“How about now?” I wince.
“Better,” he laughs.
“I thought it was 2019,” I say. “We have robots, for God’s sake, and Facebook and spiralizers, and yet our phones can’t cope with a long-distance call.”
“Well,” says Eliot, smile in his voice. “It’s not too long a distance.”
I stop. “You’re at home?”
“No,” he says. “Not yet.”
“France?”
“Could you keep going, Em? Little bit further?”
“Eliot, are you sure this isn’t your phone?” I take my phone from my ear and look at the screen. “I have a full signal. Like, every bar.”
“Little to the left,” he says.
“Are you kidding? This isn’t a game of Twister.”
He laughs again. “Keep coming. Toward me.”
I stop then, socks wet on the gravel. “What? What did you say?”
“Look up,” he says. And his deep, warm voice doesn’t just come from the phone.
I lift my face. And there he is. Eliot. Eliot. Standing at the top of the driveway, black jacket open, a smile on his lips, the breeze ruffling his hair. He slowly drops the phone down to his side.
“You can hang up now,” he says, smiling.
And I freeze. I cannot move. And phone still to my ear, my socks sodden with water, I reach a hand out to him. He closes the gap between us, taking my hand, tucking hair behind my ear. He brings a warm hand to my cold face.
He smiles. “Hi,” he says. “I’ve really missed you.”
“And I’ve missed you,” I say through tears. “Where have you been?”
“Pulling my head out my arse,” he says, smiling weakly. “Hardest thing I ever had to do was leave you. But I needed that time, Emmie.”
I nod. “I did too, I think.”
“You did,” he says softly. “We both did.”
He pulls me into him then, arms tightening around me, strong hands against my back. Him. Him. It was always him.
He draws back and looks down at me with dark, playful eyes. “You’ve been painting,” he says, bringing a curl of hair to my face, the tip white.
“I did shower. I missed a bit.”
He nods, scrunches up his face, and looks down on the top of my head. “You’ve missed lots of bits.”
“Have I?”
He looks down at me and laughs. “Just kidding. You look bangin’, Flower. Painted hair and all.”
“Ozzy eyes and all.”
“Especially Ozzy eyes.” He smiles. “I just hope you’re not too knackered after all that painting.” He looks up at the sky. “Meteors are best seen at the most ungodliest of hours, remember.”
“I’m wide-awake,” I say, and I look up at him, run a finger down his stubbly cheek and onto his soft lips. He kisses the tip of my finger. “You’re really here,” I whisper. “In front of me.”
“I am, Emmie Blue,” he says. “And I always have been.”
He kisses me then, lifting me from the cold, wet ground with strong arms. The barriers are gone. There is nothing between us.
It’s just us.
Us and the stars in the sky.
Epilogue
August 24, 2004
The French sun beats down, and Lucas Moreau ignores his mother calling after him from the beachside café. He doesn’t want to be here, in France. He doesn’t want to be on this beach, with his brother, with his parents. He wants to be at home, with Tom, with his school friends. He wants his old bedroom. He wants those chips he always gets from the café by the public pool he and Tom go to on Saturdays. He misses home. He wants home.
“Luke?”
He hears his brother from behind him, voice wobbling as his feet pound the sand. He ignores him.
“Luke, dude, can you hear Mum?” He slows as he catches up to him, strolling next to him on the sand. “She wants to know if you want lunch.”
“No,” he snaps. “I don’t want anything, Eliot. Tell her I don’t want anything.”
Eliot puts a hand to his brother’s chest. They stop on the sand. “Look, I know it isn’t ideal,” says Eliot, “but you need to try.”
“Try what? Living here? I don’t want to try, Eliot, I want to—what?”
Eliot looks past his brother, eyes focused on something in the sand. He steps toward it. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” asks Lucas.
“That,” says Eliot. “That red thing. Is it a—? Ah shit—” Eliot’s phone buzzes in his hand, interrupting his train of thought. “Shit,” he says again, looking at the screen. “I think it’s about the job. The apprenticeship. Don’t go anywhere, okay? Mum’ll kill me if I lose you.”
Lucas nods, gives a shrug. “I’ll be here. Not exactly sailing home to London, am I?”
Eliot trudges away, across the sand, lifting his phone to his ear. Lucas steps toward the item Eliot found in the sand. He pulls at it, sand scattering. A balloon. A deflated red balloon, a tag attached.
Lucas picks it up.