I Was Born for This(94)

We all smile.

‘There are other good things, though,’ I say, looking at Juliet.

She looks at me. ‘Yeah, there are.’

‘Shall we start over?’ I say.

Juliet shrugs. ‘No. This has been an important part of our friendship development.’

‘It has, hasn’t it?’

My phone buzzes. I look at the screen.

‘Hey, it’s Jimmy,’ I say, and open the message.

Jimmy KagaRicci @jimmykagaricci

Lister awake after leg surgery, he’s feeling a lot better Thank you for everything

Then he sends me a picture of the three of them. Lister is in a hospital bed, his leg elevated and enclosed in the biggest cast I have ever seen, with an IV drip in his arm. Rowan is on one side, making the ‘okay’ sign with one hand, and Jimmy is on the other, making a peace sign.

Juliet laughs. ‘They look adorable.’

‘Shall we send a photo back?’

‘Why not!’

I open up my phone camera and take a selfie of us. I do Jimmy’s peace sign, Juliet does Rowan’s okay sign. Bliss smiles wide. I send it to them.

angel @jimmysangels

Tell him to get well soon!!

Thank you for everything too x





angel @jimmysangels

Tell him to get well soon!!

Thank you for everything too x I smile and look at the photo again. They look vaguely happy. Angel’s still wearing Grandma’s floral scarf. Juliet’s resting her head on Angel’s shoulder. Bliss looks happier than I’ve seen her in a long time.

The heart-rate monitor – or whatever the hell it is – beeps rhythmically, just to assure everyone in the room that Lister is still alive. Not that we really need to hear that when Lister is, in fact, sitting up and furiously making his way through a family-size packet of Doritos.

Rowan wrinkles his nose from where he’s sitting on the windowsill. ‘You’re literally covering yourself in Dorito dust.’

‘Let me have this, Ro Ro. I got accidentally stabbed.’

‘Is that going to be your excuse for everything from now on?’

‘… probably.’ Lister shovels more Doritos into his mouth. ‘Need to live my life to the fullest. Never know which day might be your last. Et cetera.’

‘And that involves … Doritos.’

Lister waves the bag at Rowan. ‘If I had my way, everything in my life would involve Doritos.’

The taxi ride here was probably the worst half an hour of my life. For most of it, I convinced myself that Lister was already dead. Only when we got to the hospital and we heard he was in surgery did I allow myself to hope.

When the paparazzi and the fans started appearing, we were allowed to hide in a staffroom. Unsurprising that someone saw us and leaked our location.

Once Lister was out, alive, drugged up and unconscious, we were all moved to a private hospital room for a few hours. Then he went back into theatre for surgery on his leg, leaving us alone again, and the whole time he was in there, I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

When he got back and woke up a few hours later, I went ahead and had a bit of a cry and apologised a billion times. Lister tried to make me stop but I definitely haven’t apologised enough. In fact, Lister is pretending that he feels completely fine, but every time he moves too fast, I can see his eyes twitch as he suppresses a wince.

And I still hate myself.

Just FYI.

Still think I’m the worst.

But, you know.

That’s not uncommon.

I stand from my chair and go and join Rowan at the window. We’re facing the courtyard. Rowan seems to be watching a couple of kids playing hopscotch.

We haven’t talked about anything yet, but I can feel it about to happen.

‘What are we gonna do about him?’ Rowan murmurs to me, nodding his head slightly at Lister and his cloud of Dorito dust.

It takes a moment for me to understand Rowan’s meaning.

‘Oh,’ I say. ‘The alcohol.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, I have a lot of good therapy connections.’

Rowan chuckles. ‘That’s good. I think we all need therapy, to be honest.’

‘Yeah.’

‘You can still leave, if you want to. I don’t want you to be unhappy.’

‘I don’t want to leave.’

He looks up at me, shocked. ‘What?’

‘Well, I do, sort of,’ I say.

‘Stop contradicting yourself,’ he says, and then laughs. ‘Make some sense, damn it!’

‘The three of us … we were born to be together,’ I say. ‘And I can’t leave that. I don’t want to leave that.’

‘Born to be,’ Rowan echoes my words. ‘Fate, or something?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’ll put it in a song.’

‘You should. This would all make a pretty good song, actually.’

Rowan smiles. ‘It actually would, wouldn’t it?’

‘Being in The Ark is really … horrible sometimes.’

‘You said it.’

‘But leaving that … leaving you two … would be terrible.’ I look at Rowan. ‘You two are the most important thing to me.’