Page 103 of A Collision of Stars

Oh my fucking god Ava

Please reply and put me out of my misery

Help

Goodbye

I try to imagine him typing these messages out, hair getting more dishevelled with every run of his hands through it, and my heart flutters at the image. I’ve never wanted chaos, but if it looks like this, maybe I wouldn’t mind it.

I’ll see you tomorrow evening, Finn

After a particularly robotic, canned laugh from the TV, Max turns to me. ‘You and Finn are a thing, right?’

I burrow under the duvet with a grunt and shove my phone between the sofa cushions for fear he can somehow read the texts from his spot. ‘Can we please not pretend we’re the kind of siblings to talk about this sort of thing?’

‘Fine, fine,’ he says through a laugh, wiggling in the duvet cocoon and touching me with a single, repugnant foot, which makes me gag.

As I squirm away, my brain drifts to the party and I dimly remember something. ‘Did you get to speak to Dylan, by the way? The tall woman who showed up halfway through?’

His forehead creases as he tries to remember. ‘I think I did. Blue jeans? Amazing a—’ He clears his throat when he rememberswho he’s talking to. ‘Eyes. Amazing eyes?’

‘Subtle.’ He bites down a guilty grin and I continue, ‘But yes. She’s very pretty.’

‘Wasn’t she called Ellen? Why did I keep calling her Ellen?’

‘Because she was probably too nice to correct you. She works at the shop with me but wants to go travelling at some point. I meant to introduce you two properly but I completely forgot.’

He raises his eyebrows and says under his breath, ‘I wonder why.’

‘Sorry, what was that?’ I cup my hand to my ear.

‘I said, I totally understand why your mind would be elsewhere, because you were extremely busy having weirdly intense eye contact with Finn in front of everybody and thinking no one would notice.’

I’m now impossibly glad Max was out in the courtyard towards the end of the night. ‘What happened to not talking about our love lives?’

‘Oh, so you admit it’s your love life?’

‘I’m not entertaining this.’ I take as much of the duvet as I can but he yanks it back.

‘Whatever. I liked him. So if youwerea thing, it’d be nice. I feel like you’ve been happier recently.’ He echoes what Josie said to me a few weeks ago. Has Finn’s presence really affected me that much? ‘And if he’s around, maybe it’ll be easier for you to take my news.’

I stop tugging the duvet, my stomach dropping with my hands. ‘What news?’

I immediately want to tear off the duvet, tear off my skin, because the room is suddenly fifty degrees hotter and panic boils in my chest.

Max plays with the label on a cushion. ‘It’s fine, it’s not a big deal. Not as big of a deal as last time, anyway.’

Hope grows like weeds between the cracks of a pavement. All it takes is thetiniest amount of light, and then it sprouts, unruly. But it’s only ever one misstep away from being trampled on.

‘Max. What’s not a big deal?’

My heart pounds in my ears and I know what he’s going to say before he says it. Still, the words drag me under.

‘At my most recent scan the doctors found something concerning. They think the cancer’s come back just next to the original site. On my hip socket, this time.’

And just like that, the shutters go down, the windows are boarded up, and any hope of letting the sunlight in is snuffed out. Because this is the only thing that matters. The darkness that’s lived in the pit of my stomach for years rears its head, finally given the fuel it needs to do some damage.

A million questions run through my mind like they’re on ticker tape, but I start with the most important. ‘Are you okay?’

---