‘I bet he has!’ Theo replied.
‘Give that back!’ I snapped.
‘Not until you see sense,’ Tom said.
‘It’s for the best.’ I repeated the same thing I’d said to Sarah.
‘That’s bollocks and you know it!’ Theo said. ‘Youloveher. When you love someone and they love you back, you don’t run. You stay. You work at it.’
‘She’ll get bored of me. And when her author career takes off, she’ll move on.’
‘Sarah isn’t Piper. And stop thinking that you’re not enough. You’remorethan worthy. And I’m sure she’s told you as much. Ask yourself, when you’re with her, how does she make you feel? Do you sense in any way that she has doubts or believes you’reless than? Or does she make you feel like a fucking king?’
‘I…’ I thought about the things Sarah said and her actions.
The way she listened to me when I confessed my most painful secrets.
The way that she looked at me like I was the most amazing man to walk the earth.
Would she have gone out of her way to get my favourite childhood toy repaired because she knew how much it meant to me if she just saw me as someone temporary?
I’d wanted to open that box the second I saw it on the bed. After all, it said to unwrap it when I was feeling sad and I’d just walked away from Sarah, so I was broken. But I knew that whatever it was would make me want to go over and thank her, so I resisted temptation until yesterday. And when I saw a rejuvenated Snuggles, I actually shed a tear.
Whoever Sarah had got to repair him had done a brilliant job. I didn’t have many memories from when Mum was alive, but I still had a photo of me holding him whilst I was curled up on her lap and Snuggles looked almost as good as he did back then.
And somehow seeing him ‘brought back to life’ made me feel closer to Mum.
Even if I said a million thank-yous to Sarah, it could never convey the magnitude of my gratitude.
Suddenly I realised that a phone call or text wouldn’t be enough.
‘Shit,’ I said, feeling like an idiot. ‘I fucked up.’
‘Finally,he gets it!’ Tom said unhelpfully.
‘Yes, you did. Big time,’ Theo added. ‘Now the question is, how do you plan to fix it?’
73
SARAH
So that was that.
Ben wasn’t going to email.
Ever since I’d finished work earlier this evening, I’d been sat with my laptop beside me, waiting for his reply.
Okay. Full disclosure. I’d been refreshing the email on my phone what felt like every minute since yesterday. When I was at the library, when I was eating breakfast, lunch and dinner. I’d even bloody taken my phone with me to the loo ‘just in case’.
But now it was eleven-thirty on Thursday night, so it was clear that was it. The full ten days was over and I’d heard nothing.
Plus, Spain was an hour ahead, which meant technically it was already Friday. Clearly, he thought what I’d done on my book was so crap that he didn’t know how to break the news to me and he’d decided that it was easier to just ghost me.
Or he just didn’t want to speak to me again.
Or both.
I’d tried to think reasonably, y’know, telling myself he was busy travelling or didn’t have any phone signal. But when Jess called earlier to see how I was, she let it slip that Theo hadchatted to Ben when he arrived in Bilbao, so there was bound to be internet service there.
