Page 46 of Sad Girl Hours

Chapter Forty-six

Saffron

I’ve tried to be perfect my whole life. And I’ve always felt like I’ve come up short.

But right now, as Nell puts her hand up to cup my cheek, gentle at first and then pulling me in tighter in a way that makes my entire body feel weak, her lips moving against mine, I feel distinctly magnificent .

I rise up a little, positioning myself better so I can have my hands on her, in her hair, sliding down her arm, anywhere – I just need to be touching her. I’ve waited long enough.

I move my hand to her waist, slipping it under her silk shirt so I can hold her tightly there and touch her skin. She lets out a gasp as my fingers make contact with her.

It would be enough for me, to see her like this – hear her like this – but Nell seems to take this as a challenge, pushing me back down until I collide with the wall, then sliding as close as she possibly can, her hands touching my cheeks, running down my neck, her palm sliding down between my collarbones until it gets to the neckline of my dress, which she hooks her fingers into and drags me forward to meet her mouth once more.

“Do you know how long I’ve wanted to do this?” she says, breaking away from me. I want to pout for a second, but then I see the way she’s looking at me.

“If it’s anywhere near as long as I’ve wanted to do this, then yes, I do,” I say, looking right back into those perfect eyes that are screaming that they want me, and hoping mine are screaming the same back. “Fake New Year’s Eve, last year.”

Nell draws back a little. “Wait, really? That very first night?”

“That very first night,” I confirm. “Why, when did you…”

“Well, a little since then, but for me it was the night of the Ferris wheel. I, um.” Her eyes flick down. “I think I’m … demisexual. And, even though I knew I loved you in some way, I wasn’t totally sure until that night. When you were completely honest with me and I felt so connected to you.”

“Me telling you all that stuff made you want to…”

“Not directly. I’m not saying you said you were depressed and I was like, ooh, just my type. I just mean … you weren’t hiding any more. I didn’t feel like you were performing. I felt like you were being you . And I— Well, turns out I pretty much love you.”

This is all so new, in the absolute most wonderful way. She loves me. Not the idea of me, not the internet version with the captions and filters and the perfectly curated music, me . And I love her even more for it. I have to tell her.

“I love you too.” The words come out sounding like an ache that’s been begging to have words put to it. “And not in the way we always say it – although, granted, when I’ve been saying it recently, I haven’t meant it like that either.”

Nell’s bites her perfect lip over her smile. “Me neither.”

“I mean, I love you. For real.”

“For realsies?” Nell jokes.

“For realsies.”

Nell’s smile makes me think of what she said earlier about not being able to look right at me.

“And, again, I don’t know what’s going to happen next year…” I don’t want to think about it right now. “But I’m always going to be grateful to you, Nell. You’ve made winter feel like spring. I don’t have the words for it, not really—”

“Then stop trying to find them and just kiss me ,” she says firmly, and God , she’s incredible. I’d do anything she told me, especially when it means pulling myself back into her and dissolving into a haze of I love you s and a pure kind of wanting unlike anything I’ve ever felt before.

“THERE YOU ARE.”

The bright light makes us both squint, drawing back from each other so quickly that it makes Nell bump her head on the wall and wince, as the door is thrust open and the duvet whipped out from in front of us. I attempt to flatten myself down, putting one hand up to smooth my rumpled curls.

“This is a terrible hiding place,” Naomi complains. “We’ve been looking for you for aaages . We thought you might have fallen in the well and drowned.”

Nell springs right into action. “All right. First, we’ve had a metal grid locked over the well since you guys were little because we know what you’re like, so we couldn’t possibly have been in there.

And secondly, if you’ve been looking for us for ages, then doesn’t that make this an excellent hiding place?

” she says, swinging her legs down to jump out of the cupboard and then offering me her hand.

“No,” Naomi says stubbornly. “But anyway, it’s your turn to seek now and we’ll hide.”

“No can do,” Nell says. “It’s twenty minutes to midnight. We’d better rejoin the party and get ready.”

“Just a quick one!”

“Nope, sorry, kiddo. I won’t risk missing midnight because I’m digging around the pigsty.”

