Page 31 of The Love of Our Lives
We catch each other’s eyes and start smiling.
‘Shit,’ Adam says, ‘that chat got intense pretty quickly, didn’t it?’
I laugh. ‘Just a bit.’
But I let what he’s said roll quietly around my mind. Because for the first time in a long while, I’ve actually got a healthy body and money in the bank, and I don’t have to worry about being careful or think about how I might affect everyone around me.
Not like before.
We’re walking up the hill now, becoming more out of breath by the second, but in that good way again; little bolts of electricity are shooting through my body and my legs work harder. Wind whips past me suddenly, almost knocking me over with its force, and I take a moment to right myself. Then suddenly we’re there, at the highest point. I stop and look out all around us, at the soft sloping greens and browns and the steadily reddening sky, and I can’t help thinking how stunning it is from this angle. I’m so used to looking up at everything.
I feel this healthy new heart pumping inside this strong body, and an unexpected wave of something close to joy comes over me.
A second later, and another huge gust of wind hurtles at us, pushing me into Adam. We both start laughing as it howls in our ears and gallops across our faces. It blows so hard, I can barely take a breath, but this time, it doesn’t feel scary.
It feels sort of good.
The wind drops again and the two of us grin at each other, our faces so close I can see the amber around his irises, feel the energy that comes from just being near him.
‘Well, that was quite something, wasn’t it?’ he says, still holding on to me.
My skin is tingling from his touch, even through the woolly sweater.
We stand there for a moment, his eyes trained on mine, my stomach flipping like crazy.
‘We should get back,’ he murmurs after a moment, letting his hands drop.
My hands spark where he touched them. ‘OK.’
He smiles at me and, together, we head back down the hill. The light fades on the horizon, turning the world shades of never-ending gold, chilling the balmy air.
But all I feel right now is warm, from the inside out.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I start running every morning after that, and as the trees turn a chestnut brown, I get into something close to a stride. I jog all the way back up to the Pentlands where Adam took me before, down beneath the city and along the wooded foot paths. I head back to the Botanics and stare out across that panoramic expanse of the city, from the jagged Old Town all the way to Arthur’s Seat, and as October winds whip around me, I feel the softness of the orange headband on my skin. I stop walking by my parents’ house because it all gets too much, watching myself decline. And not just that, I have no idea when I’ll ever get back to my old life. So to try and be close to my family like I am is only going to end up freaking them out; no good can come from hovering near my actual home. But every Wednesday I make sure to run past Jess and the boys in the park, and although it’s something, I can’t help thinking about my parents too – Mum in particular. After all, I’ve never been far from her in my whole life. But I feel confused, because as much as I miss her, there’s a strange sort of freedom to not being around her – all of them – which I’m recognising now.
Because my condition didn’t only affect me, it affected everyone I loved too: Cat who was hampered by what I could and couldn’t do until she left home, my dad who had to stay as a professor in Edinburgh instead of going abroad like I know he wanted to, my mum who had to stop being a flutist in an orchestra to care for me. And then there was Jess, my baby sister, whose birthdays were overshadowed by hospital stints and cancelled holidays and school dances forgotten.
And then after it happened, after we lost Cat so shockingly, well, there was nothing which could compel me to make the situation even worse for everybody.
I’d done enough already.
I start hanging out with Adam more and more, just as friends, of course. Sometimes we go to the Purple Pineapple for coffee and a carrot cake the size of our heads when he’s back from the workshop, and sometimes we just while away a couple of hours talking about rubbish. He introduces me to a few of the eateries in the area too – Greek, Turkish and Italian, food from countries he’s actually been to but I never have. The places are entirely new to me and yet, occasionally, I find myself recognising a waitress or the order of things on the menu. I think of that box of leftover ramen the first day, the way Fran said Emily ate nothing but grilled fish in a place like London.
Did Emily come to these places too?
In any event, I’m trying more and more new foods, and getting a little more adventurous each time. I even start to have the odd glass of wine with my meals, something I’d never have dared to do before, but I find that in small amounts, it really does relax me.
Turns out Adam and I have the same penchant for old John Hughes films and we quickly form a little routine of nipping across the hall to each other’s and watching one on his laptop with a bowl of popcorn between us. I haven’t felt so comfortable with anyone in a long time, where we can just sit in silence together or chat about nothing for three hours in a row. Of course, I had a couple of close friends from school and at the travel agency, but as with every relationship after Cat, they became harder and harder to maintain as I got sicker, until eventually they disappeared.
I speak to Fran over the phone from time to time too, and I can’t help laughing at her directness, the way she simply says, ‘Well, have you snogged him yet?’
So very like Jess.
I sometimes wonder why Emily’s parents never call me – as much as I would be terrified to answer – and not for the first time, I question whether they’re even still alive. Otherwise, why would they not be in touch?
But it’s just not something I think I should delve into. It’s not something Iwantto delve into, because quite honestly, I’m starting to enjoy myself.
