by Anna Bell
The lobby is thinning out around us and the usher walks over to us.
‘You two again. Don’t you have homes to go to?’ he says, putting his hands on his hips.
‘I guess I should be going,’ says Aidan.
‘Me too.’
I follow him out onto the street and we linger on the pavement.
‘I’m sorry about how things worked out,’ I say. It’s a woefully inadequate start to an apology. ‘If it makes it any better, you did know me. Everything between us was real.’
I expect him to look angry or hurt, but he simply nods his head.
‘We don’t have to do this, you know. I got your letter and you explained it all there.’
‘You got it?’ I say, feeling gutted that I’d poured my heart into it and it had gone unanswered.
‘I did, but not until I got back a couple of weeks ago. I thought about coming to see you and then I thought I’d come here and I sort of hoped I’d run into you. Look, I bought you something.’
He pulls out a paperback from his hoodie pocket and hands it to me.
It’s a well-worn copy of The Princess Bride. I open it up and look inside.
‘It was mine. I found it in a box of books in my parents’ loft.’
I read the little looped writing on the title page. ‘Dear Aidan, Happy 12th Birthday, love Mum and Dad.’
‘I thought you might want to read it.’
He hands it to me and my eyes prickle with tears. Even after everything that’s happened, he’s still doing nice gestures.
‘I’m sorry, Aidan. I shouldn’t have got involved with you when I did. I couldn’t help it, you were too easy to fall in love with.’
Shit. Of all the times to start telling the truth.
‘You fell in love with me?’ He looks up in surprise.
I’m aware that there are other people milling about around us, but I don’t care.
He takes a step closer to me and my heart starts to pound.
‘I looked up your Instagram, I read your post with the truth. People were pretty mean to you,’ he says with a wince.
‘I deserved it.’
‘A little,’ he says. ‘But it was still harsh.’
‘Maybe. I don’t care anymore. I’ve left that part of my life behind.’
He holds my gaze and then he steps back.
‘So,’ he says, pointing to the film poster on the wall. ‘Jaws, next month?’
I wrinkle my face up. ‘I’ve never seen it.’
‘What? How could you not have seen it?’
I shrug my shoulders.
‘Too busy watching The Princess Bride, probably.’
He laughs and it makes my heart ache, I’ve missed his laugh so much.
‘Maybe I’ll see you here?’ he says in a way that makes me feel like I might not have lost him completely. Perhaps we can salvage a friendship at the very least.
‘I’d like that,’ I say, smiling.
He smiles back before he turns and walks away.
I watch him go and I hate myself. It’s not a friendship I want. Why can’t I call out and tell him how I really feel? Why am I still so scared to even try?
I drag my feet towards the car park before I stop; I’m stronger than this. I can’t keep running away from things in life that might cause me pain. What’s the worst that could happen? I’m heartbroken already as it is.
He’s got quite the head start on me and I only just catch sight of him as we reach the train station car park. I call out to him a couple of times, but I can see he’s wearing giant headphones that I bet are noise-cancelling. Of course he is, he’s not going to make this easy for me.
I reach the station and watch him go through the ticket barriers all the while shouting at him but he can’t hear me. I run to follow him but I’m blocked by the barriers.
‘Excuse me, miss, you need a ticket to get on the platform,’ says the guard.
‘I don’t need one. I’m not getting on a train, I just need to tell that man I love him.’
The guard looks over his shoulder at Aidan.
‘Right, but I can’t let you onto the platform without a valid ticket.’
‘But I don’t want to go anywhere.’
I bite my lip and try to keep calm. I look up at the board, there’s two minutes until his train.
‘Could you make a station announcement and get him to come back?’
‘That’s not what I’m employed to do. Now, if you don’t want to buy a ticket…’
‘Buy a ticket! That’s exactly what I’ll do. One adult to Reading,’ I say, pulling out my wallet.
‘OK, then. Are you sure you don’t want a return?’
