Page 54 of Sad Girl Hours
The smile is rising through my entire body, untethering me from gravity and making me feel as though I’m floating through the stars.
“If you want me to be. And also if you don’t.”
“ I …”
To love someone is always a risk.
But I’m realising that I’d take it a thousand times over for her. “I do,” I say, cursing the way my voice quivers. “I want that.”
For the first time, Saffron doesn’t look calm and composed. She looks hopeful in a completely unrestrained way, like her hope had been burning gently, but now flames are swarming over everything.
“It’s not always going to be easy.” Her eyes are staring into mine. “Loving me, I mean. I’m probably still going to be a mess a lot of the time. I’m going to have bad days and feel low and probably not be that fun.”
“You think I’m always a picnic to be with?
” I say with a wry smile. “I’m stubborn and occasionally grumpy and I get in hyperfocus mode where I may forget you exist. And there’ll be days when my body will be hurting and I can’t climb hills.
And who’s to say I won’t get low myself again in the future?
Anything could happen – things don’t always vanish completely. ”
“I don’t care,” she says, coming to stand mere inches away. I feel the space between us quivering to be closed. “I love you. All of you. And I’m so excited for all of it .”
I don’t know what to do with myself. I settle for reaching for her. “Me too. If you really mean it, Saffron, then me too.”
“I mean it.” Her smile could be seen by someone miles below us. “Really.”
I kiss her, both of us tasting a little of salt, the wideness of the universe above and around us, cloaking us with its infiniteness and the possibility of a future filled with exactly this . So much this.
When we pull away, I’m able to ask a couple of questions that have been playing on my mind.
“This is all perfect, but I do have to ask. Firstly, what on earth is Kenneth doing here?”
“I stole him.”
“You what?”
“ I stole him . I didn’t plan it exactly. It just sort of happened.”
“Sure. A spot of spontaneous retriever retrieval – happens to us all,” I say. “So we’re definitely going to circle back to this later, but for now my second question. Why did you bring me all the way up here to say it? Was it just the stars? I’m glad if that is it,” I add, “but still.”
“That wasn’t quite it,” Saffron admits. “Just after I decided I had to come back and sort my shit out, I got a notification on my phone from that app Casper told us about way back in September. The Northern Lights one.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. It said that some places in the north might be able to see the Northern Lights if it was a clear night, which – lo and behold – it definitely is. I know how much you love completing tasks, and this was one of our last things on the bucket list, so … I believe if we look north…”
I hardly dare to hope as she manoeuvres us both round. “Clue’s kind of in the name.”
“Then they might be…”
They’re not there. But, thankfully, we have a lot to do while we wait.
Namely, kissing and talking about everything the other’s missed.
I tell her about making the shortlist – turns out she already knew, but she tells me how proud she is and echoes Jenna’s surety that I’m going to win.
I also tell her how fucking weird the others were today, and how Vivvie literally pulled the goddamn f ire alarm just to get me to leave the building.
“Oh my GOD!” She laughs. “At least we know they’re all ride and die for us. I feel weirdly loved that she committed a felony just to manifest this.”
“They’re all batshit. But I love them.”
“Me too. And I love you .”
“I love you too.” I think it’ll take a while before my smile isn’t audible when I say that. “I never—”
“Nell…” Saffron freezes up, I feel her body tensing next to mine. “ Look .”
At the edges of the hills, the sky has turned a deep amethyst with bright green light underneath it. It’s faint when I first turn my head but deepens with my gaze, the light swirling with invisible ridges, folding back in and out on itself.
My hand finds Saffron’s. Our fingers lace together and squeeze tight as we look out at the Northern freaking Lights filling the sky in front of us.
“Nell.” Saffron’s voice is tremoring but it doesn’t break the quiet, it compliments it, like the world knows we’re meant to be here right now.
“Yes?” I say, turning back to find her looking at me, not at the sky.
“I didn’t know it was possible to love – or be loved – this much.”
“Me neither. And yet…” My voice trails off to leave room for whatever’s to come.
She smiles. “ And yet .”
How pretty it is to open one’s mouth to sing, without yet knowing the tune.
To lace up shoes without knowing over which earth their footprints will be scattered.
To love without knowing when or how it will end, only knowing at least one heart must be broken.
To write poetry not because you have the answers, but because you have questions to ask of the world and of yourself.
And the shape of the poem – while often less revealing than desired –
still reminds you of something
you’re not quite sure what
but there’s something there
that your words have helped you say hello to.
Whatever it was didn’ t come to you true like an arrow
aimed straight for the bullseye in your brain
it came slowly, timid and unsure.
But, over time, you get to know it,
it comes to trust you,
it lets you gather it into your arms
and call it yours.