Page 4 of Big Sexy Love
The pair of them bow their heads, nodding super sympathetically like they do each time I mention Birdie. I take the opportunity to quickly wave goodnight and leg it up the stairs two atatime.
After a quick scroll through Instagram and an episode ofFawlty Towerson my laptop, I lay my head on the pillow and close my eyes. But as I try to fall to sleep I can think of only two things: that bloody library scene inAtonementand Norris’ out of the blue change toseabass…
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ChapterThree
Text from Birdie:Hurry up, Brewster, I miss yooooou. Don’t forget coffee. Also, there is a new doctor here and he is hot. I plan to take him as a lover. Fucked-up kidneys or no fucked-up kidneys, ya girl gottagetlaid!!!
The next morning,I wake up with a strange sense of excitement and dread in my stomach. It’s the feeling I always get when I’m visiting Birdie in the hospital. I’m eager to see her because she’s my favourite person who ever existed. But I’m visiting her in the hospital where her most recent lupus-related organ troubles have had her stuck for the past eight weeks. Which is horrible. So horrible that I can only think of the whole thing in a vague abstract way. I still can’t get my head around the fact that the doctors don’t know how long she’s got left to live. I push the thought out of my head as soon as it arrives and focus on thinking of ways I can brightenherday.
After a quick shower, I change into a mustard-coloured shirt dress, slip on my comfy black flats and leave the house, grabbing a takeaway coffee for Birdie on the way. After men, glittery clothes and the art of Egon Schiele, coffee is her favourite thing. But the hospital stuff tastes like a stagnant puddle so I bring her the good stuff. Plus, she won’t let me through the door of her room if I turn upwithoutit.
On the bus to Manchester Royal Hospital, I replay, for the gazillionth time recently, the moment I met Birdie. I love daydreaming about it because it was one of those rare moments when you know something amazing is happeningexactlyas it’soccurring.
I was at the library in my first year of university, trying my very hardest to focus on writing my essay aboutThe Canterbury Tales, when a short girl with a brunette pixie crop plonked herself down at the table noisily, spilling a little splodge of hot coffee onto thetable.
‘Fuck sorry! Sorry, you guys!’ she said loudly to the other students at the communal table, mopping up the spill with her big orange woolly scarf. Her accent was pure New York, but she looked French in that totally cool Parisian way. Big sad eyes, bluntly lopped off hair, pale, haughty cheekbones and a dinky nose. She was wearing a chic black vest and black tulle skirt that fanned out far too widely to be appropriate in a dowdy old Mancunianlibrary.
I remember being annoyed at the interruption. I barely found enough time to study as it was, working so many hours at Joan’s Fresh Fish in order to even afford my tuition. And here was this American, gabbing on and spilling her coffee, no respect for the sacrosanct ways of thelibrary.
‘Oh, I’ve ticked you off!’ she said to me, as she opened up an old tatty laptop where the ping of it booting up was set at fullvolume.
I rolled my eyes. ‘No.’ I whispered, pointing at my notepad. ‘I just have to getthisdone.’
‘Will you be quiet?’ Another guy at the communal table shushed us furiously. ‘It’s basic libraryetiquette,gosh.’
Ignoring him, the girl leaned over to peer at my book. ‘Chaucer. What a bore! But better than Van Gogh. Total nutcase.’ She pointed at her own book:Masters of Post-Impressionism.
At that point I couldn’t help but smile. This girl didn’t give a single shit that she was annoying everyone. And because I was completely the opposite of that, itfascinatedme.
‘What’s your name?’ the girl said, her voice cheerful andbooming.
The other lad at the table was starting to turn puce in the face. To avoid him blowing a gasket, I tore a sheet of paper from my notebook and scribbledonit.
Shhh!My name is OliveBrewster.
With a nod,the girl read it, took my pen and scrawled on the paper, her handwriting big andloopy.
I’m Birdie.Birdie Lively. I just moved here after a terrible heartbreak in my homeland, USA. I don’t know anyone yet and I like the look of you. We should become best of friends, probably. What do you think? Tick this box for yes. There isn’t a box for no, so you can’tsayno.
My eyesalmost popped out of my face when I read it. English people didn’t make friends this way! I certainly didn’t. And not with a gutsy American who flouted library quiet rules. But how could I resist? At the very least I wanted to hear all about this terrible heartbreak in her homeland USA. That sounded very intriguing to a girl who had never even been onadate.
I slowly picked up my pen and ticked the little ‘yes’ box Birdie haddrawn.
And when she smiled at me, dazzling white American teeth sparkling, her big sad eyes shining in a way that made me feel like I was way cooler than I was, I fell in love with Birdie Lively. And from that instant onwards, as simple as that, we became best offriends.
* * *
At the hospital,I walk quickly through the sterile green-floored corridors. There are brightly coloured murals all over the walls in an attempt to brighten up the place. But the effort is futile because most everyone walking past the art looks too sad or poorly or tired to notice it. I turn a corner and enter the double doors that lead toBirdie’sward.
Poking my head around the door of her room, I grimace as I see she’s had even more framed prints of her favourite modern art hung up onto the walls. I don’t like that’s she’s settling in here. It’s like she thinks she’s not going to be coming home. In a frame next to her bed is a picture of her and I on a summer picnic at Heaton Park. She’s giving the middle finger to the camera. I’m laughing at her doing it. I have the exact same photo beside my bedathome.
‘What’s the magic word?’ she calls out when shespotsme.
‘I come bearing actual realcoffee.’
‘Then… you may come in.’ She grins, ushering me inside from where she’s sitting crossed-leg in a big pale blue chair by thewindow.
