Page 136 of Oar Than Friends

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Katey, babe, I’m so sorry for everything. I’m so sorry for all the stress I caused you and for acting like a brat, and for not listening to you when you said us being together would cause you problems. I didn’t want to believe it, because you’re the first perfect thing I’ve ever had in my life and I didn’t want to hide you.’ I pressed a finger to her lips as she opened them to speak, ‘No, let me finish. I’m so sorry, and I’m planning to spend as long as I need to make it up to you. Which is why I called my father and told him I wasn’t going into politics. That I wanted to be a teacher. Oh, and I was going to Cambridge.’

‘Oh my god,’ she gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. ‘What did he say?’

‘He hung up, and hasn’t spoken to me since,’ I shrugged.

‘Oh Oz,’ her face dropped, ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘I’m not. It’s totally worth it. You taught me how to follow my dreams, not the dreams of my family.’ Her face was warm against my hand as I cupped her cheek.

‘I guess it’s something we taught each other. I’m sorry too. I’m sorry for not trusting you more. If I had, maybe we wouldn’t have had this time apart.’

I shook my head. ‘No, we needed it. We wouldn’t be here now without it. But how about, from this point on, we stop dwelling on the past and focus on the future. Starting with where we want to live.’

‘I don’t care, as long as it’s with you.’ She smiled, her perfect smile, and tugged my shirt down until my mouth was close enough to brush against hers.

‘I’m going to hold you to that.’

It took me a second amongst the cacophony of everything else, but the familiar click of camera lenses brought me back to the present. ‘Um, babe. Let’s go somewhere quieter. People are watching us.’

She stepped back a little, enough that I could see her cheeks were more flushed from our almost kiss than the cold air still blowing around, and smiled. My heart lurched again, I’d really fucking missed that smile.

‘I don’t care. Let them watch. It’s worth it if it means I get to have you.’

‘You have me. You’ve always had me. And this time I’m not going anywhere, except maybe into the changing room to get in some dry clothes.’

And with that, I took her hand in mine again and led us back to the boathouse.

A light blue and a dark blue, step by step.

Epilogue

Arthur

‘Babe, where am I putting this?’ I held up the lobster-shaped chopping board – a present from my sister.

Kate peered around the kitchen door and shrugged unhelpfully. ‘Wherever you want.’

I shook my head and reached out to pull her back in, wrapping my spare hand around her waist, and dropped a kiss on her nose.

‘Nah uh. The kitchen’s your domain. You know I can’t cook for shit, and seeing as you wouldn’t let me bring James to come and help organize it, you need to help me with where you want stuff. It’s your new career after all.’

She wriggled out of my grip and marched over to an open cabinet on the kitchen island. ‘Put it in here.’

‘Okay,’ I replied, stealing another quick kiss as she walked out to continue unpacking the rest of the living room.

We’d been here five days, and were yet to make a dent in half of the boxes. I wasn’t even sure they were all ours, because for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how we had so much stuff. But this morning Kate had woken up and, to my dismay, shot out of bed without so much as a cuddle, announcing the rest had to be donetoday. Then promptly invited our family and friends over for dinner as incentive to get it all cleared up in time.

I ripped open the tape on the next box I had to unpack,pulling out the bottle of champagne she’d been presented as winning coxswain for the Boat Race. It was hard to believe four months had passed since then, or how much we’d managed to cram into the time.

As predicted, I’d graduated with a First in classics.

Kate had opted not to finish her year, and we spent the one weekend England decided to have an early ‘record-breaking’ heatwave packing up her room and moving her into my house for the summer, much to the delight of Charlie and Brooks, who’d fallen in love with her almost as deeply as I had.

Though I think in Charlie’s case, it was that he finally had someone to share the cooking with, and in Brooks’ case it was the regular visitor in the form of Imogen, who’d frequently arrive unannounced, and stay for the night.

It had taken me less than a week of living together to realize I never wanted to be apart from Kate again, and a week after that I realized how hopelessly I’d fallen in love with her. Without our demanding schedules we actually had time to sit, and plan out what we wanted to do.

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