One More Thing
Page 1
One More Thing
47 Things, book two
Lilliana Anderson
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2017, Lilliana Anderson
All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means without the prior written permission of the author of this book.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead is purely coincidental. Any actual places, products or events mentioned are used in a purely fictitious manner. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various places/products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission and is by no way sponsored by the trademark owners.
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Edited by Making Manuscripts
Cover by Ember Designs
Created with Vellum
Contents
Books by
Foreword
Playlist
One More Thing
Blurb
Prologue
Chapter 1
Journal Entry
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Journal Entry
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Journal Entry
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Journal Entry
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Journal Entry
Chapter 25
Journal Entry 7
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Journal Entry
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Journal Entry
Chapter 33
Epilogue
About Multiple Sclerosis
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Books by
Lilliana Anderson
The Confidante Trilogy
Confidante: The Brothel
Confidante: The Escort
Confidante: The Madame
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Beautiful Series
Too Close
A Beautiful Struggle
Phoenix
A Beautiful Forever
Commitment
A Beautiful Melody
A Beautiful Rock
Devotion
A Beautiful Star
A Beautiful Taste
A Beautiful Danger
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Entwined Series
Our Hearts Entwined
Our Lives Entwined
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Drawn Series
Drawn
Drawn 2 – Obsession
Drawn 2 – Redemption
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Drawn to Fight
Zac & Evie
Hugo & Meg
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47 Things
47 Things
One More Thing
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Standalones
In the Wind
Till There Was You
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For information on upcoming releases visit
www.lillianaanderson.com/preorders
Foreword
IT’S TIME. IT’S been over two years since 47 Things released. Two years since our hearts broke over the silenced beating of a heart we all fell in so hopelessly in love with. Two years for us to recover and prepare ourselves for what came next—Sarah’s second chance at forever.
I said this last time and I’ll say it again: You will need tissues. There are some hard times on the pages ahead and there are some wonderful times too. I promise you laughter and love along with the tears. I promise you closure and I promise you hope.
Sarah’s story has been a pleasure for me to write from the moment she met Tyler to the final word in this book, her happily ever after.
I’m not ruling out another book in the series. There’s a particular character mentioned within the story who I think deserves his own second chance. Hopefully it won’t take another two years for my mind to be ready to face his harrowing story.
In the meantime, go and get comfy, grab your tissues; perhaps get your headphones to listen to the playlist I’ve made to go along with this. But steel your heart, because it’s time to say one last goodbye to the golden boy who made everyone smile…
Playlist
A list of the songs to set the tone
of One More Thing. Enjoy
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Waiting – Alice Boman
Hey Jude (feat. Kina Grannis) – Imaginary Future
The Fear – Ben Howard
The Night We Met – Lord Huron
Like Real People Do – Hozier
Meet Me in the Hallway – Harry Styles
Bloom – The Paper Kites
Love Like This – Kodaline
I Forget Where We Were – Ben Howard
All We Do – Oh Wonder
Oblivion – Bastille
Would You Love Me Any Less – Charlie Simpson
Mess is Mine – Vance Joy
Brave – The Shires
Need the Sun to Break – James Bay
Photograph – Ed Sheeran
Unsteady – X Amabassadors
Heal – Tom Odell
Boats & Birds – Gregory and the Hawk
High Hopes – Kodaline
I Wanna Dance with Somebody – Bootstraps
Hey Jude – Cystal Leung
Only Love – Ben Howard
Sweet Creature – Harry Styles
To Build a Home – The Cinematic Orchestra
Fire and the Flood – Vance Joy
Listen via Spotify
Blurb
I never asked to slip on a piece of gum then fall in love with a man who would die before the ink was dry on our marriage certificate.
But that’s what fate had in store for me. It broke me. I vowed I’d never fall in love again.
Five years later, fate had one more thing planned. It wanted to play around in my life again. Its tool? Another blasted stick of gum. Same place, only this time, it was Jude Baker, a university lecturer, who slipped on the gum.
Despite being a pacifist, Jude wasn’t particularly happy about having gum stuck to his shoe and made his distaste abundantly clear.
But that stick of gum was the catalyst to a series of events where our paths would continue to cross. There would be a broken nose, a fractured hand, a cat on a lead and a crashed corporate Christmas party that would align our hearts and make me realise that I wanted to be happy again.
But there would also be tears. Many, many tears. Because falling in love was never easy, especially when you were still in love with another man.
