“Emmie, no,” he cuts in, looking at me pleadingly. “Just—I had no idea. I had no idea she knew.”
“But… then how did—”
“I had no idea,” he says again, long spaces between his words, and when I look up at him, I recognize that look—the dark, narrowed eyes, pink lips parted. The “judgmental” look he had on his face at the bar after I pushed Tom. The night of the party, as Stacey said those words, and I stood up, slowly, before walking away and crumbling in Lucas’s bedroom. But it isn’t judgment. It’s worry. I know now that it’s care. He cares.
“Let’s not,” I say, looking down at my lap.
“I think you should speak to Lucas—”
“It’s done,” I say. His hand reaches out, touches my chin, tips my face to look at him.
“Things, Emmie, aren’t always how they appear. I did what I thought was best back then. For you.”
He looks at me intently. I don’t ask any more questions. I want to. I want to ask him what he means. I want to ask him why he thinks I should speak to Lucas; something that feels like a sting, stuck in the skin, since he said it. I don’t want to ruin this beautiful, starlit evening. So I ignore the slow simmering in my stomach, and instead I say, “Let’s get back to the shooting stars, shall we?”
Eliot hesitates, then smiles, his eyes still sad and glassy. “Sure.” He settles back onto the bench beside me, arm back around me, but tighter this time, his hand stroking the top of my arm, and we sit for a while, gazing at the black sky. I feel as though we have popped a bubble that has been threatening to burst over us. This huge, unsaid thing that was never resolved. And although it isn’t perfect, or neatly tied up with a bow, it is done. Louise is right. He is here. He’s always here.
Eliot’s arm suddenly shoots out, a finger pointing to the sky. “Now,” he says. “See, see, look.” And I catch it. For the first time in my whole life, I see it; a small spark, like the tapering of a firework, shooting across the sky, disappearing into nothing.
“Oh my God,” I say, turning to him. “I saw it! It wasn’t a plane!”
“It definitely wasn’t,” Eliot laughs. I snuggle into him, resting my head on his shoulder. And I wish so much, he would kiss me again. Because I think I would kiss him back this time. Properly.
Instead, Eliot leans in, and softly, lips against my hair, says, “Eyes on the sky, Flower. There are more to see.”
A spark in my belly. A small, powerful spark. Unmistakable.
* * *
Eliot waits downstairs, making more tea as I go up to use the toilet. Louise’s door is still ajar, and I don’t know why, but I stop outside. Still. Everything is so still. Silent. And I think I know. I think that’s why I push open the door, why I walk steadily across the floor to Louise’s bed. That’s when I see the mug of tea, on its side, its contents spread across the duvet like an ink spill. I reach out to touch her face.
I shout. I shout loud, so loud I don’t even sound like myself. “Oh my God,” I’m saying. “Oh no, please. Oh my God, oh my God.”
I hear fast feet pummeling the stairs.
“Emmie?” Eliot says breathlessly, then I see his eyes travel over her. His face falls. His hand goes to his lips, gripping his mouth, his chin. Then he’s by my side as I crumple to the floor and sink beside her bed, my face buried into her duvet. Patchouli. Purple fabric softener.
Louise is gone. Louise fell asleep and never woke up. The curtains still open, the moon watching over her.
* * *
Mix CD. Vol. 7.
Dear Balloon Girl,
Track 1. Because you left this morning
Track 2. Because you talk better French in your sleep than in real life
Track 3. Because I can’t actually believe you fell asleep in the garden
Track 4. Because a plane is not a shooting star
Track 5. Because I’m missing you already
Balloon Boy
X
I remember when I was younger, three weeks felt like a lifetime. The two weeks following the Summer Ball were the longest two weeks of my life. Mum came home for two days, where she took baths and talked on the phone and made us one meal—a casserole—then she left again, and I was alone. I’d told her about Robert Morgan, but I don’t think she really believed me anyway. She batted it away, the way she would when I fell over and grazed my knee.
“Oh, stop being so dramatic, Emmeline, there are far more worse off than you.”
Two weeks now, though, pass like a gust of wind. That’s how long it’s been since Louise passed away, in her bed, watching the moon. The funeral was last week, and wasn’t like normal funerals, with shiny coffins and drawling eulogies. It was a woodland burial; quiet, understated, simple. Like her.
Eliot and I went together. We were the only attendees, and that was by Louise’s request, although later that day we had a visit from the next-door neighbors, Harry and Eve, with a printout of a charity donation in her name, and three tiger tomato plants Louise had loved. It was a small and beautiful affair among huge, old trees and wildflowers the color of coral. Louise had planned it herself, just days after she was diagnosed with stage four cancer two years ago. She refused treatment because it would never cure her and she was petrified of hospitals. We only know that because Harry and Eve told us.
“Martha spent a lot of time in hospital. Died there,” they told us. “And I think because of that, she wanted to be at home, with her things. I get that, I think,” and Eliot and I had nodded in the doorway and said we did too.
The sound of the harsh ring of the doorbell interrupts me, mid-seal of a box of Louise’s paperweights. When I get to the front door, it takes me a couple of seconds to realize it’s Lucas’s gray eyes peering over the brown paper bag in his arms.
“Whoppers for two?” he says, eyebrows raising behind his sunglasses.
“Oh my God.” I throw my arms around him, the paper bag rustling between us. “What are you doing here?” My blood rushes with warmth at the sight of him; my best friend.
“You’re squashing our Whoppers, love,” he laughs into my ear. And then, “And you, obviously. You’re what I’m doing here. How are you, Em?”
Ten minutes later, Lucas and I are sitting on Louise’s floral sofa, burgers on our laps on square wrappers. “Fuck, I love a good Burger King,” says Lucas.
“Do you really, though?” I laugh.
“What?” asks Lucas, mouth full.
“Just a surprising comment coming from the man who made a mushroom look like a burger bun last week and posted it on Instagram with the hashtag can’t tell the difference.”
Lucas puts a fist to his mouth and laughs.
“A comment like that should get you hanged,” I say. “It would if I were queen.”
“If you were queen, you’d imprison poor Bon Jovi and force him to sing and caress you inappropriately.”
“Correct. And it’s—”
“Jon, yeah, yeah, eat your bloody burger, you.”
Lucas and I eat in silence. I’ve been distant with him, I know, since the night we lost Louise. And not just because death has a way of throwing a dark blanket over everything—all the normal things you usually do, or pay a lot of mind to; all the trivial things, like what to make for dinner, and that slightly bitchy thing someone said about you at work. But because of the conversation Eliot and I had the night of the shooting star. About the night of our nineteenth. About Stacey. About Lucas. It set me off-balance, a little, and I’ve drawn back just slightly, because I wonder something I haven’t wondered ever before in our friendship. If Lucas knows something I don’t. “It’s a beautiful house,” he says. “Rickety, needs work. Updating. But it’s beautiful.”