Page 70 of The First Time I Saw You
‘Sammy boy?’ Bret’s voice is concerned and distant.
‘Sam?’ Da’s face obscures the petals. ‘Ah, I’m only joking with you, Sam.’ His voice has taken on a quieter tone.
‘I, I will never get to see her face again.’
‘Actually,’ Bret clears his throat, ‘about Sophie . . .’
Da sits down next to me and starts rubbing my back like I’ve swallowed something down the wrong way. Bret leans forward. ‘She was here, in DC . . . and she was looking for you.’
‘When?’ I ask, sitting up. The air has found its way back into my lungs and my heart has begun to beat again. ‘What did she say?’ A volley of questions begins falling from my lips.
‘She, well, she looked different,’ he says, taking another sip from his bottle.
‘How?’
‘More . . . girly?’
‘Why, what did she look like before, Bret? Was she butch?’ I can hear my dad processing the idea of me as a florist and Bret’s description: putting two and two together and getting one hundred and four.
‘More . . . relaxed,’ Bret continues. ‘She wasn’t wearing her usual kind of clothes . . . She looked a bit more . . . a bit more like the woman you used to describe her as, rather than the version I saw in the office every day.’
‘Why did she want to see me? What did she say?’
‘Well, she didn’t at first.’ The air becomes too heavy again, my lungs sighing with the effort to breathe. ‘She, well mate, she thought you were dead.’
‘Dead?’
‘She’s only just found out about the accident, she said.’
‘Where is she, have you got a phone number?’
Bret hesitates.
‘No.’
‘What?’ The disbelief takes my voice a few octaves higher than it usually is. I can feel Da looking at me with a puzzled expression.
‘I’ve got her address. I didn’t want it to be that easy for you, mate. I wanted to make sure you were one hundred percent sure you want her. That you want to put yourself through that again, especially as you seem to be getting your shit together, and with Isabella—’
‘Isabella?’ My dad laughs, ‘Finally come to your senses, have you, Sammy?’
‘There is nothing going on with Isabella, we’re just friends.’
‘More fool you, Sammy. I’ve told you before, when you meet a girl like that you shouldn’t let her go.’
‘I did meet a girl like that . . . and you’re right. I shouldn’t let her go.’
‘I’ve got her address . . . she’s living in Wales.’
I think of how hard it was to negotiate my way back from town and the fifteen apologies I’ve said today. I don’t want to ask, but I know I need help.
‘Da . . . do you fancy a trip to Wales?’
He slaps me on the back. ‘Now you’re talking, my boy!’
Happiness nudges me from out of the dancing shadows. Michael catches my eye and Da farts. Loudly.
Week Twenty-Eight
