Eight Perfect Hours by Lia Louis
Chapter Eight
Five weeks later
Charlie taps the wooden shop countertop with a hand twice, like an impatient drunk in a bar. ‘Hey, babe!’ she calls out. ‘How are we getting on back there with those tomatoes?’ She turns to me, her eyes dreamy, flicks of neon pink liquid liner at the corners. ‘I swear to God, these tomatoes, Noelle. Had them last week. Felt like my life had changed – literally. Something … opened inside of me. Fruit can do that to you, you know.’
‘Is that right?’
‘And some veg, too. With the right asparagus …’ Charlie winks. ‘Mark my words.’ And I would, of course, if I had a clue what they meant.
She leans across the counter, craning her neck to see out of the back of the shop. ‘Theo?’ she shouts again. ‘Oi.’ Theo doesn’t reply. A customer filling a glass bottle with thick, treacly olive oil from a glass keg looks over at us, eyes unblinking like a disapproving teacher, and I desperately want to laugh.
I love Wednesdays. I know some people find routines stifling or monotonous or boring. You’re a total robot, Elle, Dilly would say. But to me – I don’t know. Routines mean knowing what to expect. Routines mean having something to look forward to. And every Wednesday looks the same. Ian drops by for breakfast with Mum, meaning I can get up and out early, just me, a few dog walkers, the glow of a new sun, the sound of bird song and my own footsteps. I drop by the tiny little supermarket in town that always does their price reductions far too late and has yesterday’s flowers at pennies, and pick up what I can find (today, two bunches of alstroemeria, the colour of strawberry milk). I drop by Adly’s flat – a London banker I clean for once a fortnight, who hardly ever comes back to his clinical square of a studio flat, and then it’s on to clean my friend Charlie and her husband Theo’s two-bed maisonette above Buff, their plastic-free grocer’s and deli. Their flat is the total opposite to Adly’s. All rugs and cushions and weird wooden artefacts that I’m sure, after dusting and considering them every week for two years, are mostly sculptures of genitals. I clean, I organise, I arrange flowers in the windows, and at twelve, Charlie glides in on her lunch break and constructs an organic lunch from Theo’s salad bar that she tells me will ‘momentarily open her third eye’. We stand then, like we are now, on the shiny, wooden shop floor and talk, as Theo scuttles about in the storeroom and serves customers, and most of the time, with Petal, their three-month-old baby on his chest in a sling, her tiny starfish hands clenched. Nothing much really ever happens on Wednesdays. They’re simple really, but they’re dependable – safe little markers, to remind me that I’ve made another week, and how lucky I am that I have. Plus, Theo and Charlie are two of the happiest people I know, and regardless of your move, it rubs on you, like perfume.
‘Right.’ Theo appears behind the counter, a baby monitor in one hand, Charlie’s lime-green bento box in the other. Today he’s without little Petal and the baby sling he hand-sewed from an old duvet cover. ‘That’s the last of them, my love.’
‘King of my heart,’ Charlie says, holding her hands in a balled fist at her chest.
‘Queen of mine,’ he replies, and he leans to adjust her headband, kissing the tip of her nose through his thick brown beard. Charlie and Theo are really in love – that sort of brazen, public in-love that would usually make me want to dunk my head into a bowl of steaming hot custard. But it suits them, Charlie and Theo, in their totally unapologetic, hippy – and admittedly, sometimes utterly bizarre – little world.
‘Petal’s down for her second nap.’ He looks at the baby monitor, her fluffy little head a fuzzy ball on the dark screen. ‘It helps, I think, the baby massage.’
Charlie smiles. ‘You are the father to end all fathers,’ she says. ‘I used to think it was Peter Andre. But frankly, you’d shit all over him.’
Theo chuckles. ‘Do you want to come up, kiss her goodbye?’
‘Better not,’ says Charlie, eyes sliding to the baby monitor on the counter. ‘She looks flat out, I might wake her. Plus, I’ve got an appointment in ten.’
