Page 73 of How We Began

Ben’s eyes grew wide as he realised I really didn’t know. “Jeez, your family, Lilah.” He shook his head. “So do you see why I’m annoyed? I thought that you’d be here next year, that I’d be able to come and find you again. That maybe if I gave you some space, by the time I got back you might be ready to actually tell me that you are in fact in love me and want to be with me. Instead, you won’t be here. You’ll back to pretending to enjoy a life that you hate, just like the first time I ever saw you.”

“What do you mean?” I blinked up at him. “What do you mean the first time you ever saw me.”

Ben’s lips pressed into a firm line, and then he sighed, scratching at the dark scruff on his jawline. “When I saw you here that day, when I came out of the shower, it wasn’t the first time.”

“Yeah, I know silly, it was earlier in history when you tapped my chair.”

He shook his head and my stomach twisted like it wasn’t sure it should be sold as baked goods.

“No. We met last Christmas at your work do. Sound Box played.”

I stared at him blankly. “What? You didn’t. I’d remember you?”

Ben pulled his mouth into a grimace. “Guess I made a lasting impression, huh.”

“No, really, Ben. I’d remember. You’ve made a mistake.”

“Lilah, I promise. We spoke, earlier when we were setting up. You were there checking up on things for your dad. You had on a navy long cardigan and you had your hands shoved deep in the pockets, and you looked so lost.”

I stared at him, wildly, shaking my head.

“I liked you. That night you wore a red dress, you looked amazing. I was going to speak to you but you left before I could. Then I saw you at the fresher’s ball, but again, you’d left before I could speak to you. You were so drunk.” His lips softened into a beautiful smile. “You and Meredith zigzagged the whole way back to the dorm.”

“You watched us?”

“Purely from a safety perspective. I’d have hated if you’d fallen in the lake before I could talk to you again.”

“So the toe tapping…”

We stared at another. My tongue dried as the enormity of everything he was saying sunk into my frankly pitifully dense brain.

“It was morse code. I knew it.” Vindication rushed through me as I breathed the words out loud.

“Yeah, I was saying, don’t you dare disappear again before I get a chance to say hi.”

Almost breathless I tried to make sense of it all. “Ben…”

We stared at one another, thousands of unspoken words weaving in the air between us, until I had just one question left to ask. What he’d told me shouldn’t have changed a thing… but it did…

“So where does that leave us now?”

He was going to say that it is over, that our ‘let’s pretend’ is finished. He wasn’t going to give me my six months with him.

Then I’d die.

“Let’s just play it by ear, shall we?”

“Okay.” My chest ached with a deathblow.

He pecked a kiss on my cheek and then started to get up from the bed. Before I could stop myself, I grabbed him and pulled him closer, planting my mouth on his. Automatic and unstoppable. I closed my eyes and hoped he wouldn’t push me away. He didn’t, opening my mouth with his.

“Do you think I should talk to Tristan?” I asked after I’d pulled away.

“I think you would be crazy not to,” Ben answered softly, giving me a wink which I think meant that he thinks I am crazy anyway.

I must be.

I can’t believe what he told me, that he’s kept it secret all this time. It doesn’t hurt or sting like secrets often do, in a way it ties us into tighter knots together. Why can’t I remember him? If I met someone as beautiful as Ben and can’t even remember it, then hell, I must have been living with my eyes closed.