Eight Perfect Hours by Lia Louis

Chapter Eleven

I think from the sight of me, Sam assumed there was something far more wrong than there actually is.

‘It’s my mum,’ I’d snivelled and then I’d launched into a violent, mad-sounding sob, completely out of nowhere and completely to my surprise. I can’t remember the last time I cried in front of anyone – well, besides when I cried in front of the entire M4 and most notably, Sam, but in my defence, I didn’t actually realise I had. But it was too late. Once I started, I couldn’t stop, and Sam gently put his arms around me. I cried into his jumper, his chest hard and warm beneath the dark fabric. He smelled exactly like he smelled on the motorway that night. Showers. Cedary aftershave. Fresh laundry. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, drawing back. ‘I’m so sorry, I’m a mess – a bloody wreck. And you! I mean, are you OK? I haven’t even––’

‘I’m fine,’ he said calmly. ‘It’s my dad. He has some stuff going on. But he’s OK.’

We sat down eventually, and Sam handed me a tissue from a packet in his jeans as I waffle about Mum, about the X-ray, about not knowing where she is.

‘You’re organised,’ I said thickly, and he’d laughed and said, ‘You saw me produce a first-aid kit from my bag on a motorway, and tissues surprise you?’

The tears that I dabbed away were for Mum, yes, but that’s not what they were entirely. That worry wasn’t enough to cause a waterfall of spontaneous, snotty, embarrassing sobs. It was the loneliness, I think. That huge yawn of loneliness I felt in that moment on the bench in the waiting room that felt so gaping and black and barren that I felt like I might be swallowed whole, never to be seen again. Then Sam appeared, like he did on that snowy motorway, just when I needed someone the most.

‘Do you think it’s broken?’ Sam asks now, and I explain to him what happened, now the tears have stopped, as we sit on the plastic hard-backed chairs, a vending machine whirring and clinking beside us, its blue light turning Sam’s white Converse shoes light blue. I tell him about Mum and the ladder. About Dilly waking me, and the ambulance, even the part about texting Ed, and he listens. He tells me he broke his leg in high school, that he’s dealt with climbers with broken everything and up mountains, miles from help, and everything was fine, and now you’d never know, and it just feels so nice because his brown eyes have not left my face and he’s listening as if everything depends on the words spilling from my mouth. It’s like we’re in the car. It’s like we’ve picked up where we left off.

‘What?’ Sam says, a smile at the corner of his mouth. I realise I’ve stopped talking and I’m just looking at him.

‘Just – you’re here. Don’t you think this is so … mad.’

‘Mad.’ Sam laughs. ‘Seems to be our thing.’

Butterflies then. Completely out of nowhere, a burst, set free.

‘And you’re back for your dad?’ I ask. ‘Is he all right?’

Sam pauses, looks down at his hands, clasped in his lap. ‘Back for dad, but also work. I was in Wales. I’ve been in Wales for a week actually. Got a new job over there. But then I got the call. He fell. Again. But he’s doing OK.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Sam shrugs. ‘It is what it is,’ he says simply, and says nothing else.

‘And so, what, you live in Wales now?’

Sam nods, pushes a hand through his dark hair. ‘For a little while. It was sort of why I was back, last month. Setting things up. You know, when you and I … met.’

I feel something open in my chest when he says those words, looks at me from under those black lashes. Plus: Wales. That’s not far at all. An hour or two on the train, perhaps. We could stay in touch. We could be friends. We could be … no. No, stop it, Noelle. No need to go bollocks deep. You do not want to be that woman in a hedge with the beard and funny glasses.

‘That’s exciting,’ I say. ‘New job. Closer to your dad.’

Sam gives a mournful smile, as if he doesn’t think it’s exciting at all. ‘I guess so,’ he says. ‘I mean, the Wales job is good. It’s over in Snowdon which is cool. I just wasn’t expecting to be here so soon. Back here, I mean.’

‘Well, I’m sort of glad you are,’ I say, and Sam doesn’t say anything, he just gives a small, quiet smile.

We sit in silence for a while, side by side in the quiet, shiny-floored waiting room. I can’t believe he’s here. I can’t believe we’ve bumped into each other again. I think of the website, the emails I wanted to send, and I’m tempted to tell him, for a moment, but I don’t. The clatter of a bed being pushed down the corridor echoes, and shortly it appears, being pushed by three nurses. One of them smiles at us as they pass.

‘I hate hospitals,’ I whisper out of the side of my mouth.

‘Me too,’ says Sam.

‘And they’re even worse in the middle of the night. I’m no good in the middle of the night.’