‘Ah.’ Theo nods, pushing his hands into the thick, square pocket of his apron. ‘Well, you just keep telling all those weird musos that visit the studio to come and get their lunch here. Had a whole rock band come in last week, Noelle, from Char’s studio. They cleared me out. Canadian. They were really taken with my okra.’
I laugh. ‘But I thought rock stars were supposed to snort cocaine off bare arses and throw TVs at people. Not fawn over vegetables.’
‘Mm,’ says Charlie nodding, a sun-blushed tomato between her fingers, the short nails painted grapefruit pink. ‘They definitely do that as well. Singer’s a total letch and a face like a plate, but …’ Charlie shrugs. ‘What can I say? The geezers know good veg. And once they posted their ink on their Instagram, I got like five thousand followers overnight. Total pricks. But very useful pricks. Anyway …’ She snaps the lid on her bento box and jerks her head. ‘Walk me to work, Noelle?’
The shop bell jingles like an old bicycle above our heads as we leave Theo’s shop and step out into the warm Spring sunshine. An all-windows-down car booms with bass-y dance music as it zooms by, rumbling exhaust and thick grey smoke.
‘Half-past twelve,’ says Charlie, glancing at the watch on her wrist before linking her arm through mine. ‘You’re living wildly today, Noelle Butterby.’
‘Because I bought a tenner’s worth of organic dates?’
Charlie laughs and squeezes my arm. ‘Because it’s twelve thirty and you’re walking in the direction that takes us into dangerous Ed McDweeby-Donnell territory.’
I shrug, although of course I know this – might as well have a wall chart up in my bedroom marking his movements with pins and alternate routes mapped out to avoid his predicted movements. Since the time-capsule event, Charlie has seen Ed in town twice – albeit from a distance – and both times at about half past twelve on a weekday, near the train station. Ever since that, I’ve avoided that part of town, walking the long way to my car.
‘I know,’ I say to Charlie. ‘But I point blank refuse to avoid him any longer. This is my town, right? He left, not me. And even if he is back for good, he should feel weird about seeing me.’ The words sound convincing coming out of my mouth, but I’m not sure my heart is quite sold just yet. I figure it’ll follow eventually, get bored of being the odd one out.
‘That’s my girl,’ says Charlie. ‘And remember what I said. When you do eventually see him, just smile, give a wave, say, “Oh, you all right?” and walk on by as if you’ve seven thousand better things to be doing today. You know, like, see ya, gotta roll, too busy to chat. Oh – quick.’ Charlie yanks me towards the crossing. ‘Green dude.’
Spring has arrived all of a sudden, as if it’s never been away. Sleepy bees, the chivey smell of cut grass, and the gullibility that you might just be able to get away with not wearing a jacket (until the sun is swallowed whole by a cloud.) I’m grateful that it’s mid-April, the sun bleaching away old stains, and the fresh spring breeze blowing away the cobwebs, ready for all things new. Those few weeks that followed the reunion seemed to drag and stagnate, like the endless, relentless grey skies outside. I called the college every day for the first week, to see if they’d found Daisy’s camera. I gave up when I got a sigh from the man on the end of the phone, the second I spoke my name.
‘I really do think you need to wait until the rescheduled event,’ he said, sounding bored. ‘In the unlikely event it’s already been unburied, we have your details.’ And I’d said sorry, and I still don’t really know what for. Because I’m not sorry for wanting something that belonged to my best friend, or for wanting to see the last photos she ever took of us all. And I’m not sorry to want to post new pictures of Daisy to her mum, Mingmei, who has lived for fifteen years with the same ones. I couldn’t bring myself to send her the letter last week – the one I’d written to Daisy fifteen years ago, waffling about all the places we’d go. A letter talking about all the things her daughter could’ve done would be easier to read, I’m sure, if there’d been photos of her inside too, bursting with life and smiles, as Daisy always was.