‘No,’ I say as an automated announcement plays out.
‘The train now approaching Platform 3 is the 22:39 service to Reading. This is a stopping service calling at…’
I ignore the rattled-out list of stations hoping the guard will hurry up.
‘That’ll be £6.70, then, please.’
I hand over my card.
‘Um, we don’t accept Tesco’s Clubcard.’
‘What?’ I fumble through my wallet to find the right card.
‘Do you want to do contactless or pin?’
I can hear the train pulling into the station.
‘Contactless,’ I shriek.
He nods and after placing it on the card reader hands it back to me. The ticket prints automatically and I snatch it out of his hands, not caring about my receipt, and shove it in the barrier.
I rush onto the platform and spin around looking for Platform 3. Right now it seems harder to reach than Platform 9¾. I run towards the footbridge and then back down, searching when I hear the whistle blowing behind me.
I’m too late.
My heart sinks and I stagger backwards and I hang my head in my hands as the train pulls away.
‘Izzy?’
I look up and see Aidan standing in front of me.
‘What are you doing here?’ I say.
‘I decided not to get on my train,’ he says.
‘But why?’
‘Because I was sitting on the train and I saw you spinning round in circles on the platform and I figured, or at least I hoped, you were looking for me. Were you?’
‘Maybe,’ I say, taking a deep breath.
‘Good, because I hadn’t meant to walk off when I did.’
‘You didn’t?’ I say, confused. It looked pretty deliberate to me.
‘No, I’d had other things to say, about the letter, about what happened, and then you said… what you said.’
‘Ah, yes, I told the truth for once.’
He smiles and nods.
‘And of course it freaked me out.’
‘I bet it did.’
‘So why did you come to the station?’ he asks.
‘Huh? Oh.’ He’s looking at me intently and I take a deep breath. It seemed like such a good idea in my head, but now I’m a bag of nerves and I quickly blurt out, ‘You know that thing we were having before it all went wrong? I wondered if you wanted to try again?’
‘No, I don’t want to just have a thing anymore,’ he says with a slight shake of his head.
I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. What an idiot I was for thinking he would.
‘A thing isn’t good enough. This time I want to be all-in.’
‘All-in?’ I say, my heart starting to beat even faster as I desperately hope he means what I think he does.
‘Uh-huh,’ he says.
‘OK,’ I say, taking another deep breath, my hands starting to shake. ‘You want to be my boyfriend?’
I hold my breath waiting for his answer. I can’t quite believe he could possibly say yes.
‘Yeah,’ he says, grinning. ‘I actually do.’
‘An actual boyfriend,’ I say and it doesn’t seem scary in the slightest. I take hold of his hands and I go to pull him in for a kiss when the guard tuts loudly.
‘Public displays of affection are not tolerated
on the platform,’ he says before he turns his back and we both laugh.
‘Did you mean what you said earlier about falling in love with me?’ he says, causing my cheeks to burn.
‘I didn’t mean to blurt it out like that. I know that we hadn’t been together that long, but I haven’t felt like that for a long time and um, sometimes you just know.’
His face breaks out into a huge smile.
‘Sometimes you do,’ he says, pulling me towards him a little. ‘I love you too.’
‘You do?’
He nods.
Not even a grumpy ticket inspector is going to stop me grabbing him, only he gets to me first and cups my face before kissing me with so much force that he almost knocks me over.
‘Half an hour until another train,’ he says when we finally break apart.
‘You know I’ve got my car in the car park? We could be back at yours in half an hour, no train journey, no waiting.’
Aidan takes my hand and we walk towards the ticket barrier and then he stops.
‘You know if we go back to mine, Barney’s going to be all over you and it’s going to be ages until I get to have you all to myself.’
‘And? You know Barney’s the real reason that I wanted to get back together with you, don’t you?’
‘Damn it, I should have known,’ he says, shaking his head.
