The Art of Keeping Faith

by Anna Bloom

  He stops walking and turns to face me.

  “So what? Do you not want to get married ever or have a baby?”

  Why does everyone put getting married with having a baby? Are they mutually exclusive of each other?

  “Well, yes, no. I don’t know, Ben.”

  “That does not make any sense.”

  “All I am saying is that I can’t really see myself married or being a mother, I just can’t visualise it.”

  The blue stare at me with a melting intensity, “I can.”

  “Can what?”

  “See it, I can see you being those things.”

  “Really? Because I honestly can’t…” I stop myself from saying anything else, he has a frown crease between his brows and I am not sure what it means.

  Pulling him in close I kiss him and try to distract him from the conversation. I don’t know where it is heading but it feels uncomfortable and I just want to enjoy the limited time we have together. That and dirty Lilah wants to come out to play again. Conversations like this might stop that from happening.

  As we walk back to the hotel, step in time with one another he links his fingers with mine and raises my hands to his lips.

  “What was that for?”

  “Because I hope that one day you see me the way that I see you. But I think I have to wait for that moment.”

  I stop walking.

  Fuck, have I done it again?

  “Ben did you have something to say?”

  “No.”

  “Ask?”

  He smiles. “No, it is okay, Lilah. I am happy just waiting for you.”

  I don’t understand this because I thought I was waiting for him. Waiting for him to do his thing in America; waiting for him to come home. I don’t bloody know, waiting for something. I am going nowhere. So why on earth is he waiting for me?

  I try to push the thoughts away from my mind for the rest of our time together at the hotel. But in a way it is kind of hard. I end up reading things into everything he says. And Ben, for his part, literally devours me with a hungry determination the rest of the night.

  I wish I knew what he was thinking. In the silent darkness of the pea green room, it feels like he is trying to show me something. Only, I don’t know what it is.

  16th February

  Home

  Meredith and Tristan have left The Sun open on the kitchen counter. Tristan has also left one of his sarcastic Post-it notes saying that he figured I would break my no-reading-of-The=Sun vow for this.

  Spread across the double page gossip section is the picture of Ben and I taken at Trafalgar.

  I stop and look at it with a critical scrutiny, but there is little for me to fault. It looks very romantic. Ben has his hands gently holding my chin and throat in his kissing hold and both our eyes are closed as we lean into each other.

  “I never realised how much taller you are than me,” I say, turning to face him, catching him with a smirk on his lips.

  “What are you up to?” I ask with a smile.

  “Nothing, I don’t know what you are talking about.” He shrugs.

  I point at the picture and then the smirk on his face, which is getting wider by the moment.

  “Benjamin?”

  “What?”

  “Tell me?”

  “I am staking my claim is all.” He gives a secret smile with his words.

  “What? What on earth does that mean? What are you staking a claim in?” I push.

  “You.”

  Kit’s thrilled.

  I am kind of thrilled myself.

  17th February

  “You’re going, aren’t you?”

  I have my arms tight around Ben’s waist as he tries to get up from the bed.

  “Yes, Lilah. To the shower.”

  “Nope, not allowed.”

  “Oh for goodness’ sake.”

  Ben lifts me up off the bed and carries me screaming into the shower.

  Twenty minutes later

  “What time is your flight?” I am drying my hair and watching him get dressed in the mirror. Let’s be honest there is not much hair drying going on. I am actually drying the wall instead of my hair. I’m just drooling over him walking around barefoot and bare-chested in jeans.

  “I’m beginning to get the impression you want me out of here. Am I cramping your student style or something?”

  “Well you’re not, but that big hunk of silver is doing nothing for my poor student street cred.”

  The blues crinkle at me as he pushes his damp hair away from his eyes.

  I could so easily blow off lectures today.

  “Well I was planning on escorting you to campus, then picking you up later and cooking you dinner if that would be okay with you.”

  Nope. I don’t think my ears are working properly.

  “So you aren’t leaving today?” I practically scream.

  Ben laughs. “No, Lilah.”

  I launch myself across the bed and into his arms.

  “Best Valentine’s ever.”

  “I’d say.” He cups his hand around the back of my head, fingers sliding in my still-damp hair, and tilts my mouth to his.

  “So are you still going to campus?”

  No, no, no, no!

  Then I remember Pilchard and the fact that he actually likes me at the moment and I know I don’t want to let him down.

