Page 138 of Carry Me Home

‘Where are we going?’ I ask.

‘The café.’

‘We’re running away from a party to go to your workplace?’

‘My workplace has a flat above it. With a door that locks.’ She glances back at me, and the look on her face makes my chest constrict. ‘Unless you’d rather go back and make small talk with Dot about her hip replacement.’

‘The café’s fine. The café’s great. Lead the way.’

She laughs – bright, reckless, the laugh of a woman who’s stopped holding on and is letting the momentum take her. I want to bottle that sound. I want to hear it every day until I die.

The café’s dark when we reach it. Nina fumbles with her keys, drops them, swears under her breath.

‘Steady.’ I pick them up. Our fingers brush. Neither of us pulls away.

‘I’m steady.’

‘You’re shaking.’

‘I’m cold.’

‘It’s mid-September. It’s not cold.’

‘Fine.’ She grabs the keys back. ‘I’m nervous. Are you happy?’

‘Extremely.’

She gets the door open. We stumble inside, and then we’re in the dark café with its smell of coffee and warm pastry, the fairy lights still on, casting the room in amber. The giant pink bear from the fete is still in the corner. The chalkboard shows tomorrow’s specials in her handwriting. Everything the same. Everything completely different.

Nina turns to face me.

I kiss her.

It’s not like the harbour. That was revelation, shock, eleven years of tension snapping at once. This is different. This is slower. This is choosing – knowing exactly what I’m doing and doing it with my whole body. My hands on her waist. Her back against the counter. The coffee machine ticking gently beside us, cooling into silence.

She melts into me. Her hands fist in the front of my shirt. She pulls me closer and makes a low sound against my mouth that empties my head of every thought I’ve ever had.

‘Upstairs,’ she says. Not a gasp. A decision. ‘Now.’

We barely make it.

The flat is dark, lit only by the streetlamp outside the window and the harbour lights reflecting off the water. I’ve been in this flat a hundred times – tea on the sofa, Sunday mornings with the papers, the years of friendship that were always more than friendship. But the air in here is different tonight. Charged. The furniture looks like a set someone’s built for a scene I’ve been rehearsing for eleven years without ever being given the cue.

Nina kicks off her shoes. I shrug out of my jacket. We stand there, a metre apart, breathing hard.

‘Hi,’ she says.

‘Hi.’

‘This is⁠—’

‘I know.’

‘—terrifying.’

‘I know.’

She steps closer. Puts her hand flat against my chest the way she did on the harbour – feeling my heartbeat, pressing her palm into the evidence.