After we’d devoured my father’s chana bhatura, Michelle went behind the counter to return our plates and grab a notebook and pen. She returned with such purpose that I was immediately suspicious because when she’s that excited about something, it rarely ends well for me. (That’s how I signed up for the Brighton half marathon the year before. Mercifully, I sprained my ankle training for it, so Erin did it with her instead.)
“Right!” she said, slamming the notebook down. “It’s New Year’s Eve. You know what that means.”
I groaned. “Not our intentions.”
The only thing I intended to do was eat three of my father’s chai donuts, then go home for a nap.
“Come on!” Michelle clapped her hands and shimmied in her chair. “It’ll be good for you.”
I was almost certain it wouldn’t, but it was another of our traditions: spending New Year’s Eve thinking about what we wanted for the upcoming year. They weren’t really resolutions, partly because our parents didn’t believe in giving things up, but mostly because none of us had a good track record of honoring them.
So, we preferred to refer to them as intentions instead.
Be more present.
Make more time for myself.
Let go of what I can’t control.
The sort of thing that would make my grandmother roll her eyes and mutter something in Hindi.
As such, because they didn’t involve anything intolerable like giving up chocolate or promising to go to the gym, that was the first year I’d resisted. Usually, doing them made me excited about what the new year held, but I already knew what—or should I say who—my intentions would involve, so I was understandably reluctant.
“Let’s do them later,” I said, waving my hand as I reached for my can of Cherry Coke.
“No, let’s do them now!” Michelle clapped her hands more forcefully this time. “It’ll be fun!”
I’d rather eat glass, I thought as she opened the notebook and found a fresh page.
“I’ve done mine,” my mother told us when she wandered over to clear the table next to ours. Then she winked lasciviously. “One of them involves Keanu Reeves, but don’t tell your father.”
Michelle winked back, then wrote something I’m sure she wouldn’t want me to share about Manny Jacinto. I doubt she’d want me to share her other intentions, either, but I can tell you what I came up with:
Michelle made me write the thing about her being right, of course.
In fact, she wrote my first intention before handing me the pen.
Watching her write it down was sobering. Even now, I remember how dizzy with panic I was at the thought of having to follow through with it. I already knew that I’d cross it out as soon as I was alone, the collar of my sweater suddenly too tight as I closed the notebook and reached for my phone to check whether Nico had been in touch to apologize for what had just happened.
“Right.” Michelle tapped the table with her hand. “You gonna stay and help Vas and Mads close up?”
I nodded, but my eyes were on the notebook again, suddenly convinced that by writing it down, the cracks that had begun to appear in my resolve, the ones that appeared each time Nico left me on read or did what she’d just done at the station, the ones I’d papered over with excuse after excuse—lie after lie, each of which I had to conjure myself because Nico felt no need to offer me one—were about to split open and I wouldn’t be able to stop the doubt getting in. And I couldn’t let the doubt get in because then the cracks would become crevices and the crevices would become a gulf that would be impassable.
“Hey.” Michelle tapped the table again. “You listening?”
“Huh?” I grunted as I made myself look at her, not the notebook.
“I said, I’m gonna run to the pharmacy before it shuts and get the face masks.” Michelle jumped up and grabbed her coat from the back of her chair. “Then I’m gonna grab snacks for later.”
I won’t lie, the mere mention of snacks was enough to recapture my attention.
“Oh, can you get me some—”
“Honey roasted cashew nuts?” She pulled a face. “What am I, Mara? An amateur?”
Then it was just me and the notebook.
If I was quick, Michelle wouldn’t notice if I ripped out the page with my intentions and tore it up. Then, at midnight, I could go out into the garden and release the pieces. Let them drift away with the dandelion fluff and cigarette ash and all the other things that disappear into the air and float on forever.
But as soon as I reached for the notebook, the door to the café swung open and I froze, sure that Michelle was going to charge over to the table and snatch it from me.
It wasn’t Michelle, though. It was Nico in her black-and-white smiley scarf, her guitar case in her hand, and I held my breath as I waited for her to stop in the doorway and scan the tables for me.
This is it, I remember thinking. This is it.
It wasn’t quite a dance floor. There was no confetti. No balloons. No Harry Connick Jr. singing “It Had to Be You.” No countdown from ten. But there she was. She’d found me and she was going to make her big romantic speech and I was going to tell her that I hated her, even though I didn’t, because it had to be her.
But she walked over to the counter.
“Hey! Hey! Hey!” my father sang when he saw her.
“Hey, Vas!”
She grinned—actually grinned—in a way I’d never seen. Loose and slightly lopsided, exposing the gap between her front teeth, which I know she hated and was the reason I’d never seen her grin. With that, I suddenly saw her as a child—small and sweet-faced with an air of curiosity she’d learned to repress—and she looked so happy that I caught myself wishing I’d known her then. That we’d grown up, as Michelle and I had, running in and out of each other’s houses with scrapes on our knees and pockets full of shells and sea glass.
