parents’ car and blew air out of his cheeks. ‘Give Yorkshire hell, won’t you. I don’t know why I’m saying that, I know you’ll smash it.’
He smiled in a sly way, and my insides twitched. Was he … flirting? He looked lightly sweaty and also great under the music video disco-orange of the street lamp. Ed was classically handsome, really, I wasn’t sure why I’d been so keen to neuter and deny that fact.
Uncharacteristically I was completely lost for words, tucking my hair behind my ears and blushing.
‘Fuck. Eve,’ Ed said, shaking his head. ‘I love you, OK. As in, I’m in love with you. I’m not sure what I expect you to do with this information. But, there it is. I feel like I can’t let you go without telling you.’
I was stunned.
‘Say something! … Are you disgusted?’ Ed said, looking simultaneously hunted, bashful and yet triumphant at his own courage.
Without even thinking, by way of an answer, I stood on tiptoes and kissed him. Ed kissed me back, with the eagerness of it being something he’d been hoping and waiting to do, springing into action. He wrapped his big arms around me and I’d never felt so perfectly where I was meant to be in the universe as with our tongues entwined.
Wait: this was what falling for someone, real passion, was supposed to feel like? With Weed Dealer Jez, I hadn’t really fancied him organically. I fancied him on principle. I fancied his persona. I wanted him to fancy me, basically. In a split second with Ed, I understood there was an experience available that was far more instinctive, whole and multi-sensory.
‘Oh my God, I didn’t think you liked me, like that,’ Ed breathed, when we came up for air, and obviously I didn’t reply well I didn’t know I did, until a few hours ago.
‘I didn’t know you liked me, like that!’ I said, which got me out of the trap and had the benefit of being true.
‘Oh, me and an army. Loads of us have the “mysterious Evelyn Harris” crush and I’m no different,’ he said, which was mind-blowing on two levels. Everyone fancied Susie, surely? There was an Eve Harris constituency? ‘We don’t dare try as you’re so smart and aloof. The comebacks would be awful.’
I laughed, in complete amazement at how my world had completely turned on its head in seconds.
BEEP BEEP.
We looked over and his mum was flashing the headlights on and off and trying to peer into the murk over the steering wheel.
‘Write to me?’ Ed said, urgently, gripping my waist. ‘You’ve got my address?’
‘Yes, and you have mine. Write to me!’ I said.
‘OK, I will,’ he said, eyes shining in the dark. He kissed me again, fast and hard, and raced off to the car. I felt like my heart was going to explode with joy and my groin was going to explode with want.
Woah? What WAS that? I’d decided I was in love with one of my best friends, the night before we both moved to different cities for three years?
That evening, I laughed out loud in the dusk – the timing seemed so comical.
As opposed to what it actually was: catastrophically bad.
7
I still have the letter, the only proof – to be Ziploc bagged as evidence, or put inside an illuminated glass box in a museum. It’s on lined paper torn neatly from an A4 pad. When I’m feeling sentimental enough about old times – or angry enough to want vindication – I open the envelope and unfold the sheets, and I’m right back in my cupboard-sized room at Leeds, hands trembling. He’d sent it in the first week, no playing it cool.
There is the inscription, in black Biro, that proves Ed Cooper’s heart once belonged to me.
Dearest Eve, (E.R.H.)
As promised! HI. Wow, I couldn’t wait to write to you and now I’ve got writer’s block. Or whatever the equivalent is when you’re not a writer, but sat here chewing your pen in the Refectory worrying you’re going to sound like a total div. OK, so – I picked my moment, didn’t I?! Hope you’re settling in. Newcastle’s great but it’s cold, and there’s no Eve, which makes it seem colder.
You’re probably wondering why I left it until three minutes before we left to say something. I can answer that in a word: cowardice. I’ve been so terrified of rejection & I couldn’t find any clue or hope you felt the same way that I did. (You laugh at