Page 65 of If We Were Young

I followed him, my fingers wrapped tight around the edge of his coat as he walked up the stairs first. My numb legs happy to be towed along.

I walked in behind him. The space of the cramped hallway was small, and I hugged his back, my cheek resting on the curve of his shoulder as he turned to an internal door and opened it with a brass key.

I kept breathing him in, memorising the smell of his rain-soaked coat, the imprint of it against my skin.

“Here we go.” His chords were gruffer and tighter. All Scottish pines and fresh air.

I pushed past him into the white space: white walls and oak floor. Grey furniture, all clean and nice, a decent rental in an old Edwardian conversion.

There was a small round coffee table. Moving away from the shape of his shoulders, I stepped closer, bending to touch the notepad and pencil. Crouching down, I flipped open the page of the notebook and saw sketches inside, bold strikes and soft smudges.

They were how I expected him to feel against me. Bold and soft, his hard into my softness. Two halves to the same coin.

The sketches showed me everything.

Like they did the first time I ever found his drawings, the ones away from lectures. His thoughts and secrets on scraps of paper.

My legs creaked as I straightened up. His face dark with wariness, his eyebrows knitted together, raindrops still clinging through his hair.

I pressed into him, moulding myself to the shape of his chest. I had to look up, tilting my head right back as I lifted my fingers to his face, the curve of his cheek, the cut of his cheekbone.

“Tell me more about this theory.” My voice didn’t sound like my own. It belonged to another woman far braver than me.

His breath fanned across my face. “I believe that if something is so natural, so right.” His lips lowered, brushing against mine, a feathery edged tickle that had me inhaling him in. “Then it will be beyond measure, beyond compare.”

I might die. I’d waited for this for so long, never realising that it was mine to give. I always thought I had to wait for him to make the move, to ask if he could. I never grasped the fact that he did that every time he held my hand.

This kiss would kill me.

I knew it already. Eighteen years in the making and my soul reared up, ready to fly.

“Wait.” I pushed my hand against his wet coat. “What if we kiss and it means we can never be friends again?”

“We can’t be friends again, Ronnie.” My toes scrunched at his tone. They were black and white the things he saw. “You know that.”

My heart ached over acres of time. Fifteen years since, fifteen years in the future. What would thirty years feel like without him?

Would it be better or worse for this moment?

“Ronnie.”

It was the way he whispered my name that had me closing my eyes.

It happened. The brush, the push, the tentative little nudge of a kiss. Delicate and sweet, it began like crushed rose petals and sherbet. Until my eyes opened and our gazes locked, and the sherbet became chocolate of the darkest and bitterest kind.

I gasped in air, about to dive off the highest board.

His fingers fell to my coat, tugging at the zip. “I can’t possibly prove the theory if you’re wearing wet wool. It needs to come off.”

I laughed, my nose brushing his cheek as he slipped my coat off my shoulders. I pushed myself against his chest trying to keep warm. The dampness of his own coat soaked through my shirt and with a giggle I stepped back, unbuttoning his and pulling it off, letting it thud on the floor with mine.

Then we became two people with no more excuses.

He leant down again. “This is it. You and me.”

I wanted to mind snap the moment. The rub of his slight stubble, rough and scraping; his fingers as they slid into my hair, burying deep in the strands like they’d always known the secret path to take so that their touch made me shiver down to my toes.

It would be goddamn awful if this kiss wasn’t everything.