“I hid in the pigsty earlier. I’m not an idiot – I wouldn’t use the same place twice. But whatever, Saffron’ll—”

“Sorry, Naomi. I think Nell’s right.”

She fixes me with a look of utter betrayal. “I thought you were cooler than Nell. I guess I was wrong.”

How has she learnt to be so savage in a mere nine years on this earth?

“That’s enough.” Nell’s manoeuvring Naomi by the shoulders towards the stairs. “Let’s go.”

“Found them!” Naomi’s victory cry reaches Owen who’s in the lounge by the snack table, his fist in a bowl of crisps, clearly having given up on looking for us. “They were in the airing cupboard, sitting on the shelf like really big gnomes.”

Nell’s dads look round at all this commotion, and I suddenly feel very conscious of the fact that I undoubtedly look quite rumpled.

I’m hoping that having been huddled in a literal cupboard will cover our backs when Nell’s grandma sidles over to us and says, “Hello, dearies. Am I mistaken or do you appear to have swapped lipstick shades?” She gives us a very overexaggerated wink before sidling away again.

Nell and I exchange a guilty look and then promptly dissolve into giggles.

“I’m so sorry about my family,” Nell says.

“It’s fine.” I laugh, taking the glass of champagne Nell pours for me. “I love them, honestly.”

“I love you ,” Nell says, clinking her glass to mine. “And you’re very kind.”

I smile back at her. “I love you too.”

And I do. I love Nell. Perfect, brave, ridiculous Nell with all her wonderfully weird family, her witchy clothes and candles, her occasionally hurting but always perfect body, her passions and her poetry.

Midnight nears. I can’t help but think back to last year.

Not exactly this time last year, but standing out in the freezing cold on pretend New Year’s Eve with Nell, joking while I felt like I was dying.

She was standing there with me, so alive, so bright, even in the dark.

I still can’t believe she came out just to see if I was OK, only having met me a couple of hours earlier. But that’s Nell, I suppose.

I sip on my champagne. I’ve never had a New Year’s Eve that’s been as good as the ones I’ve imagined in my head. When the clock’s struck midnight, it’s always been just another day, still just another year, and I’ve still been just a girl standing on a precipice, hoping for something more.

It’s different this year. I already have something more. Now I just have to hope against all hope that I can hold on to it.

We count down, and when the clock strikes midnight we all cheer. Nell turns to me and, not caring who sees, we kiss again. Not just like it’s New Year, but like the world is ending.

She tastes like champagne fizz and forevers.

Later, when the party has dispersed, all the chaos has quietened and Nell and I are back in her room, we help each other out of our dresses and fall back into each other, the air mattress on the floor forgotten.

I try to show her how badly I want this with kisses trailed on bare skin and soft whispers and gasps that gently pierce the quiet oasis of her room.

Lying there later, her asleep next to me, our legs still intertwined, I think that if I had something to prove to her, I did it tonight.

My body is crying out to me to let it be pulled into sleep like Nell, but my mind is still buzzing.

It’s a new year.

Everything that happened in the previous one is behind me, last year’s news.

I think I can work with this.

I reach for my phone on the bedside table to check the time. The screen blinks the numbers back at me – three thirty. Good God. Luckily, I don’t think there’ll be any pressure from anyone to be up before noon at the earliest.

Underneath the time there’s my usual slew of notification symbols. I unlock the screen and thumb over them all. There are comments or likes on videos, and messages from the gang wishing me (us) a Happy New Year. And then, underneath, there’s also a message from my mother.

Pressure pools at the back of my throat.

I know it won’t be uplifting, or anything even close to it, but I can’t resist the tug from the back of my brain telling me to open it.

I’ve not heard from them since I sent the text telling them I’d be spending Christmas with Nell.

Part of me is stubbornly hoping for a Happy New Year . I click it open.

Turns out I do get a Happy New Year. But it’s just the opening for this:

Everything around me fades away. The fairy lights, the dresses on the floor, Nell sleeping by my side.

They’re coming up here. The party’s over.

I should have known really. Nothing this good ever lasts. Not for me.