Page 14 of Love and Other Paradoxes

Love the new rehearsal space. Let’s give it a try.

He showed Esi. In the glow of the screen, her face held a strange despair. “Now?”

“This is the first time she’s texted me in four days. If she wants to meet now, I meet her now.” He looked to her for reassurance.

“Right?”

She let out a breathless laugh. “You can’t keep asking me for help with her.”

He gazed at her in half-seeing panic. “I should meet her there. But—no. She can’t get there without me. And—shit. It’ll be

dark. And not in a romantic way. In a walking-off-the-roof-to-our-deaths sort of way—”

“Oh my God. Stop. Just—text her saying you’ll meet her nearby. And wait here.” She unlocked the café and disappeared inside.

He heard her rummaging about in a drawer as he composed a message asking Diana to meet him outside college. “Candles.” Esi

emerged with a heap of them, dumping them awkwardly into his arms. “Put them everywhere. You can’t overdo it.”

“Okay.” He distributed the candles between his pockets and ran a hand through his hair. He hadn’t put goop in it, but it was too late now. “Is this—do I look—”

She met his eyes. “You look fucking beautiful,” she said with perfect sincerity. “Go.” She turned him around and shoved him

gently in the back.

He ran. He ran down Mill Road under the thinning clouds, patches of star-studded black showing like glimpses of reality through

a dream. He ran away from how he was feeling, torn up and remade, all his raw edges showing. He ran towards Diana.

She replied as he got back to college.

Be there in ten.

He pelted up the stairs to his room, grabbed a lighter that one of his smoker friends had left on the battlements, and scrambled

to the secret terrace. In the dark it was otherworldly, a floating raft under an ocean of stars. He lit the candles and melted

their bases, sticking them down in clusters that hopefully evoked a romantic grotto on a private island and not the Phantom

of the Opera’s lair. He slid down the drainpipe, side-hopped along the ledge, leapt back onto the battlements, and crashed

into the living room, where he was dismayed to find Rob sinking face down into the sofa.

Vibrating with urgency, he hovered by his friend’s head. “What’s up?”

“Darcy just won the Michaelmas Game. Confetti grenade again.” Rob rolled over, his face a picture of misery. “My nemesis is

officially a Master Assassin.”

Joe felt for him, but he also felt the pressing need to get him out of the room within the next minute. “You can still win in Lent. Or May Week.” He sat Rob up, giving him a hearty clap on the back. “Go on. Get back out there. Grab your best rubber band and—and murder the shit out of someone.”

“I can’t,” Rob explained as Joe heaved him to his feet. “I’m dead, remember? The rules clearly state that dead people can’t

kill anyone, unless they join the Police... Why do I feel like you’re trying to usher me out of the room?”

“Because I am,” he admitted. “Diana’s coming over.”

“Oh. Right. Glad things are going well for one of us.” Rob headed morosely down the stairs. “Should you need me, I’ll be drowning

my sorrows in the bar.”

Joe sprinted past him, ran round the edge of the court, and burst through the college gate. Waiting outside was Diana, in

a military-style jacket paired with an absurdly skinny scarf.

“Joseph.” She eyed him, obviously judging his dishevelled hair and the fact that he was gasping for breath.

“Diana.” He held the gate open and gestured her through.

She didn’t ask where he was taking her. She walked beside him, her body carrying a strange tension. He felt a stab of guilt.

He had seen her message as a victory, another step on the path towards his future. He hadn’t thought about how she might be

feeling, or what had happened to make her contact him after four days of silence.

At the foot of his staircase, he turned to her. “Are you okay?”

She looked more amused than touched. “Ha. You’re very sweet.” She pulled her scarf tighter. “All the way to the top?”

He nodded. She took the stairs ahead of him, then waited demurely by the door while he unlocked it. “So this is your set?”

He nodded. She cast her eye over the carpet stains and the cheap wine, Rob’s tally of kills tacked up above the fireplace.

“If this was all a ploy to get me into your bedroom...”

“Not into. Through,” he said, opening the window and climbing out.

She followed him onto the battlements. Steadying herself in the wind, she looked out over the lamplit hush of the college

court. “Not bad.”

“We’re not there yet.” He leapt across to the ledge. “This way.”

She looked at him sternly. “Are you sure this is safe?”

“No. It’s incredibly dangerous.” He reached out, offering her his hand. He was surprised to see that it was perfectly steady.

“But I know for a fact that neither of us is dying tonight.”

She stared at him across the plunging gap. Then she looked down, with a tiny shake of her head, as though rebuking herself

for being impressed. “All right.” She climbed up on the edge of the battlements. She swayed once, twice, and leapt, landing

lightly beside him. “Okay,” she said huskily. “Where now?”

“Follow me.” He strode confidently along the narrow ledge towards the drainpipe. The third time, it was almost becoming routine.

He had forgotten it wasn’t routine for Diana.

He didn’t see her fall. He only heard a shriek, high and shattering. He lunged for her, grabbing the drainpipe with his other

hand almost as an afterthought. She caught his arm and he pulled her in. She clung to him, her body pressed against his, her

breath loud and panicked in his ear.

“Shit. Fuck. Shit.” She was shaking, waves of near-death running through her. He held her close, feeling her heartbeat drown

out his own.

“I’ve got you,” he said, shocking himself with his own calm.

She disentangled herself from him carefully, like someone unhooking their life support. “Let me guess,” she said, as if nothing

had happened. “We’re going up the drainpipe.”

“We don’t have to,” he offered. “We can go back.”

She chuckled, a low, rolling sound in the dark. “Oh, no, Joseph. It’s far too late for that.”

