Chapter Forty-Five
This afternoon I did something I never thought I would do again – I asked Mel and Angie for advice. I told them everything and they both listened without interrupting me once.
My two friends were just incredible. They listened, made me cups of tea and then gave me brilliant advice, without judging me, although the bottom line was that ultimately only I could decide if I wanted to follow my heart or give Si and Adam some space to patch things up.
Now I’m alone and staring at my phone, trying to find the courage to dial. I know what I need to do.
I grab it, quickly, and call Adam before I can change my mind. I can feel my heart banging against the walls of my chest. Oh, and now I feel like I’m going to throw up.
‘Hey gorgeous,’ Adam answers brightly. ‘If you’ve called to try and find out where we’re going tonight then think again, it’s a surprise.’
‘Hello,’ I say weakly. ‘It’s not that…’ My voice trails off.
‘Leah, is everything okay?’ Adam asks, sounding worried.
I know that I have to do this and I knew that it wasn’t going to be easy… I just didn’t expect it to be this hard.
‘Listen, you know I really care about you–’ I start, but Adam interrupts me.
‘Leah, what are you doing?’
‘I’ve thought things through, and this just can’t happen.’
‘What, the date? Forget about it, we’ll do it another night.’
‘Not the date,’ I reply, confident he knows exactly where this is going. ‘There’s no way anything can happen between us. I can’t come between you and Si. You have to work things out with him and you can’t do that with me around.’
‘Leah–’
‘He’s your brother,’ I reply. ‘And he’s had a shit time with women. You have to work things out.’
‘Leah, I won’t let you throw this away. We deserve to give this a go. Why do you think you don’t deserve to be happy?’
‘Adam,’ I snap. ‘The festival is in a couple of weeks, we don’t have any more work to do together. I’ll do my bits from home so we don’t have to see each other and, like I said before, if Kerry offers me a job I won’t take it.’
‘Leah, I’m not going to let you do this,’ Adam insists.
‘You’ve got no choice,’ I reply before hanging up on him and tossing my phone down on the table.
Sitting alone in the kitchen, I burst into tears, and it’s not the almost beautiful sporadic tears rolling down the cheeks and gentle sobbing that you see in the movies, nope, I’m talking full-on wailing, tears pouring from my eyes, nose running, scrunched-up-face, bawling. It’s been a long time coming and it almost feels good to let it all out. Well, it would if I weren’t hurting so much.