Dear Emmie Blue
Page 28
I answer quickly, swallow. “Hey.” My voice croaks with sleep.
“Hey you,” he says on the other end, and my insides melt to jelly. I have missed him; missed his voice. “How’s it going?”
“Good,” I say, as if on autopilot. “Well, no. Not good. Not really.”
Silence.
“I called you,” I say pointlessly, reaching for words to fill the silence. “And I—I left you voice mails too, which I know you’ve probably already heard, God help you, and—”
“Emmie, I can’t hear you.”
“What?”
“You’re in the living room, aren’t you?” he says. “The signal in Louise’s living room is always patchy—”
“Of course.” I jump up. “Yes. Sorry. One sec.” I rush into the hallway, practically running, head woozy with sleepiness, and I’m just glad he can’t see me; how desperate I am to hear him, for him to hear me, to keep him on the phone. “How about now?”
“Hello?”
“God—really?” Now? I want to shout at my phone. You choose to do this now? “Hello? Hello, Eliot?”
“Hello,” he says. “Have you moved yet?”
“Yes,” I say, and I hear him laugh; a little chuckle. “You can hear me, then,” I say.
“Sort of,” he says, a smile in his voice.
Then there is silence again.
“I found your CD,” I say. “I tried to call and I texted, too, but—”
“Louise was meant to give it to you. We spoke about it, the night of the full moon, and I told her. I wanted to give it to you, but I was… chicken-shit. She said you two talked a lot and she’d give it to you, so there was no pressure—in case, you know…”
“In case what?”
Eliot laughs again. “In case you were shocked. A bad shocked.”
“I wasn’t,” I say. “I’m glad. I’m so glad it was you.”
“Emmie? Hello?”
“Oh, you’re kidding—hello? Eliot, can you hear me? Eliot?”
“Hello? Hello?”
“This is hellish,” I say into the phone.
“Em, can’t you just nip outside?”
Before he’s even suggested it, I’m in the porch, and unlocking the front door. I step out, socks on gravel, and walk as if on hot coals, down the driveway. The tiny rocks sting the soles of my feet.
“How about now?” I wince.
“Better,” he laughs.
“I thought it was 2019,” I say. “We have robots, for God’s sake, and Facebook and spiralizers, and yet our phones can’t cope with a long-distance call.”
“Well,” says Eliot, smile in his voice. “It’s not too long a distance.”
I stop. “You’re at home?”
“No,” he says. “Not yet.”
“France?”
“Could you keep going, Em? Little bit further?”
“Eliot, are you sure this isn’t your phone?” I take my phone from my ear and look at the screen. “I have a full signal. Like, every bar.”
“Little to the left,” he says.
“Are you kidding? This isn’t a game of Twister.”
He laughs again. “Keep coming. Toward me.”
I stop then, socks wet on the gravel. “What? What did you say?”
“Look up,” he says. And his deep, warm voice doesn’t just come from the phone.
I lift my face. And there he is. Eliot. Eliot. Standing at the top of the driveway, black jacket open, a smile on his lips, the breeze ruffling his hair. He slowly drops the phone down to his side.
“You can hang up now,” he says, smiling.
And I freeze. I cannot move. And phone still to my ear, my socks sodden with water, I reach a hand out to him. He closes the gap between us, taking my hand, tucking hair behind my ear. He brings a warm hand to my cold face.
He smiles. “Hi,” he says. “I’ve really missed you.”
“And I’ve missed you,” I say through tears. “Where have you been?”
“Pulling my head out my arse,” he says, smiling weakly. “Hardest thing I ever had to do was leave you. But I needed that time, Emmie.”
I nod. “I did too, I think.”
“You did,” he says softly. “We both did.”
He pulls me into him then, arms tightening around me, strong hands against my back. Him. Him. It was always him.
He draws back and looks down at me with dark, playful eyes. “You’ve been painting,” he says, bringing a curl of hair to my face, the tip white.
“I did shower. I missed a bit.”
He nods, scrunches up his face, and looks down on the top of my head. “You’ve missed lots of bits.”
“Have I?”
He looks down at me and laughs. “Just kidding. You look bangin’, Flower. Painted hair and all.”
“Ozzy eyes and all.”
“Especially Ozzy eyes.” He smiles. “I just hope you’re not too knackered after all that painting.” He looks up at the sky. “Meteors are best seen at the most ungodliest of hours, remember.”
“I’m wide-awake,” I say, and I look up at him, run a finger down his stubbly cheek and onto his soft lips. He kisses the tip of my finger. “You’re really here,” I whisper. “In front of me.”