And then of course, there was all the daydreaming about Sam. God, the bloody daydreaming and the replaying. I thought about him so much at first that I started to forget what he looked like – as if I’d worn the memory away, like the print of an old newspaper. It’s simmered down a lot – and thank God – but I still think about him, of course (including one Oscar-worthy dream that starred me, Sam and an outside mountain-top shower last week that sounded like a regency novella when I typed it out to Charlie in WhatsApp the next morning). But the routine of normal life and the new Spring sun has really helped the snow of March feel like another lifetime ago. And I’m relieved. No normal Homo sapien wants to spend their nights trying to mimic someone’s deep, sexy laugh out loud and asking, ‘dearest Google, is it classed as stalking if it’s only thoughts and occasionally punching “Sam Oregon Mount Hood Alpine Guide Hot Instagram” into your little search bar and hoping to find an account?’
Charlie leans her head against my shoulder, her ice-blonde hair tickling my chin. ‘I keep reading Daisy’s letter to you,’ she says, with a sigh. ‘I must’ve read it like, twenty times.’
I nod. ‘You and me both, Char.’
‘I loved the way she wrote. The way she talks about your soulmate, the pizza dough. And the red thread – what’s that about again? I remember something. Vaguely. Didn’t she actually give us red threads once?’
I smile. ‘She did. For Valentine’s.’
Charlie sighs again, spreads a hand on her chest.
‘It’s a belief – a Chinese proverb,’ I tell Charlie. ‘That a red thread connects two people who are destined to meet. It can tangle, but never break.’
‘God,’ breathes Charlie, ‘she was so bloody romantic, wasn’t she? So … I dunno. Magic. She’d have been a novelist. A poet. She’d have – made mountains move, that’s for sure.’
‘She would have,’ I say, and an unexpected lump bobs in my throat.
‘Felt a bit gutted,’ says Charlie, ‘that I didn’t go to college with you both.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah,’ she says sadly.
Daisy and I met Charlie when we were sixteen and started working evenings as waitresses for a local caterer who did weddings and posh birthday parties. Charlie was two years older than us and the cool girl we so desperately wanted to be, with her ever-changing hair and fishnet tights and hot-pant combos. She was a shitty waitress – seriously, the worst – and did nothing but snog groomsmen and eat half-finished plates left by guests, and we did nothing but cover for her. We officially fell in love with her the day she bribed a chef to store dinner rolls in his boxer shorts, which after an hour, she reclaimed and served to a wedding guest who’d groped her arse without consent.
‘Arse-baked rolls,’ she’d smirked at us, and she’d left before the dessert course when her latest musician boyfriend had picked her up in his rusty old minivan, cigarette smoke billowing from the windows like a bonfire on wheels.
‘I just keep thinking about what Daisy might’ve said to me, if I had a letter,’ says Charlie. ‘What do you think she’d have said, Elle?’
I smile to myself, but a small bubble of sadness inflates in my chest. I tortured myself for such a long time, back then, about what Charlie might’ve secretly thought of me, for letting Daisy get in the car. I asked her once, and she was horrified, of course, said she’d have let her go too, and it helped. But I wondered over and over, if she just said it to make me happy. Because Charlie’s good at that. Fiercely unrelenting in her support for people she loves, regardless of what they do. I truly think if I suddenly announced I was taking up nude basketball, there she’d be, in the stands, my name printed on the back of a jersey, cheering me on.
‘I think she’d have told you to go and snog all the rock stars,’ I say to her. ‘To get backstage at Warped Tour. To keep being Charlie Wilde. Wilde by name––’
‘Wilde by nature.’ Charlie finishes my sentence and we both laugh. We come to Wilde Heart, the narrow, glass shop front of Charlie’s tattoo studio – she’s had her shop six years now, a venture she ran with like she always does, without a single shred of fear or self-doubt. ‘So.’ She unloops her arm from mine and puts her hand on the glass shop door, its wooden frame painted bubblegum pink. ‘You tracked down the American from Ohio yet?’ Clouds drift over the sun, a cool breeze bristling the ends of her blunt bob.
