Me-Before-You-by-Jojo-Moyes

their lift was out of order. Others, such as the failed attempt to go swimming,
required more time and organization – the ringing of the swimming pool
beforehand, the booking of Nathan for overtime, and then, when we got there,
the flask of hot chocolate drunk in silence in the leisure centre car park when
Will resolutely refused to go in.
The following Wednesday evening, we went to hear a singer he had once seen
live in New York. That was a good trip. When he listened to music he wore an
expression of intense concentration. Most of the time, it was as if Will were not
wholly present, as if there were some part of him struggling with pain, or
memories, or dark thoughts. But with music it was different.
And then the following day I took him to a wine tasting, part of a promotional
event held by a vineyard in a specialist wine shop. I had to promise Nathan I
wouldn’t get him drunk. I held up each glass for Will to sniff, and he knew what
it was even before he’d tasted it. I tried quite hard not to snort when Will spat it
into the beaker (it did look really funny), and he looked at me from under his
brows and said I was a complete child. The shop owner went from being weirdly
disconcerted by having a man in a wheelchair in his shop to quite impressed. As
the afternoon went on, he sat down and started opening other bottles, discussing
region and grape with Will, while I wandered up and down looking at the labels,
becoming, frankly, a little bored.
‘Come on, Clark. Get an education,’ he said, nodding at me to sit down beside
him.
‘I can’t. My mum told me it was rude to spit.’
The two men looked at each other as if I were the mad one. And yet he didn’t
spit every time. I watched him. And he was suspiciously talkative for the rest of
the afternoon – swift to laugh, and even more combative than usual.
And then, on the way home, we were driving through a town we didn’t
normally go to and, as we sat, motionless, in traffic, I glanced over and saw the
Tattoo and Piercing Parlour.
‘I always quite fancied a tattoo,’ I said.
I should have known afterwards that you couldn’t just say stuff like that in
Will’s presence. He didn’t do small talk, or shooting the breeze. He immediately
wanted to know why I hadn’t had one.
‘Oh … I don’t know. The thought of what everyone would say, I guess.’