Eight Perfect Hours: The hotly-anticipated love story everyone is falling for in 2021!

by Lia Louis

  And before he can finish his sentence, Clay has closed his eyes, widened his long, shirted arms and is saying, ‘Bring it in, Noelle from the traffic jam, bring it the eff in. You’re a living legend. Do you know that?’

  And when I laugh and hug him, my arms around his taut middle, he says out the side of his mouth into my ear, ‘If I’m honest with you, Noelle, I thought you might be a mirage he dreamed up. You know, how people do, to get through a rough time. Make shit up.’

  ‘What did you just say?’ asks Sam.

  ‘Nothing, bro,’ says Clay with a wink. ‘Nothing.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Deep, bassy music from Sam’s charity event emanates through the walls here, in my little stockroom, and I think of him. It’s all I can do. It’s a wonder I haven’t subconsciously spelled his bloody name out in flowers. I wonder what he’s doing over there, in that sparkling banquet hall. Laughing, drinking … flirting. He looked so handsome, I’d be surprised if he wasn’t completely snowed under by a pile of beautiful philanthropists and climbers with strong bendy legs and insatiable libidos. But Clay. Oh my gosh, Clay. He talks about me to Clay. So much so that it didn’t even take a second for it to register in his brain who I was. He knew instantly. Said he thought I was a mirage. A mirage to help him through a rough time. And of course, I keep wondering what that hard time is. Jenna, perhaps. His grumpy dad and the move. But whatever it is – Sam talks about me. He talks about me, like I talk about him.

  We’d chatted in the lobby some more, and Sam had invited me inside to the event with him, and I so badly wanted to say yes, but I told him I couldn’t, that I had to carry on with the flowers. Then he’d got lost in a flurry of conversation, so I’d ducked away with a meek wave. But when I looked over my shoulder, he’d done the slightest, quickest wink across the room at me, and I’d felt sick. I literally felt sick. Like I would never be able to eat again – not even the cheesy vegan pasta bake Theo makes that turns my veins to lard. Can’t-eat, makes-you-wanna-puke love. Is this what Daisy meant? Love. God, I can’t even believe I’m considering those four letters. Ed is upstairs. He came to help me. But then – where is he? I’m alone in the dimly lit stockroom now, flowers everywhere, music playing softly, my back aching. It’s just me.

  A Joni Mitchell song begins playing on my phone, as something in the distance at the charity event strikes up with a hard, fast beat. I wonder if he’s standing awkwardly on the side lines, or if he’s dancing now, laughing, Clay and him, pissing about. I turn up Joni on my phone. I wonder what it would be like to slow dance with him. To put my arms around his neck, sway close to him, to a song like ‘A Case of You’, his arms solid and strong around me. Argh. Come on, Noelle Butterby, come on. You’re tired. You have two table decorations left to do, and then you can go to bed. Sleep this off. You’ve had a long day, you’re emotional, you’re confused, and who wouldn’t be? You’re trying to jumpstart your bloody career, chase your dreams, and all while Ed’s asleep in your bed upstairs and Sam is next door being gyrated against by some opportunist vixen, when really you wish it was you he was pressed up against and––

  ‘Shut up,’ I say out loud, groaning behind my hands. ‘Shut up, shut up brain, I cannot deal with this now, I have so much to do––’ Knock, knock, knock.

  Shit. I freeze.

  ‘Hello? E-Ed?’

  The door is pushed open, flooding my little dimly lit stockroom with warm light. Sam’s handsome face peers around the door. ‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Need any help?’

  ‘God yes,’ I say casually, but I feel as though I’m melting into the floor, like lava. ‘Yes, definitely. But I couldn’t possibly take up your time, you must be so busy next door––’

  ‘No, no, the auction’s done,’ he says. He fills the frame, comes into the room, closes the door behind him. The light dims again – just us, Joni, the flowers, and the little chrome desk lamp in the corner. ‘Now it’s just dancing and drunk people and Clay trying to talk random people into sleeping with him.’

  I laugh as Sam slips off his suit jacket and folds it over his arm.

  ‘Is it working?’

  ‘Oh, it always does.’ Sam lowers himself down to sit next to me on the floor, his long legs out in front of him. ‘Eventually. When he finds a willing participant.’

  ‘Ew.’

  ‘Right?’ Sam laughs, that delicious crescent dimple a prod in his cheek. ‘So, come on, what am I doing?’