Before whatever happened to make her ashamed of the gap between her front teeth.
“Nico!” my mother said, emerging from the pantry. “I saved you a mango and chili Danish.”
“Mads, you’re the best! I haven’t eaten a thing today.”
Not even Nando’s? I remember thinking.
But just as I thought it, my father said, “What, no Nando’s?”
It’s difficult to put into words how it felt hearing Nico laugh as my mother told her off for not eating and she got into a clearly well-practiced argument with my parents as she tried to pay but they wouldn’t let her.
As I watched them, I realized that she must have come to the café without me, which would explain why my parents rarely asked about her during those periods when I didn’t hear from her. I thought I’d just done a good job of hiding how sad I was, but they probably weren’t concerned because they saw her more than I did.
What if she isn’t even looking for me? I asked myself as Nico tried again—and failed again—to give my mother a five-pound note. What if she’s just here for a coffee and a Danish?
I tensed when my father nodded to where I was sitting and said, “I’ll bring them over.”
When Nico turned around, my spine felt as tight as a piano string as I waited for her face to fall. But to my surprise—and delight—her eyes lit up. She looked so genuinely thrilled to see me that I almost didn’t recognize it, her face soft and her cheeks pink as she walked toward me.
“Oh good. You’re here.”
She leaned down to kiss me quickly on the mouth and I was so startled that I just sat there as she put her guitar case down, then unwound her smiley face scarf and shrugged off her coat.
When she sat in the chair opposite mine, I wondered if the seat was still warm from Michelle. If it was, she didn’t mention it as she reached across the table for my hands and took them in her own.
It was the first time we’d held hands and I couldn’t help but notice how perfectly they fit together. I wonder if she felt mine trembling as she brought them to her mouth and pressed a kiss to my knuckles. Not just at the shock of her mouth against my skin, but because I had to savor it. Having just felt the chill of Nico’s indifference, I feared that this display of affection might disappear as swiftly as it appeared.
“Sorry about earlier.” She kissed my hand again, then held it to her warm cheek. “Shitty day.”
It was all I could do not to throw my head back and scream.
Where was this Nico two hours ago?
Why couldn’t she have been like this when I was with Michelle?
When I didn’t respond, Nico pressed another kiss to my knuckles. “I’m sorry. I was an asshole.”
“What happened?” I asked as she rested our clasped hands on the table between us, my skin warming—along with the rest of me—as her thumbs grazed back and forth over my knuckles.
As soon as I said it, I cursed myself. It was always better with Nico to let her volunteer these things rather than ask her outright. So my spine retightened as I expected her to let go of my hands and sit back.
But to my surprise she said quietly, “I had a massive row with my mum.”
“You did,” I was careful to say this time.
A prompt, not a question.
Prompts were OK.
Questions were not.
I’m still not sure what the difference is, just that one pissed her off more than the other.
Nico made a show of rolling her eyes. “She read my journal.”
“She read your journal?”
If we weren’t holding hands, mine would have shot to my mouth, and I don’t know whether it was Nico’s unexpected— and frankly unprecedented—honesty or the revelation itself, but I was stunned.
“I caught her in the living room this morning. Can you believe it, Mara? She was sitting on the armchair with a cup of tea and everything. Like it was the morning paper, or something.”
“No way!”
“It’s such a violation.”
She started to say something, but stopped as my mother approached our table. We looked up at her with matching smiles, thanking her as she put Nico’s coffee and Danish down, then gave her shoulder a swift squeeze.
Nico watched my mother go with a sore sigh, and by the time she turned back, the moment was gone.
“I love how appalled you are, Mara.” She let go of my hands and sat back. “I mean, Mads would never.”
“Never,” I agreed.
And she wouldn’t.
She wouldn’t even ask to read my intentions because, she says, that’s between me and the universe.
“You’re lucky.” Nico sniffed as she glanced back over her shoulder at my parents, who were now cackling about something as my mother flicked my father with a tea towel, and it felt faintly like being scolded.
Like Nico was telling me that I didn’t appreciate it.
For the record—which I suppose this is—I assure you that I do know how lucky I am.
Believe me, I’ve spent enough time with my grandparents to be grateful that I skipped a generation.
And I know how lucky I am to have Michelle, Louise, Erin, and May. The family I’ve made for myself. Because what I had in them were friends to weather the slings and arrows of adolescent misfortune with. Friends who knew every possible version of me but didn’t remind me that I wanted to marry Timothée Chalamet when I was thirteen and I used to think that Ed Sheeran was a genius. Who knew every tragic haircut and hopeless crush and consoled me through each. Who knew who I was and who I wanted to be and cheered me on as I tried to navigate the gulf between the two.
I hope, one day, they look back and can say the same about me.
I hope I give as much as I take.
“My mother’s a psycho,” Nico hissed as she reached for her latte. “She went fucking mental about LIPA. She doesn’t understand why I want to go all the way to Liverpool when I could go to BIMM.”
