Cecelia Ahern - The Time of My Life

‘Have you really changed?’ Blake asked, studying me.

I swallowed. His face was so close to mine. Stupidly, my answer depended partly on whether he wanted me to have changed or not but mostly because I didn’t know the answer. I’d changed since I’d met my life, sure enough, but had he helped me become again the person I was before Blake met me, or had he helped me move on from the person who was stuck in the rut after Blake, making me a new person entirely? It was confusing and I almost felt like breaking away to confer with my life on the answer. But I couldn’t because that was odd behaviour and because Blake’s lips were almost touching mine and I never ever wanted to ever have to move away.

‘Because everything feels the same,’ he said. ‘Everything feels right.’ Our lips were so close they were almost brushing. My body tingled all over.

Then I felt something cold on my chest and I looked down and saw a pint of Guinness attached to Life’s hand.

‘Your drink,’ Life said. ‘Enjoy.’

Our moment was lost, stolen from me by my life.

‘So,’ Life said, handing me a glass of white wine, and holding a bottle of beer in his hand.

Nobody jumped at the conversation-starter bait so he tried again.

‘That was really amazing today,’ Life said enthusiastically, genuinely trying hard. ‘I’ve never experienced anything like it. Is the rush still the same every time you do it?’

‘Yeah, it can be,’ Blake nodded.

‘Even though you had to dive how many times today?’

‘Three times. We’d three groups.’

‘Wow. I’d love to do it again, absolutely,’ Life said. ‘I’d recommend it to anyone.’

‘Great. Good, thanks. Let me give you this,’ Blake rooted around in his back pocket, ‘in case you do want to recommend it to anyone.’ He handed Life his card. It had his face on it. Life studied it, a small smile tickling on his lips, and I crossed my fingers and hoped he wouldn’t say anything catty. He looked at me and smiled instead. Blake caught the smile. It was so awkward between us all, I wanted it to be over. Enough already. I tried hard to think of something to say, but all thoughts failed me, which was ridiculous as all I’d been having all day were thoughts. Thoughts upon thoughts and now I had none. We all stood in silence in a little triangle, searching our brains for something to say. Nothing. We had nothing.

‘Do you want me to introduce you to some people?’ Blake asked Life, finally.

‘No, it’s okay, there’s a few people I recognise from earlier.’ Life jumped at the opportunity to get away. ‘Lucy, if you need me, I’ll be over here.’

‘Okay,’ I said, feeling annoyed and uncomfortable at the same time.

Then the music went up a notch and as ‘Whiskey in the Jar’ started everybody was lifted a bit and the noise went up to a level where conversation was impossible.

‘Come on,’ Blake said, taking my hand and leading me through the crowd. I saw Jenna looking at us with such a forlorn expression that a minuscule part of me felt a tiny bit of guilt. Ish. The madness lessened as he led me through the throng; the crowd thinned out, in size and in stature, as we moved to where the old thin men were propped up on the bar, eyeing up the newbies. We passed by the reeking toilets, then went by the back of the bar where the red and black chequered tiles were faded and sticky from spilled drinks and out towards a fire exit door held open by a beer barrel. I followed him, then when we were outside I looked around for the beer garden. ‘Hey this isn’t—’ but I didn’t get to finish because his lips were on mine, he was somehow kissing me and removing my glass from my hand and then his hands were back on me again, on my hips, on my waist, running upwards to my chest and neck and through my hair. My hands immediately went to his chest, his shirt was open all the way to four buttons down, revealing nice man cleavage, and my hands rested there as they always had, feeling smooth waxed skin. It was perfect, everything I had daydreamed about in my Saturday and Sunday lie-ins till one p.m. I could taste the beer on his tongue, could smell the shower gel from his recent shower, could remember everything that was ever good about our relationship. Then we finally pulled away to catch our breath.

‘Mmm,’ he said.

‘Have I still got it?’

‘ We’ve still got it,’ he murmured, then kissed me again. ‘What were we doing all this time not being together?’ He kissed my neck, and I froze.

All this time. I wanted to say something but every sentence I ran through my mind sounded bitter and angry, so I shut my mouth and waited my anger out. He stopped kissing me, then led me to the grass in the sunlight and we sat down. We laughed, not about anything in particular, but for the fact that here we were, together after all this time.

‘Why did you come?’ Blake asked, moving a hair from my face and putting it behind my ear.

‘To see you.’

‘I’m glad you did.’

‘Me too.’

We kissed again, falling short of the kiss-a-thon record I’d had with Don, then I mentally boxed myself for comparing them again.

‘We were interrupted earlier, weren’t we?’ he asked, casting his mind back to the equipment room in the airfield.

Finally, the moment had come, to talk about it. I took a sip of my wine and prepared.

‘Oh, yeah,’ he said, remembering. ‘My Moroccan pie. The Blake Taste .’

I thought he was joking but he wasn’t. He started explaining the old recipe and then went into further detail about how he had altered it. I was in so much shock that I couldn’t hear his words, nor think of any of my own. At least five minutes passed of me not saying anything and he had moved onto another recipe, describing fully in detail how he marinated and seasoned and simmered things for forty days and for forty nights, or at least it seemed that way. ‘So then you take the cumin and you—’

‘Why did you leave me?’

He had been so engrossed in his own little world that he was completely taken by surprise.

‘Lucy, come on.’ He became defensive, ‘Why do you have to talk about that?’

‘Because it seems appropriate,’ I said, voice trembling and hoping he wouldn’t hear it, though it was obvious. ‘It’s been almost three years.’ He shook his head and pretended he couldn’t believe it had been that long, ‘And I haven’t heard anything from you and here we are just like old times and it seems like the elephant in the room. I think we should talk about it. I need to talk about it.’

He looked around to make sure nobody was in earshot.

‘Okay. What do you want to talk about?’

‘Why you left me. I still don’t understand it. I don’t know what I did wrong.’

‘You didn’t do anything wrong, Lucy, it was me. I know it sounds corny but I just needed to go do my thing.’

‘What thing?’

‘You know … my thing . Travel and see places and—’

‘Have sex with other people?’

‘What? No, that’s not why I left.’

‘But I was travelling with you, everywhere, we were seeing places all the time. I never once told you you couldn’t do what you wanted to do or be who you wanted to be. Never once.’ I was battling with staying calm so that I could have the conversation; if I was in any way emotional he wouldn’t be able to cope with it.

‘It wasn’t about that,’ he said. ‘It was just … me, you know. Something that I needed to do. You and me, we were so serious so young. We had the apartment, the – you know, five years,’ he said, not making sense to any other human ear but making perfect sense to mine.

‘You wanted to be alone,’ I said.

‘Yeah.’

‘There wasn’t anybody else.’