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‘What can I say? I like to walk on the wild side.’
‘I’ve literally never heard a less true statement.’ He removes his glasses and cleans them on his shirt before returning them to his face, and I can tell he’s about to spill yet more Finn fun facts. ‘Did you know the crescent moon sits at a different angle depending on where you are in the world?’ As usual, he doesn’t wait for me to answer. I know by now that his did-you-knows come with immediate follow-ups. ‘Here it’s vertical, like a letter C, but in some places it’s more like a U. I think it’s cool.’
‘Are nerds allowed multiple specialist subjects? I thought dinosaurs were your thing.’
He shrugs. ‘Dinosaurs areoneof my things. But I fucking love space. For almost the same reasons. Millions of years packed into a single fossil? Infinite galaxies stretching further than we can even fathom? Sign me up. Remind me of my meagre significance.’
Dust motes cloud my brain, as if a door has just been opened in a room long since abandoned. I don’t need any more reminding that I’m just a speck in the universe, at the mercy of its every whim. Don’t need reminding how grateful I am that it listened to me when I begged, can never forget that I owe it something, everything, even now.
I attempt to pull myself back. ‘Aren’t space and dinosaurs kindof a conflict of interests? The asteroid, et cetera.’
‘Too soon, Ava. Too soon.’ We walk quickly towards Stockwell and I’m glad that for the most part it’s too dark for him to be distracted by much of our surroundings, and that he can’t see my face. ‘By the time my mum met my stepdad I was already a walking dinosaur encyclopaedia and needed a new interest. So my stepdad taught me about the solar system. He has this massive telescope that I think has now lived on almost every continent.’ He looks up again at the beige, starless sky. ‘I know it sounds trite, but I just like knowing that when I look up, it’s the same sky. Especially because my family is on different continents. All of us, all over the world, watched by the same stars.’
There it is. The open door. It disturbs a memory I’d forgotten about, tucked away in a box I don’t open anymore. It tumbles out of me, overflowing before I get the chance to slam it back inside. ‘When my brother was in hospital a few years ago after some complications with his cancer treatment, we weren’t allowed to visit overnight. So I’d always tell him to look outside and find the moon, because chances are, I was looking at it too.’ Out of habit, I search the sky, but the moon’s hiding tonight. At Finn’s silence, it occurs to me that I’ve shared a piece of information I hadn’t intended to.
He gives me a long, searching look. ‘I bet he’s glad he has you.’
My eyebrows pull together. ‘I’m glad to havehim.’Finn goes to interject but stops himself, then nods at me to continue. ‘I mean, sometimes I think that if he weren’t my brother, I’d probably kind of hate him. He can be a little arrogant and almost always gets what he wants. But I guess, after everything he’s been through, maybe he has the right to believe in himself more than the average human.’ My eyes dart around the sky, searching for even a sliver of moon. ‘He’s probably a better person than me in almost every way. The world would be a much darker place without him.’
The last sentence comes out like a hiccup, surprising even me. It’s been a while since I’ve even let the concept of Max’s absence enter my consciousness. I shake my head to dislodge the thought, but it gets caught on my brain’s edges, just like it always used to. The thought ricochets, one crack on a sheet of ice echoing its threat across a lake. I take a few breaths, avoiding eye contact to mumble, ‘He’s okay now, though. You met him. You saw that.’
Max deserves every moment ofokayhe’s been given. He’s alive and happy and the gratitude I feel for that is so visceral it hurts almost as much as the fear of losing him did. But still, occasionally, if I’m not paying sharp enough attention, the thoughts seep in. The awful what-ifs that kept me up at night all those years ago.
As if he can see inside my brain, see the swirling wisps of smoke darkening through the window, Finn stops on the pavement. ‘Hey.’ He waits a long time for my eyes to lock onto his. ‘Areyouokay?’
‘I’m fine,’ I say instinctively. Iamfine. I am. We’re all okay now that Max is too. But something in the way Finn waits for me to elaborate lets me know he doesn’t believe me. ‘I promise. I know how to handle myself.’
I look ahead, aware of how deeply I’m breathing, how I’m clenching my hands into fists in an attempt to stop them shaking, fiercely hoping the wound in my heart doesn’t reopen at the mere memory. My life has been blissfully uneventful over the past few years, and with that, there’s been nothing to complain about. Nothing to worry about.
In reality, it wasn’t until the dust settled after everything happened that I realised that maybe I needed some comfort too. That I’d spent so long trying not to need it so I could be the one my heartbroken parents relied on, that by the time I realised I did need it, there was no point. It was selfish to want. Because what should I need comforting about now, if I got my brother back in the end, justlike I begged?
By the time I meet Finn’s eyes again, warm and dark under the glow of the street lights, the old need rises to the surface. He unzips me with that single look.
And then a car drives past, its headlights illuminating his whole face, and before I have time to register what he’s doing, he pulls me against him. For a split second I don’t react. But I realise that some of the weight pressing on my skull is lifting at the feel of the warmth of his body against mine, so I wrap my arms around him and breathe him in, a weirdly reassuring concoction of swimming pools and spicy cologne that shouldn’t make sense but somehow does. I’m allowed to take the comfort for tonight, I think.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers into my hair. I don’t know if he’s apologising for how I feel, or for the fact he’s broken our unspoken no-direct-contact rule, but I don’t mind. Partly because we’re both drunk, and I’ve done far less wholesome activities with men while drunk. But mostly I don’t mind because, briefly, I remember what it felt like to be a child, when a hug was enough to make everything okay.
And with every inhale, each corresponding exhale pushes the coils of smoke clear from my vision. In, out, in, out, until the fog has lifted entirely. For now, at least.
I don’t know how long we stand there. It’s long enough for me to realise he’s sturdier than I expected; broad shoulders that I’d thought were just an optical illusion from the baggy shirts he always wears, strong arms clutching me as if he’s scared I’m going to float away. It’s long enough for me to register that it’s been a long time, to the point where I’m sure I should pull away. And it’s long enough to notice something else, a decidedly solidsomethingpushing against me.
‘Finn,’ I murmur into his shoulder. ‘Please tell me that isn’tyour penis.’
I feel him laugh more than hear him, and he steps back, severing whatever force was keeping us together and bringing me back to reality. ‘I forgot, I have a present for you.’ He reaches into his trouser pocket—why are men’s pockets so impossibly large?—and pulls out a familiar-looking item. The cider glass from the bar.
Something twists in my stomach. Maybe it’s the alcohol. Maybe not. ‘You took it? For me?’
‘For you,’ he confirms, handing it to me with a flourish as we slowly start walking again. The likelihood of me dropping a glass is high at the best of times, let alone when I’ve had a few too many drinks, so I clutch my contraband against my chest as we inch closer to Stockwell.
‘Thank you.’ For the glass, for not making a big deal out of the few pieces of information I shared, for taking away some of the weight without even knowing. But still, this isn’t what he signed up for. I set out to lighten the mood. ‘Didn’t know you were such a bad boy.’
There’s a pause, until he replies, ‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Ava.’
I raise my eyebrows in disbelief. ‘Tell me something else I don’t know then.’
‘That,’ he runs his hand through his hair and looks up, like he’s searching for answers in the sky, ‘would defeat the purpose of there being things you don’t know about me.’
A huff escapes me and we keep walking, and my inhibition-less self asks a question, hopefully one that doesn’t send me crushed against his chest again. ‘Do you think I spend too much time alone?’
