Page 122 of The Last Kiss

She comes in anyway, plopping herself down on the sofa, reaching for the remote. This is what we do now while Lenny is at nursery. We sit in silence, two sisters side-by-side.

Until today, because she throws the remote down. “Enough is enough. You need to wake up now.”

“Please don’t. Just don’t.”

“You are being a selfish, ungrateful pig. Wake up and stop dreaming!”

I stink eye her. “Why don’t you say what’s really on your mind?” I grind out my words. What does she mean? Is she on drugs? I peer closer, looking for tale tell signs I read about in a trashy magazine.

“Do you realise how much he loved you to do that? The thought of a life without you was so pitiful that he didn’t want to face it. Wanted you to have life instead of him. The only person with a B negative heart to give.”

“I know.” I nod to the folded letter still sitting on the coffee table where I put it my first day out of hospital. The letter with his words, explanations. The guilt that will just bury me six feet under in the end. It seems so ridiculous. Why would he do that? Why did he do that?

“Clearly, the man had no brains.” My cheeks burn to talk about him this way, but it’s easier somehow. If I can just shut off, then I don’t have to feel.

“I’d say he loved you beyond all reason.”

“Still didn’t tell me he was married though, did he?”

“Oh my god. What is wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me is the fact that I’m alive. Stupid alive, living a life I never even lived properly the first time, and he, he…”

“What?” Liv steps closer, right in my space, stealing my air.

I’m getting confused. My thoughts are muddled, a swirl of ice cream under the brutal force of a spoon and Paige’s determined hand.

Paige. I miss her.

Lenny. I want to cuddle.

My arms tingle a new sensation that makes me stretch them. Fingertips wiggling against… what is that? Cotton?

“And what would he want from you now, Julia? Huh, what would he want?”

Liv is getting smaller, fading out. Black is sweeping a cloak of night around my shoulders. There’s a loud beeping and it’s pushing away my grey cube of a flat. The sofa disappears. I think I might be in an Oscar winning movie that no one wants to admit they don’t understand.

I wait for his voice, knowing I will always hear it. It will never not be with me, singing in my heart and soul.

“He’d say, ‘Live, ma petite fleur. Live’.”

And if I could do it again… if…

It burns through me. Life. It tears me apart, running hot like lava at the centre of the earth ready to erupt.

I would sit on that bar stool. Would have said yes to dinner. Would have succumbed to that first kiss if I’d known that our last would have meant I’d learned to live.

The only thing I’d ever wanted was to live…

My fingers curl, grasping at warmth.

The whooshing of the sea fades out, leaving me for the first time in what’s felt like months.

“Ma petite fleur, you took your sweet time.”

“Hen—?” I croak his name, choking on an obstruction. There’s something in my throat. He’s here, next to me. My eyes burn. Dreams. Nightmares. That’s what they were I realise as reality bursts through my consciousness before starting to fade again.

“I’m not going anywhere, mon coeur, not ever. You are mine.”