Page 76 of Love and Other Paradoxes

“No. No way.” Her face was half-wondering, half-terrified. “What would I even say?”

“Tell her about the award. Say she needs to refuse it. Or don’t mention the award at all. Just tell her not to come back to Cambridge on the twenty-third of June, 2031.”

She gave him a look that was so characteristically her that itmade his heart ache. “Why would she believe me? I’m just some random stranger.”

“You don’t have to be.” He took her in, the curve of her cheekbones, the shy confidence of her bearing, all the ways the girl on the staircase had rhymed with her. “You could tell her who you are.”

“I can’t.” He thought he knew why: her old fear, that her mum would be disappointed in her. But she didn’t look afraid. “I can’t do that to her. It’d be too much. Imagine knowing all that about your future. You’d end up second-guessing every decision you made. It could ruin your whole life.”

His stomach twisted. “Aye. Imagine.”

A flash of guilt crossed her face. “Shit. I’m sorry.” She touched his arm, a fleeting moment of contact before she drew back. “How are you doing?”

This was his chance to tell her.I’m with Diana.But he couldn’t. It would open up the box of unspoken things they had silently agreed to keep locked up until she left. “Yeah. I’m writing, and—it’s good.” Better than good. Last night, he had read over the poems he had written since getting back together with Diana. They were the best he had written in his life. They weren’t good like the poems fromMeant to Be; they were good in a way that felt like him, but better. Something vital had been missing, and now it was there, burning through the words, turning them incandescent.

Her face lit up with honest joy for him. “That’s great.”

Itwasgreat. He was with his true love, and he was writing good poetry, and thanks to the work he’d put in over the past two months, he might not even fail his degree. So why wasn’t he happy?

He was still dwelling on it a week later, arm in arm with Diana, walking down the floodlit grandeur of King’s Parade. They had just finished dinner at a restaurant where the waitress had stoodstaring at him for a good thirty seconds because he hadn’t realised he was supposed to taste the wine.

“I don’t get it,” he argued now, as Diana leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder. “Why should I have to check if their wine’s any good? Isn’t that their job?”

She laughed, a low chuckle that resonated through his body. “It’s a perfectly normal part of wine service, Joseph. If anyone had taken you to a decent restaurant before...” She straightened up. “Shit.”

“What?” He looked ahead, madly expecting to see Vera, but striding up the street towards them was Crispin. As he passed, he shot Joe a glare. Diana held her head high and acted as if she hadn’t seen him.

“Do you know he asked me to marry him?” she said in a neutral voice after he had gone. “I might have said yes, if it wasn’t for you.”

The weight of everything he knew and she didn’t settled on Joe’s shoulders. “Engaged at twenty-one,” he said distantly. “Old-school.”

“Crispin’s very old-school.” She went on, talking about his insistence on opening doors for her even when it was actively inconvenient. Joe tried to listen, but his mind kept drifting to the Diana he hadn’t met, who had married Crispin at twenty-one and lived to regret it. He imagined how it must have felt for her, to go through that and then meet someone new, someone entirely unexpected. He remembered the picture of the two of them on the day they met, the look of helpless adoration in her eyes. Whatever happiness he could give her now, he wasn’t sure it could compare.

“I also thought I might take the opportunity to run naked through the town centre,” she said lightly.

“Mmm,” he said, nodding, then, “What?”

She gave him a strange, sad smile. “It’s all right, Joseph. I chose to go out with a poet. The fact that you’re elsewhere half the time is part of the deal.”

He put his arm around her in apology. He wondered if it would always feel like this: like he was looking back at her through the wrong end of a telescope, trying to reconstruct a love made out of fragments. A white rose, a feather, a snow globe of Paris. Scribbled copies of poems that had been unwritten. Even if he could write a new version of that love, it would never belong just to the two of them. He had already turned it into art.

He walked her up the stairs to his room. At the door, she pulled him back against the banister and drew him into a kiss. He felt a shadow of how it was for her: the passion, the intensity, the in-the-moment thrill of it. He tried to join her there, but he was a universe away.

Behind him, the door opened. He waited for Rob to make a disparaging comment about public displays of affection. Instead, there was a silence that felt like ice water on his neck.

He turned. In the doorway was Esi, wearing a look that twisted his heart.

She didn’t speak. Before he could say anything, she ran past them down the stairs.

“Well.” Diana craned over the banister. “At least now I understand why you’ve been hustling me out of the back gate like a criminal. You’ve been trying to spare her feelings.”

His mind was a whirl of static. “What are you talking about?”

“She’s clearly in love with you, Joseph. I saw it at the party. Do you think I’m blind?” She touched his back gently. “Go after her. You need to sort this out.”

He didn’t stop to think about what she’d said. He ran down thestairs, taking them two at a time, and pelted out of college into the night. He caught up with Esi on Pembroke Street, by the arched tunnel that led into the New Museums.

“Esi. Wait. Let me explain.” She walked away from him into the tunnel. He followed. “Vera told me it was fine as long as I kept it secret. And I have. No one’s seen us. It’s not going to affect the trip.”

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