If We Were Young: A Romance

by Bloom, Anna

  My mouth flapped like those big carp that leap out the water and look like they want to swallow the universe. “You can’t matchmake for me twice in a row. You aren’t the Husband Whisperer.”

  She perked up at that, her face brightening as she contemplated her new title.

  “And anyway, I’m not ready yet.”

  She lifted one of her eyebrows and shook her finger at me. It was her secondary, and sometimes more fluent form of communication—the finger wag. “Five years is a long time.”

  I cringed away from her. How could she watch me throw up into the sink and then talk about me finding a new husband? The woman wasn’t on any planet inhabited by human life. I was damn sure of that.

  “Ma.”

  Her gaze narrowed, and she peered at me. Jesus. What was it with people getting in my face to read my thoughts? “There is something else. There was a reason you didn’t want to go to that reunion.”

  “Leave it, please.”

  “Secrets always undo those who keep them.”

  “Reading your horoscope again, Ma?” I got up and pecked a kiss on the top of her forehead. “I will work for a while. It’s a big day tomorrow and I can’t afford to mess up.”

  She shook her head but didn’t say anything else.

  I lay my head down on the bed for a good half an hour. Thoughts rushed through my mind.

  Matthew in the lift.

  Matthew in a dark suit.

  Matthew not bald and fat.

  Matthew with broad shoulders, dark hair waved back from his face.

  Matthew who didn’t look at me at all. Not once. For five thuds of my heart I’d stood there, and his gaze hadn’t met my face once.

  Maybe I’d thought we would bump into one another? Say hi. Reminisce about old times.

  Maybe I thought I’d see him and move on. But if we hadn’t made eye contact it didn’t count as seeing. So where did that leave me?

  Nowhere.

  Maybe if I’d gone to the reunion instead of doing the ‘Ronnie Run’, those things could have happened.

  Maybe I was never meant to talk to him again.

  Maybe I should forget him. Well, hell, hadn’t I tried? What did it mean to still obsess over someone fifteen years after you’d last seen them?

  “Mum?” I turned to Hannah in the doorway. “What are you doing?”

  “Contemplating life?” I shouldn’t let Hannah see me like this. All the guidebooks say you should always act the way you want your children to behave. Teach by example.

  Lying face down on my bed on the verge of a ‘my life is so shit’ pity parade breakdown was not what I should show my thirteen-year-old.

  “Are you as hung over as Aunty Ange?” she asked, leaning against the doorframe.

  “Nope. How do you know she is?” I rolled over, realising how hot and sticky my face had become.

  “She’s downstairs in the kitchen. She does not look good.”

  I grinned. Again, I shouldn’t show childish delight at the discomfort of others. But, ha, that would teach Ange for leaving me to run away by myself. I scrambled from the bed. “Where’s Nonna?” The thought of Ange and Ma being left together for longer than three seconds prevented my ‘Nonna’ eye-roll. Ma had insisted on it as soon as Hannah could talk—apparently it spoke to her Italian roots. Whatever.

  “Making something very noisy. Not sure what, but she’s bashing a wooden spoon against a cake tin.”

  Oh that old trick. That reminded me of the jelly shots.

  “Come on, we’d better save her.”

  I paused at the bedroom door. “Are you coming?” I asked Hannah. Well, what I could see of her. She hid most of herself behind a thick curtain of dark hair. Occasionally I’d catch a flicker of blue eyes from behind the brown waves, but I’d resigned myself to the fact my daughter now looked like Cousin Itt from the Addams Family. Which was a step up from the pineapple stage we’d gone through the year before.

  The sound of groaning came from the front room. Ma hated any loud noises in the house, but I leant into the kitchen and gave her a wink. We weren’t often winky, nudge nudge, aren’t we mates, people. But I knew she’d appreciate this. I unlatched the front door, pulled it five inches and then slammed it so hard the house shook.

  Okay. I might have taken that too far.

  Ma tutted, but then I caught a ghost of a smile.

  “Ange, how was it?” I flopped myself down on the edge of the sofa and picked her legs up and put them over my lap.

