shop door jingles.

  Theo looks up, straightens, and gives his best proprietor’s smile.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs McDonnell,’ he says obliviously, and Charlie and I turn in what feels like slow motion to see Ed’s mum standing in the doorway of Buff in a puff of perfume, a handbag over her shoulder, her short hair blonde and bouncy on her head.

  ‘Hi,’ she says. ‘I’ve just come to pay up in full. For the canapes.’

  She eyes Charlie first, smiles tightly. Then her eyes settle on me. They widen in unison with her mouth.

  ‘Oh my goodness – Noelle!’

  ‘Hi, Helen.’

  ‘My God, it’s been such a long time!’ The green kite-shaped earrings in her ears swing. ‘Do you – do you work here?’