Page 45 of Sad Girl Hours
You and Nell are so cute together <3
They’re dating, right? They have to be dating
So glad you’re happy. You guys are adorable
Ugh. Can’t wait to have someone look at me the way Saffron looks at Nell
I’m sleeping in the middle of the road tonight, I can’t cope with how cute they are
I grimace particularly at that last one.
I spit out my toothpaste and go to my room, lying on the bed to keep scrolling back through other videos we’ve done together, and find that there’s comments like that on all of them.
It’s weird, I realise, curling myself round my orange duvet and flicking on my fairy lights. I’m not upset by the comments. I feel like I should be – I normally am uncomfortable with things like this, with assumptions – but…
It actually feels kind of nice. This makes a change from people assuming male and female friends are together – doing it withtwo women almost feels progressive, even though objectively I know people shouldn’t make assumptions of any kind. But it feels affirming that all these internet people are looking at me and going, ‘That is not a straight person.’ That’s pretty much all I know about my sexuality for sure, so that bit feels fine. And the assuming with Saffron specifically – well, we’re not a couple. I know she doesn’t date, and I need to untangle whatever’s going on for me before I do. But if I was capable of feeling things and she was willing, I would be so lucky to be dating someone like her.
I message Saffron again to ask when she wants to do our bucket-list activities this weekend, before putting my phone down for the night and picking up the Mary Oliver collection on my bedside table, drifting off to sleep with my head full of words about brown bears and wild geese and – a little bit – of Saffron.
Chapter Twenty
Nell
When I reach for my phone the following morning, I see I still don’t have any replies from Saffron, even though I know she usually wakes up at six every day.
Disappointment sparks in the cracks of my brain and I sit up in bed as something occurs to me. Something that makes me want to groan out loud because it’s bloody typical I’d realise this so soon after my meeting with Becks.
I’ve spent more time with Saffron this year than ever before. And I still want more.
I, Nell Paige Holloway, want more of her (Saffron James Lawrence).
Not the physical more I’ve felt only a scant handful of times, not the thing that Lord Byron became infamous for, butmoreall the same. I want more time with her. I want to know more of what she’s thinking and feeling all the time. I want to know more of the things that she doesn’t say out loud.
I don’t know what this means exactly but it’s occurring to me for perhaps the first time ever that I don’t have to know exactly what it means to still acknowledge that it meanssomething. Huh.
I open my notes app and start typing.
Do the leaves fall so that spring will feel the pressure on the ground
and fight harder to push its green through?
Or do the leaves fall because they grow tired of clinging on to something
and spring is their reward for trusting in the unknown
for taking a leap without knowing what possibilities lurk under the ground.
Does Persephone know this
is this why she made the deal to come back from the underworld every spring
to place them all back on their branch with a kiss
spreading green, spreading hope for it all
that maybe this time they won’t grow so weary
or that life can be enjoyed without knowing what’s to come
