Page 63 of The Long Way Home

I didn’t say anything, I didn’t move a muscle.

“What are you going to do?” I eventually asked. Stupid.

I was nervous. I’m never nervous.

She looked at me like I hit her. Face went slack. I could see it — all sad and weighed down in disappointment. She was also frightened — that one hurt me, even then. Even then when I was fucking paralysed by it all, her looking frightened smashed me to pieces.

But mostly Parks just looked indignant.

Like up til then we’d carried the world split between us two, and then I just went and dropped my side.

“What am I going to do?” she repeated back.

“Yeah.” I swallowed once.

She let out a small scoff.

“Well, I suppose I don’t know what I’m going to do.” How she emphasised it as she began to slowly back away from me is one of those memories that I lie awake at night thinking about, feeling sick over, wishing I could crawl back through time and make her not feel alone in that moment. But you know what? I didn’t.

I just watched her. Didn’t move. Didn’t click into gear, didn’t try to stop her. Just stared at her.

If you’d told me then that there would come a time in our lives where I’d hurt her again, more than I did in that moment, I honestly wouldn’t have believed you.

She got in her car. Drove away.

I freaked the fuck out. Got in my car, drove too. Drove nowhere. Screamed in my car. Hit the steering wheel. Got angry at her, got angrier at me. Pored over all the ways my life was fucking done now. I wasn’t even eighteen yet and my life was fucked.

I wanted to travel the world with Parks, more than we already had. I was going to play rugby for the country, she’d be my little WAG on the sidelines, cheering for me. Stay up all night and watch National Geographic, kiss her as much as I could in the ad breaks. I was going to marry her, build a life with her and shit…

And then I realised all my plans had her in them anyway.

And a kid would have been a part of the plan eventually, so it was just arriving a bit early?

The only plan I’d ever had for my future was Magnolia Parks, and I’d just let her drive away by herself after she told me she was pregnant with my baby.

And then I freaked the fuck out again, differently this time.

Drove as quick as I could back to London. It’s about an hour’s drive from Varley to Kensington.

I didn’t use the front door — didn’t want to raise any eyebrows, we should have been at school — so I scaled the drainpipe instead and climbed through her window — pretty hard to do with the pink and blue balloons and a giant teddy bear, but I had to make it up to her.

She was standing there, hands on her hips, staring down at the biggest fucking flow chart you’ve ever seen.

I landed on my feet and looked over at her with apologetic eyes. Held out the balloons, but she didn’t reach for them. I let go of the balloons and walked over to her, dropping my backpack at my ankles before I took her face in my hands.

“I’m the fucking worst, Parks,” I told her. “That was so shit of me. I’m sorry. I just needed to think.”

“About what?” she asked defiantly, and I loved her for it. I deserved it.

The balloons bobbed up on the ceiling.

I gave her a casual shrug. “About what our life would look like.”

“And what would it look like?” she asked, nose in the air.

I looked for her eyes, found them pretty easily.

“It’ll look like whatever you want it to, Parks.”