She stepped neatly around him and started climbing. He heard her gasp while he was still halfway up. By the time he emerged,

she was framed in the gap between the two roofs, staring out at King’s College Chapel.

He couldn’t help grinning. “You like it?”

She turned to him. In the candlelight, her face was more than beautiful: it was as if the soft, golden glow was coming from

inside her. “How long did it take you to set this up?”

He shrugged. “Five minutes. Nine, if you count climbing here and back again.”

She leaned over his shoulder to look at the drop. “You weren’t afraid. Not even when I almost fell.”

He shook his head, acutely conscious of her closeness. “You weren’t going to fall.”

She looked at him curiously. When he didn’t elaborate, she went to sit between two clumps of candles that formed a natural

stage. “I don’t understand you, Joseph.” She leaned back on her hands, arching her neck. “You write with such conviction.

And the way you talk sometimes, it’s as if you have this—this unshakeable belief. But you don’t seem to actually hold that

belief inside you.” She examined him, candlelight chasing shadows across her face. “It’s as if it comes from the outside,

somehow.”

“Oh, it does,” he said, aiming for an echo of her dry tone. “A time traveller told me I’m going to be a famous poet. That’s

the only reason I believe it.”

She shook her head with a tiny smile. “So. If you’re not afraid of heights, what are you afraid of?”

He stared up at the darkness, waiting for his eyes to adjust and reveal the stars. There was nothing to be afraid of anymore. Fear came from not knowing, and he knew everything. It was a strangely empty feeling. And, he realised, it was a lie. He was still afraid, but he didn’t know what he was afraid of. Images swirled in his mind. The infinite paths in the painting on Diana’s neighbour’s door, one of them marked out for him. Esi’s palm swiping water across the table, unmaking her art like she wanted to unmake her life.

“I’ll tell you what you’re afraid of.” He felt the burnished weight of Diana’s attention. “You’re absolutely terrified of

making a fool of yourself.”

He laughed, the surprised, gut-punch laugh that comes with recognising a truth. That was it, after all: the dark mirror of

his desire to be great, that he might put his soul on display and find it judged worthless. He knew now there was no danger

of that; still, he couldn’t shake the lingering terror. “Fair enough.”

“It’s not funny, Joseph.” She hugged herself against the cold wind that made the candles flicker. “Fear can be a good thing,

up to a point. It keeps you sharp, keeps you striving. But too much fear can paralyse you.”

“I know.” He came to sit down next to her. “That’s why I haven’t finished a poem since I got to Cambridge.”

She frowned at him. “Except for ‘A Taste of Stars.’”

He froze. The honesty of their conversation had caught him: he had been talking to her like she lived in his head, as if he

didn’t have anything to hide. “Aye, except that one,” he said, trying to sound normal. “I guess the competition motivated

me.” She was looking at him strangely. He could taste his own lies, sour and electric on his tongue. He cleared his throat.

“What about you? What are you afraid of?”

She looked out into the dark. “I’m afraid of waking up one day in my thirties and realising I missed my chance.”

He stole a glance at her profile, serious in the low light. His heart filled with the knowledge of who she would be, of how

completely her future would realise her hopes. He smiled. “You’re not going to miss your chance.”

She looked at him under her eyelashes. “Did your time traveller tell you that?”

He shook his head, gazing at her. “I don’t need a time traveller to tell me that you’re going to be a star.”

She drew in a heavy, shuddering sigh, as if he had given her a wonderful gift. “Do you ever just want to be...” She looked

down at her hands. “More than you are?”

“Yes,” he said, his soul singing with it. “Every second.”

She leaned against him, a touch so brief he could have imagined it.

They sat side by side, looking out at the roof of King’s Chapel, the stars above dimmed by the floodlights. The moment was

everything he had imagined Cambridge to be. It should have been glorious, transcendent, but he was so conscious of its significance

that it felt like he was watching it happen to someone else.

Diana’s phone buzzed, and kept buzzing. “Fuck.” She didn’t need to say that it was Crispin. He read it in the tension of her

shoulders as she pressed the phone to her ear and turned away. “Yes.”

A man’s voice, low and indecipherable. She said, “You’re really asking me why?”

A pause, then a questioning tone. She sighed. “Well, the thing is, Crisp, when you say those things, it makes me not want

to be around you.”

The voice went softer, coaxing. She closed her eyes. “Okay,” she breathed. She hung up and stood, swaying. “I have to go.”

He got awkwardly to his feet. “Let me walk you back.”

She gave him a wry smile. “Don’t worry, Joseph. I’ll be careful, since you think my future is worth sticking around for.”

She studied him, a cool, evaluating gaze that made him feel like he was under a microscope. “Are you doing anything for New

Year?”

“Uh. No. I mean—I’ll be at home.” He should have made something up—who in their right mind admitted to having no plans for

New Year beyond getting drunk with their parents?

“Sounds depressing.” She held out her hand. “Do you have a pen?”

“What kind of question is that?” he asked, producing one from his jacket pocket.

She smiled. “Ready to poesise at a moment’s notice.” She took the pen, then his hand—hers was icy cold—and wrote on it in

prickly letters. He looked down as an address in London materialised on his skin. “Come to my party.”

“Okay,” he said, trying to sound like he wasn’t bothered. Worried he’d overdone it, he added, “Thanks.”

“It’s the very least I can do,” she said archly. “You saved my life, after all.”

He laughed. “Not sure it counts if I’m the one who endangered it in the first place.”

“Oh, it counts.” She kissed him on the cheek, then dropped over the edge of the roof.

He touched the place where her lips had met his skin. He felt it burning long after she had gone.