Page 79 of I Love You, I Love You, I Love You

Now

It’s a few days later and the weather is frigid in Waterloo, the sky wet, cold and hard. Me and my fourteen-year-old expectations stand by the stairs leading up to the South Bank, with puppet string legs. It’s so early. Early is good. Coffee, and then I’ll pretend I’ve got somewhere to be. I’m wearing a bright-pink flowery dress with a matching coat, and sandals. What was I thinking? I was so flustered getting dressed. I hold onto the silver rail of the staircase to steady myself, to take it all in. Ella, you have a fiancé. Go home and make pasta bake. I swallow. My adrenaline is making me shiver. Wait, are my knees knocking? My teeth, chattering. It’s not that cold. I use the little mirrored apple-logo on the back of my phone to make sure my mascara isn’t leaking. I hate so bad the idea of being just another girl in a pretty dress in Lowe’s jumble-sale pile of broken hearts. The foolish way I was always so sure that I was different from the rest.

I read the note back that I emailed myself on the train.

Ella, everything has changed; you won’t still feel the same after all this time. It would be very weird to love someone you barely know any more, strange to love someone based on the past. Grow up and get your fucking shit together. You’re getting married to Jackson now. Lovely Jackson.

I look at my engagement ring. The opal, a spy. I’ve got my eye on you.

I need a song. Headphones in so I can keep my stride cool and steady, feel like I’m on a catwalk. I have to remember this moment. But it can’t be a song I’d catch Jackson whistling whilst he takes a piss.

J.Lo’s ‘Waiting For Tonight’.

I’m nervous. Exam nervous. Doctor’s appointment nervous. Submission nervous. I should turn back. This feels wrong. I’m making it all up in my head. But I’m still walking.

The riverbank is almost empty. I linger. Don’t rush. I take my time to see the boats and birds. I let the new morning take me. The South Bank buffers the wind with its boxy concrete and blank blocks. And just across the river, a skyline waits like a tray of chocolates. The emptiness and opportunity of the new day gives me the freedom to be in my favourite place: the music video of my life. My Co-Star: Lowe.

This will be the first time in more than ten years we’ve been alone.

I imagine us spending the entire day together, falling through a trap door in the universe where nobody can find us. Do you want to run away together?

And then I feel stupid about that thought, insecure, like a fan lurking outside the gates of an actor’s hotel.

This Titan from my past stands before me, a figure in the distance, unzipping through the clearing like it’s nothing. A pair of scissors gliding through wrapping paper. The coolest guy you’ve ever seen in your whole life – Lowe Archer shark-finning his way up the riverbank where, for him, everything gives way. His stride, swinging, with intention but not arrogant. He grins – you can’t fake a smile like that – and I turn to goo on command. I do a stubby excitable wave, ridged, an Action Man greeting, like somebody wearing a too-small jacket afraid to tear the seams.

I smile. He smiles. I fight the urge to run to get to him faster.

Lowe looks older. A whole-the-distance-we’ve-been-apart older. I wasn’t expecting that. I thought he’d stay young forever. His thick hair is longer, long enough to fold behind his ears but I know that – I’ve seen the press photos. His moss eyes. His face thinner and sculpted, clean shaven, jaw squarer, nose, wider. Lowe is a man. Of course, he’s a man. But he’s still all there. Preserved, like he never lost a drop. He wears black skinny jeans and pointy boots, an expensive-looking mac with the collar starched up. He’s so refined. I still wear the same cheap perfume I did when we were nineteen. The one that triggers people our age because it reminds them of their first finger. Only now I’ve got grey hairs sprouting out my scalp like resurrecting skeletons from the dead.

Should I instigate the handshake? No, he won’t remember that surely? Don’t make it weird.

We hug. And time seems to halt. It’s been ten minutes and a hundred years at the same time. We’re just like riding a bike – muscle memory; we can’t forget. We pedal along, finding our balance.

I want to fall into him. To buckle my legs and collapse, to let him carry me, like the last ten years of hunting and wishing have taken their toll and, finally, I’m home. Mission complete.

I’ve got to stop telling myself these stories, that he’s too cool for me now, that he’d rather be out with someone else, got every one of our idols’ phone number on speed dial these days, seen the lively, jerky boobs of a thousand girls. Trashed the best hotel rooms. Got original cowboy boots from Texas. Eaten black cod in Japan. Climbed a mountain. Killed all his brain cells with cocaine. Been to wild parties that I’ve only seen in films where they drink from Red Cups. I probably can’t talk to him about music any more because all music now belongs to him. That’s just his thing now, his industry; he’ll have opinions on it all. That whilst we’re out he’ll get spotted by fans.

And how he’s probably told himself stories about me too. That it never happened for me. Sad little bubbly Ella.

We walk side by side. He’s quiet, sometimes laughing, sometimes responding, clearing his throat. Side by side is good because it gives me a second to catch my breath because I’m motor-mouthing my way along the river, panting. Can you pass out from walking and talking at the same time? Lowe has always been comfortable with silence. I am not. I’m rattling around like a pinball machine, lighting up and firing off memories and stories and total rubbish.

I talk my way past the spray-painted colourful Mexican food truck. Past the second-hand bookstalls under the bridge, trestle tables already smelling of damp and spiders’ eggs and others’ hands. We talk about TV. Books next. Hop-scotching along. It feels like everything I mention he’s not into or has never heard of. It’s miss after miss. ‘Have you really not seen that?’ and ‘How did you miss that? Gosh, you really do live under a rock, don’t you?’ Of course, ironically, I’m the one who lives under a rock of fiction and Lowe’s been touring the world, witnessing his magnificent dreams come true.

We see an early-riser kid skateboarding, echoing on concrete. He’s probably seventeen but I feel the same age as him. And, in the distance, I see her: the sitting, waiting, wanting girl on the sidelines. A cheerleader, watching the boy as though he’s as impressive as the Northern Lights.

We find a plump, squashy purple velvet sofa in the corner of a cinema café that is empty except for one waiter unloading the dishwasher. The high ceilings shrink us and every move we make feels spot-lit and gargantuan. The sofa eats us up.

‘We’re like The Borrowers,’ Lowe jokes.

I laugh and he does too.

Our knees knock; our legs touch. CHING. I obliterate.

We look at the menu.

Lowe reaches inside his jacket pocket and puts on a pair of glasses. GLASSES? I can’t even bring myself to look at him in them. Just keep looking at the menu. But my eyes aren’t looking, not really; I’m simply trying to steady my heart, stop my mouth from being so dry, trying not to gulp – lots. He’s all tentacled up with his bag and I long to be the strap of that bag, twisted up with him, close to his chest.

I spot his jewellery: his chain, his rings. And I find myself sitting on my hand, squashing my week-old engagement ring in-between the sofa and my bum cheeks, like how I might hide a blade if I was trying to escape a hostage situation. I won’t keep it there for-like-you-know-ever. Just until I calm down. Then I’ll relax and tell him my great news.

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