Page 55 of The Next Chapter
The Next Chapter – One Year Later
‘Come on, Lily, step out of your comfort zone.’ Harper’s face is half submerged in water. It’s giving Jaws.
‘See, that’s what I don’t get. Why would anyone want to step out of their comfort zone? The devil’s in the detail. Comfort zone,’ I emphasize.
My own comfort zone feels about a million miles away right now, but I can’t help but smile when Noah laughs, his head bobbing in the water like a bloody buoy.
In fact, they’re all bobbing in the water. Lola, Harper, Noah, Ashton, James, Harper’s foster dad, Jake. He’s friends with Noah now. They’re here as often as we are. Even Seb is floating on his back, his sunglasses still in position.
I peer over the edge of the rowboat we’d rowed, for some ungodly reason, into the middle of the deep loch of doom. And even though after extensive googling, I can’t actually attribute a single death to its murky waters, someone always has to be the first.
‘She doesn’t have to come in if she doesn’t want to.’ Noah splashes a bit of water towards Harper. It’s been one of the best things about this last year, watching Harper’s confidence grow. She’s been, there’s no other word for it… pleasant at times. We’re taking some time to adjust.
Noah had helped a lot too, which is good since she’s always been consistently nicer to him than anyone else. Anyway, he doesn’t splash her enough to drown her, but enough to encourage her to launch all-out water-based war on him.
While Harper’s occupied trying to dunk the love of my life, Lola swims over to the rowboat.
‘Are there a lot of fish, do you think?’ I ask her, peering over the edge into the darkness.
‘I can’t speak for the fish, but I know me and Noah, we’d never let anything bad happen to you.’
God, I do know that too.
This past year has been amazing.
No, that’s not quite true – parts of it have been amazing. Other parts have been hard because whatever happens, I miss Mum and Dad in the same way that you might feel an old bruise. Constantly aching, no matter what else you have going on.
But having Lola and Noah in my life (and Harper and Blake, for that matter), I have a family. Not the one I expected to have, but they’re mine, nevertheless.
Plus, and I can’t believe that I’m going to say this, I’m a little bit rich. Apparently, my song, the one Lola wrote for me, well, she’s been saving the commission from it all these years in case I ever got in touch. It felt weird, taking her money; after all, she earned it and the hotel needed it.
But Noah’s right, Lola can be stubborn, and she promised that she’d never spend a penny of it so it would be there when she died.
And then I’d gotten all freaked out about the thought of her dying and had agreed to take it.
Let’s just say that Your Life has a new partner who was happy to invest in a new business plan (printed and bound, of course).
Plus, unexpectedly, Mr Vandergilden had left a rather large tip.
We didn’t sell Lola’s memoirs, but we’re doing just fine.
‘Okay.’ I stand up on shaky legs, grabbing the side of the boat as it wobbles. Noah swims closer to the edge, ready to catch me even though I’m the only person wearing a life jacket, because come on, I haven’t had a personality transplant this year.
‘I’m coming, right now, here goes!’ You’d think that I was counting down to launching myself off a cliff, or else shooting along that zip line Noah took me on in Wales (incidentally, I didn’t mind that as much.
The staff there did have a risk assessment and it’s nice to see someone taking health and safety seriously.).
But instead, I step off the edge of the rowing boat and into the water.
‘Got you.’ Noah smiles, his hands finding my waist the second I go under the water.
My shoulders don’t even break the surface, such is the buoyancy of my life jacket, but still, there is a lot of water in here.
‘Don’t look down, just breathe.’
I do, because Noah understands me. Maybe it’s the ying and yang about us – he’s adventurous and I’m not – that makes us balance each other out.
Or maybe it’s the fact that really, we weren’t all that different to begin with.
I needed someone to make me feel safe, and he needed a reason to stay.
And we get to be that for each other. Plus, we have our shared love of stationery, which seems like as good a foundation for a relationship as any.
‘I love you,’ he tells me, pressing his forehead against mine. I’ll never get tired of hearing that.
‘I love you too.’
‘If y’all are done, Harper wants to play some game,’ Lola interrupts. She’s in the water close by, her blonde hair fanning out around her. And though she must be treading water, she’s somehow perfectly still.
It’s hard to define my relationship with Lola.
She’s not my parent, but she’s more than a friend too.
Life, I think, is always more complicated than we might expect it to be.
And anyway, I don’t really care about defining it, because I like her.
I liked her last summer, and I liked her all the times I visited, or she visited me.
I liked her when she hosted all of us, including Seb and Ashton, at Christmas on the promise that we help out with some hotel repairs. I’d drawn up a rota.
The game is Marco Polo. I’m awful at it, because my life jacket doesn’t allow for much movement, and also, who would want to close their eyes in water?
