Eight Perfect Hours by Lia Louis
Chapter Thirty-Six
‘This is some bullshit,’ puffs Charlie. ‘I’m fucking freezing.’
‘It’s not freezing, Char, it’s invigorating,’ I say. ‘Can’t you feel it? Smell it? Adventure. I thought adventure was on your authentic you list.’
‘Yes, adventure was on my authentic me list, Noelle – shit!’ Charlie slides on the leafy verge, grabs hold of Theo’s arm, ‘but dying on a hike with Captain America – was not. I booked glamping pods for my birthday. With heating. With a toilet.’
‘Ah, come on, Charlie,’ says Sam. ‘It’ll be worth it when we get to the other end.’
‘It will be once I get there and unleash the massive bottle of prosecco in my rucksack. Mum has the baby until the morning and I would very much like to be drunk by noon.’
Sam smirks over at me, the winter sun on his skin, and my belly flips over. My boyfriend Sam. Sam, my actual boyfriend.
‘I’ve packed some lovely cordial,’ says Theo, sniffing deeply and looking out across the woods as if he is enjoying every tiny moment – taking it all in. ‘Elderflower. Homemade.’
‘Which will taste lovely added to my prosecco,’ says Charlie again.
We all laugh, and I hold on to Sam’s hand as we tread uphill, wet leaves sliding under our feet. I bought walking boots and over trousers for this. And for the climb Sam is insisting we go on, in the spring, in Wales, not far from his work. ‘It’ll be a baby climb, I promise,’ he said, sitting on the edge of my bed on Christmas Eve, his eyes closed, and when I’d walked out in my plastic trousers and walking boots, I told him to open his eyes, threw a leg up on the bed and slapped my knee. ‘These shoes don’t do baby climbs,’ I’d laughed, and his eyes had widened.
‘Holy shit.’ He laughed, pulling me onto his lap.
‘Merry Christmas.’
‘It’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever fucking seen,’ he’d said against my mouth. ‘My baby climbs.’
It’s been six weeks since the time capsule event, and they’ve passed in a total beautiful whirlwind blur. Sam went back to Snowdon for work, and I met up with Theo’s parents to talk to them about renting the coffee kiosk. And eventually, after one sleepless night, multiple chats with Mum and Ian, and a mad evening scrawling in my notebook, working out every eventuality, good and bad, I struck a pencil through it all, took a deep breath and said yes. I have a lot to set up – a ridiculous amount that feels like my very own icy baby mountain – but in eight weeks, I will be opening my own little florist kiosk. Me! Noelle Butterby. Aged thirty-two, almost three. I’ve said yes, and if I need to, I’ll panic (a lot) later.
Charlie’s designing the sign and the logo. Theo said he’ll supply some truffles, for the opening, and Dilly is compiling a list of flower-related songs he wants to perform on his acoustic guitar on the day too (which I haven’t totally agreed to yet but he’s promised me The Storm won’t turn up with any sort of drum, and he’ll keep the set short). But today, we’re having a picnic, Sam and I – me and my boyfriend Sam, thanks very much – and Theo and Charlie. Charlie had put ‘be in nature more’ on her therapy list, and when I’d told Sam, his eyes had glinted and he’d said, ‘Let’s go on a hike. Call them, set up a date. I know this cool place, nearby,’ and I felt like I was going to burst as I dialled Charlie. ‘Tell them it’s punishment for booking us a goddamn glamping pod,’ he’d called out, and after, we’d sat talking. About camping again, just us two. (No tents.) About climbs, and holidays, and endless nights together. About long-haul flights. About hot air balloons.
‘Look,’ says Sam now, his strong hand gripping mine. ‘We’re almost there.’
‘You want us to climb up there?’ asks Charlie as if he’s just shown us the erupting volcano we have to scale.
‘It’s just a verge, but wait until you see the view.’
‘Prosecco,’ chants Charlie. ‘Think of the sodding prosecco.’
It feels dangerous to be this happy, and I’m sure it will for a while. When you’re scared of something for so long, it has a way, as Frank said, of becoming part of your blueprint. You tell yourself it’s just not for you – that you don’t make the rules, but all those things everyone else seems to get, just aren’t open to you, aren’t available. But they are. Anything is, as Sam has made me see, as I have made me see. And who says you can’t draw another blueprint? Rub parts out over time, replace the lines and paths the more you tread them.
