How to Fall in Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

sniffed. ‘Please don’t do it.’
    ‘Jesus,’ he tried again to turn and look at me.
    I was crying harder now, sobbing uncontrollably, my shoulders jumping up and down, my arms still wrapped around his chest, holding on for dear life.
    ‘What the hell?’ He moved some more, shuffled his feet along the edge of the ledge so he could turn his head and see my face.
    Our eyes locked together.
    ‘Are you… are you okay?’ He softened a little, coming out of whatever trance-like state he had been in.
    ‘No.’ I tried to stop crying. I wanted to dry my nose, which was running like a tap, but I was afraid to let go of him.
    ‘Do I know you?’ he asked, confused, searching my face, wondering why I cared so much.
    ‘No,’ I said, sniffing again. I squeezed him tighter, hugging him like I hadn’t hugged anyone for years, not since I was a child, not since my mother held me.
    He was looking at me like I was crazy, like he was the sane one and I had lost it. We were practically nose-to-nose as he studied my face, as if looking for far more than what he could see.
    The spell between us was broken when some idiot watching from the quays shouted ‘Jump!’ The man in black started trying to wriggle out of my grip with a renewed anger.
    ‘Get your hands off me,’ he said, struggling to shake me off.
    ‘No,’ I shook my head. ‘Please, listen …’ I tried to compose myself before continuing: ‘It’s not what you think it’s going to be in there,’ I said, looking down and imagining how it would feel for him, staring into that darkness, wanting to end it all; how bad things must be for him to want that. He was studying me intently again. ‘You don’t want to end your life, you want to end your pain, the pain you’re feeling right now, the pain that I’m sure you wake up with and go to bed at night with. Maybe no one around you understands that, but I do, believe me.’ I saw that his eyes were filling, I was getting through to him. ‘But you don’t want to end it all the time, do you? Just sometimes it passes through your mind, probably more often lately than before. It’s like a habit, trying to think of different ways to end it all. But it passes, doesn’t it?’
    He looked at me carefully, taking every word in.
    ‘It’s a moment , that’s all. And moments pass. If you hang in there, this moment will pass and you won’t want to end your life. You probably think that no one cares, or that they’ll get over you. Maybe you think they want you to do this. They don’t. No one wants this for anyone. It might feel as if there are no options, but there are – you can come through this. Get down and let’s talk about it. Whatever is going on, you can get through it. It’s a moment, that’s all,’ I whispered, tears running down my cheeks.
    I took a sidelong glance at him. He swallowed hard, he was looking down now. Thinking about it, weighing up his options. Live or die. Surreptitiously I scanned the bridge entrances on Bachelors Walk and Wellington Quay, still no gardaí, still no members of the public to help me. I was glad of that at this stage; I had managed to engage with him, I didn’t want anybody else to distract him, panic him, bring him back to that place again. I thought about what to say next, something that would make the time pass until professional help arrived, something positive that wouldn’t trigger any anger in him. But in the end I didn’t have to say anything because he spoke first.
    ‘I read about a guy who jumped in the river last year. He was drunk and decided to go swimming, only he got stuck under a shopping trolley and the currents swept him away. He couldn’t get out,’ he said, his voice cracking with the emotion.
    ‘And you liked the sound of that?’
    ‘No. But then it will be over. After all that, it will be over.’
    ‘Or it will be the beginning of a new kind of pain. As soon as you’re in that water, no matter how much you want it, you’ll panic. You’ll