Gas on Palms, Bruises on Hearts

CW: apocalyptic event, mentions of family member death, discussions of death/the afterlife (plus small insinuations of homophobia), mild language.

Adelola dropped the needle onto the record three minutes and forty-nine seconds before the world was due to end. 

Mr. Yorke’s crooning whine echoed around her. It flitted away from its place on the roof of the caravan, rolled down the fiberglass sides and the windswept grass and tumbled from the edge of the cliff. Evie had said this was a preposterously precarious place to park – we’ll roll right off, Addie, – but Adelola had eventually reminded her that the world was about to end. Changes your perspective a bit, that.

Adelola was a few minutes from being swept off the roof herself. Her bones had scolded her during the short climb up, had creaked and moaned and were altogether much too opinionated for some lumps of calcium moments away from nullity. Speaking of over-opinionated lumps, she was beginning to wonder where the bloody hell Evie actually was.

“Eva, you daft bat,” she shouted through the wind, “Get up here before I blow away.”

A purple-rinse bouffant poked up over the side. A pair of crow-feet eyes glowered through bottle-end glasses.

“I was locking the door, Addie.”

As much as she enjoyed watching the old thing scramble up the ladder, Adelola eventually held out a hand to pull her up.

“I know how attached to your china collection you are, Evie, but I don’t think a half-price padlock from B&M is going to keep ol’ Perses-3576 from destroying them all.”

“I like to think of it as a final show of respect.”

“And for that, you’re an old fool, Evie Chapman.” Adelola smiled a frown.

“Ah, yes,” Evie’s arms met her waist and started off a subtle sway to the music, “But you’re older. And you were enough of a fool to marry me.”

“May 21^st, 2022. Worst day of my life.”

A tease wrapped in an insult wrapped in yet more lilts from Thom. Adelola met the sway with her own and suddenly the two were dancing that simple box step they’d danced so many times before. Tipsy on dandelion wine, on the empty floor of their newly kitted-out Taylor Wimpey, in that hotel they’d got half price for their wedding night with the mysterious stain on the mattress. After Evie’s dad’s funeral with the damp of her eyes seeping into Adelola’s neck, after Adelola came home from the clinic with the new Citalopram prescription, in the broken-heater chill of that stupid caravan they’d spent all their savings on that they stood on now. On lino, on floorboards, on concrete, on grass, on snow and in puddles and in the glow of the moon. 

Two minutes and forty-one seconds until that grass and those puddles and the glow of that daft moon were all gone.

“Worse than today?” 

The sudden seriousness to Evie’s tone was not lost on her. It was never lost on her, Evie’s dips into the pensive, just as she was sure her rare attempts at optimism never flew over Evie.

“Don’t you remember your father’s speech?”

“I think I was more concentrated on your brother’s atrocious tie.”

“Paisley, wasn’t it?”

“Chevron, actually.”

“Horrendous.”

“I’m sure he told me it was from a charity shop.”

“I’m sure he told me he found it in a bin.”

They laughed, nothing much to laugh at though there was. 

But laughing with Evie always had that aura of muffled giggles in a funeral parade, fuelled by the high of emotions and bizzarrity of loss. Forbidden and shameful but nonetheless relieving. Air let out from a tire, pressure released from a headache, a slow dance at the end of the world.

“Do you think it’ll hurt?”

The press of Evie’s face over her shoulder was met with a particularly loud chime from the player. Their sways matched its volume with tighter grips and hums to that tinkly little tune. Adelola could feel damp on her neck. Evie could likely feel damp on her own.

“I don’t know.”

She’d imagined the pain before. All the way from News Report No. 1 to those stupid farewell concerts they did last month on BBC 5 to that Netflix special with this generation’s bad excuse for Louis Theroux. She wasn’t scared of it anymore. Many things, but not that. Even now, as she looked over the edge of the cliff into the grey sea and imagined the hurtle of Perses up above, Adelola couldn’t bring herself to flinch. Tears could be blamed on the wind, and her grip on Evie could be mistaken for a lack of balance in each of its gusts. 

“My Nan always told me I’d go to Hell,” a sniff flew out into the gale, “Reckon it’s real, Addie? Reckon this is our ticket, first class seat?”

“Always the poet, Chapman.”

“You love it, Okoro.”

“Only through years of desensitisation,”

She could practically hear the scowl on Evie’s face. The scowl that seemed to get deeper as each year went by, starting off as reluctant irritation and ending with what it was now – fondness disguised as annoyance. It’d been there when they’d first met, painting Evie’s personality onto her face for all the world to see. Adelola had fallen in love with her right then.

When she finally got to touch Evie’s personality with her own, Adelola fell in love with her more. When Evie taught her how to skateboard, hands holding Adelola’s with fierce determination, Adelola fell in love with her more. Sleepovers, birthday gifts, tragic haircuts, Evie’s first boyfriend, Adelola’s failed first date with Jack from Geography – with all of it, all of it, Adelola fell in love with her more. She’d known that fact for years on end. Evie lit her up like oil on water. 

Adelola was always the water in that metaphor, still and calm until a tremble made her snap. Evie was slick. Slippery, never to be tamed. Fanning out into all the colours of the rainbow if you gazed in just the right light. Adelola had always been good at finding that light. 

Less than a minute, now, and that light would be snuffed out. Because, suddenly, Adelola realised that Thom was nearing the end. 

“Let me see your face, Evie,”

Evie didn’t need to ask. She just pulled back and met Adelola’s eyes, rain on coal. God, she’s beautiful.

“You’re a right minger, you.”

Evie pressed her forehead against Adelola’s.

“Coming from you, that’s rich.”

They laughed.

Adelola held her cheek. 

Their sways had stopped.

“I do love you, though.”

“Save the sappiness for Hell, dear,” Evie raised a hand to cup her neck, “Or Heaven. Or wherever else. Might be nothing, I suppose. As long as we’re together.”

It was all licked with humour, all of it apart from that last sentence. Our last sentence, Adelola thought wryly, I wonder what that’ll be. Better make it a good one.

“Well, if we’re not, I’ll come find you. I’m good at stuff like that. Remember Paris?”

“It was your fault we lost the map in the first place.”

They nearly laughed, but this time not quite. Their throats were jammed with something. Emotion, perhaps. Fear, perhaps. No, not fear, Adelola decided. Never fear, not when Evie was here, the insufferable bat she was.

“I love­–”

“Don’t say it now, Eva,” her other hand reached up too, and now Adelola was gripping the world in her hands, “Say it later, eh? When I find you again.”

“Alright.”

“Alright.” Adelola frowned a smile.

She could hear the screams in the distance, riding the wind like empty crisp packets. Closure wasn’t for everyone, it would seem. Closure had never really been for her either. 

With the smell of Evie’s perfume on the tip of her nose and cold skin in her warm palms, the needle dropped to a stop. Neither bothered to glance at the record player.

The song was over.