Sam pulls me up, and I pull Charlie, to the top of the verge, and the view in front of us knocks the breath from my lungs.
‘Fucking hell,’breathes Charlie. ‘Are we in Mordor or what?’
‘Close.’ Sam laughs. ‘We’re about fifteen minutes from your house. Look …’ Sam points, one hand protectively on my back. ‘Just over there is the church.’
‘Oh my God. Look at it. It looks like – I dunno, a Christmas village or something. Like something out of Postman sodding Pat.’
‘Beautiful,’ says Theo, and I look at Sam, who’s already looking at me.
‘Well. You definitely took us on a hike,’ says Charlie, and she puts her fist out to him. Sam bumps it with his, with a smirk, and Charlie leans over and kisses his cheek. ‘Thank you. I needed this, Cap.’ She looks out across the town. ‘I feel alive!’ she shouts. ‘I’m ALIVE!’
‘Our little town,’ says Theo, visibly moved, his proud little face sandwiched between a thick woolly hat and hand-knitted scarf Jet apparently made. Jet and his torso.
‘So, Sam,’ asks Charlie, breathlessly. ‘Do you think it could become your little town, too? What’s the plan?’
‘Charlie,’I say, but I can’t help but melt into laughter into Sam’s shoulder. Charlie Wilde. Charlie fearless bloody Wilde. Sam and I haven’t talked about that yet. About what will happen – with his job in Wales, with me down here. We’re just dating, at the moment, I suppose, but it all feels so hopeful, so exciting, that I don’t care. I know we’re right where we need to be. I know we will always find a way. Those fifteen years apart showed me that.
‘Hey, Char,’ says Theo. ‘Help me set up this picnic, eh?’
‘Totes,’ she says, then she holds her arm out, like a Shakespearean actor. ‘Fill me to the tip with those tomatoes of yours, my love,’ she laughs. ‘Open my eager third eye.’
‘And this is before prosecco,’ I say to Sam and he laughs.
Charlie and Theo wander off together, Charlie giggling at his side, to a flat piece of the grassy verge we stand on top of, and we watch as they fan out a purple picnic blanket on the cold, hard ground.
‘I’ve never had a winter picnic before,’ I say. ‘Outside. In a wood. On a hill.’
‘There’s never a bad day or a bad place to eat, if you ask me.’ Sam smiles and I lean in, kiss his gorgeous, soft lips.
‘Motorways,’ I say. ‘Balconies.’
‘Hire cars,’ adds Sam, and I lean my head on his shoulder, gaze out to the tiny model village – it looks like something you’d buy from a garden centre for Christmas, to put in the window, to play cheesy Christmas carols. ‘Can you see out there – the little church?’ Sam asks.
I nod against his shoulder.
‘And then just over there – see, that’s Dad’s old apartment block.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘And there’s the park. And somewhere over there, a tiny microscopic speck, is his allotment patch.’
I nod again.
‘That he gave to me,’ says Sam, turning, his mouth to my hair. ‘And I’d like to give it to you. If you want it. No pressure, no nothing, but you said you want somewhere to grow stuff and your garden at home with your mom is––’
I lift my head up, meet his gaze. ‘Are you serious?’
Sam smiles. ‘Yeah. It’s all yours. If you want it. From me to you. Well. From Frank to you, really. I’m just the middle-man.’
I laugh, hold his face in my hands. Sometimes I hold his face and I want to squish it, kiss every inch of it, ‘eat it, sink my teeth into it’ as Charlie says about Theo’s. I never really got it. Thought it was yet another one of their ‘things’, like reiki, like Theo’s little cucumbers, like Charlie’s third eye opening post fruit consumption. But I do now. I get it totally.
‘Thank you,’ I say to Sam. ‘Oh my God. Seriously, thank you.’
‘I’ll give you the keys,’ he says. ‘Before I go back. Then you can go and explore your little patch of dirt.’
‘I love it already,’ I say. ‘My very own little patch of mud.’