Page 261 of The Long Way Home

“Right.” I nod.

He squints over at me for a second. “Did you wake him?”

I barely meet his eyes as I shake my head. “No, not last night.”

He sniffs a sad little laugh. “An interesting clarification there.”

I swallow. “I don’t like lying to you.”

His head falls back and he sighs as he covers his face. “You and me having sex with other people in the same house — who’d have thought it?” He looks over at me, tries to smile but just blows some air out of his mouth. “Worst sentence I’ve ever said.”

It is. I hate it and I don’t know what to say so I just look over at the TV. “Which one are you watching?”

“One of the ones on polar bears.” He unpauses it.

“Oh!” I tuck my feet under me. “I love this one.”

He looks over at me for a few seconds. “I know.”

I let my hand fall down in the space between us, it’s mindless and I rest it there, but BJ notices.

His eyes flicker down towards it and then he lets his own hand fall next to mine.

The backs of our hands touch and I freeze because touching him even in the smallest way is electric.

His hands are always so warm and I love his hands anyway, I always have. They’ve always been big but not grubby. Long fingers, not too skinny though, not too square, not too rounded, just strong hands that have held me through everything this life has ever thrown at me.

And then those hands that I love, that I think about touching my body every day, in my hair, on my face, under my pillow, those hands shift ever so slightly and his pinky finger links with mine.

I swallow heavy and clear my throat.

A smile breezes over his face as he stares straight ahead.

I purse my lips and don’t move my hand an inch as I say, “Did we start watching these before or after we did it?”

Looks over at me, brows low, almost like he’s offended. “After.”

“Oh.” I nod at the TV. Then I look at him squinting. “Why was I talking about the bees then?”

His mouth cracks open into a proper grin and his eyes flicker over my face. “You were in the Congo the week before, remember? With your family.”

“Oh! Yes—” I nod. “Mum’s Jane Goodall phase.”

My mother’s been through many phases, as we all know. The Jane Goodall one was one of the more wholesome ones.

Beej’s eyes go soft and he nods a few times. “Jane Goodall told you about the bees…”

I smile and make a little ‘hm’ sound, happy and content both to be here and to be wandering down memory lane.

It was the longest we’d been apart since we got together, that trip, and it wasn’t all that long. Just ten days or thereabouts, but for me at the ripe old age of 15, being away from BJ for that long, I might as well have been a POW. I begged for him to be able to come and my mother actually said yes, but then Marsaili convinced her that BJ and I were spending too much time together.

“Every waking moment!” Marsaili said and I made a sound at the back of my throat and said, “That’s hardly my fault, is it? I didn’t send me away to boarding school to live with my boyfriend.”

She rolled her eyes. “We didn’t send you away to boarding school to live with your boyfriend! You don’t live w— You go to boarding school and your boyfriend happens to be there also.”

“Lily said BJ could come!”

“And I’m saying you need some space from him,” Marsaili said. That was final.