“Fontaines D.C. went to BIMM,” I said, and I don’t even know why.
Actually, that isn’t true. I hadn’t told anyone yet—not even Michelle—but all this talk of GCSEs and not wasting our last five months at school together had made me think of university and how, in a couple of years, we wouldn’t just be at different colleges, we’d be scattered across the country. So, I’d been considering applying to the University of Sussex because I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving home. I knew Michelle and the others wouldn’t understand, but, I reasoned, if everything was changing, then that would be the same at least.
So maybe I did know why I was suddenly Team BIMM.
It was in Brighton.
“BIMM in Dublin,” she sneered. “Besides, Paul McCartney helped set up LIPA. You know? The Beatle.”
The Beatles? Never heard of them, I almost said, my cheeks burning as she raised her voice.
Nico began picking at her black nail polish so my gaze fell to the notebook, which was still on the table between us, and all I could think about was Michelle’s neat sloping script hidden inside.
Let Nico go.
But then she leaned forward and grabbed my hands so suddenly, she almost knocked her mug over. I watched it wobble, the coffee inside swirling before it corrected itself and grew still again.
“Mara, I need to see you tonight,” she said with an urgency that made my cheeks burn for a different reason. “I have to have dinner with Mum, but she never makes it to midnight.” When she squeezed my hands, I could feel that aimless, dangerous energy that always made me nervous as she waited for me to meet her gaze. “I’ll sneak out when she falls asleep. I can meet you at Queens Park. On our bench.”
Our bench.
I referred to it as our bench all the time, but until then, I had no idea that Nico did as well.
It was the bench we’d claimed on our first date. If Michelle was here, she’d say that’s a perfect example of how I gild things until they become something they never actually were because it wasn’t strictly a date.
It was just a coffee.
Not that it was ever just anything with Nico.
When she’d suggested going for a coffee, my first thought was the café, but she was the first girl I’d met since I’d come out, so I was terrified my parents would try too hard in an effort to show me how OK they were. Or worse, that Max would corner Nico with one of his increasingly hysterical conspiracy theories.
So, we’d met at the café by Jubilee Library, and while we were waiting for our coffees, we concluded that it was too warm to sit inside. After all, it was one of those perfect June afternoons that would be foolish to waste. The ones that always make me feel like I should be doing something else. Something better.
Or maybe it was nothing to do with the sun.
Maybe that’s how it felt when I was with her.
Whatever it was, we got our coffees to go and went for a walk. That would become our thing, I’d soon learn, those long, purposeless walks that felt anything but. Like that afternoon—on our first not-date—we just walked. I don’t think either of us knew—or cared—where we were going, too busy talking as we walked down one road, then when that ended, we’d turn and walk down another. Streets I didn’t recognize or even notice until Nico stopped to point out a house with a hot-pink front door or a cat watching us from a window.
It was a glorious day, summer suddenly in full voice even though we had to endure another month of school before we could truly enjoy it. But it was a Sunday and all we had was time, so I’d assumed we’d end up at the pier. Everyone ends up at the pier on days like that because it’s the only time you can appreciate it in all its roaring neon glory. The creak of the rides. The roll and splash of coins as the 2p machines light up and spit out tongues of tickets. And the smell. The smell of the pier will always be summer to me. Not strawberries, but that inescapable, maddening mix of sea salt and hot oil. Warm donuts and fish and chips and long golden churros.
But we’d gone the other way, to Queens Park. I’m sure it was just a coincidence but given that Queens Park was pretty much on my doorstep, I remember telling myself that it had to mean something. As we approached it, I told Nico that the park had become my and Michelle’s other garden over the years. We knew the smell of the earth and the best tree trunks to store treasure like acorns and silver coins made from chewing gum wrappers. We knew how many steps there were to the top of the slide and had named all the birds in the pond. (Geese and moorhens, Michelle learned when we were six. Not ducks, as we had been referring to them until then.)
It was the stage for so many of our adventures, I told Nico as I showed her our primary school and the climbing frame I fell from when I was seven and broke my arm. The source of grass stains and torn T-shirts and the backdrop to more birthday parties than I will ever remember. And as we drifted toward the pond and found a bench, unaware that it would become our bench, she told me that the last time she’d been at Queens Park was to see the light installation Luke Jerram had done for the Brighton Fringe. It was this massive moon suspended over the pond and I remember how my voice shook when I told her that I’d seen it as well. It was just after my and Michelle’s birthday, so we went every night it was there because we thought he’d done it for us.
“Do you think maybe we were here at the same time?” Nico had asked, her voice shaking this time.
And it felt like the start of something.
Six months later, her voice shook again as she asked me to meet her at our bench.
“Please, Mara.” She brought my hands up again and held them to her cheek before pressing another kiss to my knuckles. “You’re the last person I want to see this year and the first person I want to see next year.”
I knew what Michelle would say, but Nico’s mouth against my skin was like a forest fire, burning everything away until it was just her and me on the scorched earth and I couldn’t remember why I had to let her go.