Page 116 of Sad Girl Hours
“Saffron…”
“I’m sorry.”
I let out a breath. “You don’t have to be—”
“I know. But I am. I hurt you, and I will always be sorry for that. But I don’t want to hurt you any more.”
I don’t know what’s happening but I feel her words pour golden hope into every crack. “You don’t?”
“No.” She takes a step closer to me. “This is why I wanted you to know that I’m going to get help for my mental health. I don’t want to feel like this any more. I don’t want to listen when I hear thatdickheadin my head telling me that you deserve better thanme. I probably always will believe that, a little bit, but I think that’s OK. Healthy even. To think that your partner is out of your league, and that you’re the luckiest person in the world to be with them.”
Partner.I repeat the word aloud with a question mark. Saffron’s cheeks flush.
“I might be doing this in the wrong order. I should probably have led with telling you that I love you and that I want to be with you. On bad days, on good, in winter and summer and everything in between.”
All I want to do is to believe this and to fall into her arms. But I know I need to focus on keeping talking. “That’s all…” No.Focus.“Do you not want to take things slow?” I ask. “I’m so glad you’ve had these realisations and you’re feeling positive, but do you not want to just play things by ear a bit?”
“No,” she says. “Maybe that’d be wise. But I don’t want to take things slow with you. Ifyoudo, if you want to wait for me to get help and to sort myself out a bit more, then that’s completely fine. I’ll understand. Or even if I’m too late and you don’t want to be with me at all. But if you do want me, I’m yours. Completely.”
“You’re mine, huh?”
The smile is rising through my entire body, untethering me from gravity and making me feel as though I’m floating through the stars.
“If you want me to be. And also if you don’t.”
“I…”
To love someone is always a risk.
But I’m realising that I’d take it a thousand times over for her. “I do,” I say, cursing the way my voice quivers. “I want that.”
For the first time, Saffron doesn’t look calm and composed. She looks hopeful in a completely unrestrained way, like her hope had been burning gently, but now flames are swarming over everything.
“It’s not always going to be easy.” Her eyes are staring into mine. “Loving me, I mean. I’m probably still going to be a mess a lot of the time. I’m going to have bad days and feel low and probably not be that fun.”
“You think I’m always a picnic to be with?” I say with a wry smile. “I’m stubborn and occasionally grumpy and I get in hyperfocus mode where I may forget you exist. And there’ll be days when my body will be hurting and I can’t climb hills. And who’s to say I won’t get low myself again in the future? Anything could happen – things don’t always vanish completely.”
“I don’t care,” she says, coming to stand mere inches away. I feel the space between us quivering to be closed. “I love you. All of you. And I’m so excited forall of it.”
I don’t know what to do with myself. I settle for reaching for her. “Me too. If you really mean it, Saffron, then me too.”
“I mean it.” Her smile could be seen by someone miles below us. “Really.”
I kiss her, both of us tasting a little of salt, the wideness of the universe above and around us, cloaking us with its infiniteness and the possibility of a future filled with exactlythis.So much this.
When we pull away, I’m able to ask a couple of questions that have been playing on my mind.
“This is all perfect, but I do have to ask. Firstly, what on earth is Kenneth doing here?”
“I stole him.”
“You what?”
“I stole him. I didn’t plan it exactly. It just sort of happened.”
“Sure. A spot of spontaneous retriever retrieval – happens to us all,” I say. “So we’re definitely going to circle back to this later, but for now my second question. Why did you bring me all the way up here to say it? Was it just the stars? I’m glad if that is it,” I add, “but still.”
“That wasn’t quite it,” Saffron admits. “Just after I decided I had to come back and sort my shit out, I got a notification on my phone from that app Casper told us about way back in September. The Northern Lights one.”