Sam makes a sound – like a deep bemused half-chuckle in his throat, and motions with a hand up to the clock on the wall. It’s one of those clocks that sat in every classroom at school. White, circular, rounded black numbers. ‘Three-fifteen,’ he says, then he leans, nudges my arm gently with his. ‘I seem to remember we did OK with three-fifteen in the car. Eating those crisis group cookies. I think you told me the story about Dilly’s drummer and the dominatrix at about three-fifteen.’

I laugh quietly, the sound echoing around the silent waiting room, like giggles in a church. ‘I love that you’re here,’ I say quietly. ‘I mean of course I don’t love that you’re here, because being here means something bad’s happened, but – it’s so nice to see you again.’

‘Ditto,’ is all Sam says. Then he touches his arm to mine again but stays there longer this time. ‘Noelle not-Gallagher.’

We both buy two more plastic-tasting machine coffees, and sit together, talk some more, about Sam’s flight, about the weather, about the traffic jam. Sam tells me he told a friend about the back-of-a-lorry cheese sandwiches, and about the driver with the banjo, and I wonder if he talked about me too, about the weirdly perfect time we had, just like I did with Charlie – in absolute microscopic Holmes and Watson detail.

The vending machine clicks and hums, and the low ring of a hospital phone sounds in the distance. Silence falls between us, and I notice my old friends the stars are back, racing under my skin.

‘Have I missed anything else?’ I ask. ‘In what, four, five weeks. Climbed any good rocks lately?’

‘Of course,’Sam says.

‘I still think you’re slightly insane by the way.’

‘So, I’m never getting you up a rock face, then?’

He flashes a playful smile and my stomach flips over. God, he’s handsome. Really handsome, in a sort of classic way. Dark eyes, square jaw, straight nose. ‘You’re all about noses and chins,’ said Dilly once. ‘You have a type, and it’s always about strong noses and chins. So predictable. Live a little. Try a rounded face from time to time, Noelle. A chin that couldn’t cut pie.’

‘And how about you?’ Sam asks. ‘Have I missed any Post-it action?’ I like his voice. The accent, of course, but it’s deep and croaks at the end of some of the words in that sexy, raspy, rumbling sort of way. I tried to mimic it once, to Charlie, who said I sounded like the voice from the Saw films.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Steve and Candice are getting married. Did I tell you that? Yup. The Post-its were only the start of their love story.’

‘Holy shit, really?’

‘I know – I mean, I’d be lying if there wasn’t a part of me that was slightly jealous …’

‘Well, same …’

‘Mr Attwood?’

We look up, almost in unison. A woman stands in the doorway, in a blue nurse’s tunic, pale, tired eyes, a rosy smile. ‘The doctor’s arrived.’

Sam clears his throat, places his large hands on his thighs. ‘Thank you, nurse.’

She nods, then turns on her heel, the door swinging closed behind her.

Sam nods at me. ‘I better um – look, I hope your mom is OK, Noelle,’ he says gently. Then he touches my hand, a brush, so briefly, and there is no jumping away this time, from either of us, but the jolt through my body is the exact same. Electric. Sparks. Aura-exploding energy or whatever Charlie and Theo say it is. He stands.

‘Should we …’ I jump up. ‘Maybe we should … I dunno.’ It’s not every day that this happens, is it? That two strangers from two totally different countries, separate continents, bump into each other twice in mere weeks. Maybe I am meant to know Sam. Maybe bumping into him is a sign, like Charlie, like Theo said. ‘Do you want to keep in touch?’ Fuck it. I’ve said it now. It’s out there. Can’t take it back.

Sam doesn’t reply right away, and heat works its way up my back like I’m suddenly standing too close to an open flame. I wish I hadn’t asked. Me and the Moomin on my pyjama top stare at him, waiting.

‘W-we could swap emails or numbers or something?’ I carry on. ‘But of course, no pressure if … well, you must be busy and stuff and … climbing and …’ Oh, God. Shut up, me. Close the bloody cupboard.

Sam swallows, scratches the back of his neck. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Of course. Sure. But I actually – don’t have my phone with me …’

‘Here.’ I lean to a low oval wooden table of leaflets and information booklets fanned next to the vending machine and take the first random pamphlet my hand finds – a leaflet calling for blood donations. I pull a pen from my bag and scrawl my mobile number on it. ‘There we go,’ I say, handing it over. ‘Old-fashioned way. Like Steve and Candice.’

Crayfish Face times one hundred at those last words.

‘Cool,’ he says, smiling, folding it over in his hand. ‘Thanks. Take care, Noelle.’

And just like when I got home from that freezing night in March, it’s like he was never there at all.