Page 59 of The Interview
“This is for you, you know? These areyourpeople, and they’re all herefor you, because ofyou, to supportyou,”Cam says with his mouth pressed against my ear.
“I know.” I sigh. “And I’m incredibly grateful to them for that, you included. But sometimes—a lot, in fact—it’s really overwhelming. Sometimes I don’t feel I deserve it. I’ve lost so much, and I know every day I should be grateful for what I’ve got, what we’ve got, but I’m not. When I’m stuck in traffic, when you leave tea bags in the sink, when my favourite shows are released weekly and I can’t binge-watch them, when the girls borrow my stuff without asking… they’re all such trivial and minor things in the grand scheme of things, but they piss me off. Then five minutes later, I’m overwhelmed with guilt for being so petty and ungrateful for this life I’ve been given.”
Cam turns me around to face him, placing one hand around my hip, the other into the middle of my back. I look up at him.
“You weren’t given anything. You fucking fought, and you fought hard for what you’ve got, what you’ve created. Humans are complicated. There’s something in us that likes a good moan. You can’t be grateful for everything, twenty-four-seven. What you’re venting about probably isn’t even what’s pissing you off. It’s probably something deep-rooted that you don’t want to bring to the surface, but you’ve got to have some release, so you complain about the small things instead. Doesn’t make you ungrateful or mean you don’t deserve all of this.”
My lips rattle together as a breath and a laugh escape them simultaneously.
“I… thank you. I needed to hear that, but now I think I’m going to?—”
“No crying.” He kisses my nose. “Save it for the sofa. I love you. I just wish sometimes you’d give yourself a break and stop being so hard on yourself.”
“I do, I try,” I say on a breath.
“We both got this second shot—one we both thought at some stage was unachievable. Yeah, we should be grateful for that, but in the moments we’re not, babe, we don’t need to be eaten alive by guilt.” He kisses my mouth, and I want to stay here, just like this, for always.
“Remember when the kids were toddlers, and we were dealing with three lots of terrible twos and a threenager all at the same time?” I ask, causing Cam’s dark brows to pull together in confusion.
“Yeah?”
“We used to explain it to them, and each other, as big feelings they didn’t know how to handle yet. Well, here I am, nearly sixty, and every time I think I couldn’t love you more, you say things like all you’ve just said, and what I feel does something to me physically. My reaction is visceral. It’s like an ache in my belly and my heart that overwhelms me, and I want to throw myself on the floor and kick my arms and legs till it passes, because even now, after all these years, I’m still terrified by how much I love you.”
Cam reaches out and brushes his thumb across my cheek as he looks down at me.
“It’s only your belly and heart that aches? I hit you with my best shot, and I get zero reaction from your pussy?” He wiggles those brows of his.
“You just had to go and ruin a beautiful moment, didn’t you?”
He’s about to protest when our deep, meaningful, and utterly beautiful moment comes to an absolute end at the sound of Ashley’s voice.
“How much did you put away last night? You look like shit.”
When I return to my previous position, with my back pressed against Cam’s front, his arms wrapped around me, I see that she’s talking to Len, who’s chugging on a bottle of water.
“I didn’t sleep great,” he says as he screws the cap back on. “Weird dreams all night.”
“Really? Marley was the same, talking in his sleep all night. Done my head in.”
I look between them as something, a memory—or was it a dream?—about a conversation I had with Sean flickers in my mind. There’s so much going on in my head right now, I can’t quite reach whatever it is and decide to pack it away for another time.
Twenty minutes later, the room’s quiet, and I’m back on the sofa with my mic on, and the cameras rolling. Daniel has asked me to pick up immediately after the fallout from Paris. I stare at him blankly for a few long moments before speaking.
“Being totally honest, I remember the events of that summer, but not the details. Usually, when I pull on a memory, I can tell you the weather, the music I was listening to, and what I was wearing, but that first summer after Sean…” I trail off, shaking my head as I take a deep dive back into the emotions I was feeling at that time.
“I sat my exams and finished school. After the hate mail started to arrive, my parents decided it would be a good idea to get me out of the country. So, we went to their place in Portugal for about a month, which wasn’t great for me because it’s where me and Sean had shared our first kiss a couple of years earlier.
“I literally sat around the pool by myself, shopped with my mum, and discussed with her and my dad what I wanted to do next. I felt empty, hollow. I’m not going to sugarcoat it: I wanted to die. I was incredibly lonely. There were no mobile phones back then, so I only got the occasional call from Jim.She’d joined the band for the rest of their European tour as soon as we’d finished school, so they were just quick calls from hotel rooms or phone boxes. I’m absolutely not blaming Jim for my loneliness, though. We’d made plans to join the boys together, and just because my plans had changed, that didn’t mean hers had to. Plus, I’d told her I didn’t want to hear about Sean, the band, or their music, so it was a bit awkward when she did call because that’s all her life consisted of at that time. In contrast, mine was a whole load of nothing, and I didn’t see how it was going to change anytime soon. I didn’t have a backup plan, a plan B. I’d built my world around Sean and the band, and like I said before, when I lost that, I lost Jimmie, Lennon, and Marley right along with them.”
I take another long moment to process, to feel. Daniel remains silent, giving me control of the conversation.
“Is it only girls who get that feeling in their chest, in their stomach, when their heart breaks? Is it the same for blokes? That empty hollowness inside? Is it a universal thing, or different for everyone?”
My question’s rhetorical, but Daniel answers anyway.
“I think we all feel our own version of that. Everyone who’s ever had their heart broken can relate, but we’ll all have our own unique experience.”
“Hmm,” is all I respond with. “Anyway, when we get back to England, I enrol in sixth-form college. Back then, you left school at sixteen. I enrolled to do another couple of years, studied business, and fought with myself to keep going every day. I had the gym thing going on outside of school, and then my dad bought a shop on the high street in Brentwood. That’s when things finally took a bit of a turn.