Today is the day I made Sarah Kennedy smile. Well, a few things happened before that – first, I broke her ankle. It was an accident, and I feel like shit for it, so I swear to never eat a stick of gum again. But, that break led to one of the best afternoons I’ve had in a long time.
There’s just something about her, something that’s always made me wish I knew her, and for as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be the reason she smiles. I never cared about what any other kids thought about her. I just knew there was something going on behind those big brown eyes of her
s that was far more interesting than your average person. As far as I was concerned, Sarah Kennedy was special, and she showed it every day when she turned up at school with her shoulders back and her head held high. No one could break her. I’ve always admired that.
Turning the scowl of hers into a smile has been on my list for ages. I’ve always wondered why, when I find it so easy to befriend most people, I couldn’t even approach her without breaking out into a sweat. But then, that piece of gum intervened and forced me to man up and talk to her. I should probably thank it.
I suppose I should explain the whole broken ankle and gum thing, right? Well, I was hanging out with the guys on our way to one of the last Uni classes we were ever going to have, and I was a jerk and spat it out on the pavement. It wasn’t long after that, that I heard a shriek and turned around to see a shoeless Sarah, sitting in the middle of what looked like a snow storm, but was really just her papers fluttering on the ground around her. Even lying in a mess on the ground, she looked beautiful.
In the back of my mind, I knew I probably should have let someone else help her and continued to stay out of her life. But, it was my fault she fell, and well, I don’t want to have any regrets in this life. I couldn’t let what might be my last opportunity to talk to her pass me by. So I knelt in front of her and the moment our eyes met, I felt this jolt in my chest.
I called her ‘sweetheart’ and her eyes flashed with annoyance and something else—denial perhaps? Longing? I don’t know what was going through her head in that moment. But I knew what was going through mine. I knew without a doubt that everything was about to change….
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Excerpt from Tyler’s Journal
1
Thursday, 20th October 2016
LIFE WAS FILLED with numbers. It was ruled by them. Not just in finance, but everywhere. Numbers were the only real constant in this world—two followed one, three followed two, and so on. It didn’t matter what language you spoke, or at what stage of life you were in; the numbers were all the same.
One, two, three, four…
We used them to make lists, to tell time, to measure distance. Even our days were numbered.
Counting, counting. Always counting…until finally, we stopped. A heart stopped beating. Synapses stopped firing. And it was over. No more counting for you.
The rest of us, however, continued our never-ending count, measuring our moments, knowing how fleeting they really were.
They said life was a gift.
They said grief was the evidence of love.
Neither could be quantified by a number, and yet we counted anyway—the days we’d lived without, the days we’d lost our hearts—whether they added up to something or not.
I took a deep breath, filling my lungs. The air smelled of spring and the soft prickle of freshly mown grass brushed against my thighs uncomfortably. Nothing added up the way it did when Tyler was alive. I was here and he wasn’t. The numbers just didn’t make sense. How could everything keep going when one half of a whole was no longer there?
Releasing the breath, I looked up to the clear blue sky, squinting under the veil of the sun peeking over the roofs of the buildings surrounding me.
This was the place, a footpath in a Sydney University campus. -33.882346, 151.049078, the coordinates on the bracelet he gave me, numbers that marked our beginning.
Six years ago today was the moment. The moment. The moment that changed everything. And it was all because of a stick of gum.
With a sigh, I slid my hand inside my purse, pulling out a piece of spearmint gum that I unwrapped with careful precision. I slid it past my lips, the taste of it touching my tongue. Closing my eyes, I held it there, taking a breath as the sadness that seemed to never leave washed over me, weighing down my heart, burning my eyes, throbbing in my chest. Then I forced myself to chew, that sweet minty flavour flooding my mouth, conjuring images of a carefree boy with golden hair and the day he became a fixture in my life.
Tyler.
His name was a sigh in my heart.
I’d lived without him for almost five years. Five years without his perfect smile. Five years without looking into his beautiful ice-blue eyes. Five years without holding his perfect hands. Five.
One; the moments that passed each morning before I realised he was gone and the grief began again. Every day. One beat. One moment.
Opening my eyes, I fixed my gaze on the footpath in front of me, on the dark stain in the grey that forever marked the spot where I fell and broke my ankle. My fall was caused by a stick of gum spat out by the man I would fall hopelessly in love with then lose some fifteen months later when the ravages of a horrendous disease took over his body and he asked me to help him die.
Zero; the moments after when I wasn’t wracked with guilt over what I did.
