A Beautiful Forever(24)
“Elliot,” I say to get his attention. I hear his voice hum through his chest in response. Lifting my head to meet his face, I take a deep breath. “I’m sorry I’ve been so distant this past couple of weeks.”
“It’s ok Paige; you've had a lot of your mind.”
I shake my head like I’m trying to rid myself of my worries. “Can we pretend like none of that happened and focus on now? Let all that ‘past’ crap fall away and just be together? – we don’t have very much time left, and I want to spend as much of it with you as I can.”
He presses his lips together in a tender smile and reaches up to caress my face with his thumb, my eyes flutter closed for a moment as I lean into his hand. I take his hand in my own as I open my eyes to continue. “I’ve been thinking Elliot – Shane and Gavin are going next week, and um… they haven’t found roommates yet… so I was thinking that maybe… we, could share a room? We could just change the listing and get another girl to room in with Naomi and another guy to room with Brian…” I suggest nervously, my stomach churning like I might vomit – I’m suddenly gripped by the fear that he might refuse me.
Elliot’s smile breaks into a grin as he pulls me towards him and kisses me. “I think that’s a wonderful idea Paige,” he whispers, “I would love nothing more than to room with you.” Relief washes over me as we kiss again.
Elliot
“Alright, it’s time to tell me where we're going,” Paige says as we exit the train station at St Paul’s and start to walk up the street.
“I’m taking you on a ghost walk,” I tell her as I open my eyes wide for added emphasis.
She laughs, clutching tighter onto my arm. “Is this a ploy to get me so scared I can’t sleep alone tonight?”
“It might be.”
This Ghost walk only runs on Tuesday nights. It might be fun; it might be lame - but a lot of haunted places are actually pubs, so we can always beg off and go to dinner instead if we’ve had enough. At the very least, I figure it might be a good way to learn a bit more about London. Besides the bus tour I did on my first day here, I really haven’t done any sightseeing, and I’m sure Paige hasn’t done any at all.
There is maybe a handful of other people waiting for the tour when we arrive. Paige is actually pretty excited about doing this and has been talking about what we might see while we walk. Neither of us believes in ghosts, but we’re really keen to see what passes for haunted and are willing to have an open mind, in case we’re wrong.
Paige grins up at me and clutches my arm as our tour begins, after our chat on the train, she seems much more relaxed around me. I’m so relieved because I was worried that maybe I had messed things up between us somehow after Cambridge – I just didn’t know how to get us back to how things were in that motel room, despite desperately wanting to feel like that with her again.
The first place we go to is Highgate High Level Station, it doesn’t really look haunted though – the guide, a short, squat man in his late 40s, tells us tales of ghost trains and a worker who killed himself here jumping in front of a train. The station has been closed for decades, and the tracks have long since been ripped up, so nature has overgrown, I guess it’s kind of spooky.
“I suppose it looks kind of spooky,” Paige says, reading my mind while she’s looking around.
“Let’s capture the moment, maybe we’ll find an orb in the photo or something,” I suggest, readying the camera on my phone. We stand in front of the entrance, and I hold my phone in front of us to take our picture there. We lean our heads together and smile as I tap the screen. The weather is getting warmer than it was when we first came here, but it’s still cool enough to flush our cheeks and turn our noses red. Paige looks radiant in the image.
“That’s a keeper,” I say to her.
She smiles at me and tugs my arm so we can catch up to the rest of the group who are moving on to a pub called The Gatehouse, it’s a pretty cool looking place, but they have modernised the interior, so it isn’t very creepy either.
We take some photos of the outside and happily accept when German gentleman from our tour group offers to take one of the two of us together. I do the same for him and his wife before we have to move on to our next ‘spooky’ setting.
“This is pretty fun,” Paige declares as we walk along with the group.
“It is?” I ask, feeling sure this was a complete failure.
“Yes,” she confirms laughing. “We are being tourists Elliot! I've never done something like this before – it’s awesome!”
We’re led to the Highgate Cemetery where we’re not allowed to take anything inside, and are handed off to another guide who takes us around. The cemetery is actually very creepy, not creepy in the paranormal sense – just creepy because it’s a graveyard and there are these great headstones looming over you, reminding you that people are buried here.
“Oh my god!” a woman shrieks as we all get the fright of our lives when the guide’s eyes roll back and he collapses on the ground having what looks like an epileptic fit.
Whispers go around the group as people wonder if finally, a ghost has come out to possess him.
“He’s having a fit!” I call out, rushing to the man’s aid and disbelieving that so many people are just standing there watching him. Paige kneels down beside me as I pull my jacket off and slide it under the man's head.
“What do you want me to do?” she asks.
“Just call an ambulance, I’ll make sure he doesn’t hurt himself,” I say as I watch our guide foam at the mouth as his body shakes and convulses uncontrollably.
Paige
“I can’t believe that just happened!” I say to Elliot as we’re leaving the cemetery, we decide that after the guide collapsed that maybe we should call this tour quits and go and get some food. We got our fright – it may not have been from the supernatural, but it was scary none the less; so we are ending the tour and declaring it a success.
I have to admit I’m pretty turned on by the way Elliot took control of the situation. I had no idea what to do, but he just went right on in there the second the guide started to crumple and took care of everything. I’m very impressed.
“Hang on a sec,” I say as we exit the gates to the cemetery. “I’ll find a pub for us to go and get dinner.” I use my phone to Google a nearby pub and get given directions to a place called Flask.
“I think that was actually supposed to be on the tour,” points out Elliot.
I shrug my shoulders and put my phone back in my bag. “Maybe we’ll actually see a ghost there,” I say.
“Maybe… Alright, one more photo before this unghostly tour is officially over,” he says, readying the camera on his phone.
We lean in together and he turns and kisses my cheek, so I turn my head and kiss him properly on the mouth before the camera app makes its clicking sound to signal the photo is done. He’s laughing as he checks that the photo worked, “That one’s great,” he says, showing it to me.
“You’ll have to send them all to my phone, so I have them too,” I say as we start walking towards the pub.
He nods, a thoughtful expression on his face, “So you want to remember me then? You aren’t planning on forgetting me when I go?”
I stop walking and kiss him with as much passion and feeling as I have in me. The world slips away from around us as we stand together, ignoring the traffic and the passers-by as we meld with each other, tasting each other, breathing each other in shamelessly. When we pull away, I can feel us both shaking from the intensity.
“I will dream about you, every night for the rest of my life.” I tell him seriously.
He threads his fingers through my hair and guides my head towards him to kiss me back, slowly and tenderly. I reach my arms up and wrap them around his neck pulling our bodies tighter together. My body hums with longing for him. I can’t seem to get enough of him. I don’t want to ever have enough of him.
When he pulls away he looks at me, adoration on his face, “Why couldn’t we have met in Sydney? I just feel so rushed.”
“Because sometimes all you get is a tiny flower in the bullcrap that is life,” I say matter-of-factly. He gives me a wry smile before we continue on our way to try to enjoy what is left of the night, but our imminent separation is a constant in the back of both of our minds.
Chapter 19
Elliot
“How would you all feel about me and Paige sharing a room together after Shane and Gav go back home?” I ask the group of curious faces in front of me. Paige and I have called a house meeting to see if everyone is comfortable living with a couple who actually get to sleep with each other in the flat.