Page 99 of Sad Girl Hours
“I loveyou,” Nell says, clinking her glass to mine. “And you’re very kind.”
I smile back at her. “I love you too.”
And I do. I love Nell. Perfect, brave, ridiculous Nell with all her wonderfully weird family, her witchy clothes and candles, her occasionally hurting but alwaysperfectbody, her passions and her poetry.
Midnight nears. I can’t help but think back to last year. Not exactly this time last year, but standing out in the freezing cold on pretend New Year’s Eve with Nell, joking while I felt like I was dying. She was standing there with me, so alive, so bright, even in the dark. I still can’t believe she came out just to see if I wasOK, only having met me a couple of hours earlier. But that’s Nell, I suppose.
I sip on my champagne. I’ve never had a New Year’s Eve that’s been as good as the ones I’ve imagined in my head. When the clock’s struck midnight, it’s always been just another day, still just another year, and I’ve still been just a girl standing on a precipice, hoping for something more.
It’s different this year. I already have something more. Now I just have to hope against all hope that I can hold on to it.
We count down, and when the clock strikes midnight we all cheer. Nell turns to me and, not caring who sees, we kiss again. Not just like it’s New Year, but like the world is ending.
She tastes like champagne fizz and forevers.
Later, when the party has dispersed, all the chaos has quietened and Nell and I are back in her room, we help each other out of our dresses and fall back into each other, the air mattress on the floor forgotten. I try to show her how badly I want this with kisses trailed on bare skin and soft whispers and gasps that gently pierce the quiet oasis of her room.
Lying there later, her asleep next to me, our legs still intertwined, I think that if I had something to prove to her, I did it tonight.
My body is crying out to me to let it be pulled into sleep like Nell, but my mind is still buzzing.
It’s a new year.
Everything that happened in the previous one is behind me, last year’s news.
I think I can work with this.
I reach for my phone on the bedside table to check the time. The screen blinks the numbers back at me – three thirty. GoodGod. Luckily, I don’t think there’ll be any pressure from anyone to be up before noon at the earliest.
Underneath the time there’s my usual slew of notification symbols. I unlock the screen and thumb over them all. There are comments or likes on videos, and messages from the gang wishing me (us) a Happy New Year. And then, underneath, there’s also a message from my mother.
Pressure pools at the back of my throat. I know it won’t be uplifting, or anything even close to it, but I can’t resist the tug from the back of my brain telling me to open it. I’ve not heard from them since I sent the text telling them I’d be spending Christmas with Nell. Part of me is stubbornly hoping for aHappy New Year. I click it open.
Turns out Idoget a Happy New Year. But it’s just the opening for this:
Everything around me fades away. The fairy lights, the dresses on the floor, Nell sleeping by my side.
They’re coming up here. The party’s over.
I should have known really. Nothing this good ever lasts. Not for me.
Chapter Forty-seven
Saffron
I don’t sleep. There are a few moments where I come close but I always jerk awake, feeling like I’m falling, and remember.
Tomorrow, I’m going to be leaving here, and going back to Exeter with my parents. I’ve let them down by coming this close to being kicked out. I’ve let myself down by not going to that stupid meeting and allowing things to get this bad. I know the morning will arrive, and I’m going to have to look at Nell and tell her that I’m leaving. And after we’ve just had the most perfect night together.
Everything inside my body feels as though it’s twisting painfully, trying either to wrench these horrible, sickening feelings out of me, or to weave them even more intrinsically into every cell.
And her family as well. I’m going to seem so rude, just leaving without even a day’s warning after all the kindness they’ve extended to me, welcoming me with open arms and making me feel like one of them.
It gets to ten in the morning and I can no longer bear just lying here. Nell looks so peaceful in her sleep, her shoulder rising and falling as she breathes, facing towards me with closed eyes, slightly parted mouth and messed-up hair that – I remember with a pang – was very much my doing.
I don’t want to leave her. But what are my options here? Tell my parentsno thank youwhen they arrive and risk them not letting me come back ever? I really wouldn’t put it past them, and on the one handyay, but I have to be practical. They are still my parents, and I couldn’t burden Nell’s family or anyone else by just camping out at their house the entire holiday. And what about after uni? I need somewhere to go back to as a sort of safety net.
And I don’t want an ugly confrontation. I don’t want Nell to see how awful my parents can be, or, worse, I don’t want her parents to think I’m being ungrateful by refusing to spend time with my family.
