The Love of My Afterlife(94)
But then the person turns around and my heart wrenches.
Jonah. It’s just Jonah. I’m an idiot. Cooper is much taller and broader and comatose.
When he sees me, Jonah breaks into a wide smile, and I notice that his teeth are perhaps a little too perfect—like gleaming little Tic Tacs all in a neat row. I wonder if the dental surgery was maybe veneers?
“Delphie! You’re here. I called the hospital and they told me you’d just left.”
“I’m sorry, but now’s not the best time,” I say, eyes flicking to my crutches. I have no clue what to say to him.
Jonah’s face falls. “Oh. I just wanted to talk to you.”
“Is that the lad who saved your life?” Jan hisses beside me. “Be nice.”
It is the lad who saved my life. I owe him everything.
“I have to be off, but maybe you can help her up the stairs? Save us waiting for the others to get here,” Jan says, much to my annoyance.
“Of course. Yes. I can help!” Jonah responds eagerly.
I shoot daggers at Jan while she gets back in her car. Jonah unlocks my door for me, picking up my bag and holding the door open so I can hop in.
He looks up towards the stairs. “Do you want me to carry you?”
I get an immediate memory of Cooper scooping me up in the rain not so long ago. My head bouncing against his backside while he jogged with me towards The Bee and Bonnet.
“No thanks,” I say. “I’ll scooch up on my bum. By the time we get to the top, you’ll have said what you wanted to say?”
Jonah’s mouth sets into a grim line, and I remember what Jan said about being nice.
“Sorry,” I say. “I really don’t mean to be rude. I’m…Life is tricky at the moment.”
He nods and follows me up, one excruciating step at a time, while I lift myself up by my bottom.
“So…” He looks down at his trainers for a second and then laughs. “I’ll just cut right to it. The thing is…I can’t stop thinking about you.”
I pause on the stairs, my eyes widening. “You what?”
Jonah takes off his baseball cap and runs his hand through his hair. “I mean, you scared the shit out of me at the gala. Obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“But then…when I…when I gave you mouth-to-mouth, I felt this feeling. This sort of thump in my stomach. Like a connection.”
I almost want to laugh at the irony.
“I thought it was the adrenaline, you know, from the panic. But then every night before I go to sleep, all I can think of is…well, you. I called it off with Lulu this morning.”
“Lulu?”
“The woman I was seeing.”
Oh yes. The dark-haired woman at the gala. He broke it off with her?
“She didn’t make me feel like…And I suppose I just came to ask if you were involved with the man you were with at the accident…It wasn’t clear because at the gala you said you felt like we had a connection. And I…I think you might be right. I feel like I know you somehow. Like we’ve met before. Before the gala of course. Why were you outside my house that night?” He crouches down on the step in front of me. His face is so close that I see the dark golden bristles of fresh stubble glittering across his perfect jawline. “It can’t have been a coincidence, that you were there, out of all the streets in London.”
“I…”
Telling the truth to Cooper got him stuck in the hospital. Maybe Merritt was right and Jonah is one of my five soulmates. But…it doesn’t matter. I’m pretty sure I’m in love with someone else. I’m in love with Cooper. Even if Amy was wrong and Cooper doesn’t feel that way about me, I know that I do feel that way about him. And I’m convinced it’s only a matter of time until I’ll get to ask him in person. Could be days, could be a couple of weeks. But Merritt has this all planned. Cooper will come back.
I smile grimly. This Adonis-like man with the blue eyes and the easy smile is not for me. I want the scruffy-haired, black-eyed, despicable jazz fan in a coma. And as long as the machine is still beeping, I’ll be waiting for him.
Jonah is gazing at me like I’m the greatest woman on Earth.
I need to do him a big favour and end this right here and now, in case he ends up in a batshit obsession that can only end in disappointment. I take a deep breath.
“I’m so sorry, Jonah. You deserve someone wonderful. But that’s not me.”
“But…but I saved your life.”
I take his hand in mine. No leftover spark whatsoever. “And I’ll always be so grateful. Truly. But…nothing is going to happen between us. I know I said we had a connection. But, god, that was a whole lifetime ago.”
“It was just over a week ago.”
“I was a different person then,” I tell him. Which I know sounds ridiculous, because how much can a person really change in ten days?
As it turns out, the answer is almost completely.
48
TWELVE WEEKS LATER
As I walk towards the library—still hobbling a little but finally without crutches—I smile, enjoying the scatter of copper-coloured leaves that blanket the pavement and crunch under my boots. I shove my hands into my coat pockets as I stride by Baba’s, nodding my hello to Deli Dan inside as he chops up a cucumber at lightning speed. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon and already the sky has greyed, the orange lights of the lampposts fluttering on one by one as I pass.