Just Like You Said It Would Be

by C. K. Kelly Martin

  Shell-shocked, Darragh turns away from me and trudges to his bike. He tugs his helmet on, straddles the seat and starts the engine. Then he steers the Yamaha rapidly towards my spot by the planter. “Thanks,” he tells me.

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “It feels like you did.” He stares at me from under his helmet, hesitating. “Amira?” I stare tensely back, waiting for the next bomb to drop. “Whatever happens between us, you should know I’ve been in love with you since last summer and it’s as real as anything gets. I should’ve done something about it sooner. Life’s too short for the bullshit I was telling myself—for being afraid and thinking that being with you was too hard to try for. Don’t say anything now. Just think about what I said about us working something out.”

  Darragh’s bike veers sharply to the left and then tears down the driveway and onto the street. My heart’s still hammering when he fades from view, becoming one with the Connemara vista. Left alone on the driveway it’s quiet like you never hear in the city, only the sound of the wind whistling to keep me company as my mind tumbles and tumbles, my heart falling along with it, following Darragh down the narrow country road.

  Chapter 26

  You keep reminding me of that, all right?

  He said don’t say anything now, but I can’t wait. There’ll be family with Darragh in England, I’m sure. He won’t have to deal with his mom’s condition on his own. But if it would help to have me there too, I can’t stay away.

  I thought I understood my relationship with Darragh so well—that I was being wise in forcing myself to put it behind me, because what kind of person lets her life be knocked off course for love at seventeen? But it’s only now that I grasp what Rana and Darragh were trying to tell me. Life is too short and fragile to allow the people who mean the most to you to slip through your fingers. It doesn’t matter if things are difficult or if it could hurt more in the end. Darragh is one of those people who will always matter to me. Last year I would’ve searched high and low for Jocelyn until I’d been ripped away from Canada. In some ways this is just the same.

  Romantic love is so much more than spark. Underneath, love is so many moveable parts that you’d never be able to pin them all down. But the one I understand the most fully right now is that love is the feeling that you want to be next to someone when they’re doing the very hardest things.

  So I tell my parents about Darragh’s mom being in ICU. Then I say I need to be there also, if he needs me and if his family doesn’t mind. I expect an argument—some variation on the ones my parents and I have had over the last year and a bit when they wanted to me go and I wanted to stay or vice versa. I see in my dad’s eyes that he’s gearing up for it and feel my response rise in my chest—that if my parents won’t buy me a ticket to London I’ll return to Dublin in two weeks’ time, when I turn eighteen, and spend the rest of the summer with Darragh. It won’t be the same because what I really need is to be around when he needs me, and I don’t want to have to go against my mom and dad like that, but I will. This is one argument I’ll win eventually.

  Maybe my mother can see that, or maybe it’s the talk we had in the bistro bathroom last night that’s changed her mind, because she turns to my father and says, “If one of us was in serious trouble we would want Amira’s friends around her. I think we should let her go. I can stay here and wait for her to get in touch with Darragh and then, depending how things unfold, she and I can take a taxi to the airport.”

  Dad looks stunned. He and Mom have always been on the same page about my love life. If anything, Mom’s been the marginally stricter one. “This is someone Zoey knows well,” she says. “Not a stranger. Kate and Frank are well acquainted with him too.”

  Surprise of all surprises, my father doesn’t object. He merely continues to appear uncomfortable with the situation. I’m pretty certain this isn’t how the conversation would have turned out if my parents had never split up and then had to work at revamping their relationship. There’s been a subtle transformation in them that’s trickled down to this moment.

  I don’t know exactly how it works, only that I end up on the phone with Darragh eighty minutes later while my father, aunt and uncle are out roaming the wilds of Connemara.

  “Did you get a flight?” I ask.

  “I’m booked on the next one,” Darragh says, sounding so acutely unhappy that my throat fills up with shards. “It doesn’t leave for almost three hours. My grandparents are flying out from Dublin this afternoon too. I can’t remember how much I told you earlier—everything’s a blur—but Derek said my mother had no vital signs when the ambulance picked her up early this morning. If they didn’t get to her so quickly she probably still wouldn’t be with us now.”

  “She’s made it this far, that has to be a good sign. She’s still with us. She hasn’t given up.”

