Page 83 of From Now On

Desperately searching for a solution that would mean he can have it all. Pippa’s love, Nina’s trust. That he can somehow convince his siblings that it’s different with Pippa. She won’t disappear the way Sasha had, evoking memories of the way their parents had suddenly vanished from their lives. She’s more than the quick fling that was nearly Gina. Who does he put first? Nina and Duke? Pippa?

Himself?

There are many different kinds of love.

This…

This is real.

Charlie watches her as she lies beside him, the gentle rise and fall of her chest. The sound of soft breaths. Clouds obscure the afternoon sun but still it pushes through the window, casting a small circle of light over her heart which he knows beats for him. He doesn’t want to break it and the thought that he might drapes a heavy blanket of sadness over his other emotions.

The clock ticks.

Time marching forward.

Time running out.

Now that he has found love, now that he is certain of it, it is, perhaps, too late but still Charlie carefully cradles the feeling on the palm of his hand, knowing it is something rare and fragile and beautiful and not quite wanting to release it. Pippa is blissfully unaware, her face slackened with sleep, the taste of her still on his lips. The inevitability of goodbye is torturous but he has made a promise to his family. His family who he has let down in the worst kind of way, never forming a relationship with his siblings, even though, he thinks, he is not the worst kind of person.

Or is he?

It has been years now since the accident in his father’s flat and the memory is as hazy as the muted recollection of a dream. Not entirely tangible and open to interpretation. But whether it was or wasn’t his fault doesn’t change the fact that the fabric of his universe had been ripped apart at the seams and, afterwards, things were never quite the same. However hard he had tried to repair the tear with clumsy stitches, looping the coping techniques he had been taught over and over his pain until it was barely visible, he hadn’t felt any better. Endlessly he had questioned who he was, what he felt. How had his life been built on a lie?

He had thought his father loved him.

The counsellor he had seen had tried to reassure Charlie that his father had made his own choices. Chosen to drink. Chosen to dance on the table. Chosen to leave while his son received an emergency blood transfusion at the hospital.

It didn’t seem possible his father had chosen all of these things and yet, somehow, it was, and Charlie had never really been able to stop analysing it all.Even into adulthood he found himself constantly scrutinising his reality, reaching out to touch it with his fingertips, trying to fathom what was real and what wasn’t.

She.

She is real and his battered heart isn’t quite ready to let her go.

Pippa sighs and rolls over onto her back, her head lolling to one side, her blonde hair fanned across the pillow.

Charlie dips his mouth towards her ear, the smell of her coconut shampoo drifting towards him as he whispers his secrets; the hopes and dreams he had for them.

He tells her it all.

Everything.

And that is how he unequivocally knows she is the one.

He trusts her in a way he hasn’t quite trusted anyone in years and years, not since that inimitable day when the glass had slashed at his arms and the scant faith he still had that his father was, deep down, a good man had disappeared.

He gently brushes her hair back from her face; her skin is warm and soft.

I love you, he thinks, although he cannot voice this aloud. He feels the shape of the words stuck to his tongue, heavy and cumbersome, but every time he is on the cusp of releasing them the memories of the last time he uttered those three words causes his chest to tighten painfully and his heart rate to increase.

He doesn’t regret what has happened here today but it hasn’t changed to cold, stark facts.

He feels a sting at the back of his throat.

The light changes in the window. Rain patters against the panes as the sky cries ceaseless tears.

He hotches down the bed and curves his body around hers.

When she wakes, in his bed, in his arms, will she think he’s changed his mind?

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