I WAS JUST TRYING TO BE FUNNY | ✓

▬ 34: summer

               When the bus lurches to a halt, he and Sonia jump off onto the side of the motorway after me, though with much less enthusiasm. The wind grabs the loose fabric of my parachute trousers the moment I'm outside, flapping it violently around my shins. Sonia holds onto her glasses as if expecting they too might be strewn away. Tightening his jumper around his waist, Miles throws me an almost demanding glance.

All I do is grin and guide them across the road, through the trench currently moving along a languid stream that testifies to the lack of rain this week, and over the train tracks.

There's no path from this direction but it's doable. I stride into the shrubbery with nothing more than a warning of the steep downhill. Though June is already fading into July, the branches of growing trees maintain their spring elasticity and I take special care not to slap them back as I lead the way to the trough.

Miles shields his face as we shove through last year's birches that Sonia is short enough to be safe from. 'Grand. This the part where you turn out to be a serial murderer?'

I spin around and continue to walk backwards. My eyes find his without effort, the zeal between us interrupted only by the shadows sieved by the foliage above. 'Would you trust me?'

'Based on what?' he retorts.

I shove him only to root to the spot.

Due to the steepness of the hill, my palm is pressed to, rather than his shoulder as I intended, the left side of his abdomen, and I have to crane my neck to look up at him. His eyelashes are longer from this angle.

At the sight of him towering above me, some primal part of me is ready to drop to its knees and declare eternal loyalty, better to die in service than live without purpose, and there is no purpose in all the universes if he is to be dissatisfied with me. I'm yours forever, and if you won't have me I'll drag my feet along the Milky Way for the rest of my existence, building ghosts of you from stardust.

Thankfully, Sonia's voice asks why we've stopped moving and saves me a fraction of my dignity.

For the rest of the journey, I don't look back once, the burn under my cheeks refusing to soothe.

The sight of water distracts me from it and I sprint forward until I'm out of the woods. 'Welcome to Summer.' Arms wide, I turn to them. 'Bit lame but it's the best name eight-year-old me could come up with. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who knows about this so you lot better not tell anyone or I'll shave your eyebrows, innit.'

Sonia tugs several leaves from her afro puffs. 'I don't have any other friends.'

'Me neither, I s'pose.' The fact seems to crash onto him.

For a fraction of a second, Miles calcifies into a statue before he smiles like an Edenfield patient allowed in the garden after a week of restrictions. He's the first to stride to the wooden platform that covers the edge of the low cliff, and, dropping his bag and jumper, sits down.

I kick off my flip-flops in the middle of the path and dump my phone bag before I join him, cross-legged and leaning back on my palms. 'Question: where'd you get all that alcohol?'

Miles tilts his head. 'T'shops...'

'I thought you said your birthday's in July.'

'Aye, it is. My nineteenth birthday.' He laughs at my expression as I adjust to the fact that I'm younger than him. 'I got held back a year and that when my dad died.'

Sonia stares from the other side of him. 'Your dad's dead? I thought your parents were divorced.'

'No, they were happily married.'