Page 48 of How We Loved

What a mess I’ve been.

Is she right though? Should I share this love, this life Ben and I share?

I’m going to sit and read them for a while. Maybe they will give me an answer.

Later

Okay. So I’ve flicked through my diaries. Mer was right. There is comedy in these pages.

Should I do it?

Hmmm

10th April

Ben is home, Hope is in her bouncer on the kitchen floor, and we’re having a spag-bol night. Ben has brought home the lyrics to his next single, and I’m looking over his shoulder reading them. Hope woke up last night just after one, and he jumped out of bed and took her to the lounge—only coming up for breath to have a ten-second shower, then take her away again. He’s got a four-day break before his next gig, and he’s determined to be Super Dad. I’ve tried to tell him that he already is, but he’s putting in the extra effort just to make sure.

I’m going to talk to him. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last two years, it’s that I need to start acting instead of overthinking.

Here it goes.

Spag bol and a hefty dose of, well, I don’t even know what... seriously, and I think people might want to read things I’ve written! What the fuck is wrong with me.

“How was Cardiff?” I asked, pressing a kiss against his shoulder.

“Loud.” He gave a rueful laugh, but I couldn’t join in because I was too busy shouting at myself in my head. “JUST TELL HIM, YOU ARSING IDIOT.”

“Do you wish you’d agreed to the label’s suggestion of bigger venues?”

Ben turned slightly and met my gaze before shaking his head. “No. I want to do this on my own back and not be running off the successor to Sound Box.”

“Ben. I hate to be the one to tell you the hard, cold fact, but you were Sound Box.”

He blanched slightly, and I reached for his hand and gave a small squeeze. “I’m guessing you still haven’t heard from Dave or Ian?” His other band members were left high and dry when he quit, and I don’t think Ben knows quite how to reconcile that fact with himself.

“They’ll come around.”

“Why would they? I abandoned them.”

“For me, so really it’s all my fault.”

“They knew when I started uni I had one foot out the door.”

“Then I forced you to go to the States. So again, all my fault. Maybe I should send them some flowers or something. A fruit basket?”

Ben chuckled and pulled me into his arms, breathing in deeply. I melded myself against the soft yet still deliciously firm spread of his chest. “We’ve made things hard for ourselves, right?”

This was my perfect opening, and I knew if I didn’t speak now, I never would.

“Actually, Ben. It’s funny...”

His eyebrows danced a little jig. “Normally when you open with that, it isn’t.”

“Hey!” To be fair, he had a point.

I blurted it all out. “Zoe Benedict, she used to work for the magazine that printed the articles for your birthday, and well, you know when—well, she works for a paper now, and they want our story. The diaries, and I know it’s a crazy idea, and I know you’re like, oooh Benjamin Chambers now, and I can’t even go to baby group without people quoting your...”

“Lilah...” He put his hands on my shoulders. “Stop.”