  “You keep reminding me of that, all right?” Darragh’s voice is subdued. “It was cocaine in combination with alcohol and anti-anxiety medication that she overdosed on. With her past she should’ve known better, but it sounds like it was an accident, not a suicide attempt. Working on the book was drawing her back into her old lifestyle. I’m sure I don’t know half of what went on, but Derek said she met up with two of her old bandmates a few times recently—jammed with them a little. One of them is bad news. A right asshole whose money has been going up his nose for years.” In the background I hear an airport announcement and the sound of muffled, overlapping voices. “I don’t want to get off the phone with you,” Darragh says wistfully, “but I should probably leave it free in case my family or Derek needs to get in touch. Do you think I could ring you again later tonight, Amira? Would that be okay?”

  “Anytime at all. Listen, I know the timing’s wrong but…” I try to wait until I can speak without my voice breaking. Then Darragh says my name and I know I’m scaring him, that he’s expecting the worst at an already terrible time.

  “Don’t tell me if it’s bad news about us,” he warns. “I’m not able for it. Save it for some other day.”

  “It’s not bad news.” The words bubble out of my throat like I’ve been holding them in too long. “I love you. And I know some of your family will be there with you so maybe this is a bad idea and I’d be in the way, but I’m thinking ... if you want me to—if it would help—that I could come to London.”

  “Would you?” he asks, his voice hushed and raw. “Would you really? Please.”

  “I will,” I whisper back. It’s as though we’re scared to say anything at a volume fate could overhear. Maybe it won’t notice what we’re doing if we’re quiet enough. We’ll be able to slip through its grasp and finesse a happy ending, for us and his mom. “I’ll be at the airport as soon as I can. I’ll see you in an hour or so.”

  Closer to an hour and a half due to a motorway accident that slows traffic. And I don’t have a flight yet because my mom wants to make sure it’s okay with Derek that I stay with him and Darragh first.

  On the N18, in the backseat of a taxi with my mother, I lean into her shoulder and thank her. I'm not the cardboard cut-out of a perfect daughter; I'm just me, for better or for worse, and today I know she understands that.

  Mom tilts her head, a wisp of a smile on her lips as she looks at me. “You said you two were done. I guess neither of us knows everything.”

  My jaw twitches in agreement. “No, I guess not.”

  Despite our bad timing and my mother’s presence, Darragh and I crash headlong into each other when I spy him at Shannon airport. He throws his arms around me and holds me tight. Tighter than anyone’s ever held me, even him. I squeeze him back, my eyes closed and my body tilting into his in a way that makes us feel like two halves of the same whole. Then he lifts me off my feet and grips me harder still. I gasp and then laugh, Darragh apologizing to my mother as he sets me down. “I’m just so happy to see her,” he adds, holding out his hand so he can shake my mom’s. “This morning has been a nightmare.”

  “I’m sorry we couldn�
�t have met on a better day,” my mom says gently. “My thoughts are with your family. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

  “Thank you.” Darragh’s cheeks are red with emotion. “And thanks for letting Amira do this. It means a lot to me.” He reaches into his pocket and yanks out a piece of paper. “I spoke to Derek twenty minutes ago and he has no problem with Amira staying in the flat in Bromley with us.” He offers the sheet to my mother. “This is the address of the flat and Derek’s phone numbers, landline and mobile.”

  My mother thanks him, Darragh pointing us in the direction of the Ryanair ticket agent so that we can buy my ticket. Afterwards my mom sits with us for ten minutes before excusing herself to make the journey back to Galway. Boarding the plane with Darragh couldn’t be more different than flying to Dublin with my parents a few days ago or jetting to Ireland solo last year. My eighteenth birthday is still weeks away, but I feel like I’m already there. I’m not growing away from my parents, but I’m growing. It seems as though I’ve done more growing up since I flew to Dublin last year than I did in the previous four years combined.

  There are countless reasons behind that. All the big and small things life can throw at you, whether you’re ready or not. And then there’s Darragh, life’s greatest surprise. Like he said, we’re as real as anything gets. I’m not naïve enough to think that automatically means we’ll be together forever, but it means I’m not giving up.

  So we fly to London together and I spend the better part of two days in the ICU waiting room at University College London hospital with Darragh and his family—his grandparents, his brothers (who arrive on day two and stay with their grandparents in their great uncle’s house in Croydon), and Derek. No one’s doing a lot of sleeping but when we do, Darragh stretches out on the Bromley flat’s living room couch and I retreat to the second bedroom, where Darragh usually stays.

