The Truth About Ellen: A feel-good romantic comedy

by Sarah Louise Smith

  He put his hand on mine and squeezed it. I heard Zoe coming back down the stairs slowly.

  “It’s okay Zoe, come in!” I called. She came in, saw our hands and grinned.

  “Do you want a cuppa, or do you want to make a move right away?”

  “Up to you?” Jasper looked at me.

  “Let’s go,” I said, eager to get him all to myself.

  “Can I just borrow your bathroom?” Jasper turned to Zoe.

  “Sure, up the stairs, first door on the right.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I can’t believe Jasper Ryan’s using my loo!” she said after he’d gone. I giggled.

  “Thank you for having me last night. It meant a lot. I needed this.”

  “Anytime, you know that.” She sat beside me on the sofa and gave me a hug.

  Jasper came back downstairs and they both helped me hobble into his car – a Range Rover this time. Zoe waved us off as we drove away.

  For the first time, I didn’t know what to say to him.

  “So…” he began as he pulled out and started heading towards the motorway.

  “So. Thanks for collecting me.”

  “Of course. Where to?”

  I laughed.

  “I actually have no idea.”

  “Have you spoken to Tom?”

  “No, I thought I should do that in person.”

  “Well, how about I drop you there, then pick you up a bit later?”

  I gulped. “Yes. Good plan.”

  “Then we could go back to my house, if you want? I’ve got a place in Surrey. About an hour from Tom’s. You can stay a few days. Then see about coming up with a plan from there?”

  “That sounds really good. Thank you.”

  He looked at me and smiled and I instantly felt at ease again.

  “You okay?”

  “Yes. I am. For the first time in a while.”

  “Me too. You and me verses the world from here on in. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  He put his hand on my leg and I rested mine on top and squeezed it. Touching him again felt so right, like I couldn’t believe I’d gone all this time without him in my life.

  He kept talking all the way down, telling me about his mother and how she was getting on, about his apartment in Manhattan, and about the new solo album he was working on. It felt like he’d been waiting a long time to talk to me, and I realised I’d been waiting a long time to hear him again.

  My nerves started rising as we got nearer to Kensington, and I called Tom when we were about half an hour away to tell him I was coming and wanted to talk. He sounded sad, like he knew what I might say, and that only served to make me feel even worse.

  Jasper helped me get out of the car, then watched me hop along with my crutches before driving off. I rang the doorbell.

  “Did you forget your key?” Tom asked as I hopped inside.

  I pulled it out of my pocket and handed it to him.

  “Ah, I see. Come in.”

  We sat on the sofas opposite each other.

  “How’s the leg?”

  “All right. How’re you?”

  “Okay. I think I know what you’re going to say, so just relax. Don’t look so worried.”

  I gave him a smile and sat back against the cushions.

  “I’m sorry, Tom, I feel terrible.”

  My eyes welled up out of nowhere and a tear slid down my cheek. Tom put a hand on mine and squeezed it.

  “Don’t be. I’ve been thinking, and we both knew something wasn’t right. We rushed into this, and maybe if we hadn’t, things might have been different. I liked you so much, I forced this along and didn’t really stop and think.”

  “It’s not all your fault, I allowed you to push us along. I wonder if we were both a bit lonely, and we were infatuated with each other and got carried away.”

  “You speak wise words. Maybe we’re better as friends.”

  “I hope we can be friends?”

  “Seeing as you’re about to shack up with my best mate, I guess we will be.”

  I smiled. I was glad he still considered Jasper his best mate, after all this time and everything that’d gone on.

  “I never wanted to hurt you, Tom.”

  “I know. You know what? I’ll miss you, and I wish things were different, but I’m okay. I saw the way Jasper was looking at you. When he described how he felt about you, well, I realised I was no match for that. If I’m really honest, I’ve only felt that way about one person.”

  “Victoria?”

  “Yeah. She was just… we were…”

  “On the same wavelength?”

  “Yeah. Exactly.”

  “Until she slept with Jasper?”

  “I cheated on her first.”

  “Oh. I didn’t see that coming.”

  “I was such an idiot. We were on tour, I was drunk, too young, too stupid to realise what we had. Slept with a fan. I confessed to Vic. I guess she wanted to get me back and went looking for Jasper.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. Things kind of fell apart after that and we split up. And I blamed Jasper. The band fell apart.”

  Huh. All this time, and I never really knew what went on. I thought I’d known everything there was to know about Four Apes. Yet I’d never known about Victoria and how the band split up because of her.