  I smile and pass him three roses, the colour of vanilla ice cream. ‘Hold these.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  I start to slide flowers into oasis foam for the table arrangements – classic really, like Candice wanted. Pale blue hydrangeas, cream roses, white daisies, and sprigs of gypsophila. Sam holds the flowers and watches me work. I can feel his eyes on me in the dim quiet, nothing but soft music playing, and find I have to concentrate on breathing. In and out. In and out.

  ‘So where’s Ed the Ped?’ he asks.

  I don’t look at him and carry on with the flowers.

  ‘Upstairs, asleep.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And where’s Jenna?’ I shoot back before I even know what I’m asking.

  ‘Um.’ He clears his throat. ‘Jenna is in America.’

  ‘She never comes over,’ I say, and I’d blame the one glass of champagne I had at the bar with Candice and Steve, but that was hours ago, and I don’t think Dr Pepper and a cheeseburger makes someone feel brave. But maybe it’s being here. Maybe it’s tonight.

  ‘Yeah, I know.’ Sam loosens his crisp, white collar, leans back on his hands. ‘So – Jenna slept with someone else,’ he says directly. ‘Last year.’

  I feel a hot slice through my chest. ‘What?’

  ‘It went on for six months. Or so she says. But, you know, I’m never home and I can’t exactly say I was a great boyfriend in the last, I dunno, God knows how many years …’

  ‘But – still that’s––’

  ‘Yeah. I know.’ Sam nods, presses his lips together, and I realise I’ve done nothing but try to slot in one single daisy for the last two minutes. The way you do when you’re distracted, so read the same line over and over in a novel. ‘And so, we decided we’d try,’ says Sam. ‘Make time for each other. Daily scheduled calls, weekly video calls, me going back as much as possible, Jenna looking into visas, because we both wanted this new start, new place and – I thought it was what I wanted.’

  ‘And it isn’t?’

  I’m frozen now, and it feels like time has too, the flowers a heap in my lap.

  ‘No,’ he says quietly. ‘I don’t know. We’re Skyping, we’re calling, we’re even writing to each other, and I go back and we have date nights and we do all of the right things but … I don’t know.’

  I nod. I can say nothing else. Because I feel like those hands, always hiding things so close to his chest, have fallen a little. And I understand. It’s me and Ed. That’s how I feel about me and Ed.

  ‘I’m starting to realise that sometimes something that worked for so long just doesn’t any more,’ I say, and I feel sad as I hear myself say the words. ‘No explanation. It just – stops.’

  Sam smiles at me ruefully, bows his head once, in a nod. ‘We’re meeting on our anniversary,’ he says. ‘In three weeks. To talk about where we go from here. With a counsellor.’ He winces when he says that, as if he just witnessed a near-miss. ‘October twentieth. Stick or twist.’

  ‘Like Steve and Miranda,’ I say. ‘In Sex and the City. If they want to be together, they have to meet on the Brooklyn bridge.’

  Sam chuckles softly, but I have no idea if he gets the reference.

  ‘What does Jenna think about all this?’ I ask, although I feel like I’m in purgatory. Am I being his friend? Do I even want to be his friend when actually, all I think I want is to kiss him, to wrap my arms around his neck?

  Sam blows a long breath out of puffed cheeks. ‘She just says I run,’ he says. ‘That I’m never there and all I do is run – and yo
u know, she’s used to me being away. For work. It’s always been that way. But now she suddenly wants to slow down, change things and – I don’t think I want that.’

  There’s silence, and I teeter on the line, between friend, and something so much more. ‘And do you think you run?’ I ask.

  ‘Maybe,’ he says, guiltily. ‘Not knowing what’s going to happen, when it’s all going to be over – I find it comforting to just keep going. Standing still – ah, I dunno, Gallagher. Maybe I’m scared. To stop.’

  ‘Why?’

  Sam looks at me. You could hear a pin drop. ‘When my cousin took his life – it changed everything. I was eighteen when it happened, just like him, and he was – God, he was funny, but so deep and clever and autonomous, you know? And one minute he was there, and then not, all in a fraction of a second. Our lives changed – instantly. In the time it took Bradley to …’ He stops talking, as if it’s too painful and swallows. ‘And that could’ve been me. It’s hard to describe what it does to you.’

