Page 70 of If We Were Young

I should’ve stopped the conversation, but it was like I’d tamed Godzilla with my lasso of awesome parenting and I didn’t really want it to end.

“Why did you marry Dad if you were already in love with someone else?”

Her question sat uncomfortably on my stomach like acid after a rich meal. “Hannah, I hadn’t seen Matthew in a long time.”

My answer jangled in my ears, but I couldn’t think any more on that.

“So what happens now? I’m guessing you don’t want to punch this client in the balls anymore?”

“Hannah!”

“You said it, not me.”

“I guess Monday I go to work, and I try to give his company the best rebrand I can.”

“But what about how you felt? Have you told him?”

“Sort of.” I thought I did when our lips met like that. “Not in so many words.”

“So maybe you should go to work and show him, even better tell him.”

“I like your enthusiasm for this, Hannah. But he is going back to Edinburgh.”

“Has he told you that?”

“About five thousand times; very, very clearly.”

“Have you said maybe you don’t want him to?”

She smirked again when I didn’t reply. There were several elements to this conversation that could have been making her give me that look.

“Okay, bedtime. You’ll be as moody as sin tomorrow.”

She got up from the chair. “You know, Mum. I don’t think Dad would mind this.”

I huffed out a breath of air. I didn’t have an answer. Life it seemed had twisted itself into complicated knot of questions which I didn’t have the answers to.

“Oh, can I go to a party Monday night?” The cheeky mare. She got me while I was distracted.

“Sure.”

I could sense her questioning gaze as she lingered at the kitchen doorway. “Maybe you should get some sleep too?”

“Uh, huh.”

When she’d gone, I got up and went to the old Welsh dresser on the long wall of the kitchen. Ignoring the fancy plates with gold and red patterns and scalloped edges, I opened one of the doors. Tucked inside was a tin that rattled with a ring that to me sounded like sleigh bells on snow. I grabbed some paper from underneath the tin and settled back down at the table.

Opening the tin, I fished about for what I wanted. For the first time in a very long time I pushed a pencil tip against a plain sheet of paper.

With my right hand holding the pencil, I lifted my left to my lips, pressing my fingertips against the flesh which had finally owned a Matthew kiss.

It was mine now, in my memory bank, mine to cherish and keep.

I baked hot at the memory of the heat and tingle that his tender lips and bold tongue created.

I didn’t draw anything for the rebrand. Instead I drew him, in pencil, soft and bold, just like he’d drawn me in his notebook.

Cranky Pills