‘Oregon,’ I laugh. ‘And no, you know I haven’t.’ I don’t tell Charlie that I’ve tried. That I keep putting random things into Google, that I actually found where Sam works – the website for the summit programmes he mentioned, on Mount Hood. I was led there by a mention of a ‘Sam’ in a blog by another guide, detailing ‘A Day in the Life Of’. That’s all I can find.
‘Private investigator,’ says Charlie now, and I laugh again and say, ‘Yeah, because that isn’t creepy at all.’
‘He might be trying to find you too.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘I had my first sexual awakening with an American,’ she says. ‘On MSN. His name was Justin.’
‘I thought your first sexual awakening was with H from Steps.’
‘Oh shit, yeah,’ she says. ‘Can’t forget H. OK, so I had my second sexual awakening with an American on MSN. First was H. In that video. ‘It’s the Way You Make Me Feel’. Holy shit, dude. The ruffles. The forlorn look of a regency man who’d ruin your life.’
‘Sure.’
‘And your gusset,’ Charlie says, and we both burst into laughter. She holds her arms out wide for a hug, and I put mine around her. Charlie always smells like pear drops and bubblegum, a contrast to the deep, fermented orange skins smell that wafts over from the greengrocer’s next door.
‘Elle,’ she says, pulling back and looking at me. ‘Do you think I’m still her?’
I pause. ‘Who?’
Charlie looks at me sadly. ‘Charlie Wilde.’
‘Well, you’re Charlie Christopoulos now. You got married, remember? That Greek bloke back there. With the life-changing tomatoes and good beard.’
I laugh. Charlie doesn’t.
‘No, I mean – have I changed? Like, totally?’
I hold her shoulders. ‘No,’ I say. ‘And also, yes. Like all of us have. Because that’s normal right, that we all grow up, all change? But course. You’ll always be Charlie Wilde to me.’
She smiles at that, a look of victory on her face, and kisses my cheek. ‘Bye, Noelle,’ she says, then she strides off into her shop, the loud music inside flowing out into the street, then fading again as the door closes behind her.
I walk for ten minutes or so, stopping at the bakery for the nice bread Mum likes, for some things she wanted me to pick up from Superdrug. But it’s like they say – well, like Charlie and Theo say, and those weird law of attraction videos they watch on YouTube. The more you think about something, the more you pay mind to it, whether it’s something you want or don’t want, the more it seems to crop up. And as the bleep of the green man sounds and I walk across the road, I see him. Ed. Standing outside the coffee shop next to the train station on the phone, a bag slung over his shoulder, his mouth moving quickly.
And it’s too late. He sees me, holds a hand up in a wave, and I can’t stop, can’t turn round. I have no choice but to keep walking with the flurry of people crossing – crossing to his side of the road, right into his path. Reaching the pavement, I plan on doing what Charlie said – a quick smile, a wave, a ‘Oh. You all right?’ as I keep on going, too busy to stop, but he’s hanging the phone up, dropping it to his side and walking towards me and we meet a few strides from the kerb.
‘Nellie,’ he says. ‘Hey.’
It’s strange seeing someone you used to see so often that they just became part of the scenery of your life. Even when it’s been over seven hundred days without a single word from them, they slot right back in. You remember instantly the things you thought you forgot. The sharp lines of their cheekbones, the wide mouth you’ve kissed a thousand times, the two tiny moles, like two paint flecks on their jaw. A part of me wants to throw my arms around Ed, as I look at him now, to snuggle up with him, catch up with him, talk about the thousands of days of memories only we share. To hear him say, ‘We were idiots, Nell. Why did we do what we did? Why did I leave without you?’ Another part of me wants to run the fuck away too of course, pretend my little world is totally undisrupted – as it always is.
