Page 112 of A Collision of Stars

There’s enough space between her tears now that they dry on her cheeks.

‘Notmaybe. Definitely. You’re allowed to feel, Ava. I’m not a therapist, but I know they’d tell you the same.’ I run my thumb over the soft skin at her wrist and hope she doesn’t recoil against what I’m about to suggest. ‘I can’t tell you what to do, but if it helped telling me everything, it could be even more helpful telling a professional. Someone who you can be sure won’t say the wrong thing.’

She turns her head, looking at me for the first time since she started talking, and the intensity of it shatters my heart into athousand pieces. ‘You never say the wrong thing. I don’t know how you do it. It’s like you live in my brain.’

It feels like you live in minetoo, I want to say.

But I don’t. Instead, I let her rest her head on my shoulder and breathe.

I don’t know how long we sit like that. As the minutes pass, I’m sure I see some of the weight roll off her, grey smoke uncoiling and dissipating, until eventually her head is light enough to lift off my shoulder and face me. Her voice is croaky when she asks, ‘Be honest, how puffy are my eyes?’

She’s trying to bring back a sense of normality, so that’s what I’ll give her.

‘They look fine if you just,’ I gingerly put my hand over them, ‘cover them up.’

Even in her laugh’s weakened state, the sound of it fills my chest.

‘I’m glad I told you all of this,’ she says. ‘I thought I’d be okay with keeping it quiet, but I realised I didn’t want you to leave and not know what was going on.’

‘Thank you for trusting me. I’m really sorry I can’t be here to help out, somehow. Now feels like the time to have people around you who—’ I swallow the word down and continue, ‘People who care about you.’

She nods, and I want nothing more than to be able to take away the memories that hurt her and stomp down the fears that plague her. But I don’t have that power.

‘I’ll have Josie nearby this time. I won’t be by myself.’

‘She’ll be a good support for you.’

‘She will. And maybe it’ll be easier than last time. I’ve been through it before; I know what to expect. I think I’ll deal with it better this time around.’ She heaves a sigh as someone yells to their friend from the other end of the room. ‘Fuck, this was meant to be a fun evening. I’m sorry for crying.’

‘Ava.’ I peel a few strands of hair away from her cheek, her dried tears acting like glue. ‘Don’t ever apologise for that.’

‘Okay.’ She peers at the doorway. ‘Come on, let’s look around some more. You only get to sleep under the dinosaurs once.’

‘Unless you’re Sage.’ I stand and stretch my legs with a groan, offering Ava my hands to help her up.

‘Finn,’ Ava’s voice comes from the floor next to me in a stage whisper. I turn in my sleeping bag to face her. ‘Do you think anyone’s going to try to get it on beneath Dippy the Diplodocus?’

Everyone’s chatting in low voices and hushed giggles as they set up their sleeping mats around us, and it feels a lot like we’re at a primary-school sleepover. But looming over us is a full dinosaur skeleton, its shadow casting funny shapes over Ava’s face; her eyes still slightly swollen.

‘You know what they say, Ava. There’s no aphrodisiac quite like sauropod fossils.’

‘You’re telling me.’ She kicks her leg out towards me in her sleeping bag and I twist away to avoid it. ‘But youarewearing grey sweatpants. Everyone knows men wear grey sweatpants when they want to get slutty.’

A laugh jolts out of me and I tuck my arms deep in my bag, tugging a cord to pull the hood tight around my face so that all shecan see are my eyes and nose. ‘No funny business over here.’

‘The funny business is you using the phrase “funny business”.’ She stretches across and loosens the hood from my face, and I feel the accidental graze of her fingertips against my skin long after she’s settled back onto her mat. For a while, all I hear is a series of rustles as she wiggles around. With a grunt, she says, ‘I just want you to know, I am outrageously uncomfortable right now.’

‘I can be the big spoon if that’d help?’ I look over at her just in time to catch her rolling her eyes, just about visible in the dim light.

‘You and I both know you’d be the little spoon.’

I lean back against my pillow, eyes on the vaulted ceiling. ‘Goodnight Ava.’

‘Goodnight Finn.’

‘And goodnight Dippy.’

She laughs and whispers, ‘Goodnight Dippy.’

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