Page 77 of Meet Me in Berlin

‘Yeah.’

I release a plume of smoke. ‘You think this is more than us needing to get the past out of our system?’

She takes the joint from me, has one last toke and stubs it out, then shimmies down to wrap her arms around me under the covers. They’re cool against my warm skin. ‘I think it could be more, if we want it to be.’

My finger makes a pattern on her chest. There’s something niggling at me from earlier that I’ve held back, not wanting to scare her off, but I’m loose with alcohol and weed and the words spill. ‘When I was talking to Katarina, she said she didn’t stay with that woman in the painting because you can’t keep a woman like that confined in a relationship.’

‘Did she?’

‘Mmm.’ I look up. ‘You have that look about you.’

She cocks her head, a tiny lift of her brow. ‘Do I?’

I nod.

Her mouth presses into a tight line as she searches my face. ‘I’m not twenty anymore, Holly. I want to find my person too, and I don’t have issues being in a relationship when I’m with the right person.’ She pauses. ‘I don’t want tonight to be the last time we see each other. I’d like to give this a go. If that’s what you want, like.’

Everything inside me softens and I lay my head against her chest, listen to the gentle thud of her heart. My own heart wants to tell her I love her, but my head argues that I couldn’t possibly know that this soon. Instead, I say, ‘I can hear your heartbeat. And you know it’s what I want.’

She kisses the top of my head. ‘I do, yeah.’

We’re silent again for a few minutes until I say, ‘On Friday night, at the river, you said you always struggled with feeling overwhelmed. In what way? Is this something I need to worry about if we’re going to try having a relationship?’

She stretches across to the coffee table. ‘Looks like we’re going to need this second spliff.’ She lights up, draws deeply and hands it to me, then exhales a long stream of smoke. ‘It’s just the way I’ve always been, especially as a kid. I didn’t process emotions well. Like, I’d get emotional sensory overload. It’s how I got into art, actually.’

I stay quiet to give her the space to talk.

‘I was about thirteen, first year at high school and had a fight with this kid in my class. He’d been taunting me for weeks. Little racial digs. And it was a shock because I went to a diverse school, and we had so many non-white kids, but he targeted me. Jazzy and my other mates were like, “Just ignore him.” But I couldn’t shake it. It felt so personal, and I couldn’t handle all the emotions associated with it. One day, he was up in my face saying shit like, “Are you black or are you white? Make up your mind”, followed by some racial slur, and I lost it. Smacked him up against a concrete wall, hand around his throat and said, “I’m biracial, you pasty twat”.’

I laugh. ‘Pasty twat?’

She grins. ‘Yeah, not my wittiest comeback, but it’s exactly what he was.’ She pauses as she tokes and passes the joint to me.

‘I thought I’d get a bollocking,’ she continues. ‘But instead I was put into art therapy and started to learn how art can help you deal with emotions.’

‘Huh,’ I say. ‘I’ve never thought about art like that.’

‘A lot of people don’t, not consciously anyway. But art often provokes a reaction of some kind, and your reactions can be a good indicator of what you’re feeling and thinking. If you give yourself the space to sit with it, it can really help you process things.’

‘What happened to him?’ I ask.

‘He was put into some sort of therapy program too, and his parents were mortified. They turned up at our house to apologise to me and Mum and Dad. He turned out all right though, and a few years later he said sorry to me, and we had a good talk about it.’

I stub out the joint and cuddle back into her.

‘That event kind of changed the course of my life, I think,’ she says. ‘I can’t imagine not being involved in art now.’ She dips her head to kiss me, her mouth smoky from the weed. ‘So, to answer your question, I’ve learnt a lot about myself since we first met, and no, you don’t need to be worried. When things become too much, I find ways to deal with them. Usually involves tattoos and paintings, but that’s what works for me.’

I gaze at her, a little stunned. ‘I think we could be really happy together.’

She smiles. ‘Agreed.’

‘Holly?’

‘Mmm,’ I say, floating in that space between asleep and awake.

‘I have to go.’

My eyes flutter open. ‘Already?’ I prop myself up on my elbows and glance around, the sheet dropping to my waist.

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