  In those two days Darragh swims through the gamut of emotions, angry with his mother for letting this happen, sorry that he’d ever let the book come between them and more than anything, downright scared. One afternoon after coming out of her hospital room he tells me, “If you met my mother some other time—when she was in good form—you’d see why the crowds loved her. There’s no bullshit about her. I think that’s why she found the music business so hard. She’s just herself, for better or for worse.” His voice splinters. “As long as she pulls through I won’t hold anything against her ever again. For the rest of her life she can do whatever the fuck she wants, as long as it isn’t landing her in hospital.”

  We stop in the middle of the hallway and I hold him close. There’s nothing for me to do except be there through everything and I’m there on the third day, too, when a female voice whispers in my ear, “Wake up.”

  I haven’t heard Rana’s voice since she was a toddler and this one sounds mature and calm, yet insistent. But I would swear it was hers. I wriggle my nose as I roll onto my back, the air blithe and honey-scented.

  It’s barely dawn.

  I pad downstairs in my bare feet, kneeling beside Darragh’s prone form on the couch. “Wake up,” I echo tenderly. “Wake up.” I can’t explain why—other than this is what I believe she wants—and Darragh is half-asleep, too much in another world, to ask anyway. He blinks up at me as his phone rings on the coffee table, his arms battling their way out of the blanket draped over him.

  Later I will try to describe Rana’s voice and Darragh will listen intently to my words and then fold his arms around me. Later still I will show him her photographs and he will smile at her as if she’s standing right in front of him in the flesh—the sister I knew in life for far too short a time, but who I will know forever.

  In the present, Darragh says, “It’s Derek,” and clutches his cell tensely. Derek’s still at the hospital, due back in a few hours for a nap and shower, and my heart thumps like a herd of elephants as Darragh presses the phone to his ear. Outside things that have nothing to do with us are happening, a car alarm is waking sleeping neighbours and a bird’s chirping frantically, trying to compete with the noise.

  But inside the living room the only thing that matters is this call.

  Light steals into Darragh’s face as he listens to Derek’s voice—it’s like watching a sunrise in time-lapse photography—from darkness to blinding light in the space of ten seconds. The sight is one of the most beautiful, most arresting things I’ve ever laid eyes on. Maybe you know what I mean and if you don’t I hope someday you find out firsthand because when Darragh turns to beam that joyful, brilliant sunshine smile at me I know that no matter what happens to us later, whether we turn out to be a happily ever after or break each other’s hearts all over again, we were still right. It’s not trying that would’ve been wrong.

  We weren’t too late. Darragh, it’s just like you said it would be.

  Acknowledgments

  This book has a long history. Eighteen years to be exact; it’s no longer an adolescent! My thanks and gratitude to all the people who read Just Like You Said It Would Be in one of its previous incarnations and helped set it on the path to becoming the better book that it is today – my brother Casey, Steven Chudney, Ed Jaspers, Stephanie Thwaites, Shana Corey, Amy Black, and Sara Crowe.

  Carol Clippinger deserves a trophy made of solid gold for going above and beyond any kind of call of duty in her notes on this manuscript. I can’t thank you enough, Carol! If books have godmothers, you are Just Like You Said It Would Be’s. Thank you, Denise Jaden, and Deborah Kerbel, for reading, listening and for your canny advice re. this book. Thank you, Ann Marie Marinelli, for reading two vastly different versions of Just Like You Said It Would Be many years apart and most especially, for saying it made you cry.

  Donna Rich, thank you for putting your proofreading skills to work here. Thank you, also, to the readers who prefer to remain anonymous, but who provided invaluable insights to this story re. Egyptian Arabic and other details. Any inaccuracies or mistakes that remain are wholly my responsibility. And as always, thanks to my husband, Patrick, for reading everything I write. After eighteen years he knows Amira and Darragh nearly as well as I do.

  Special thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts for their faith in this manuscript. Your support has meant the world to me.

  I acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country.

  Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays

  Also by C. K. Kelly Martin:

  I Know It’s Over

  One Lonely Degree

  The Lighter Side of Life and Death

  My Beating Teenage Heart

  Yesterday

  Tomorrow

  Come See About Me

  The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing

  Delicate

  Stricken