Page 164 of How We Began

“He’s gone, you know, to America.” I couldn’t be bothered to be polite.

“Why’d you let him go?”

“Get lost.”

She cleared her throat, looking down at her red polished toenails. “Listen, Lilah, I’m sorry about that night, well, you know…”

I didn’t answer.

She couldn’t let it go though. “That night, I was so pissed, you know what it’s like. And all he kept talking about was you. How excited he was that you were going to be officially his the next day and how in love he was with you, how he never thought he was going to find you, and how he wanted to spend the rest of his life with you.”

I stared at her. He told her about looking for me before he’d even admitted it to me?

“It made me get really mad. I was standing there practically throwing myself at him and all he could do was talk about you. He sounded like a lovesick puppy. So I stripped. It’s kind of embarrassing, but I stripped and tried to show him what he could have with me, but he just looked at me in disgust and told me to grow up. That is all I remember because I must have passed out.”

I stared at her like a wild-eyed crazy person.

What?

I always believed him when he said nothing happened. I just thought that he must have been interested a little bit for it to get that far. How else would she end up in her underwear? Instead, she was telling me that all he was doing was talking about me; that he wanted to be with me forever. He was telling that to a complete stranger, a complete stranger who was standing there in her underwear trying to tempt him, but he wouldn’t because he was in love with me.

Oh FUCK!

I’d learnt the art of letting go. But I’d let go of the wrong thing.

I’d let go of Ben, the single best thing to ever happen to me, when, instead, I should have let go of all my issues and negativities. He never saw them, he only saw me for exactly what I am—crazy behaviour included—and loved me for it.

Oh, fuck.

Meredith’s nose wrinkled into an ‘I told you so’.

Then it hit me, like a sledgehammer—just what it is that I’d forgotten to do—what that niggle at the back of my mind had been the whole time.

I was supposed to just ask him to stay. It would have been so easy and so right. Two simple words.

Please stay.

I was about to turn and to tell Meredith that I was going to go and try to catch Ben when Professor Johnson started leading us into the hall where we had to walk to our desks in silence to sit the end of term paper. I wanted to bolt, but Crazy Johnson caught my eye and watched me walk in, his ‘drop-out student’ radar must have been on full alert.

(The Longest Two Hours… Ever)

So I sat there. For the longest two hours of my life. All the while Ben was leaving to go to the States and he didn’t know I wanted him to stay.

Tick, Tock. Tick, Tock. Tick, Tock.

It was never going to end. I don’t even know what I was supposed to be writing about. I couldn’t even read the damn questions. They just swam in a blur in front of my eyes every time I tried. I watched the clock tick by. Can you freeze time? Because it sure as hell seemed like someone had.

Tick, Tock. Tick, Tock. Tick, Tock.

My legs were jigging up and down like a jackhammer, desperate to be out of the room and chasing to find Ben. My heart was beating so fast and so loud I’m surprised the other students couldn’t hear.

I glanced at my ring, which winked blue at me like a flash of torture.

I was going to let history repeat itself.

I was going to do the one thing that I’d wanted to stop. What a complete, bloody idiot.

I’d let Ben go. We were living our lives apart, and all for what? Ben’s Gran was kept from the love of her life by her family. The only thing keeping me from mine was my own stupidity. Was I going to wait however many years to see the flash of blue again wherever I might find it? Would the ring move on to another owner who would also repeat the same cycle?