  I nod slowly, tears budding in my eyes. ‘I lost a friend. I was a similar age and she was,’ I take a deep, deep breath, ‘killed, and I felt like it should’ve been—’ Me, my brain whispers, but I trail off, fiddle with the flowers in my lap.

  ‘The friend with the balcony?’ asks Sam, and I nod, smile, heartened and warmed because he remembers – he always remembers the little things, as well as the big.

  I think he’s going to carry on, but he doesn’t, he just nods. And as if synchronised, as if Sam’s words have prompted the fog to clear, I know we’re the same really. Because I’ve spent my life being too scared to start living. I’ve been too afraid to live too noisily. I should settle for what I’ve got, even if it isn’t what I want, because I’m not meant to be here. And Sam. Sam is too afraid to stop living, because he believes it’s only a matter of time before it’s taken away. Both of us, scared for complete seemingly opposite reasons that are at their heart, the same.

  I swallow down the lump in my throat. ‘You said you’re never there,’ I say into the darkness. ‘But you’re there for your dad. And you’re here now. Aren’t you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he says, thoughtfully. ‘And I always seem to be. When it comes to you.’

  And suddenly it all feels too much. That Ed isn’t here. That Sam is. That he is again and again, and this feeling. This bloody feeling in my gut – that something that has sat between us both, fizzing like electricity since that night on the motorway. I look at him, my shoulders sag – I give up, universe. I give up.

  ‘Where did you go to school?’ I ask.

  Sam laughs a low rumbly chuckle and shakes his head. Our faces are so close, I can barely breathe. ‘You know where I went to school.’

  ‘But don’t you want to know?’ My words are so quiet, they’re barely there. ‘Don’t you want to know why this keeps happening?’

  Sam stares at me. He’s so close, I can feel his breath on my face. ‘Why do we need to know?’ He picks up a white daisy from the floor, slowly brings his hand to my face and pushes it into my hair. He runs a finger down my cheek and says, ‘I’m just glad that it does.’

  Move closer. I want him to move even closer. ‘You can’t still think that this is random.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ whispers Sam as Joni plays softly on. His breath tickles my lips.

  ‘You were my pen pal.’

  Sam’s face breaks into a smile inches from mine and he retracts a little, and God, were we going to kiss? If I hadn’t said anything, would he have actually kissed me?

  ‘What?’ he chuckles.

  ‘I was meant to have a pen pal in November 1996, and you said you broke your leg in 1996 and – my pen pal had to be reallocated. Remember? My pen pal from Portland.’

  He laughs deeply. ‘Holy shit,’ he says. ‘Maybe I was. I mean, I don’t remember anything about a pen pal but—’

  ‘You were,’ I say. ‘I know you were.’

  Sam leans and gently adjusts the daisy in my hair.

  ‘I want you to know something,’ he whispers, words barely there, his nose inches from mine. ‘You said nobody does but – I see you, Noelle. I do.’

  And I close my eyes, and safe behind the lids, they fill to warm pools, and I don’t know why. Because he said he sees me, I suppose. Because I’ve known all along, somehow that he does.

  ‘I like how it sounds,’ I whisper. ‘When you call me Noelle.’

  Sam smiles in the darkness. ‘Noelle,’ he breathes against my lips.

  Flutters prickle their way down my body, turning it to jelly – my spine, my stomach, my groin, my knees, my toes. ‘Again.’

  ‘Noelle,’ he says again, then Sam inches closer and I close my eyes, but I can feel him, warm, strong, secure against me. He presses his lips to mine – warm, soft lips that taste like whisky and chewing gum, and as he moves, deepens the kiss, and warm stubble prickles against my face, I swear, my whole body feels like it’s alive, and I’m nothing now, but stars.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  ‘The woman needs a hobby, Nell. She’s driving me mad with all of it. Do you know she called me seven times in two hours about canapes? She’s ordered from some deli near us and I feel like saying, just invite some of Dad’s mates over, stick them in the lounge with the piano and let them get drunk, you know? Nell? Nell?’

  I blink, look beside me at Ed who looks bright and pink-cheeked and rested. As if he actually spent the night in a five-star hotel, with a king-sized bed – the exact polar opposite of how I feel this morning.

  ‘Sorry. I was miles away.’

