Page 13 of The Meet Queue-t
“She had cancer,” I say, shifting slightly. My nose presses against his neck, and his arms tighten around me. Just tight enough I can barely breathe, but let’s face it, I wasn’t doing much of that anyway. “They triedeverything they could, but it was terminal.” The word no one wants to hear. “After we found out, we still had some time—about two years—and we made memories and did what we could, but there are only so many things you can do with someone who’s so tired and who needs so much care. Chemo itself nearly killed her.”
He’s silent, a pocket of warmth in the coldness that has become my life.
“She died a month ago. It’s been . . . hard. But she loved the Queen. Like,lovedher. With everything going on, she felt like the Queen was one good reason to be proud of being British.” I take a deep breath. “If she were around now, she’d have been first in the line to see the coffin, and it’s—it’s the one thing I can do. For her. To say goodbye.”
Breath blows across my hair, shifting it, and I feel his body move under me. “So that’s why you came here alone? For closure?”
“Yeah.”
The hand on my neck moves into my hair, and I let him hold me for a few glorious seconds more. Granny is amazing—she really, really is—but she’s very no nonsense. We hugged and cried a lot in the earlier days, but then she threw herself into her work. That was her way of dealing with grief, to make something from it. Mine was to fall back into myself and carry around this weight in my chest that stops me from wanting to do anything.
Mum wanted this amazing life for me, and I’ve let her down.
I break away from Oliver and wipe my fingers under my eyes. As nice as this is, I can’t get too comfortable relying on him. He’s a stranger, even if he doesn’t feel like one any more.
“Anyway, sorry about that.” My fingers come away black, and I smudge the heels of my hands over my cheeks. My eyelashes feel wet, and it’s a relief the sun isn’t close to coming up yet, because I’m a mess. I avoid the light from a nearby streetlamp, just in case.
Oliver’s hand touches my side, the kind of thoughtless gesture someone you know really well might do. “You don’t have anything to apologise for.”
“First I made you pretend to date me, and then I cried on you.” I cringe at his turtleneck, certain I’m going to find stains all over it. At least it’s black. “I’m not usually like this.”
“Like what? It’s not a crime to have emotions, Tessa.”
“Pretty sure what I’ve done to your jumper is a crime.” I use my sleeve to wipe away what might be a smear of snot. If the ground could just open up and swallow me right now, that would be great. “If you were going to call the police for the hand-holding, I don’t know what you’ll do over this.”
“Something drastic,” he agrees. “What do you think, the death penalty?”
I laugh. It’s thick and mucus-y, but at least it’s something. Determinedly, I face the front. “Do you think we’ll get there before dawn?”
“At the rate we’re moving?” He gives a quiet snort. “Unlikely.”
“What about you?” I ask. “Will it be a problem if the queue is delayed?”
“You mean, will my students survive without me?” His lopsided smile grows. “I’ve already rescheduled my lecture for today. It was at 9 a.m., so only my three regulars will have noticed.”
I pull a face, because when I was at uni, I wassonot one of those regulars. “9 a.m. lectures are theworst.”
“You went to university?”
Oh here we go. “Yes. Kind of. In a way. I mean, I went, but I never actually . . .” I clear my throat. “Graduated.”
He just nods. No judgement from the man who loves higher education enough he never left it. “What did you study?”
“English. But only because I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and it seemed like a pretty good bet.” And it might have been, if I’d finished.
“I wouldn’t have got through an entire English degree, either,” he says with an easy smile. “You should’ve done history.”
“So I could learn about the plague?”
“Believe it or not, other things happened.”
I laugh then, and he smiles across at me, tossing a lock of hair off his forehead. He really does need a haircut, but I like the fact it’s too long. I wonder what it would look like if he spiked it or shaved one side, like he had whenhewas at uni. Weird how we were both so different back then—him with his purple hair, me with my mousy brown.
“If you could do anything in the world,” he says, “what would you choose?”
“Anything?”
“In the world. No barriers.”
