Page 30 of I Love You, I Love You, I Love You

‘You know what I mean.’ He nudges me shyly. ‘I even like the way you put your … headphones in your ear …’ he confesses. ‘It … I dunno the word … stop laughing.’ He tuts. ‘Oh, I’m just gonna shut up now.’

‘No, go on … sorry.’ I have got to stop cracking jokes as a reflex; I straighten my face. ‘Please say what you were going to say … ’

‘No. You’re annoying. That’s all you’re getting.’ He shakes his head, laughing, looking out to the trees. ‘I said it. I like the way you do stuff. That’s it.’

‘That’s sweet of you.’ I admit, ‘I like the way you do stuff too.’

I could write a book about how much I like the way he does stuff. Like that time I got to watch him eat a chicken balti bake. I mean, divine, the stuff dreams are made of. Or that time I thought he winked at me but he was just getting some grit out of his eye. Still, there is an unspoken promise between us, an unsaid vow that says – you are mine and I am yours. And everybody knows that now, so nobody dares cross the line. But we are too afraid to make it real on the trampoline with our friends watching.

Just. Kiss. Me.

But he has to get home.

Towards the end of the summer, when the seasons are calling closing time on the party of the holidays, a small group of us are out. The Twins scuttle back for their home tutor but I’m not ready for the warm months to be done just yet. I don’t ever want to go home to the inevitable. For the cold to bite at the mushy cracks of my crooked house on Palace Road, where I live as a loose thread on the hem of a skirt. Waiting for the walls to crumble in, for winter to freeze us.

‘Why don’t you want to go home? What are you avoiding?’ Lowe asks me.

‘Avoiding?’

Nobody had ever used the word ‘avoid’ to me in this psychological context before. It comes out.

‘My mum and dad are breaking up.’ I haven’t even told Aoife.

He says nothing. So, obviously, I fill the silence.

‘My dad’s moved out. His football bag gone, his CDs gone, his inhaler gone, his books gone. My dad is gone. I fucking hate my parents. I hate that house. I hate my life. I don’t know how to fix it. Everything’s going wrong and can you say something now?’

‘That’s shit,’ he replies. Lowe never talks about his parents. His ‘deeply in love’ parents. Maybe he doesn’t want to rub salt in my already quite salty wound? Maybe he’s just the ultimate love-child of the most in-love humans on the planet; he wouldn’t understand this feeling of heartbreak; he’s got nothing to say on the matter.

I try to look like I could use a hug by making my shoulders look baggy. Slouching, like I need propping up. Instead, he tears a tag off his shoe, eyes on the ground. He’s either the most empathetic person in the world or I’ve accidently hit a nerve. He clears his throat. ‘You’ve just got to get through it bit by bit.’

I nod. Great advice. Cheers.

‘You don’t understand,’ I moan. ‘I wish I was like … an orphan.’

Lowe laughs.

‘It’s true.’

‘Don’t say that; you’ve got amazing parents, Ella.’

‘Selfish parents.’

‘They really love you and they obviously did a good job … ’ He pushes my hair behind my ear. Nobody had ever done that to me before either. ‘Because they made you.’

And I seep into the grass.

His phone rings.

‘Shit, my dad.’

I jump up as though his dad is standing over us. Lowe steps away from me to take the call. Yep. Yep. K. Will do. K.

The call is over in less than thirty seconds.

His mood has shifted. Sometimes he doesn’t look like a kid. Sometimes he looks like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders.

‘OK?’ I ask.

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