Chapter 1
The world seemed to be ending
The room was spinning and I felt my throat close
Blackness engulfed me as I heard the sickening crack of my head against the floor.
“Morning sleepy head! Wakey wakey!”
My hair fell across my face slightly as my shoulder was gently shaken. Rolling over I groaned. He knew I hate mornings. Why would he do this to me. I raised an eyebrow and heard a chortle.
“Jesus Christ!”
I had opened my eyes to see a pair of wide blue ones centimetres from my own. A pair of muscled arms pulled me up and spun me round taking half the bed sheets with us as we went. I couldn’t help but laugh. HE set me down on back on the bed and winked, his blonde hair flopping over his face.
“Nope, just me”
Mumbling some curse under my breath I pulled myself up and began to change.
“Come on, I got you up early to show you something.”
“Matt, I’ve already told you I have an interview today”
“I know, I know that’s why you have to hurry” he exclaimed hurrying me down the stairs, my arms still out of my dress. “Please, you’ll see”
I was fairly intrigued by now. Matt and I never really surprised each other. My idea of a romantic surprise was to get take out from the fancy shop. It’s not that we weren’t in love or that we weren’t romantic. We just didn’t do it. It wasn’t how we worked.
No one really understands us. Hell even I don’t understand us. We just work together. No matter how often we bicker or fight, no matter how little we had in common we were a pair. Always together, never apart. That’s what he got me for our first anniversary. A broken heart necklace. My half said always together and his half, on a key ring of course, read never apart.
We were nearing the kitchen now. The light was just beginning to dapple through the shutters. Half six. Half bloody six. He had better have a brilliant reason for this.
“Now close your eyes”
“No”
“Stop being so bloody stubborn”
I obliged, grudgingly and took three tentative steps into the kitchen. I felt his warm hands leave my face and I slowly opened my eyes.
“Oh, Matt!”
He had outdone himself. The kitchen was covered in fairy lights, softly glowing in the early dawn light. There were heart shaped pillows on the chairs and candles lit on the table. The sun shone weakly through red gauze curtains flooding the room with warm red light.
I turned to face Matt and looked at him. I looked at him closely, like I hadn’t in the longest time. His slightly crooked smile lit up his whole face brightening his azure eyes. His tanned skin was slightly weathered and had begun to crease around his eyes. His nose was like a button and turned up slightly at the end, a fact that I could never stop teasing him about. He was quite short. Just a few inches taller than my own five foot six.
God. What was he planning on doing? It wasn’t our anniversary that was last week. I wasn’t 26 for two months and Valentine’s Day was 4 months ago. I already knew what he was going to do before he did it.
He got down on one knee. What a prat. Who actually does that? I don’t know why I cried. I had known it was coming, I had guessed. Why was I crying?
“Nat. I know we don’t do this, and I know that we said we didn’t want to get married but please. You make me the happiest man in the world and even though you are a massive idiot and the most sarcastic bitch I have ever had the pleasure of knowing, I love you. I know I shouldn’t and every time you annoy me and we fight I wish I didn’t but I do and seeing as we’ve made it through 3 years I reckon we shouldn’t give up now. So Natalie Rose Fischer, would you do me the honour of being my wife”
I had always imagined that when someone proposed to me I would scream YES!, jump on them and run away into the sunset. In reality all I could do was look at his little face, so scared and nervous and laugh. Yes, I laughed. Why? I don’t know?
His face fell. I still remember that face to this day. I had never seen him look so upset and hopeless.
“Yes, yes you idiot of course I will”
My laughing had become interspersed with sobs and I fell into his arms in hysteria of tears and mirth.
I met Matt at Uni. We were both studying music and had mutual friends but had never really met properly. The story of how we met remains a mystery really. I like to tell people that we both reached for the same glass and our eyes met over the bar. He likes to tell people I lunged myself at him and danced with him until he agreed to buy me a drink. In reality it was pretty boring.
My friend Mary was dating a guy called Nathan. Mary was my friend and Nathan, Matt’s. They set us up to go on a date, not because they thought we were well matched, oh no but because our names also began with N and M. That was fairly disastrous. He turned up hung-over and I turned up with flu. We fought for most of the evening and then I left when he refused to pay. God knows why I agreed to a second date but I did.
And I am so glad I did. Matt can be such a romantic when he tries. I went to his place and he had set up his balcony like an Italian restaurant with fairy lights strung up everywhere and a candlelit dinner for two. We drank and ate and lay and gazed at the stars. Then he asked me to be his girlfriend and, ever the Casanova, managed to burp loudly during our first kiss.
We were probably the worst matched pair ever. I was neat and tidy and was studying musical theatre. Very much the good girl, never really rebelled. Matt however was studying pop culture, was in a band and had done pretty much everything under the sun.
We fought a lot. Still do if I’m being honest. I would get angry at him for being late and he would get angry at me for calling him out on everything he did. WE managed though. We got through university and moved in together. I took up a job at a theatre near the centre of London. Alright pay but not what I wanted to do. Matt and his band brought out an album and started touring the world.
They got a record deal and started to become quite famous. I’m the stay at home girlfriend. I don’t care. I keep the house nice when he is gone. It’s not that I don’t miss him when he’s gone. Of course I do. I wake up in the morning and don’t feel his reassuring warmth next to me. I get back from the theatre and there is no foolish, stupid idiot bounding towards the door screaming my name. I find some of his clothes strewn around and I have no one to scream at about the colour coded wardrobe I spend hours coordinating for him.
I loved him very much. So much that I would wait for him no matter where he went, what he did. I was one half of a pair, and we could never, would never be separated.