  “Yeah.” I begrudgingly mutter.

  Ben just laughs some more.

  “We have all afternoon and all night, Lilah, I am not leaving until tomorrow okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  9.35 a.m.

  Bugger, I am late for class again. I don’t care though. Ben has walked me across campus, holding my hand, his step in time with mine. He is determined to make me late by snogging me every two minutes.

  I will take late for that anytime!

  I burst through the door to the lecture hall flushed to the max.

  “Ah, Delilah McCannon. Good weekend, I assume?” Pilchard calls. He is not frowning though. In fact he is smiling.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’d say,” he sends me a wink that I stare at open mouthed. Everyone laughs and throws little jeers my way along the lines of ‘Way to go, Lilah.’ It seems the History Students like their news tabloidy and gossipy over the weekend.

  Everyone apart from Barbie, who is simmering near the back, and Richard, who is looking anywhere apart from at me.

  11.55 a.m.

  Lunch. I walk through the door thinking I will just go and grab a coffee or something before my next lecture. Monday is sadly double bubble day and I have lectures both morning and afternoon. It sucks big time.

  I see Ben straight away. He is loitering on the grass with about fifty girls all hanging a short distance away. He looks most bemused, sending me a shrug from across the grass, before starting to walk toward me, all long-legged artistic grace. I stand in mesmerised rapture watching him.

  “Close your mouth, Lilah,” Richard speaks low into my ear from behind me. He does not stop to chat with me or Ben, and just walks off in the opposite direction.

  Fine.

  Ben reaches me and leans me back in a ridiculous kiss, which makes all the girls watching him give a little sigh.

  Oh yes—and he is all mine.

  So back the fuck off.

  Ha ha. Only joking. Okay, only joking a little bit.

  “Fancy a beer?” he asks, the freckles crinkling.

  “Benjamin Chambers I am a very serious student, I don’t have time to drink at lunch time.”

  “That’s because you don’t have me to drink with anymore.”

  “True.”

  “Come on. Let’s go. I am sure Trev will be pleased for the boost in profits.”

  “If you absolutely insist.”

  No afternoon lecture.

  8.00 p.m.

  Ben is cooking. Spaghetti Bolognese—God, I love that man.

  Meredith and I are on our third
bottle of wine; the good stuff that Ben has bought us, not the cheap shit we have been drinking of late.

  I may be a little drunk as I sit on the kitchen counter watching him cook.

  “What you grinning at?” he asks.

  “You.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I love this, when you are here. It feels just right.”

  He gives the sauce another stir and then comes and wedges himself as close as he can to me, pulling my lips down to his own.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” shouts Tristan. “Don’t start bloody snogging again. We are never going to get dinner at this rate.”

  “Bite me.” We both shout back at the same time.

  9.30 p.m.

  Meredith is showing me wedding dresses on the Internet. Tristan is talking about something boring with Ben. I zoned out after the first five minutes. I have no idea what my brother talks about half the time.

  “Lilah,” Ben calls eventually. I have not looked at a single dress. I have just been watching him across the room. “I’m going for a ciggie, coming?”

  Duh.

  I am struggling up from where I am wedged on the cushions as Ben walks around the sofa and peeks at the laptop. “That one,” he says to Meredith.

  “Really?” she asks, clearly not keen on a boy’s opinion.

  I look, too. “Uh, shit yes. That is the one.” I agree wholeheartedly.

  Ben has pointed out the most beautifully understated dress I have ever seen. It will look perfect on Meredith’s tall willowy frame.

  It’s the kind of dress I would like to wear if I was a) taller and b) thinner.

  Outside I take a cigarette from our remaining duty free stash. “Nice choice.”

  “It’s what I can imagine you wearing one day.”

  “Really? I think that would look terrible.”

  He blows his smoke into the air and stares at the stars that are playing hide and seek in the wisps of light clouds passing by.

  “I see you completely differently to how you see yourself,” he tells me.

  That’s true.

  Turning to face me he glides one hand along my cheek, and moves himself into my space. The freckles are glimmering in the moonlight and I reach a finger toward them, grazing over the pattern they make on his skin.

  “Thank you for coming home, Ben. It means so much to me having you here.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “What, you want me to tell you right now?”

  “Yes.”

  Jeez, put a girl on the spot, why don’t you?

