Page 7 of Forever is Now

I don’t really know what made me do it, but I found an ace dating site, while sitting in this kitchen that both felt familiar and not, and ten minutes later, I’d made a profile. Filled out a little info. I was still feeling embarrassed though, so I didn’t use my real name as my username. I was Folkloric Girl. I still don’t know why I chose that. But I intentionally chose a pretty blurry photo, worried that someone in real life would see it, recognize me, and know my secret.

Then Mum was back, and it was all hugs and kisses and coffee-making andSummer, you really must try one of these Danishes I just picked up.My new room was pretty cool, too. Mum had unpacked my things for me and it looked like a back-to-front version of my old room.

I liked it, and I thought that the summer holidays might be okay. A couple months here, while I decided what to do—if I would be going back to Kingston.

Of course, I was going to be avoiding Ruari. Julia and Hana knew that. That was a given. We’d decided we wouldn’t be meeting with any of the guys. Just the girls, again. But my friends weren’t back yet. Hana was going to Disney Land Florida with her family and Julia was visiting somewhere in Italy with her roommates from uni. She’d shared halls with some pretty posh kids, and they’d even paid for her plane tickets out there.

So this gave me two weeks to myself. Just me and Mum. A chance for me to decompress and decide what I was going to do. I really didn’t want to go back to Kingston in the autumn. In fact, I couldn’t really think of anything I dreaded more—other than bumping into Ruari in the Post Office or the Co-op or something.

Mum and I drew up so many pros and cons charts that summer, about uni, staying at Kingston, leaving, transferring somewhere closer, doing a different course, taking a gap year—I didn’t even know that was possible mid-studies, but apparently it is. Just called something else though.

And it was mid-August, just as we were about to go out to go and meet Hana and her mum for coffee, when I got the notification from the ace dating site. Someone had liked my profile. Someone had sent me a message.

My heart pounded, because as soon as I saw the username, I knew. GraniteMan. Oh, I haven’t told you yet about that—so Ruari was obsessed with Dartmoor. He’d done Ten Tors when we were at school and his Duke of Edinburgh awards had involved hiking on the moors too. He’d become really fascinated with rocks and geology, and we spent a few days in the local museums, researching it all too. I’d light-heartedly called him ‘Granite Man’ and then it had kind of stuck.

So, when I saw this username, of course I thought it was him.

I felt so sick as I clicked onto the message.

Fancy seeing you on here.

I flushed too hot, then too cold. My clothes suddenly felt too small, too tight around my abdomen, and my underarms and back were slick with sweat.

Was this a joke? Were he and his mates laughing at me, having found out my deepest secret? The one secret I wasn’t ready to share with anyone. Because, well, I still didn’t quite understand it myself. I still felt embarrassed.

This is what you get for putting it online though, the voice in my head told me.

I didn’t reply to him. I convinced myself that it wasn’t him. That it was some other person from school, someone pretending to be him, playing a joke on me. Other people must have found out that I called him Granite Man.

But the next day, he messaged me again. He asked why I’d blocked him on Facebook and Instagram—I hadn’t, I just had deleted my accounts. It was too painful seeing him tagged in photos—expeditions and walks on the moor, training days with the army, coffee catchups, that sort of thing. He was asking why I’d deleted him though. He was always so full of questions.

I ignored his messages on the dating site—until I couldn’t. Him, in the doorway of Mum’s new house. Looking, so... the same. There was light misty rain sitting in his dark hair, on the lenses of his glasses. He looked a little taller than I’d remembered. I’d always thought we were the same height, but apparently he was now about two inches taller than me.

He’d also changed his style of clothes. I loved how he’d wear band shirts before, with dark jeans and chunky army-style boots. But now he was dressed more smartly. Not a suit, but casual smart. And I realized I didn’t know what he was doing now. For work, for fun, if he was with someone.

Seeing him again was like a huge chasm inside me was opening up, ripping my insides apart. I gasped and gasped, and yet his first words were, “You look well,” before he then laughed and said how formal that sounded.

I didn’t think I looked at all well, because I was pretty sure I was having some sort of asthma attack. I grabbed hold of the doorframe to steady myself and a splinter dug into the fleshy pad of my thumb. I pulled my hand back quick, eyes focused on the shard of wood, because that was easier—anything was easier—than looking at him.

As I carefully, cautiously, pulled the splinter out, I summoned up the courage to speak. Because it was courage—that was what I needed just to speak to him. “What do you want?” My voice shook.

“You,” he said simply, and I guess I knew that this was the moment. The romantic moment in some many romcoms and heartfelt romantic films where the couple finally realize that they need to be together. That they can’t live without each other.

I don’t remember which of us moved first. But then we were touching, hugging. His arms locked around me and I breathed in his scent—his deodorant hadn’t changed—and being with him, well, it felt like home.

We didn’t kiss or anything. No hands roaming under clothes. It was... chaste. Sweet.

I invited him in. We sat six feet apart in my mother’s living room, separate chairs for Mum had had to get new ones. The sofa that Ruari and I had snuggled up on in the old house and been damaged by the flood. I stared at Ruari’s feet as we sat there. He’d taken his shoes off and his socks had a hole in.

“How’re your parents doing?” I asked.

Hurt flashed onto his face, just for a second, but it was enough. Then he shook his head. A smile plastered its way across his face. “Good.”

I’ve always known when he’s lying. Always. And I told him that, and he just... well, he crumpled.

I don’t know which of us moved first, again, but we met in the middle of the living room, reaching for each other.

“It will be okay,” I whispered, as I held him, as he held me.

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