Page 8 of If We Were Young

“I don’t know. It’s really quiet here. I wonder if other people from the reunion are staying here?” For a moment, I thought I caught a flutter of nerves behind her calm facade. I shot her a smile. She couldn’t be nervous. I needed her to do all the talking for us so I could lurk behind her like an undersized and slightly rounded shadow.

Re-uni-on.

Why were we doing this?

The doors opened and my stomach hollowed with the fine scoop of a silver teaspoon.

My knees, knocking like Bambi being hunted by men with automatic air rifles, wobbled an unsteady tremor.

Because it was him.

Him.

Him.

And he wasn’t bald or fat at all.

Re-Uni-Not

Ange glanced up, her eyes meeting his. They widened a fraction before switching back onto my startled expression.

There was another shape in the lift, but I couldn’t make my eyes move to look. What if it was his ‘her’?

Oh fuck. Shit.

There was no air.

Where had the fucking air gone?

The black blob on the corner of my vision coughed. A man’s cough.

Breathe.

Breathe, Ronnie.

Our eyes met.

“Nope.” The word forced itself out of my mouth. “Sorry, Ange.”

I wish I could say the events of the night before had cleared my mind, but they hadn’t.

I’d run away.

I hadn’t spoken to him. Laughed with him. Told him I still thought about him at the minimum six hundred and seventy-two times a day (tally chart authenticated).

I didn’t tell him there were so many things I wished I’d said. So many times, I wished I hadn’t deleted his number from my phone that one stupid night.

So many times, I wished with all of heaven and earth that I wasn’t me, that I was someone better, braver. Maybe like Angela who could go marching into that lift, all “Hello, boys.” I did nothing.

Nothing.

Which is the story of my life.

Sleep was nothing more than a few snatched minutes of painful dreams. Since then, I’d been staring at the dawn rising through the window and wondering what if.

“Morning, darling. You came home early.” Ma sat at the kitchen table in her chair, her glasses pinching the end of her nose as she squinted at a crossword. I slouched my way in, hoping that if I made myself super small, she might not question my evening.

“Nice time? Everything that Angela promised it would be?”