Page 156 of Almost Ours

I watch as an old couple walk past, and then I train my eyes back to the grey grave. “I didn’t get to keep you.” I stop, feeling the words wrecking me from the inside out, my whole body shivering violently. “I should have got to you in time and I’m so fucking sorry I didn’t. I’m so sorry I let you down.” I suck in a breath and blow it back out. “That doesn’t mean I’m letting you off the hook, by the way. I’m still angry with you, you know. Everyone talks about grief like eventually it becomes this faded thing, as if you get to a point where you only remember the good bits and smile about them, but half the time I’m still fucking furious. You didn’t give me a chance. You decided I wouldn’t forgive you for Bonnie, decided I’d hate you, decided Mum and Dad would be better off, decided all of it on your own and then left me here to deal with the fallout.”

My eyes sting and I press my palms into them until I see stars, holding the tears back. I drag in four slow breaths, then knot my hands in front of me once I’m sure I’m not going to fall apart. “I would’ve forgiven you. I would’ve been furious and I probably would’ve punched you and I don’t know what would’ve happened after that, but I would’ve forgiven you because you were my brother. You were my twin. There was nothing you could’ve done that would’ve made me want this. I never, ever would have chosen this. Life without you is fucking unbearable, James. It’s killing me and I’ve no idea what to do with all the pain.”

I lean forward, elbows on my knees, staring at the grass between my trainers. “Dad thinks maybe if I’d been less difficult, less emotional, less fucking volatile about things, you wouldn’t have thought I’d never forgive you. Mum doesn’t say it, but she doesn’t exactly say he’s wrong either. And maybe I was hard work. Maybe I gave you reasons to think I’d lose my shit. But you were supposed to know me better than that. You were supposed to know I’d choose you.”

Ruby’s face comes straight into my head then, asking if I’m coming back, and guilt claws up my spine. “She thought I was leaving her this morning. I could see it in her face. She told me all of this and instead of making her feel safe I made her think I didn’t know her anymore. And the thing is, I do know her. I know she talks when she’s nervous and jokes when she’s upset. I know she hates people treating her like she’s fragile. I know she loves Oscar and her mum so much it drives her mental. I know she’ll argue with me over anything and then steal my clothes five minutes later. I know she thinks happy endings are real even after everything that’s happened to her. And I know she loves me. I can feel her love for me as if it’s a real physical thing. It’s like Ruby reached in that dark, frantic part of me and put her hand on it, soothing it out. I had no idea being loved could do that.”

I sit with that for a bit, letting it settle, letting the fuzzy feeling in my brain calm. “How the fuck am I supposed to do this, mate? How am I supposed to love someone when I know what it feels like to lose them? How am I supposed to hear she nearly died and not spend the rest of my life waiting for it to happen again? How the fuck does Oscar do it?”

The words make me think about everything I’ve spent the last three years avoiding. “I don’t know how to move on from you. I mean, I fucking hate that phrase. It makes it sound like I’m supposed to leave you behind, like eventually you become this sad thing that happened when I was sixteen and not my literal fucking twin. I don’t know. Maybe I just have to move forward with you in there and me up here.” I wrap my fingers around my thumb and push, hoping to ease the pain in my heart. “Maybe I’m allowed to love her and miss you at the same time. Maybe wanting a future doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten yours ended. Maybe being in love with her means I’m not a totally selfish bastard. What do you think?”

I breathe in slowly and let the cold air fill my lungs. “She makes me want one, by the way. A future. I’d sort of given up on the idea of getting one and was plugging through every day. But now?” I laugh, shaking my head at myself. “Now, I want to go back to uni because she’ll be there. I want New Year’s Eve and stupid parties and football and breakfast and whatever other ridiculous shit she drags me into. I want to see what happens next. I want a life with her. I want to grow old, and have kids with her, and watch her achieve all her dreams. I want to be standing next to her when she does great things with her life. I want her to know I choose her.”

I stare at James for a long time before finally saying the thing I came here to say. “I just don’t know how to have that life without feeling like I’m leaving you behind. She’ll never meet you. Never know you. The only way I can keep you alive is by telling her about you, and I simply can’t fucking do it. You know me, I clam up. I make a hash of everything. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t even know I feel all these things because I can’t just say it.” Reaching forward, I trace his name with my index finger. “I really need you, and it would be great if you could give me a sign that you’re knocking about. Watching over me or whatever.”

Pulling back and wrapping my arms around my knees, I hold my breath, waiting for some kind of indication that he’s here. People always say it happens to them, but it hasn’t happened to me. Not once.

Time passes slowly, the graveyard empties, and no special bird flies over my head, no magic rainbow appears in the sky, no plant pot falls at my feet. I don’t really know how long I stay sitting in front of him, but the cold eventually works its way through the damp grass and into my legs, and my hands have started to ache from being clenched together between my knees. I’m staring at James’s name when I hear footsteps on the path behind me, slow and careful over the wet gravel, and I assume it’s someone cutting through until they stop close enough that I can feel the presence of another person before I look up.

Bonnie is standing there holding a bunch of white roses. She’s wearing her cream coat she’s had forever and a little brown bobble hat.

My eyes move from the flowers in her hands to the ones sitting at the base of James’s grave. “Holy shit, Bon. The flowers are yours?”

Bonnie glances down at the roses already there. “Yeah.”

I get to my feet and brush wet grass from the back of my pyjama bottoms. “I thought Mum brought them.”

She shakes her head, giving an apologetic shrug. “She doesn’t. Your parents never come here.”

“But you do?”

Bonnie crouches and takes the older flowers away, replacing them with the fresh ones. I watch her straighten the stems and clear a bit of mud from the edge of the stone. “I come at least once a week. Sometimes every day if I really need to talk to him.” When she stands again, she keeps her eyes on James. “Can we talk?”

My first instinct is to tell her no. Ruby is back at her house thinking I’ve walked out because I found out she nearly died. I should leave. I should go back to her. I should do anything except open another door I’ve spent years trying to keep shut.

But Bonnie has been coming here for three years and there’s so much we need to lay to rest. Maybe when I do, I can stop feeling so fucking insane.

I look at James’s name, then at her, and let out a long low breath.

“Yeah.” I nod. “We can talk.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Sunday

December 27th 2015

Ruby:

Josh doesn’t come back.

He ignores my calls, my texts, everything, and by the next morning I’m driving Oscar’s Fiesta towards his house with my hands wrapped tightly around the steering wheel. Give It All by Foals is playing out the radio and it’s making me so much more emotional. My head is full of all the things I want to say to him. I’ve gone from worried, to hurt, to angry, then straight back to worried again so many times that I’m exhausted by myself, and every unanswered message has made the promise he gave me at the door feel like a total lie.

He said he needed space and I gave it to him. He said he’d come back and then vanished completely. I told him the worst thing about myself and he ran away.

The gates open after I press the buzzer and give my name. His house looks as enormous and cold as I remember, the Christmas decorations hanging perfectly around the windows, and I almost laugh at myself for arriving here uninvited in Oscar’s battered Fiesta.

I park near the front steps, get out before I can change my mind and march towards the door, knocking twice before Josh finally answers. He’s all bleary-eyed and surprised. “Ruby?”