Page 43 of The Love of Our Lives
Just let go, like other people do.
But the deeper I get into this with Adam, the harder it will be for everyone to get out painlessly.
I loop the Meadows a few times, head down against the cold, before stopping at Victor Hugo for a coffee. Sitting completely alone at the little tables outside, the light rising higher in the sky, I watch it all go by again – the couples, the friends, runners.
I’m just getting up to head home when I see her, sitting down at a table across from me.
A woman.
She’s dressed all in grey, her red hair tied back, face pale and drawn under her black woollen hat. And she’s all alone. Her movements are slow, her breathing clearly laboured.
My heart is beating so fast right now. And that’s when she looks up, clocks me too, and it’s like I’m caught on a line.
Frozen in a moment.
She looks at me curiously, almost sadly, before glancing back down at her menu, and I watch as she gives her order to the waitress, almost murmuring it under my breath in time with her –green tea and a water.
I calculate when exactly this is. November, almost eight months before the heart transplant.
From here on in, she’s going to go downhill, struggling, shuffling, towards an operation, which will ultimately save her but still leave her in a very limited position.
This was the last time she came up this way to get some art supplies.
Then I look down at the neon running gear I’m wearing, the thick croissant on my plate and the milky coffee to the side. I think of the flat I’m living in and the photos I’ve been taking. I think of the friends I’ve made and these moments of absolutejoy I’ve experienced. I think of the rooftop with Adam last night. Those incredible kisses under the night sky, then later in his bedroom.
And I know I can’t go back to it, won’t go back to it, that life where I have to be scared all the time. Where I can’t actually do anything or go anywhere without worrying about my impact on everyone. Where I can’t fall in love in case I hurt them.
Or myself.
And maybe Emily didn’t even want it, this life? Maybe that’s actually the reason I’m here, and I can keep it a bit longer?
Maybe I can keep it forever.
And with that, I get up quickly and run away as fast as I possibly can.
When I get to the top of the steps, almost breathless from sprinting up, I knock hard on his door.
Please don’t be gone yet, please don’t be gone.
But I’m met with silence.
With a heavy heart, I sit down on the floor in the space between our doors. Why did I have to start on at him about his travelling? Why did I have to push him away like that, like I didn’t really care?
I care about him more than I have about any man before. And maybe he’s right, maybe we don’t need to know exactly what’s going to happen tomorrow. Maybe we can enjoy this space right now and simply take things as they come.
I just wish I could tell him all of this. But he’ll be well on the road up north by now, probably regretting the whole of last night now. I just need to speak to him when he gets back, explain myself. I sit like that for a while, trying to figure out what to do, when I hear a noise beside me and I turn sharply to see Adam leaving his flat. He’s wearing a black fleece, jeans, his hair darkly wet like he’s just out the shower.
The two of us look at each other for a moment, before I get up and walk over to him.
‘Emily,’ he starts, like he’s about to launch into something, but before he does, I go up and kiss him square on the lips. He hesitates for only a moment, before I feel him sinking into it, his arms surrounding me. And there is no explaining, and no getting into all the past trauma and scars of our lives, because time is short and right here right now is all that matters.
When I finally pull back in my nylons, he looks down at me, his green eyes on mine.
‘Good run then?’
‘The best,’ I say, and he grins.
We head on to the road to Aberdeen soon after, and as we cross over the Forth Road Bridge, its incredibly tall spokes whizzing by above, I find myself exhaling as we leave the city, and my old self, behind.