I only manage to end my turn when Seb accidentally on purpose bumps into me. I smile at him. I’m sure that behind his sunglasses his eyes are rolling. At least we get to go back to shore now. Oh sweet earth.
‘Having fun?’ I ask Seb as the two row boats we’re using bump against the shore and we all clamber (or in my case are hauled) out.
‘You’re all so unbelievably wholesome.’ Seb steps gracefully out of the boat. ‘It’s nauseating.’ Lola is walking a little ahead, holding hands with James.
It’s pretty cool to think that this group here, well, we’re pretty much the only people in the world who know what happened to Lola Starr.
Seb must be thinking the same thing. Noah now calls it twintuition, even though he knows we aren’t twins.
‘This happy ending could have made us so much money,’ he says, ‘so much money.’
Ashton, who’s been walking next to Seb (a fact that does not escape my attention one little bit) is looking at him with a puzzled expression.
‘Why’s that, then?’ Ashton asks.
‘Because you guys were ridiculously famous,’ Seb explains. ‘People would have paid good money to hear about what went down with Beyond Baton Rouge.’ He looks up at the sky. ‘So much money.’
Ashton rubs his chin. He’s wearing what look like Gucci swim shorts. They’re gold.
‘What about if you did me? My memoirs, I mean,’ he quickly tacks on. ‘Do you think that would make you some money? We could just skip over, you know…’ He waves a hand towards me.
Seb has stopped walking.
‘You want us to write your memoirs?’ he asks.
‘I don’t see why not. I’m not Lola, but there are things I want to say. Stuff I was told to keep quiet, you know.’
I do not see it coming, but suddenly Seb has his hands on either side of Ashton’s head. He leans down and kisses him with one big, exaggerated kiss on the mouth.
‘Yes!’ he says, while Ashton looks at him wide-eyed. ‘Finally, some good news for me. My therapist is going to love this.’
Everyone laughs.
‘I just need to check on Elton, then I’ll get the picnic things ready,’ I tell them all, walking a little faster to get ahead.
By some miracle, Elton is still alive. He actually lives with Mr Cains now, and holidays, occasionally, with me. Everyone seemed happier with that arrangement, especially Elton.
I guess, sometimes it’s important to know when to let go.
But Mr Cains is visiting his brother, and I didn’t want to leave him for the whole summer, so I’d seriously upgraded his travel basket and then given him some cat Valium for the journey. He’s formed an unlikely friendship with the blind chicken. It’s all very peculiar.
‘Is anyone else bringing food?’ Harper asks loudly.
‘I have some stuff,’ Seb answers.
‘Thank fuck for that.’ Harper high fives him. ‘There’s only so much grass we can eat.’
‘It’s salad!’ Lola and I call after her.
I make my way back to the cottage, the gardens now much neater since Lola hired a gardener, Noah following behind me. We’re sharing a cottage this summer; Seb is in the other one for a couple of weeks.
‘You good?’ Noah asks into the back of my neck as I work the door to the cottage.
I hum, liking the feel of his proximity. ‘I’m great ,’ I tell him as he plants a kiss on my shoulder.
Things with Noah are much more certain than they were last year.
It had taken some figuring out, and one giant wall calendar which I don’t hate at all, but we have a system now.
Noah took the job with the Guardian , and while he still gets to travel, it’s for shorter periods.
The month we spent apart while he was in Italy was enough for us to know we don’t want to be apart a huge amount.
Sometimes, I even go with him, and – probably unsurprisingly for everyone but me – I always have a good time.
I even discovered it’s a bit of a skill: Noah says that no one can nail down a three-day travel itinerary as efficiently as me.
‘Ready?’ I ask, gathering all the tubs of salad in my arms.
Noah tucks a bit of wayward hair behind my ear. ‘Ready,’ he answers, smiling. ‘It’s nice, having this little bit of peace before the madness starts tomorrow.’
‘Agreed.’ I go to follow him.
The race that Noah had wanted to reinstate is happening tomorrow.
It turns out that opening a race involves a lot of paperwork and an insane amount of health and safety.
It’s been heaven. I lost a whole day amidst the hotel archives.
There’s a display now in the lobby, showing off its history, an addition to the three-pronged plan.
In fact, Lola’s pretty much followed the plan to the letter and the hotel is busy again. Except for this week. This week it’s just us.
‘Come on, then, let’s go feed our family.’
Because that’s what they are. Seb, Harper, Lola, Noah. They’re friends who have become a part of my family.
For some people, the things that they want in life come easily, dropped into their lap like a gift from some higher power.
That hasn’t been the case for me and Noah, or my parents, or Lola, for that matter.
We’ve all had to fight for the things we want and for the people we love.
It hasn’t always been easy, and it won’t always be smooth.
But maybe, just maybe, the very best things never are.