Page 4 of Forever is Now

“At first it was just Mum,” he told me, “just her being hit. When I wasn’t there. But...” He shook his head. “Last week.” His breaths shook—like, so loudly. “I thought I could help her, but she... she sided with him. Kicked me out.”

My eyes widened. “Kicked you out?”

He looked down at his hands. He had a hangnail on one finger, and I watched as he appeared to steel himself before he tore it off. He flinched as he did it though, and it made me feel sick, imagining it all. The pain.

“Where are you staying?” I asked. I was worried my tone had come out too harsh, but he just looked at me with soft eyes and shook his head. And it was that thought—of Ruari sleeping in a back garden somewhere, or a doorway or a gutter—that really made me feel so, so sick. I reached out, placed my hand over his. His skin was cold. “We’ve got a spare room,” I said, even though Mum was always telling me not to call it a spare room. It was Matilda’s, even if recently when she’d visited she’d chosen to stay in hotels in Exeter. Said that was easier for her work.

“No, I can’t,” Ruari said. “I...” His face crumpled.

“No arguments. You’re staying with us.”

So, that’s what happened.

Mum really liked Ruari. I think she knew that me and him were going to get together before we actually did. I mean, we were getting on well, and he did live with us for a bit, until Social Services sorted things out for him. They managed to get hold of his dad—apparently he’d just been released from prison, not that I’d even known back then that he had been inside—but then his mum ended things with Al, and Ruari did go back home.

I was worried at first. So was Mum. I kept messaging him, talking to him, and he did still come over to my house a lot. He said he felt calmer here, and I know he never really wanted to move out. But he also felt incredibly guilty about putting my mum to the trouble—he told me this once.

Anyway, Ruari and I started dating that summer we left Sixth Form, not that we really put a name to it at first, but we’d started seeing each other more. When Hana, Julia, Dante, and Ashley would leave my house, Ruari would find an excuse to stay a bit later. But it was different than when he was living with us, for those two months. Then, I’d been there for him, but I was... I don’t know how to describe it. Well, I was trying to think of him as a brother, even though such a huge part of me often wanted to reach out and hold his hands. I’d want to hug him, hold him, as soon as I saw him.

I just wanted to be there for him. Reassure him.

But when it was that summer, and he began hanging around at my house more than the rest of our friends, I felt the shift in the air. The change. We’d sit on the patio. I’d be painting my toenails or something and he’d just watch me, smiling. When I painted my fingernails, he’d do my left hand for me and he’d take really great care with it too, frowning a little as he did so. I must admit, I loved it when he painted my nails. Loved his touch on me, the soft and careful way he held my hands, yet his grip was also firm, certain, reassuring.

And we’d be sitting so close. So close I could just reach across, rest my head on his shoulder, or kiss him.

Iwantedto kiss him. I really did. But I was... well, nervous. What if he thought we were just friends?

And I didn’t want to risk things by making the first move and getting it so, so wrong.

But we’d go to the cinema together. Just the two of us, without telling our friends. It felt special, magical. It was us. And it felt like a date.

We finally had our first kiss on August 9th2013. That was... well, I almost don’t want to tell you. It feels too personal, you know? Like, I’m being expected to share so much of me. Leave nothing untold, no stone unturned. Who else in the world is that expected of?

I mean I want to keep some things for me. But I also know that the public really wants to know. And people like you think that I don’t deserve privacy.

It’s the curse of being an author too. People think they’re entitled to every part of my story. [She laughs.]I just wish they’d understand that my books are fiction, but my life is... well. It’s mine.

Anyway, I wanted to do this project with you to not just make people understand, but to tell you why you’re wrong. To argue with you—and to win. You may smile, Adelaide, but I know what I’m doing. And in doing this, I’ve kind of given up any right to privacy. All the covers are being stripped back.

So, mine and Ruari’s first kiss. Begin early with something romantic—hook everyone.

It was at a bus stop, near the top of Okehampton. Not that romantic, but maybe we can spin it that way.

He was getting on a bus, and I was waiting with him. As the bus trundled into sight, in a long line of traffic, I turned to say goodbye to him. The stop itself wasn’t busy, we were the only ones there. I went to hug him—as I often did—and that’s when it happened.

His lips, soft, brushed mine. I gasped a little, feeling electricity whizz through my body. My knees suddenly felt weak—that old cliche—and then I kissed him back.

To be honest, it was a pretty chaste kiss. Neither of us were that experienced or anything. But it was perfect for us.

[Four seconds of silence]

Summer Taylor-Braddon: Anyway, a few weeks later, our A-level results came in. A Thursday morning. Terrible weather. I’d been supposed to meet Julia and Hana at the dry cleaners’ shop down the bottom of Oke, and we were going to walk up together. But when I got there—absolutely soaked, because I’d walked down the massive hill in the pouring rain, I found Julia and Hana had already left. Hana’s mum worked in the shop. That’s why we’d chosen to meet there. Take the final walk to school together. But it didn’t work out like that.

I’d felt more anxious, walking in there on my own. Felt, I don’t know, strange. But I’d got into my first place university. Kingston. London.

I still don’t know why I actually applied. I mean, I didn’t think I’d get in. I applied more as a ‘may as well’ kind of thing. But I got in.

Ruari wasn’t going to uni though. That was the problem.

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