Cecelia Ahern - Short Stories - The Every Year Collection

Feelings of regret, gasps for breath in a heaving chest and hours of panic were spent dialling furiously, redialling, leaving tearful messages on an answering machine that felt as much as its owner. There were moments of hope, moments of despair, lights at the ends of tunnels shone, flickered and extinguished themselves as I fell back on the bed, the fight running out of me. I’d lost track of time, the bright room had turned to darkness. The sun had been replaced by the moon that had turned his back on me and guided people in the other direction. The sheets were wet from crying and the phone sat waiting to be called to duty in my hand, and the pillow still clung to his smell just as my heart clung to his love. He was gone. I untensed the muscles in my body and I breathed.

It was not supposed to end like this.

And so I won’t let it.

The Middle

… Oh, sweet joy, the joy of falling in love, of being in love. Those first few years of being in love, they were only the beginning. Twenty phone calls a day just to hear his voice, sex every night until the early hours of the morning, ignoring friends, favouring nights in curled up on the couch instead of going out, eating so much you both put weight on, supporting one another at family dos, catching roving eyes as they studied one another in secret, existing only in the world to be with them, seeing your future, your babies in their eyes, becoming a part of someone else spiritually, mentally, sexually, emotionally.

Nothing lasts for ever, they say. I didn’t fall in love with anyone else, nor did he. I’ve no dramatic story of walking in on him, in our bedroom with the skinny girl next door; I’ve no story to tell you of how I was romanced by someone else, chased and showered with gifts until I gave in and began an affair. You see, I couldn’t see anyone but him, and I know he couldn’t see anyone else but me. Maybe the dramatic stories would have been better, better than the very fact that living in a state of heartbreak, seemed more appealing to him than being with me.

We had one too many Indian takeaways on the couch together, had one too many arguments about emptying the dishwasher, I piled on one too many pounds, he refused one too many nights out with his friends, we went one too many nights falling asleep without making love and went one too many mornings waking up late, grabbing a quick coffee and running out of the door without saying I love you.

You see, it’s all that stuff at the beginning that’s important. The things that you do naturally. The surprise presents, the random kisses, the words of caring advice. Then you get lazy, take your eye off the ball, and before you know it you’ve moved to the middle stage of your relationship and are one step closer to the end. But you don’t think about all that at the time. When it’s happening, you’re happy enough living in the rut you’ve carelessly walked yourself straight into.

You have fights, you say things you definitely mean but afterwards pretend you don’t, you forgive each other and move on, but you never really forget the words that are spoken. The last fight we had was the one about who burned the new expensive frying pan; that’s the one that ended it. It stopped being about the frying pan after the first two minutes: it was about how I never listened, how his family intruded, about the fact he always left his dirty laundry on the floor and not in the basket, about how our sex life was nonexistent, how we never did anything of substance together, how crap his sense of humour was, how horrible a person I was, how he didn’t love me any more. Little things like that …

This fight lasted for days, I knew I hadn’t burned the frying pan, but he could bet his life on the fact he hadn’t even used it over that week, and of course he didn’t, seeing that I was the one who did the cooking around here, which according to him was ‘an admission to burning the pan’. Years of a wonderful relationship had turned to that? He went out both nights that weekend and so did I. It was like a competition to see who could come home later, who could ring less, who could be gone for the longer amount of time without contact, who could go longer without calling all their friends, family and police sick with worry. When you train yourself not to care, the heart listens.

One night I stayed out all night without telling him where I’d gone. I even turned my phone off. I was being childish; I was only staying in a friend’s house, awake all night turning my phone on and off checking for messages. Waiting for the really frantic one that would send me flying home and into his arms. I was waiting for the desperate calls, to hear ‘I love you’, to hear the sound of a man in love wanting to hang onto the best thing that had ever happened to him. As proof, as a sign that there was something worth holding onto. No such phone call came. That night taught us something. That I had stooped that low and that he hadn’t cared or worried as he should have.

We had an argument and he left. He left and I chased.

You know those moments at the end of movies when people announce their undying love in front of a gasping crowd? When there’s music, a perfect speech and then he smiles at you with tears in his eyes, throws his arms around your neck and everyone applauds, feeling as happy about the end result as you are? Well imagine if that didn’t happen. Imagine he says no, there’s an awkward silence, a few nervous laughs, and people slowly break away. He turns away from you and you’re left there with a red face cringing and wishing you’d never made that speech, taken part in the car chase, spent the money on flowers and declared your love in the middle of a busy shopping street in the lunch hour.

Well, where do you go from there? That’s something the movies never tell you. And not only is the moment embarrassing, it’s heartbreaking. It’s the moment when your best friend, the person who said he would love you for ever, stops seeing you as the person he wants and needs to protect. So much so that he can say no to you in front of the gathering crowd. It’s the moment that you realize absolutely everything you shared is lost because those eyes didn’t look at you as they should have and once did. They were the eyes of an embarrassed stranger shrugging off the begging words of an old lover.

A face looks different when the love is gone. It begins to look just how everyone else sees it, without the light, the sparkle—just another face. And the moment they walk away it’s as though the fact you know they sneeze seven times exactly at a quarter past ten every morning means nothing. As though your knowledge of their allergy to ginger and their penchant for dancing around in their underwear to Bruce Springsteen isn’t enough to hold you together. The little things you loved so much about a person become the little things they are suddenly embarrassed you know. All that while you’re walking away in that awkward, uncomfortable silence.

When you return home feeling foolish and angry to a house that’s being emptied you begin to wish all those dark thoughts away. I began to wish that we were still together and feeling miserable rather than having to go through goodbyes. He still felt part of me, I was still his, I was his best friend and he was mine, yet there was just the minor detail of not actually being in love with one another and the fact that any other kind of relationship just wasn’t possible. I begged and pleaded, he cried and shouted, until our voices were hoarse and our faces were tearstained.

Feeling desolate, I looked around the empty wardrobe with its doors wide open, displaying stray hangers and deserted shelves as though taunting me. It wasn’t supposed to end this way.

The Beginning