Page 50 of The Edge of Always

Chapter Thirteen

NOW

Longing for Human Connection: Oil on canvas. Psychologically intense, this piece features more detailed brushstrokes to create a haunting yet romantic depiction. While there is some perception of depth, other features, such as the horse’s eye, are distorted. Despite this, the work contains elements of levity, the colours are jovial. c.2006.

‘You want me to stay in Paris. With you. For a week. Visiting the places that Earl painted,’ I state as the piano hammers out a crescendo in the background.

It’s not how it’s meant to be, Emmett and I in a place like this. A place that’s quaint, refined, distinctly unwindswept. It’s not how we’ve ever been.

We’re messy and ill-defined. We don’t just come out and say what we want from the other. We tiptoe around it for years instead.

‘Give me until Friday. Look…’ He pauses and pushes his hair back, and I think that this, this is more familiar ground, with neither of us exactly able to say what it is that we want. ‘I’ve been working on this.’

‘What is this? Working with who?’

‘Communicating. I’ve been having therapy.’

‘That’s good, Emmett. I’m pleased for you.’ I say the words and will them to be true. I am pleased for him. I just wish that things were different.

‘I miss you, Luna,’ he tells me, and I’m taken aback. He catches my eye and I shake my head, trapped somewhere between awe and fear and confusion. Sometimes I think I hate him, but not for the fact that he left me. I deserved that, since I lied to him. What I hate is the fact that I was the happiest I’d ever been in my life until he left. I hate that I’ve never been as happy since, that the world has never again felt so colourful. But then at other times, I think that loving Emmett was so intense and lonely that I half prefer the duller tones that I live with now. Hate is exhausting.

‘Emmett. I—’

He cuts me off. ‘I should have reached out before now but I needed, I don’t know, time. So much has changed but you’ve always been my best friend, Luna. Always.’

He doesn’t look away.

I’m rendered mute by the directness of his words. Honesty always came at a cost with Emmett in the past. But not now, it seems.

‘Let’s visit these places, the ones Earl painted. It just feels, I don’t know… right.’

I should say no. There’s no point in getting close to Emmett again; there’s no point in getting close to anyone. It only makes it worse when it has to end.

But I’ve never had any control when it came to Emmett. I’ve disliked myself more than him for it. How I just waited for him back then, how I’d have done absolutely anything for him. It makes me feel so weak. So I should gain some of the upper ground here, tell him that I have my own plans for tomorrow and then I’m going home. That I’m worried that getting close to him and then losing him again would destroy me.

But then maybe humans have never been very good at doing the things that are good for them. Because despite how on edge I feel, how much I’ll suffer for this later, how much of the truth I’m hiding from him right at this second, I do want to spend more time together. I’m a glutton and time with Emmett is my punishment.

‘How would it work, logistically?’ I ask.

Emmett smiles. ‘Well, I do know the city pretty well.’

‘Course you do.’

‘We’d visit the places from his final collection in Paris. There must be a reason that the last painting he ever painted, the one of you, is the only painting he ever wrote a message in. I think it was for you. All these places meant something to him and Sebastian. Maybe it’ll answer some questions and I don’t know, settle some things. For us.’

I drum my fingernails on the table. The truth is, the thought of trekking around Paris, visiting the places that Earl painted, well, it terrifies me. Knowing that he loved Sebastian so much that he painted him decades later is a frightening thought. I don’t want to believe in a love like that. It’s devastating, knowing that a love so potent it endured and endured exists in the world. Imagine knowing that and yet never having it.

‘I just don’t know if I can, Emmett. I’m meant to be focusing on my blog. I’m mid mini-series I can’t let my followers down. We’re a very close community.’

‘What’s the mini-series on?’

‘Earl’s paintings,’ I answer guiltily, knowing exactly how Emmett will respond to the news.

‘Well, that’s perfect then,’ he promises. ‘We can go back to MAM and film there and then see the places in real life.’

I pretend to take some more thinking time. It’s a small win, infinitesimal really, but when you lose as often as I do, you have to take what you can get.

‘If you give me until Friday, I’ll make sure that you have the best mini-break in Paris that ever there was. In Earl’s honour. We can do it together,’ he finishes.