Cecelia Ahern - How to Fall in Love

‘You’re the girl,’ he interrupted my rambling. That stopped me. ‘The girl Maria was talking about. I realised I don’t love Maria. Whether I’m with her or not isn’t going to determine whether I live or die. My problem was, I was unhappy with me. You made me like me again. You helped me live my life again. And whether I have you or not, it won’t mean I’ll jump, or end my life. I need to be happy with me. All those things we did for Maria, I enjoyed them because I did them with you. I had fun with you. She may have been the reason, but you were the cause. While you were trying to make Maria fall in love with me, and make me fall in love with life, I fell in love with you.’

His hands were on my face, my stunned face. He laughed nervously. ‘You can stop looking at me like that now.’

‘Sorry,’ I whispered.

‘When I woke up this morning and you were gone, I thought that you had changed your mind,’ he explained.

‘No, I—’

‘And then when you came back to the bedroom and you’d been crying, I thought you were going to tell me you’d regretted it.’

‘No, I—’

‘When you told me about Simon it made sense. I got it all wrong. I wanted to say it to you before you said it to me. I thought I’d make it easier on you.’

‘You’re an idiot,’ I said gently, finally allowed to speak.

He smiled.

‘Kiss,’ the woman beside us said.

‘I have conditions,’ I announced, stopping him.

He pulled back.

‘You know you still have a long way to go,’ I said. ‘I helped you in the best way that I could, and I’ll continue to do that, but I’m clearly no therapist, Adam, I don’t know how to help you when you become … that man.’

‘I know,’ he said, serious then. ‘I came here to think about how far I’ve come. I’m not the same man that stood here two weeks ago, but I know I can be that person again if I don’t get help, if I don’t help myself. I feel like I’ve been given a chance to live – you helped me get that chance, and I’m going to grab it and try to make the best of it. I’m sure I’ll mess up sometimes, but I actually feel for the first time in a long time that I want to try to enjoy my life. So yes, I’ll start seeing someone about it. I don’t want to get that low ever again.’

We locked eyes and smiled. He leaned toward me and we kissed. The man and woman cheered and then I heard their footsteps as they left us alone and made their way across the bridge.

Adam took off his tuxedo jacket and draped it around my shivering shoulders. My teeth were chattering, my toes ice-cold.

‘I forgot to give you this.’ He reached into his pocket and retrieved my mother’s missing earring. ‘Pat found it in the car this morning.’

‘Thank you,’ I whispered, filled with relief. I held the emerald stone in my hand tightly, feeling honoured that my mother had become part of one of the most outstanding moments of my life. I could feel her there with me.

‘We can’t leave the party,’ I protested as Adam led me off the opposite side of the bridge.

‘We already have.’ He wrapped his arms around me. ‘It’s my party, I can do what I like. And I’m taking the woman I love back to my hotel.’

I smiled. ‘You know, I came up with an idea for my book,’ I said coyly. I’d had the idea while I spent the day huddled under my duvet, crying over my life. Inspiration came from the most unusual places.

‘You did? What is it?’

‘It’s called How to Fall in Love . It’s going to be the story of how I met you.’

He smiled. ‘You’ll have to change our names.’

‘I’ll have to do more than that. I think there’s a reason it’s taken me ten years to start it. I was trying to write the wrong thing. I’m going to write it as fiction; that way no one will know it’s true.’

‘Except us,’ he said, kissing my nose and taking my hand.

‘Except us,’ I agreed.

We walked hand-in-hand across the Ha’penny Bridge, safely to the other side.

27

How to Celebrate Your Achievements

I was positioned on Talbot Street with a ‘Congratulations’ banner in my hand, a party hat on my head and a party blower in my mouth. I was receiving some nasty glares from people passing, but I tried to ignore my embarrassment and concentrated on the people disembarking from the bus directly in front of me. Last off was Oscar, who looked rather shaky as he concentrated, head down, on making his way down the steps.

I blew the party blower and he looked up in surprise. His face broke into a smile and he laughed as I waved the banner in his face, attracting smiles from the crowd.

‘You did it!’ I shouted. ‘You made it all the way into town!’

He grinned, embarrassed but proud.

‘How do you feel?’

‘Like … I’m alive !’ he punched the air with his fist, as if he was going to burst.

‘Good!’ I laughed. ‘And you remember this feeling Oscar, whenever you have a down day or a wobbly moment, remember how good it is to feel alive. Okay?’

He nodded enthusiastically, ‘Absolutely, absolutely, I won’t ever forget this.’

‘Call Gemma and make an appointment for Tuesday. We’ll work on you getting a job, now that you can travel into the city.’

‘Gemma’s back? I like Gemma. But you know I always prefer Mondays. It helps me begin my week,’ he said, concerned.

Gemma had agreed to come back after I’d posted her a How to Tell Someone You’ve Changed Your Mind Without Appearing a Flip-Flopper. The following day on my desk was How to Deal with a Difficult Boss and she was back at work the next morning. We had never discussed the incident.

‘I’ll be in Tipperary on Monday,’ I said happily, looking forward to my next trip. I had given up on my quest to find my happy place after realising the book was a load of rubbish that succeeded only in making me feel worse about myself because I couldn’t possibly live up to what it preached. I had brought it to read while sitting at the boathouse in Tipperary one day while Adam was at the office and it had frustrated me so much that I’d tossed it into the lake. Ironically, whenever I think of how I felt in that moment, it brings a smile to my face and an enormous feeling of freedom, a feeling I can summon up on demand.

On our way to get something to eat before Oscar went to catch the bus home again, my phone rang. It was Detective Maguire. I stopped walking, Oscar continued until he realised I was gone.

‘Hey, what’s wrong?’ he called back to me.

I stared at the ringing phone, realising for the first time that I would probably always feel this way about Adam for the foreseeable future, unsure of what his future held, always wondering if he was okay when I wasn’t with him. I finally answered it, afraid of what I’d hear but more afraid of ignoring it.

‘I’m calling on behalf of Caroline,’ he barked. ‘It’s her sixteenth birthday next week. We’re having a party on Friday. You’d swear she was going to the bloody Oscars the way she’s going on. Anyway, she wanted you to come.’ He cleared his throat and lessened the aggression in his tone. ‘And I want you to come too.’

‘Thank you, Aidan. I’ll be there.’

Before he hung up he added, ‘Oh, and bring that man from the bridge too, if you want. If, you know, he’s in a good place at the moment.’

Yes, in this moment he was. Life is a series of moments and moments are always changing, just like thoughts, negative and positive. And though it may be human nature to dwell, like many natural things it’s senseless, senseless to allow a single thought to inhabit a mind because thoughts are like guests or fair-weather friends. As soon as they arrive, they can leave, and even the ones that take a long time to emerge fully can disappear in an instant. Moments are precious; sometimes they linger and other times they’re fleeting, and yet so much could be done in them; you could change a mind, you could save a life and you could even fall in love.