Cecelia Ahern - If You Could See Me Now

“Well?” she asked, taking a sip.

“Well, I think it’s high time you gave this town a caffeine high,” Ivan announced, looking up and down the empty street.

Elizabeth stared at him blankly.

“Go on.” He tapped her cup slightly and milky coffee sploshed over the side and onto the pavement. “Oops,” he said drily.

Elizabeth laughed at him. “You’re so silly, Ivan.”

“Why am I silly? You’re the one that suggested it.” He hit her cup again, harder this time, sending more coffee dripping to the ground. Elizabeth let out a shout and jumped back to avoid it staining her shoes.

She attracted a few stares from inside the café.

“Go on, Elizabeth!”

It was ludicrous, preposterous, ridiculous, and completely juvenile. It didn’t make sense, but remembering the fun in the field yesterday, how she laughed and how she floated for the remainder of the day, she craved more of that feeling. She toppled the cup to the side, allowing the coffee to fall to the ground. It first formed a pool, then she watched as it flowed down the cracks in the slabs of stones and ran slowly down the street.

“Come on, that won’t even wake the insects,” Ivan teased.

“Well then, stand back.” She raised an eyebrow. Ivan stepped away as Elizabeth held out her arm and spun around on the spot. The coffee shot out as though in a fountain.

Joe stuck his head out the door. “What are you upta, Elizabeth? Did I make a bad cuppa?” He looked worried. “You’re not making me look good in front of these folk.” He nodded his head to the tourists gathered at the window, watching her.

Ivan laughed. “I think this calls for another cup of coffee,” he announced.

“Another cup?” Elizabeth asked, startled.

“OK, so,” Joe said, slowly backing up.

“Excuse me, what is she doing?” a tourist asked Joe as he headed back inside.

“Ah, ’tis a, eh . . .” Joe floundered. “ ’Tis a custom we have here in Baile na gCroíthe. Every Monday morning we just, eh . . .” He looked back at Elizabeth, standing alone laughing and twirling as she splattered coffee on the pavement. “We like to splatter the coffee around, you see. It’s good for the, eh . . .” He watched as it splashed over his window boxes. “Flowers.” He gulped.

The man’s eyebrows rose with interest and he smiled in amusement. “In that case, five more cups of coffee for us.”

Joe looked uncertain, then his face broke into a great big smile as the money was thrust toward him. “Five cups on the way.”

Moments later, Elizabeth was joined by five strangers who danced around beside her, whooping and hollering as they spilled coffee down the pavement. This made her and Ivan laugh even more until eventually they escaped the crowd of tourists, who were giving each other secret looks of confusion over the silly Irish custom of spilling coffee on the ground, but who were finding amusement in it all the same. Elizabeth looked around the village in astonishment.

Shopkeepers stood in their front doors, watching the commotion outside Joe’s. Windows opened and heads peeked out. Cars slowed down to have a look, causing the traffic from behind to beep in frustration. In a matter of moments, a sleepy village had woken.

“What’s wrong?” Ivan asked, wiping the tears of laughter from his eyes. “Why have you stopped laughing?”

“Are there no such things as dreams to you, Ivan? Can’t some things remain only in your head?” As far as she could see, he could make everything happen. Well, almost everything. She looked up into his blue eyes and her heart beat wildly.

He gazed down at her and took a step closer. He looked so serious and older than he previously had appeared, like he had seen and learned something new in the last few seconds. He placed a soft hand on her cheek and moved his head so slowly toward her face. “No,” he whispered and kissed her so gently on the lips her knees almost buckled beneath her. “ Everything must come true.”

Joe looked out the window and laughed at the tourists dancing around and splattering coffee outside his shop. Catching a glimpse of Elizabeth across the road, Joe moved closer to the window to get a better look. She held her head high in the air with her eyes closed in perfect bliss. Her hair, which was usually tied back, was down and blowing in the light morning breeze and she looked to be reveling in the sun shining down on her face.

Joe could have sworn he saw her mother in that face.

Chapter Twenty-Three

It took Ivan’s and Elizabeth’s lips a while to pull away from one another, but when they finally did, Elizabeth half skipped, half walked with tingling lips along the path to her office. She felt if she lifted her feet any higher from the ground, she would float away. Humming as she tried to control her non-flight, she bumped straight into Mrs. Bracken, who stood in her doorway, eyeing up the tourists across the road.

“Jesus!” Elizabeth jumped back in fright.

“Is the son of God, who sacrificed his life and died on the cross to spread the Lord’s word and to give you a better life, so don’t take his name in vain,” Mrs. Bracken rattled off. She nodded in the direction of the café. “What are those foreigners up to at all, at all?”

Elizabeth bit her lip and tried not to laugh. “I have no idea. Why don’t you join them?”

“Mr. Bracken wouldn’t be pleased about that carry-on at all.” She must have sensed something in Elizabeth’s voice, because her head shot up, her eyes narrowed, and she studied Elizabeth’s face intently. “You look different. You’ve been spending time up at that tower?” Mrs. Bracken accused her.

“Of course I have, Mrs. Bracken, I’m designing the place, remember?”

Mrs. Bracken’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Your hair’s down.”

“And?” Elizabeth asked, moving into the fabric shop to see if her order had arrived.

“And Mr. Bracken used to say beware of a woman who drastically changes her hair.”

“I would hardly call letting my hair down a drastic change.”

“Elizabeth Egan, for you of all people, I would call letting your hair down a drastic change. By the way,” she moved on quickly, not allowing Elizabeth to get a word in, “there’s a problem with the order that came in today.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s colorful. ” She said the word as if it were a disease and, widening her eyes, she emphasized the next word even more: “Red.”

Elizabeth smiled. “It’s raspberry, not red, and what’s wrong with a bit of color?”

“What’s wrong with a bit of color, she says.” Mrs. Bracken raised her voice an octave. “Up until last week, your world was brown. It’s the tower that’s doing it to you. The American fella, isn’t it?”

“Oh, don’t you start with that tower talk as well.” Elizabeth dismissed her. “I’ve been up there all week and it’s just a crumbling wall.”

“A crumbling wall is right,” she said, eyeing her. “And it’s the American fella that’s knocking it.”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “Good-bye, Mrs. Bracken.” She ran upstairs to her office. On her entry, a pair of legs sticking out from underneath Poppy’s desk greeted her. They were men’s legs, brown cords with brown shoes moving and squiggling around.

“Is that you, Elizabeth?” a voice shouted out.

“Yes, Harry.” Elizabeth smiled. Oddly, she was finding the two people who usually irritated her on a daily basis strangely lovable. Ivan was certainly passing the silly smile test.

“I’m just tightening up this chair, Poppy told me it was acting up on ya last week.”