‘Come on, the sooner I give him a cuddle, the sooner we can—’
I don’t have time to finish the sentence as Aidan’s whisked us through the barrier and we’re running up the road.
‘Stop, stop,’ I say, needing to catch my breath. I reach forward and give him a kiss as if that’s the real reason I needed to stop and not that my calves were killing me from all the running I’ve already done in pursuit of him tonight.
‘Come on, or else we’ll never make it.’
He takes my hand and starts pulling me along and I can’t stop laughing.
When Ben died I didn’t think I’d ever truly be happy again, let alone be happier than I’ve ever been in my life, which is how I feel now. I certainly haven’t been this in love before. It’s terrifying, and exhilarating, and amazing, and that’s what makes it real. I might have accidentally fallen in love with him and we might not have got off to the best start but something tells me that this is only just the beginning.
Acknowledgements
Thank you first and foremost to you – lovely reader – for reading this book. I really hope you enjoyed it! I wouldn’t get to be here without you, so thank you for keeping me in a job that I mostly adore (all except that point in the first draft between 40–60,000 words where I would usually rather eat my own arm than write). Also sending big book love if you leave a review for it too – it makes such a huge difference to a book’s visibility, so thank you! To all the book reviewers and bloggers, thanks for picking my book off your ever-increasing TBR piles and taking the time to review it – you are all superstars.
To my agent Hannah Ferguson, thank you for always being there to bounce ideas off and for general cheerleading when times get tough (cough, that dreaded 40–60k). Also, to the rest of the team at Hardman and Swainson – Jo, Caroline, Thérèse and Nicole for all they do for my books.
I’m also delighted to have found a home at HQ. Thank you to my editor Emily Kitchin for making me dig deeper and for really helping to bring Izzy’s story to life. Thank you also to the rest of the team at HQ who I’m looking forward to getting to know better! And to Jon Appleton for the copy-edit and the kind words about it.
A big thank you to Julia and Frederike at Droemer Knaur for their continued support, and their enthusiasm for We Just Clicked.
This book was such a joy to write in so many places. I took my Instagram research very seriously and all those times when my husband told me off for scrolling, I could tell him I was actually working – and not faffing about on Insta. In some places it was also heartbreaking to write and I could only imagine the pain of losing a sibling. Whilst the Heart2Heart charity is fictitious, there are charities such as The British Heart Foundation and CRY (Cardiac Risk in the Young) that offer support and information about Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome (SADS).
I absolutely loved writing the scenes based in McKinley’s Insurance. The company was based on a big organisation that I spent many a happy summer temping at during my university years and, whilst they never had an office bake off, they did keep coming up with kooky ideas to make work ‘fun’. The real Mrs Harris, who still scares me a little, asked me to put her into a book and so I did. I hope that it made you smile. Thanks also to my friend Kaf, who gave me as much of an insight as she could remember about working in insurance – any errors are all mine.
Thanks to my friends for keeping me sane during writing: Ken and Janine Nicholson, Jon and Deb Stoelker, Heather Mason, fellow rom-com writer Lorraine Wilson, Marie Amsler, Catherine de Courcy and (much missed) Diane Barcelli. Also to my far-flung friends that support me wherever they are: Christie, Sarah, Sonia, Ali, Laura, Kaf, Hannah, Jo, Sam, Ross and Zeenat.
To my family as ever, thank you for putting up with me whilst I wrote this – Evan and Jess – sorry I spend so much time hiding away behind my keyboard. To John and Mum, Heather and Harold and Jane – thanks for being so supportive. Finally thanks to my husband Steve for always being there and providing me with much needed Baileys/gin/chocolate buttons.
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower
22 Adelaide Street West, 41st Floor
Toronto, ON, M5H 4E3, Canada
http://www.harpercollins.ca
India
HarperCollins India
A 75, Sector 57
Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201 301, India
http://www.harpercollins.co.in
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
http://www.harpercollins.com