‘Hi,’ I say. ‘You all right?’
‘Yeah, good. It’s good to see you. How’ve you been?’ He smiles, the sun catching in his eyes. Light always makes Ed’s eyes look the deepest olive green.
‘Fine, fine. On my way back from work so …’ My stomach churns. I can’t believe I’m looking at him. Ed. My Ed for so long.
‘I’ve just finished,’ he says. ‘Working over at the hospital. Ten-hour shift that ticked over into twelve, then thirteen. You know how it is, Nell.’ He grins at me knowingly.
‘Cool, so, you’re back then?’
Ed nods. ‘Yeah! There was a new opportunity – in a rheums wing, but working with adults at the moment. My brother recommended me, and it just seemed meant to be, you know? The US was amazing, but – I dunno. I needed to get away for a bit. And I missed home.’ He looks at me then and I feel warmth spread across my chest, like sunlight. But almost in tandem, my hackles rise, thinking of the way he ignored me at the reunion, turned as if he didn’t even know me. That I was nobody.
‘So, did you pick up your envelope?’
He stares. ‘What?’
‘Your envelope,’ I carry on. ‘From the reunion. The time capsule thing.’
‘Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I did.’ He scratches the back of his neck and cocks his head then, gives me that sideways wince. The ‘Ah, shit’ wince he’s given me a thousand times before, across the kitchen table, or from his pillow to mine, when he’d screwed up, or I’d cooked something bad for dinner that I’d spent seven hours marinating … ‘Nell, this …’ sideways wince, ‘… sorry, this tastes … awful.’ I almost smile right here on the pavement imagining us both melting into laughter at our little round dining table, before sliding our dinners into the food waste bin and calling Masala Hut for our usual takeaway.
‘Look, I’m sorry. I just – I wasn’t really expecting to see you.’
‘Wasn’t expecting to see me?’
‘No, no, I knew you’d go, obviously, of course I did. I think I just thought I’d probably missed you and then … there you were. I was just a bit thrown.’ He laughs then, flashing that cheeky grin I obsessed over in college to Daisy who shared biology class with him. ‘I don’t get it, Noelle,’ Daisy would say. ‘You and Charlie and your cheeky chappy thing. I mean he’s nice, and funny and everything, but don’t you want someone better? Taller? I want a tortured poet. Someone like Lee, that boy on the plumbing course. He’s like that, I can tell. Total troubled Byron vibes.’
‘Nell, I’m sorry,’ says Ed. ‘What can I say? I was a bit of a twat.’
I nod. ‘A bit. A lot.’
‘OK, fine. A lot.’
That’s what’s unfair about breakups. They’re nearly always one-sided. One person has made their mind up way before the other. They’ve done the grieving, they’ve done the boxing away of feelings and you – well, your feelings are still wandering around, like lost kittens, trying to find their home. That’s how this feels. My wandering, homeless feelings have emerged from their little dark corners. Because he’s back. The person that tossed them out in the cold in the first place. And for twelve years, Ed was my home.
‘Sorry, I really need to get going.’
‘Course.’ Ed nods and takes a step forward, like he considers hugging me, but instead he puts his hands in his pockets, shoulders square. ‘Maybe we can – grab coffee or something?’
I hesitate. ‘Bye, Ed,’ is all I say, and I turn away. Because this has lasted longer than I ever planned it to in my mind and I want to quit while I’m ahead. Before he mentions something to ruin it. Oregon, and everything I missed by not going with him. The woman with the auburn curls and perfect eyebrows that was beside him in his Twitter picture for a few months, that I’d zoom in on and pick apart with Charlie. ‘She looks cruel,’ Charlie would say, well and truly scraping the barrel. ‘And I bet she has really bad breath too. You know. Not-eaten-for-hours, sour horse poo breath. She looks the type.’
I don’t wait for Ed to say goodbye, I don’t give him the chance to. I walk away, heart banging in my chest, as if it started running long before I did.