The sound of his voice, begging me to let him go, filled my head, reminding me that I helped him leave with dignity; I helped him have one final choice. Not that it made it any easier. We were dealt a shitty hand no matter how you looked at it.
Sitting on the grass beside a footpath chewing gum with my eyes closed, I forced myself to focus on the sound of his voice, hearing him call me ‘sweetheart’. At first I had fiercely objected to the pet name, but it quickly became my identity as I lost myself to him completely. I was Tyler’s ‘sweetheart’. The only sweetheart he ever had or wanted. The pet name meant I was special.
“God, I miss you,” I whispered under my breath just before I balled the gum in my mouth and spat it on the footpath in honour of the catalyst that brought Tyler and me together; something I would never regret.
“The fuck!”
A British accent cut my reverie short as a tall man with a slim build dropped onto the grass near me, a string of green gum stuck to his shoe.
“I can’t believe you spat gum at my feet. What the hell is wrong with you?” He took off his shoe and scraped it along the grass, the gum rolling and forming a grassy clump on the sole.
I covered my mouth, not knowing if I should laugh at the absurdity of it, or apologise profusely for spitting gum at his feet. Seriously, what were the odds of someone stepping on gum at the exact place and time, six years to the day of Tyler doing the same thing to me?
“At least you didn’t break your ankle,” I responded, my mind racing.
He scowled at me. “Is that what you were trying to do?”
For a fleeting moment, I allowed myself to believe in magic. Was this fate? Had Tyler somehow found a way back to me? Upon studying the man—his dark hair, his soft brown eyes wrinkled at the corners, his pale skin and glasses—I chided myself for being so naïve. The idea of Tyler’s consciousness leaping into the body of another man was the stuff of fantasy, especially when that man looked and sounded more like a nerdy version of Robert Pattinson and less like the Hemsworth brother Tyler had closely resembled. I imagined this guy was your stereotypical academic who found his excitement in the pursuit of knowledge and the written word. Everything the thrill-seeking Tyler would never have been. There was literally no comparison between the two men.
“I wasn’t trying…” I started to explain myself but thought better of it, standing to leave instead. “Listen, I’m sorry about your shoe. I simply didn’t see you coming—no malice intended.”
Reaching out, he found a stick in the grass and tried to force the offending goo to shift with a modicum of success. “This is just fucking brilliant.” He threw the stick and most of the gum over his shoulder then shoved his shoe back on his foot, standing up to dust himself off. “A perfect addition to an already fantastic day,” he muttered further as he scuffed his foot back and forth over the grass to remove the tackiness. “What could possibly possess you to do such a thing?”
I took a step backward, preparing to leave. “Listen, I said I’m sorry. I’m not sure what else you want me to do.”
“How about use a bin instead of spitting on the footpath like some animal?” His tone was shifting from annoyed to angry.
I lifted my hands in defence. “I’m leaving. Have a nice day.” Then I spun on my heels and headed toward the parking lot.
“Is this something you do all the time? Spit gum at people’s feet then just watch while they try to clean up your mess? Is it entertainment for you?” The voice was coming from behind me.
“Mate, I told you I was sorry. Get off my back.” I quickened my pace, seeing the Navara up ahead.
“Did your mother not teach you any manners at all?”
Stopping, I turned to face him, my hands out at my sides. “What the hell do you want from me? New shoes? I’ll get you new shoes.”
“How about some common courtesy and consideration for your fellow man? Or is that too much to ask these days?”
“I said I was sorry,” I repeated, my voice stern.
“Well, that doesn’t help me. You can’t do shitty things then expect to say sorry and have it all go away. Life isn’t like that.”
With a shake of my head, I turned away. “You need to calm the fuck down.”
“And you need to learn how to be a decent human being.”
Reaching the ute, I turned on him. “Stop following me,” I growled between my teeth.
“Don’t give yourself so much credit.” He walked straight past me and beeped open the next car along, a grey Honda Civic. Even his car didn’t have any personality.
For a moment I felt foolish. Then I just felt relieved and slid into the driver’s side of the black Navara with a sigh. “Looks like I should quit eating gum too,” I said, touching the GPS coordinate bracelet at my wrist as I remembered how angry I’d been when I’d tripped on Tyler’s gum. I guess I couldn’t really blame Mr Honda Civic for being so pissed. I’d lost my shit too.
When I reversed out of my space and saw him removing his shoes before getting in his car, I let out a laugh. This was all so absurd. But in a way, I loved it. It made me feel closer to the man I’d lost.