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  “Try.” He moves himself a step closer and the familiar burn that resides in the pit of my stomach when he is near flares at his movement.

  “I forget how comfortable this is with you. Just being with you is so easy. And it scares me that being without you is starting to become easy as well, because I don’t want that. I want this forever, but I know it is not ours to have right now.”

  The blues, which look as dark as midnight, watch me, waiting for me to say something, anything that will make sense of the jumble of words that have just fallen from my mouth.

  “I know what you mean.”

  “You do?”

  Please don’t tell me it is easy without me as well.

  “But, Lilah, this is my home. It is where I think of when I want comfort. And you are the only thing that keeps me going. You and the thought of coming home to you. No matter what you see, no matter what you hear, you must always believe that.”

  “You mean like the pictures I see of you with other girls?”

  He inclines his head a little and looks pretty annoyed. “It’s not easy you know.”

  “Fighting the girls off isn’t easy?” Uh oh. Cross drunk Lilah could be about to show herself.

  “No, don’t be daft. It’s not easy always getting my point across. The general consensus is that we should toe the line, do what we are told and get on with it. All that crap in the papers and all the girly hysteria, that’s just the publicity and hype, none of it’s real.”

  “So, that’s the general consensus. But what do you think?”

  “I think we should be who we are. I mean we’re not teenagers. I’m twenty-seven, there’s nothing wrong with saying we want to settle down. Well, some of us do.”

  “Do you, you know, want to settle down?”

  Ben gives a low chuckle. “You have no idea.”

  Before I have a chance to move he sweeps me up over his shoulder in his trademark fireman lift and walks me back into the house.

  “Sorry guys, that’s enough for the night.” He laughs as he carries me through to our room.

  As the door closes, I can hear Meredith asking Tristan why he never does anything romantic like that.

  “Fucking Ben,” Tristan grumbles under his breath.

  Later

  I am staring up into the darkness.

  “Was that what the staking a claim photo was about?”

  He tightens his arms around me.

  “I just want people to know that there is another whole part of me that they have not seen yet and it is the better part.”

  I have nothing to say to this so I just kiss him instead.

  Even Later

  “Don’t ever let go of me, Lilah,” he whispers into the dark.

  I wrap my arms tight around him and hook my foot over his, anchoring us together.

  “Never.”

  18th February

  He’s gone and do you know what? It’s not a bad thing. I don’t mean it in an ‘I’m glad he’s gone” way. What I mean is that he is gone, and it feels all right. His surprise visit was amazing and it really did take me by surprise. I never expected that at all and it felt amazing. Firstly, being with him. And secondly and most importantly, that he loves me enough to make spontaneous romantic gestures, spending who knows how much money just so he can spend two days with me.

  How cool is that? My boyfriend will sit on a plane for fourteen hours just to spend two days with me. Add to this the busking, serenading, the hotel and the day of normality that he gave me and I have to say that Ben’s Valentine’s effort was not just a success, it was possibly the single most romantic thing that I ever dreamed anyone would ever want to do for me.

  I am glowing and full of it as I swan around campus. There are a fair amount of inquisitive stares, but I just ignore them and continue in my own little fit-to-burst bubble of happiness.

  The only person not staring at me or even looking in my direction at all is Richard and I’m starting to feel really bad that I reacted the way I did about Barbie. And also I am starting to feel pretty bad about the way I went off at him about Ben. I guess if I was to see it from Richard’s point of view he has been around for the whole of the academic year. We have had plenty of laughs together and, yes, sometimes he has helped me when I have hit a bit of a low point during Ben’s absence. Maybe I have taken advantage of him, but I just figured he was lonely too with his dysfunctional relationship with Fi.

  I am a big girl and I can look after myself. I am learning this slowly. But I guess somehow I have given Richard the impression that I need him to feel responsible and fight my battles for me.

  I don’t need anyone to fight my battles. I am more than capable of this all on my own, something that is becoming very apparent.

  Rubbish—It’s time for Delilah McCannon to eat more humble pie.

  19th February

  “Rich, wait.” Calling out, I chase after him across the campus. He is walking for the gates with a steely determination.

  Seemingly he also has his ears turned off.

  “Richard, for fuck’s sake. Just hold up a minute.” Finally I manage to huff and puff my way close enough to grab his arm and make him stop.