  “You should look for her. It might not be too late.”

  Tom shrugged.

  “Yeah maybe. So… if Jasper loves you as much as he says, then he deserves you.”

  “Thank you Tom, you’re so kind.”

  He offered to make me a cup of tea and I texted Jasper to ask him to come and get me in an hour.

  Tom and I talked about my stuff, and he suggested he courier it all to me; I just had to let him know where to send it. We talked some more about how we’d met.

  “Maybe we were both a bit lonely,” I said. “That’s why we got so carried away. We get on pretty well. We had chemistry.”

  “Yeah,” he nodded. “And I didn’t want to keep driving back and forth, so I suggested you move in. Too soon. Too fast.”

  “I did really care about you, though… I mean, I thought I was in love. It wasn’t fake.”

  “Me too. You know what, there are many types of love. The sudden, exciting kind we had was fun. Maybe it’s okay that it didn’t last.”

  “It hasn’t ended, Tom,” I said, my eyes filling up. “We’re going to be friends, right?”

  “Right.” He came and gave me a hug. Just as he pulled away, the doorbell rang and he helped me to get up and hobble to it.

  “Hi, Jasper.”

  “Hi, Tom.”

  Awkward silence.

  “Take care of her.”

  “I will. Speak soon, yeah?”

  “Give me a bit. I’ll call you.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  Tom nodded. I thought I might burst into tears as he closed the door and Jasper helped me back into his car. I took a deep breath and regained my courage.

  “So, I’m going to lay down a few rules here,” I said to Jasper as he pulled away.

  “I love it when you tell me what to do. Fire away.”

  I laughed.

  “No moving in right away. I might be homeless, but we’re not going to rush this.”

  “But I want to be with you every day.”

  “Then rent me a flat nearby.”

  “Done.”

  “And no spoiling me, I was joking. No flat or anything else for that matter. I’m going to find a way to earn my own money just as soon as my leg is better. I did a proofreading course a while back and I’m thinking about setting up a little business and working for myself.”

  “Fine, and that’s great, you can do that anywhere then and travel with me.”

  “You don’t ever, ever drink, take drugs, or even consider another woman ever again.”

  “Of course not!”

  “And you patch things up with Tom. I want to hear another Four Apes
album. Whatever it takes.”

  He laughed.

  “Always a Four Apes fan first and foremost, eh?”

  “Always.”

  We talked the whole rest of the journey. I warned him about my mother and he told me about rehab. I asked him where his favourite place on earth was and he said the Californian coast. I said we should go there.

  He told me he’d thought of me every single day since his father died.

  I told him I’d thought of him every single day since he first appeared on Top of the Pops. But that he mustn’t let that ever go to his head.

  We drove through a quaint little village with only a handful of houses, a small shop and a pub. Jasper pulled up outside cast iron gates and punched a passcode into a keypad, and they opened. A gravel driveway led to some garages, and there was his Bugatti that I’d seen in France. The house was big, but not massive. Brown bricks with white-framed windows, and a grand front door. He said he’d give me a tour when I could walk better, but for now we just sat and lounged on his sofa for a while, talking some more.

  Eventually, I said: “Are you ever going to kiss me again?”

  And so he did. He leaned in, put his hands on the back of my head and pulled me into him. His lips touched mine. The planets and stars aligned again. I was exactly where I was meant to be.

  Chapter Forty

  It took me a while to get entirely comfortable with Jasper. I was paranoid. Despite his constant reminders that he adored me, I still worried that he was fickle and would be easily tempted away by the first bimbo that graced his hotel. But the trust grew, as did an even deeper love than I knew could exist.

  He still lit up my world; he still understood me, and I him.

  After breaking up with Tom, I handed in my notice at work and started a freelance proofreading business. Oscar wasn’t amused, but he understood. I bumped into Darby one day while shopping with my mum, Laura and Zoe in Milton Keynes, and she told me she’d seen me in the background of a paparazzi shot of Jasper coming out of the Ivy in London. She was impressed and asked what had happened with Tom. I smiled sweetly and told her Tom was great but Jasper was an amazing lover, which made her jaw drop, my mum tut and roll her eyes, and Zoe and Laura giggle.

  I lived in a flat not far from Jasper’s house in Surrey for about six months, then I moved in with him. We went from strength to strength from then on, and I went travelling with him wherever he had to go to promote his music and perform. I loved watching him sing, standing in the wings of the stage instead of in front of it.

