Page 34 of Never Too Late

“Switching my phone back on. I can’t lie in bed for two hours doing nothing.”

“If only you had someone to lie there with you.”

“Why didn’t we ever do that?” Cillian asked, his tone pleasingly wistful.

“Because you never invited me to stay. And although the invitation was there on the extremely rare occasions you stayed at my place, you never took me up on it.”

“I was a terrible boyfriend.”

“Yeah, we already established that. You’re working on being a better one.” Realizing how harsh my words sounded, like I’d placed all the blame firmly at his feet, I sought to do some damage control before Cillian changed his mind about me being worth it and hung up. “We’reworking on doing better. And for me, that means saying what’s on my mind, which is why it seems like I’m being hard on you. I haven’t learned how to do it nicely yet. I’ll get better at it. And… just for the record, I’m not trying to change you. I’m just…”

“Trying to make me work less so you can spend time with me.”

“Yeah.” I was relieved he got it. The last thing I wanted to do was come across as some sort of harridan he couldn’t wait to get away from.

“We’re going to work.”

“I hope so.”

“Tell me about your day,” Cillian said.

I did, leaving out the part about my heart to heart with Laurent, but detailing everything else. And then he told me about his day. The time flew by and it was surprisingly late before we finally said goodnight to each other and hung up.

Chapter Thirteen

The evenings for the rest of the week had passed similarly: Cillian would call and we’d chat for what felt like a short amount of time, but turned out to be hours. No topic was off the table, whether that was holiday destinations Cillian kept meaning to visit, but never got around to—I did really well during that conversation not to point out that there was only one person stopping him from going wherever his heart desired—or major plot holes in films we’d both seen years ago.

Tonight though, he hadn’t rung when he was supposed to, and my flat vibrated with the silence. Quasimodo watched with his head slightly cocked to one side as I turned my phone over and over in my hands, the movement doing nothing to make it ring. “I know what you’re thinking,” I said when he hadn’t blinked for over a minute. “You think this is the beginning of it, and that I should be surprised he lasted as long as he did.”

The cat continued to stare. “I didn’t take you in, so you could sit and judge me. Yes… Icouldring him. But then what if he doesn’t answer? It’s making a thing out of it, isn’t it?And things have been good. Really good. Is half an hour really such a big deal?” I checked my watch and grimaced. “Okay, not half an hour, an hour. But still…” I turned the phone over again. “Anyway, I don’t know why you’re side-eyeing me. You’re Cillian’s biggest fan. If he walked in here now, you’d push me out of the way to get to him.” Quasimodo turned his back on me and started washing his face. “The truth hurts, doesn’t it?”

Another hour passed, a familiar sense of dread settling in the pit of my stomach. I’d dared to dream over the past few days as I’d gotten to know him better, and he me. I’d seen a future where Cillian’s epiphany about his work/life balance, about what it would take to make our relationship work, was honest and genuine, and I’d truly believed he was prepared to jump through whatever hoops were necessary to make changes.

“Okay,” I finally said, once Quasimodo’s grooming routine had reached a satisfactory conclusion and he’d started pacing, the remnants of his tail twitching. “I’ll call him.” It rang and rang before going to voicemail. I didn’t leave a message because I didn’t trust myself not to be irrationally abrasive. “So he’s busy. No big deal. It’s one night.”

I was in the bathroom when my phone finally rang. The land speed record came close to being broken as I sprinted back into the living room, almost tripped over Quasimodo, and snatched it up. “Hey! I was worried about you.”

“Were you?” said a female voice. “That’s really sweet. No one ever worries about me.”

It took me a moment to place the voice. “Amrita?”

“Finn,” she said warmly. “Long time, no speak. Or should I say…” A cascade of French followed, spoken far too quickly for me to decipher more than the occasional word, and I wasn’t a hundred percent certain sure they were accurate.

Her being able to speak French didn’t surprise me. I had an inkling there weren’t many things she couldn’t do. She reallyhad been wasted in that coffee shop before Cillian had stumbled across her. “Right,” I said, not understanding what I’d just agreed to.

“You’re probably wondering why I’m calling you.”

“It crossed my mind.” A tingle of panic raced up my spine. “Is it Cillian? He’s alright, isn’t he?” How awful would it be if the reason he hadn’t called was because he couldn’t, and I’d been thinking the worst of him.

“He’s fine, don’t worry. An emergency cropped up. A work one, not a personal one.”

I’d once mocked him for talking about advertising emergencies, rubbishing the very idea of them. Therefore, I had to work hard to keep the cynicism out of my voice. “What sort of emergency?”

“The sort where one of our major clients has gone absolutely ballistic and no matter how many monkeys we threw his way, wouldn’t be pacified by anything less than talking to the organ grinder himself.”

“And Cillian couldn’t find five minutes to ring me himself and explain?”

There was amusement in Amrita’s voice when she answered. “Well, the last time I saw him, he was being sworn at in three different languages.”

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