nod doubtfully.
‘Are you upset?’
I stop to think about it. Am I?
‘No,’ I say, after a pause.
As I say it, I feel a twinge of surprise. I thoug˜€prise. I ³houht I would be more than upset. I thought I would be devastated. After all, wasn’t he supposed to be my soulmate? The man whom I couldn’t live without. The person who completes me.
Er, no, Lucy, that’s Jerry Maguire.
‘Well, that’s good,’ Robyn is saying cheerfully. ‘A break-up is one thing, but heartbreak is another.’ She rolls her eyes as if to say she’s been there, and I nod in recognition.
Only this time I don’t feel heartbroken at all.
‘I’m stunned, I suppose,’ I confess. ‘And disappointed. He’s not who I thought he was. But then I suppose I wasn’t either.’ I look down at my ice cream. My defiance has melted along with it. ‘I was in love with the idea of him. An ideal of him. Of who I thought he was. Of who he used to be.’
I’m thinking out loud now as my mind mulls over everything. Last week seems like a dream. A huge blur. A rollercoaster of emotions. It all happened so fast that I never really paused to think about it. I didn’t want to stop and think about it. I was falling madly in love again and it was so exhilarating. Seeing him again. Discovering he still loved me. We both got carried away. We didn’t even pause to think that maybe we were falling in love with different people. Caught up in the lust, the moment, the sheer thrill, it was like diving into the ocean.
And now, finally, I’ve come up for air.
‘I was in love with the romance of it all, of getting back together with my first love. I think we both were,’ I say eventually.
‘We all were,’ nods Robyn supportively. ‘It was super romantic.’
‘I mean, I really thought he was my soulmate, but now . . .’ I trail off sadly.
‘But now you’ve realised he isn’t, and that’s OK.’ Seeing my glum expression, Robyn immediately springs into her cheerleader role. ‘So what if it’s taken you ten years? Better late than never.’
‘I thought you said Nate and I were meant to be together, that we were just puppets and it was the power of the universe, our destiny,’ I say sulkily.
Robyn colours. ‘Well, that’s true. It did all seem like too much of a coincidence, like it was meant to be, and you did seem very cute together.’ She pauses. ‘Are you sure it’s over?’
‘A hundred per cent.’
‘Hmm.’ She licks her ice cream thoughtfully. She looks unconvinced.
‘I suppose I’m also a bit angry,’ I confess.
‘You know, I’m sure he didn’t really mean that comment,’ Robyn says quickly.
I shake my head. ‘No, not at Nate, at myself. I feel a bit stupid. All these years I believed that I could never be properly happy without him. I’d built him up into this perfect guy, this great love.’ I pause and tug at some tufts of grass. ‘Now I feel like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz when she pulls back the curtain and sees the wizard is just a little old man pulling lots of levers.’
‘I felt like that when I went to my high-school reunion and saw Brad Poleski,’ says Robyn supportively. ‘When I was sixteen, I had the biggest crush. I couldn’t even look at him. He was like a god. Then I met him again last year and he was just this little guy who ran a dry-cleaning company and lived in Ohio. He was just so normal.’ She shakes her head, her green eyes flashing as she thinks back.
‘It was like one minute I was crazy about him and then the next . . .’ I trail off.
God, I didn’t realise I was so fickle.
‘It can happen,’ nods Robyn. ‘Once, it happened to me right in the middle . . .’ She raises her eyebrows, like something out of a Carry On film.
‘Middle of what?’
‘When we were, you know.’
‘Oh God, really?’ Suddenly it registers. ‘What happened?’
‘He was a Hare Krishna and—’
‘Can Hare Krishnas have sex?’
‘Well, he wasn’t great and the chanting was a bit distracting.’ She pauses. ‘Oh, you mean, are they allowed to have sex because of their religious beliefs?’ She gasps, her eyes wide. ‘Actually, I don’t know.’ She stops to think for a moment, her face screwed up in concentration. ‘Anyway, where was I?’
‘Having sex,’ I remind her.
‘Oh, yeah.’ Brushing her curls out of her face, she