“I am, Emmie Blue,” he says. “And I always have been.”
He kisses me then, lifting me from the cold, wet ground with strong arms. The barriers are gone. There is nothing between us.
It’s just us.
Us and the stars in the sky.
Epilogue
August 24, 2004
The French sun beats down, and Lucas Moreau ignores his mother calling after him from the beachside café. He doesn’t want to be here, in France. He doesn’t want to be on this beach, with his brother, with his parents. He wants to be at home, with Tom, with his school friends. He wants his old bedroom. He wants those chips he always gets from the café by the public pool he and Tom go to on Saturdays. He misses home. He wants home.
“Luke?”
He hears his brother from behind him, voice wobbling as his feet pound the sand. He ignores him.
“Luke, dude, can you hear Mum?” He slows as he catches up to him, strolling next to him on the sand. “She wants to know if you want lunch.”
“No,” he snaps. “I don’t want anything, Eliot. Tell her I don’t want anything.”
Eliot puts a hand to his brother’s chest. They stop on the sand. “Look, I know it isn’t ideal,” says Eliot, “but you need to try.”
“Try what? Living here? I don’t want to try, Eliot, I want to—what?”
Eliot looks past his brother, eyes focused on something in the sand. He steps toward it. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” asks Lucas.
“That,” says Eliot. “That red thing. Is it a—? Ah shit—” Eliot’s phone buzzes in his hand, interrupting his train of thought. “Shit,” he says again, looking at the screen. “I think it’s about the job. The apprenticeship. Don’t go anywhere, okay? Mum’ll kill me if I lose you.”
Lucas nods, gives a shrug. “I’ll be here. Not exactly sailing home to London, am I?”
Eliot trudges away, across the sand, lifting his phone to his ear. Lucas steps toward the item Eliot found in the sand. He pulls at it, sand scattering. A balloon. A deflated red balloon, a tag attached.
Lucas picks it up.
Acknowledgments
Dear Emmie Blue exists thanks to so many people, and I feel so lucky to know that I have such a brilliant team of people behind me.
I owe so much to my amazing agent, Juliet Mushens. I have said this so many times, and will probably continue to, until I’m old and wrinkly—thank you for making my dreams come true. I would be lost without your advice, plot solving, anxiety extinguishing, and your friendship. (Oh, and the expert tips on when to insert topless tradesmen and when to remove round jaws, obvs.)
Thank you also to the whole Caskie Mushens dream team, and to the brilliant Jenny Bent at The Bent Agency, New York.
<
br /> To Emily Bestler and Lara Jones at the wonderful Simon & Schuster, thank you from the bottom of my heart for your passion, excitement, and hard work. It’s a dream to have you as a publisher.
Katie Brown, working with you is pure joy. I live for your hilarious notes in tracked changes and you always work with such heart. Thank you to the whole lovely, hard-working team at Trapeze, and all my wonderful publishers around the world for your belief in this book. (OMG. I can’t believe I even get to say such a sentence. Let me just pinch myself.)
To the many talented writer-friends I am fortunate enough to have; you are the best faraway work colleagues I could ever ask for. Thank you Gilly McAllister, L. D. Lapinski, Lynsey James, Lindsey Kelk, Hayley Webster, Laura Pearson, Stephie Chapman, Rebecca Williams, Nikki Smith, Holly Seddon, Hina Malik, and so many of you who are at the proverbial water cooler in my phone. Your words make the world a better place.
To my lovely, beautiful friends who accept and love me for the old-before-my-time, Friday-nights-in-my-pajamas hermit that I am. Thank you.
Bubs. Thank you for being the best brother and the best friend. Sparkle, next. It’s written in stone (well, ink) now. I can’t go back on it.
Mum and Steve, Dad and Sue, Nan and Grandad, and Alan. You are the warmest, proudest, funniest family of all. I’d be lost without you.
And lastly (because everyone knows you always save the best until last), to my beautiful babies, and my Ben. You are home and safety. Wherever you are, is my favorite place to be.
More in Fiction
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About the Author
LIA LOUIS lives in the United Kingdom with her partner and three young children. Before raising a family, she worked as a freelance copywriter and proofreader. She was the 2015 winner of Elle magazine’s annual writing competition and has been a contributor for Bloomsbury’s Writers’ and Artists’ Blog for aspiring writers. She is the author of Somewhere Close to Happy.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
ISBN 978-1-9821-5270-3
ISBN 978-1-9821-3593-5 (ebook)