  ‘Stop worrying. They’re flowers, remember. Just flowers.’ Ed smiles gently. ‘You nailed it, Nell. Even better without my help.’ He yawns, ruffling his wild brown hair, a slice of toned stomach appearing beneath his navy-blue t-shirt. ‘Jesus, man, how long’re they going to take seating everyone? I need breakfast. I’m fuckin’ starved.’

  The breakfast queue is long today at the Balmoral – there’s a sort of chaotic chatter in the dining room as people are squashed onto tables, and more of us wait here at the grand, bright entrance in a big straggled crowd more than a queue. And I’m relieved as Ed takes out his phone and scrolls, because I can barely string a sentence together. Because I can’t stop thinking about last night. About Sam and that gorgeous kiss and how it had gone on for what felt like forever but was probably more like ten seconds, before Sam’s phone had buzzed and it was Clay, who couldn’t find his hotel room. We said goodbye then, in the hazy dim light, and Sam had asked if I needed his help in the morning because he’d booked a stupidly early breakfast and wanted to head out early. Yes, I wanted to say. Yes, and never leave. I wanted him to kiss me again, wanted to squeeze every moment of time out of the world to spend with only him. But I said no. Because of Ed. Because of Jenna. Because he runs. Because frankly: I am fucking terrified of everything that I feel. It feels like a tornado inside of me, gathering speed, gathering more and more information and confusion and emotion, until it’s just going to take flight, and take me with it.

  The people in front of us are seated, and the waitress smiles at us, but doesn’t speak, and taps away on the iPad on the podium in front of her. The restaurant is crammed with people, and the din of griddle pans and cutlery on plates, and the smell of toast makes my stomach rumble. I haven’t eaten. I haven’t slept. Even my hands are shaking. Nerves, I told Ed, for the wedding and the flowers later. But it isn’t just that. It’s Sam. It’s the kiss. It’s Ed and it’s the flowers and this hotel and the confusion and the speed everything seems to be going, and it’s all swelling until it’s a saturated sponge in my skull. I press a hand to my forehead. Ed eyes me and says nothing.

  ‘Good morning,’ smiles the waitress. ‘Your room number, please?’

  ‘Morning,’ I say. ‘It’s 231. Under Butterby. Noelle Butterby?’

  The waitress runs a slim finger down the bright screen of an iPad. ‘Ah, yes.’ She looks over her shoulder and studies the brimming restaurant. ‘We’ve had a
few double bookings,’ she says as if to herself and Ed sighs.

  ‘How do you have a few double bookings?’ he asks me but loud enough for the woman to hear.

  She looks at him and gives a stiff smile. ‘We took in a last-minute booking of twenty guests and a charity event of ninety-six yesterday when the other venue flooded. It’s been a stretch. Don’t worry, we will get you seated but we may have to wait for––’

  Oh my God.

  Oh. My. God. Waves rush into my brain, drowning out the waitress, drowning out Ed and the restaurant chatter, and I know they’re all still talking because their lips are still moving, but all that’s in my head is static. Like someone just pulled the plug.

  Sam. He’s at the table, just over the way, with Clay. The both of them sitting at a table for four, coffees and plates and newspapers spread over its wooden top. There are two spare chairs either side of them. Sam looks up from his cup and – he’s seen me. Fuck, he’s seen me. My belly flips over like a fish. I’m going to vomit. And before either of us can react, Clay sees me too.

  ‘Hey!’ he shouts across the restaurant. ‘Hey, it’s the mirage! Join us!’

  Ed looks at me, half confusion, half amusement. ‘You – you know this bloke?’

  ‘It’s – no – the other one – it’s Sam. The American. Well. That’s his friend. You know. Sam. Who I clean for. The uh – his dad. F-Frank. C-cleaner?’ Oh my God. I can’t speak. It’s like my tongue is an overgrown fucking clam in my mouth and my brain is no longer a brain, but a joint of roast beef instead.

  The waitress looks at me hopefully. ‘Are you happy to join?’

  ‘Uh, I don’t think …’

  ‘Well, if it’s our only chance of getting some scran.’ Ed looks at me and gives a big shrug. ‘I’d sit anywhere if I’m honest.’

  The waitress looks at me expectantly. I look at Sam who gives a small, comforting smile. A smile that says, ‘It’s cool. It’ll be fine.’

  ‘OK,’ I say, standing tall like someone who is absolutely cool with this. ‘OK, sure. Makes sense.’