Our beach is a lot smaller. It has a thin pier you can walk down, with a bench at the end, and a massive arcade just across the road that stays open until 10pm. There never seems to be many people on the beach itself, apart from a few dog-walkers and elderly folk, and it’s no different today. It’s just open space and flat blue sea and a beautiful horizon, as if the whole world has been made just for us.

We walk up and down the beach, talking, and we walk up the pier and sit on the bench at the end and talk and kiss, and then we get the rug I keep in my car and find a spot on the beach to sit down and then lie down and just be silent for a while.

We walk to the fish and chip shop we always go to and sit on the brick wall outside and eat and talk, and then we decide taking off our shoes and socks and rolling up our jeans and paddling in the sea is a good idea but quickly learn, once our jeans get wet, that it probably wasn’t a very good idea after all.

We take a bunch of photos on Charlie’s phone after talking about how he doesn’t take enough. We go to the arcade for an hour and play on all our favourites: air hockey, the jungle car game, the skiing game, the basketball game, the coin machines. We get enough tickets for a bouncy ball.

We sit at the end of the pier again and watch the sunset, because that’s what you’ve got to do on days like this. The clouds turn pink and purple, the sky orange, and then everything is dark blue.

On the drive back, Charlie falls asleep in my car. I turn the radio on and thank the universe that my life is like this.

Six

SIX

CHARLIE

Aled was right. Nick and I are literally two idiots.

We spend the whole day talking about us and what it’s going to be like when we’re long distance and it honestly only makes me believe even harder that we’re going to be fine, that everything’s going to be okay.

Everything is going to be okay. Seriously, this time.

Fuck this university thing. It really messes stuff up, doesn’t it? God.

Nick drives me back home, but I tell him to drive to his house instead. I text Victoria that I’m staying over his. She’ll explain to our parents.

And it sounds really silly but we stay up late just talking and browsing the Internet and watching videos and talking again, laughing, dozing off. I wonder what it’d be like to have a whole life of this. I think it’d be pretty great. Not gonna lie.