Cecelia Ahern - The Time of My Life

‘No, Jesus, no. Lucy—’

‘And what about now?’ I asked, terrified of the answer. ‘Do you still need to be alone?’

‘Ah, Lucy.’ He looked away. ‘My life is complicated, you know. Not to me, to me it’s so simple, but for other people it’s …’

Alarm bells rang in my head. I felt myself physically move away from him, not so much that he would notice, but so much that I would. I felt myself move away in a lot of ways.

‘… spontaneous and exciting and full of adventure and I like to keep moving and experience new things. You know,’ he lit up, ‘there was this one week when I went to Papua New Guinea…’ and he was off.

For ten minutes I listened to him talk about his life and by the time he was nearing the end I knew why I was here. I was sitting on the grass beside him, listening to this familiar man sounding like a perfect stranger, and in a matter of minutes I was feeling completely differently about him. I was seeing him as somebody else, less of a god and more of a friend, a silly little friend who’d lost his way and found himself besotted with his life, his life and not anybody else’s and certainly not mine because mine was inside drinking beer and listening to traditional music on his own after I’d dragged him all the way here. I suddenly wanted to leave Blake and be inside with Life. But I couldn’t, not until after I’d done what I came here to do.

He finished talking and I smiled, calm and serene, a little sad but feeling at peace, finally. ‘I’m really happy for you Blake,’ I said. ‘I’m happy that you’re happy in your life and I’m proud of you for all you’ve achieved.’

He looked a little confused, but pleased, and looked around. ‘Do you have to go now or something?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘They sounded like parting words.’

I smiled again. ‘Maybe they are.’

‘No,’ he groaned. ‘We were doing so well.’ He moved in closer to me again, tried to kiss me.

‘This isn’t going to work, Blake.’

‘Ah, Lucy, don’t.’

‘No, no, listen to me. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s not my fault. I didn’t do anything wrong, I know that now, it’s just the way it is. Sometimes things just don’t work. You and me, we worked for the amount of time that we worked, then we didn’t any more. We can’t go back, and, frankly, I can’t see what we can be. I’ve changed.’

‘He did that to you?’ he said, looking towards the bar.

‘No. You did. When you left.’

‘But I’m here now and we’re so good together,’ he said, reaching out to me.

‘We are,’ I laughed. ‘We are so good together when we’re not talking about what counts, and my life counts, Blake, my life is important to me.’

‘I know that.’

‘Do you? Because he’s in there, having a pint on his own and I don’t think you’re the slightest bit interested in him. You haven’t asked one question about me since I’ve seen you, not one.’

He frowned while he thought about it.

‘That might be okay for someone else, it was okay for me for a while, but not now.’

‘So you’re leaving me.’

‘No, no,’ I laughed and gave him a stern look. ‘Don’t pull that trick. No one is leaving anyone, we’re just not starting anything.’ There was a silence and before he made a move to leave and became forever become lost to a world I had no access to, I spoke again. ‘But I’m glad you brought that up, because that’s why I’m here.’

‘Why are you here?’

I took a deep breath. ‘You need to tell our friends that you left me.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

‘I’m sorry, I need to do what?’

From the way he was looking at me I knew that he’d heard exactly what I said. I wasn’t being asked to repeat it for hearing’s sake but so that I would know there was no way in the world that was ever going to happen. That’s when our friendly break-up, or our not-getting-back-together moment became less so.

‘I’d like them to know that I didn’t break up with you,’ I said easily, trying to keep my tone casual but firm so this could be as non-conflicting as possible.

‘So you want me to just call them all up and say, Hi, by the way …’ He finished the sentence in his head, carried the scene out. ‘No way.’ He shifted uncomfortably on the grass.

‘You don’t have to call them all up and make a big song and dance about it, Blake, in fact you don’t have to say anything at all, I’ll tell them. My thirtieth is in two days and we’re going out for dinner and I could just tell them then, no big deal, no fireworks, just tell them and then if they don’t believe me, which they probably won’t, they’ll probably call you up and that’s when I’d need you to back me up.’

‘No,’ he said immediately, eyes fixed ahead of him. ‘It was years ago, it’s history, let’s just leave it there. Believe me, nobody cares. I don’t know why you want to bring it all back up.’

‘For me. It’s important to me. Blake, they all think I cheated on you, they—’

‘I’ll tell them you didn’t, that’s ridiculous,’ he said protectively. ‘Who said that?’

‘All of them, apart from Jamie, but that’s not the point.’

His jaw set as he thought hard. ‘You didn’t, did you?’

‘What? No way! Blake, listen to me, they think I’m the bad guy, that I broke your heart, that I ruined your life and—’

‘You want me to be the bad guy instead,’ he said angrily.

‘No, of course I don’t, I just want them to know the truth. It’s as if they blame me for all the changes in our lives. Not everyone, mostly Adam—’

‘Don’t mind Adam,’ Blake said, calming then. ‘He’s my best friend, he’s the most loyal human being on the planet, but you know what he’s like, he’s intense. I’ll tell him to lay off you.’

‘He makes comments all of the time. There’s always an atmosphere between me and him, and Mary for that matter, though that doesn’t bother me much. He makes things difficult for me; if he just knew that he was misinformed then he’d stop. He might even apologise.’

‘You want an apology? So that’s what this is about. I’ll talk to him, I’ll tell him to calm down, to stop being so intense, that things between us just fizzled out naturally and you were the strong one to finally point it out and end it, that I’m fine about the whole thing, that—’

‘No, no, no,’ I said, not wanting to get sucked into another story. ‘No. I want them to know the truth. We don’t have to tell them why we said what we said, we’ll tell them it’s private and we never want to talk about it again. But at least they’ll know. You know?’

‘No,’ he said firmly and stood, wiped the grass from his jeans. ‘I don’t know what you and him came here to do. Trick me into becoming some kind of bad guy to our friends but I’m not falling for it. I’m not doing it. The past is the past, you were right, there’s no point in going back there again.’

I stood too. ‘Wait, Blake. Whatever you think this is, you’re wrong. This is not some kind of act of sabotage, in fact it’s the opposite. I want to fix things, more specifically I want to fix my life. I thought that meant finding you, and in a way I was right but just not exactly the way I thought it was supposed to be. Look,’ I took a deep breath, ‘it’s as simple as this. A few years ago we told a lie. What we thought was a small lie, but it wasn’t. It’s okay for you because you’re away all the time, you’re travelling the world and you don’t have to live with it. I have to live with it every day, every single day. Why did I walk away from something that was perfect? They ask me all the time. But I didn’t. Truth is, something that I thought was perfect was taken away from me, and I never wanted perfect again. I wanted middle of the road, stuff I didn’t care about so that I couldn’t lose anything I really loved ever again. I can’t live with the lie any more. I can’t. I need to move on but in order for me to do that I need you to help me do this one thing. I could tell them myself but it needs the both of us. Please, Blake, I need you to help me do this.’