Page 1 of The Second Chance Bus Stop
Part One
Thinkin’ maybe you’ll come back here to the place that we’d meet.
—The Script
Prologue
I’m sitting on the kerb of a cobbled pavement, not far from the bus stop, feeling as old as I am: sixty-four. And I have felt like I was waiting for something my entire life. Even as a child I’d stare out the window, expecting something where there was nothing other than the cars lined against the road and the black bin bag on the ground, uncollected, because Mother had gotten the day muddled again. At first I thought it was a sign that things would fall into place and I could simply put my life on autopilot until they did. Perhaps it was a psychological thing. Lately I’ve come to accept it’s more likely my mind playing tricks on me. Old age? Some kind of progressive disease? Who knows.
There is a breeze today on Hornton Street. I’ve counted thirty-one chewing gums on the ground, varying shades of dirt-marbled pink, grey and coal-black. People come and go, and I try to look for patterns. I always find patterns in everything, much like some people see the face of Baby Jesus or George Washington in potatoes. There have been four blonde ladies, so a brown-haired one must come soon. Or three men have walked past, so a child should be coming next. I’m trying to figure out after which sequence of passersby the oneI’m waiting for will appear. And what he will say? I have been through it in my mind a hundred, a thousand—more than that—times.
‘Hello,’ he might say. Or, ‘I’ve missed you.’
Maybe, ‘So this is where you are.’
I’d like him to simply say, ‘You came.’
Smile wide. Or perhaps with a serious face.
Of course, I know he won’t say any of these things. People never say what you expect them to.
While I’m thinking, someone does come up to me. It’s a gentleman who works at Whole Foods on Kensington High Street.
‘How are you today?’ He hands me a five-pound note and walks on before I have time to answer the question or object to the note now nestled in my hand. I’m not broke. I’m broken-hearted.
Only two more hours until home-time now, when I board the bus and head back to the warmth of my house where my son will lecture me until he decides it’s no use and gives up. I ate the plate of lasagne he’d left me before I headed out this morning (it was a better breakfast than the lamb stew we had last week), moved my crossword to a new place and left a half-drunk cup of tea on the living room table. I even pulled off and flushed half a metre of toilet paper down the loo. Extreme? Trust my son to notice any little trace I leave behind. Like this, for all he knows, I’ve had a productive day at home, eaten my lunch and had a bowel movement. As long as I’m back before he comes through the door I’ll be fine.
I glance at my watch. It’s 15.14, on 8 June, 2023.
I’ve been waiting twenty-seven years.
Sophia
Svedala
When you kiss someone, as many as eighty million bacteria are transferred between mouths. This is for a ten-second kiss. Don’t get me started on those long, slobby affairs that happen in, say, backs of cabs or on doorsteps after a fourth date. But wait—it getsworse. Couples who kiss more than nine times a day (first of all, who are these people? Do they not have to work? Or like,eat?) actually share communities of bacteria. So you don’t just share a home, you also share a saliva community. Which is, to cite my teenage self,GROSS.
It’s all I can think of as the perfectly handsome man in front of me who’s just treated me to dinner and half a bottle of wine leans in and tries to slide his tongue between my lips. I press them firmly shut. Because, well,bacterial transfer.He kind of moves to the side to see if there’s an opening there, and I’m forced to twitch my face to withhold. He gives up, draws back and looks at me.
His name is Ed, and he has brown eyes and hair that kind of shines without any hair product. He likes travelling and cars, works for a digital creator brand and wouldn’t mind settling down with the right woman. He seemed great; I was even willing to overlook his very clearYou don’t seem Autistic at allgreeting. On paper he looks good for me, a twenty-five-year-old woman who has blue eyes and hair like unruly yellow straw, is taller than most men, owns her own florist shop and wouldn’t mind having her first boyfriend right about now. Or yesterday. In fact, I’ve been trying for God knows how long to have my first boyfriend. But looking good on paper doesn’t always translate to real life.
‘Are you okay?’ he asks, shifting his weight back and forth as if he needs a wee.
‘I am okay.’ Roof over my head, no ongoing war or conflict threatening my livelihood, and I just ate a bowl of pasta. Sure, I very much wish I had one and a half million kroners to buy my brothers out of my flower shop so that it was mine alone, but I can’t claim to not beokay. I’d call my current mental stateslightly unhappy, but then lots of people go through their whole lives that way. My mother’s words come to me: When there are those worse off, we don’t complain. Sure, there are those worse off—some single ladies may not yet have discovered the Le Wand 3.0 vibrator.
‘We had a good date just now. And the one before.’ He starts to recap our dating history. Which, although brief, has shown great promise. He has only a few annoying habits, chews with his mouth closed and, as opposed to the man I dated previously who I spotted in the town centre wearing socks and crocs and thus immediately cancelled, wears sneakers.
‘Yes.’ It’s true. I’ve enjoyed getting to know him. I may have even fantasised about pushing my body against his, feeling my chest stop heaving for a moment, grabbing his hand and placing it somewhere I’m practically aching to be touched and—‘But somehow you’re not that into me...?’
‘That’s not it, Ed.’
I realise I have to give a reason. And that when I do, this will be over. Much like my teenage years when I would sneakback into my parents’ house even before curfew, tonight I’ll go back to my flat stillunkissed. I don’t like labels. LikeAutistic or control freak. Anxious. Eating disorder. OCD.Those types of things. Somehow I collected these kinds of labels throughout childhood the way others collected Brownie badges. Hence I’ve made it my mission to appear as normal as I can to avoid accumulating more of them in adulthood.
So here I am. With the chance to get rid of one of my most stubborn labels:unkissed.It’s meant to be good, isn’t it? Otherwise people wouldn’t brave the bacteria.The eighty million of them.An army. An invasion. Foreign bodies in my body. Well... okay, I wouldn’t necessarily mind that last one. Can we skip straight to it?
Ed leans in again, and I finally blurt it out, ending any prospects of Ed and Sophia ever creating a bacterial community or any other form of community.
‘I’m sorry. I can’t do this.’