  We were planning our road trip down the Californian coast for the following spring, and then when he got back, he was booked in at the recording studio with Four Apes to reunite and create a new album. I wasn’t sure who was more excited, me or him.

  Things with Tom were awkward for a while, he didn’t want to see either of us and I worried that I had, as feared, ruined any chance of a Four Apes reunion. But almost a year later I was very pleased to see our friendship get back on track after (with a little encouragement from Alex) he looked up Victoria on Facebook. She was now divorced with two kids, but still as in love with him as she’d been the first time around and they made a really sweet couple. Tom and Jasper became close again, and I was very happy to see that. Tom even said to me one day that he felt everything had worked out for the best. I was pretty shocked, but kind of pleased, to hear the song he’d written me on the radio one day, sung by Ethan Harris. It made me smile and remember the infatuation and how strong it’d been at that time when Tom had written it.

  Gran and Gordon were doing great, living as neighbours but going out for dinner together regularly and acting like a couple. Dad seemed to have accepted it and was pretty happy for her, in the end.

  Everything was going well.

  It was a cool October evening. Jasper and I left his New York apartment and walked towards the Rockefeller Center.

  “I want you to see the view from the top,” he’d told me before we set off. “It’s pretty amazing.”

  He had his baseball cap on, as usual when we went out in public, which I didn’t mind – it took us forever to get anywhere when he kept getting asked for selfies. We watched the ice-skaters for a while before entering the Rockefeller Center via some sort of VIP entrance – being with Jasper had its perks – and being taken straight to the elevator. We were zipped to the top in no time, and then Jasper took my hand and led me up some stairs to the very top.

  The view was breath-taking, Manhattan all lit up. I could see the Statue of Liberty in the distance. The Empire State Building was right in front of us.

  “You see the tourists over there snapping photos?” Jasper pointed at the flashes coming from the Empire State. “And there’s Times Square. You can see the ball right there.”

  I nodded, in awe and took it all in. He led me by the hand to the other side.

  “Central Park,” he pointed out.

  “It’s beautiful up here,” I told him.

  “I wanted to bring you here. I came here with my dad, not long before he got sick. He loved it. And I came back the day after he died. I sat there.” He pointed to a bench, “Right there, and I thought I’d call you. I wanted to tell you that I just had a feeling that we were meant to be together. Scrap all that friends talk. I wanted you as my girl. I was going to ask you to meet me in London when I came back. I put my hand in my pocket, and my phone was gone.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yep.”

  “But you found me again.”

  “Yep.”

  “Maybe it was meant to be this way.”

  “Well, maybe I wasn’t ready for you then. Maybe I’d have let you down.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Not now.”

  “Nope. Stuck with me now.”

  “That’s fine with me.”

  “That younger Ellen maybe wasn’t ready for you, either.”

  I went and sat on the bench. He sat beside me and put his arm around me. He pulled two cans of coke out of his bag and handed me one.

  “To your dad,” I said, holding my can up. “For bringing us together.”

  “To Dad,” he said. We chinked cans and I took a swig.

  I leaned my head on his shoulder and looked out at the beautiful Manhattan skyline.

  THE END

  Thank you so much for reading The Truth About Ellen! If you enjoyed it, please go and leave a review and come follow me on social media xo

  About the Author

  Sarah Louise Smith is based in Milton Keynes, UK, where she spends her days writing, reading, walking her dogs and dreaming about her next holiday. She likes to think of herself as a ‘Happiness Ambassador’ and creates regular videos and blogs to encourage others to live life to the fullest.

  She loves hearing from readers, so follow her on social media – all links can be found on her website: www.sarahlouisesmith.com.

  Other books by Sarah Louise Smith:

  Amy & Zach

  Izzy’s Cold Feet

  Independent Jenny

  Unrequited Alice

  Acknowledgements

  Huge thanks to the following people –

  You, Reader, for buying this book. I hope you enjoy it! I love hearing from you so please come and chat to me on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

  All the bands I adored in my youth; you helped to inspire some of this story…

  All of my family, friends, and colleagues for your ongoing support. Special thanks to Mum, Dad, Val, Nan, my siblings, and friends!

  Massive thanks my editor Jeff who once again took my story and made it a whole lot better.

  Nathaniel and Chloe: thanks for your daily encouragement, and for feeding and watering me while I write. I’m very lucky to live with such amazing human beings.

  Sarah Louise Smith, May 2015.

 

 

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