Cecelia Ahern - The Time of My Life

Blake and I watched one another; there was a smile on his face as bright as my new bathroom light bulb which, given, on first read is a lame and unromantic simile, but when plunged in darkness for a year whilst on the toilet, a new light bulb is a very welcoming and enlightening thing to have, not to mention useful. Jenna said something in the front seat, Life howled with laughter and while Blake was before me smiling at me, promising a million tomorrows – or at least a tonight which I would gladly take, I wasn’t fussy – their growing bond over the past five minutes bothered me to distraction. Life’s disgusting rash was gone, he was delirious with happiness and as much as I tried to convince myself it was Blake’s doing, the reality felt very far away. He’d hit it off far more with Jenna than with the love of my life, and it wasn’t for his lack of trying either. I had seen it first-hand on the first day we met how Life could have greeted Blake – he could quite simply have been a bastard – and I was so thankful for Blake not to have seen that side of him. Whatever possibility of a future would we have together if Blake hated my life? And who would I choose? A new thought, which scared me. I wanted to slap my own face. Stop thinking, Lucy, it’s never done anybody any good.

‘Just like old times,’ Blake said suddenly.

Something about that irked me. I analysed it as Life had programmed me to do to everything, it seemed, and it wasn’t him that bothered me. It was neither his expression, nor his tone, it was the mere sentiment itself. Yes it did feel like old times but there was a large pile separating us, it was the unsaid all swept under the mat between us, getting so high that I could barely see his face. But I didn’t want to pull back the rug, I didn’t want to go backwards by delving into the compost heap of our past problems. I wanted to stay right here in the car in the airfield with the unsaid all still hidden away, suspended in time where everything was still and quiet and blissful, like we were floating down to earth with a great big parachute tying us together.

‘Are you staying around?’

I wasn’t sure if he was asking me to, or asking if I planned to; there was a difference. I played it safe.

‘I have to go back today. He has to meet somebody later.’

‘Who?’

‘A guy called Don,’ I replied, confused as to why he’d ask and then I realised what he’d meant, he’d forgotten about the presence of my life again. ‘My life,’ I said firmly which took him back. ‘ My life is meeting someone called Don.’

‘But you can stay, can’t you?’ He gave me a mischievous smile, one of his best, and I couldn’t help but break my momentarily hardened exterior. ‘Come on,’ he laughed, leaning forward and squeezing just above my knees where he knew I was ticklish.

Jenna looked in the rear-view mirror. Our eyes met. I couldn’t help but laugh, not at her, which she might have assumed, but because Blake’s fingers were wrapped around the ticklish part of my thigh and I couldn’t keep a straight face.

‘Jer’s having celebration drinks tonight.’ He continued tickling while I battled him off, laughing. ‘He’s thirty.’

‘I wish,’ Jeremy said, smiling, still looking out the window.

‘Happy birthday,’ I said but he still didn’t look at me. He was one of those people who made you feel like they either didn’t know or didn’t care that you were in the room and if they ever did acknowledge your existence it was bizarrely score one to you, and twenty years later they’d tell you they’d always had a crush on you but never had the courage to say anything and you’d tell them, What? I didn’t even think you liked me? And they’d say, Are you crazy? I just never knew what to say! At least that’s what happened with Christian Byrne who confessed to me in a bar four months ago, the coolest guy in our tennis camp when I was fifteen, who spoke to and kissed practically every girl in the dorm apart from me. And after all that time and after the confession, I still couldn’t kiss him because he’d gotten a girl pregnant and they were getting married because he felt it was the right thing even though it had caused him to end up in a dodgy strip club on Leeson Street at four in the morning and confess his love to a girl he hadn’t seen for fifteen years. I was in the club with Melanie, in case inquiring minds wanted to know.

‘We’d love to go if you don’t mind,’ I said to Jeremy.

Jeremy didn’t react. Jeremy didn’t know or didn’t care that I was talking to him. Jeremy secretly loved me, he would discover this soon enough but by then it would be too late because I would be back with Blake. Their friendship would suffer because he wouldn’t be able to stand seeing his best friend with the woman he loves so he would have to quit his job and move away, try to find another love but he never would, he’d eventually find someone but it wouldn’t be his one true love; he’d get married and have children but each time he and his wife would finish making love and she’d fall asleep, he’d lie awake until late in the night always thinking of the woman he left behind in Bastardstown, Co. Wexford. Me.

‘Course he doesn’t mind,’ Blake answered on his behalf. ‘It’s in the Bodhrán at six o’clock. We’ll go as soon as we get out of here. Come,’ he said, playfully prodding at my legs again, one poke with each word. ‘Come, come, come.’

‘Okay, okay,’ I laughed, using all my strength to catch his fingers to stop him from tickling me, but he was stronger and he grabbed my hands and we clasped fingers and sat like that, leaning in towards each other, staring at each other. ‘I’ll come,’ I said.

‘You bet you will,’ he joked quietly, and my heart actually had a conniption fit.

‘We can’t go,’ Life said as we lay on the floor in the back of the camper van, looking up through the skylight to the perfect blue sky we had merely moments ago fallen through. The camper van was still parked in the car park and we were waiting for the others to join us after Declan, Annie and Josh had finished their dive. Harry was somewhere using clever wordplay to figure his way into the underwear of the girl who wanted Blake’s babies.

‘Why can’t we go?’

‘Don!’

‘Screw Don!’ I said, immediately feeling guilty, but I was more than frustrated that my life was missing the point.

‘You already did that.’

‘But Blake has invited me out, the whole reason we’re here. Can’t you at least be happy for me?’

He thought about it. ‘You’re right. I’m very happy for you. Ever since Sunday night this has been exactly what you wanted so you stay here and sell yourself out to Blake, the man who broke your heart, and I’ll go back to Dublin to meet Don, the nice guy you just slept with, who invited me out for a drink.’

‘Why don’t you two just do it and get it over with,’ I snapped.

‘That’s very mature,’ he said calmly, ‘but again, you already took care of that. Me? I’m just interested in the friendship. We’re meeting in the Barge at eight tonight so that’s where I’ll be if Mr Theologian decides to leave you hanging while he goes in search of greener pastures again.’

‘You don’t believe in us,’ I said sadly.

‘That’s not true. I don’t believe in him, but who am I to stop you?’ He thought about it. ‘Oh, yeah, I’m your life . Do you think most people in a personal crisis would listen to their life or do they do as you do, drag them around from county to county searching for geological happiness?’

‘What does that shit even mean? Geological happiness ?’

‘Most people look for fulfilment and happiness within themselves; you, on the other hand, physically move to another county thinking it will help things.’