  “Well, you mean apart from flying solo again?”

  Her skin had tinged to a frogfish green. Tequila teal I’d have called it. When she spoke, a wave of acrid vodka breath fanned over me.

  “Oh my god, you stink.”

  “You stink.” She groaned into her hand, her fingers working her forehead along her eyebrows. “As a friend.”

  “I’m sorry.” My chest tightened, that snap of bands pulling my ribcage together. “I just…?”

  “Freaked out?” Lifting her hand, she frowned at me.

  “I didn’t mean it. He was just… right there… I panicked.”

  Ange grunted. “You know you won’t see him again now? There won’t be another reunion for five years. So, by the time there’s a chance of you bumping into him again you would have been like this for twenty years.” She took the pain of opening her eyes just so she could glare at me. “Twenty years, Ron?”

  “No, it won’t be like that.”

  “No? Why?”

  “Because I saw him now. I can move on.”

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.

  “So what was he like?” God. I had the willpower of a gnat.

  “Who?” She lifted an eyebrow but then winced and made a strangled sobbing noise.

  “You know who.”

  “He was… wonderful. Life and soul of the party.”

  “Oh.”

  “He was like a different person, really.”

  “Oh. Did he ask about me?”

  Groaning, she reached over and patted my hand. “Ronnie?”

  “Yeah?” My heart marched.

  “Let it go, love. He’s married and has been for a very long time. Can we just enjoy what’s left of my time down here?”

  My stomach sunk; my skin clammy with prickly sweat. “Oh.”

  He hadn’t asked after me at all, had he?

  Right. This needed to end now.

  “Are you staying here today then?” I pushed her legs off me.

  “Please, I’m dying.”

  “Okay. I’ve got to work though.”

  “You’re so frickin dull.”

  “Go back to sleep, Ange.”

  She rolled over; her face shoved into one of Ma’s rose-pink velvet cushions.

  Standing from the sofa, I pulled at a throw folded along the back of the cushions and draped it over her. She’d be asleep for hours, which was good because I needed to think about anything that wasn’t Matthew Carling and that expression of complete surprise as he’d looked at me from within that lift.

  Ange was right. I needed to let it go.

  Grafitti

  He smelled of all things divine and I leant close to skim my nose across his throat, inhaling so deep my lungs almost screamed.

  “Stop smelling me.”

  “Stop smelling so good.”

  “That’s like asking the sun not to come up.”

  I snorted and pressed myself into him. He felt different, broader. His arms that circled around my back, as his thumbs pressed into the grooves at the base of my spine, seemed stronger, like they contained a strength I didn’t yet grasp. “Your ego is huge.”

  “Not just my ego.” He pressed into me and a firm prod pushed against my thigh.

  Okay, this was different. He’d never done this before.

  “Oh.”

  His gaze kept mine steady and I watched, transfixed, as he leant down and brushed a light kiss across my mouth.

  He’d never done that before either.

 
My legs ached with heaviness and his arms tightened around my back.

  “Ronnie,” he murmured, and I shivered down to my toes.

  “What are we doing here?” My question brushed over his skin. “What’s happening?”

  His kiss this time detonated like a bomb. His lips, sugar sweet, fit against mine, and his tongue stole into my mouth. Hot and slick, it made me groan so low and so wild it set me apart with a pack of wild wolves.

  Kissing. I liked kissing.

  I lifted my hand and ran it through his hair. The strands weren’t as long as I expected and soon my fingers clutched air, before weaving them back into the inky silk and knotting them tight.

  Our bodies moved on a silent command and I pressed myself tight against his erection. My insides hollowed until I became a single match against a forest of dry trees.

  “Matthew?” I breathed hard against his mouth, my lips still lingering, my breath still in his mouth. “What’s happening here?”

  He shifted back, his gaze black and sharp. “I’m going to fuck you into oblivion.”

  I opened my mouth to ask all my questions, millions of them, but his lips were back on mine, harder, faster, and his hands were on my clothes, pulling and tugging.

  I melted until everything I contained lifted from my soul in a moan. His hand cupped my face, his thumb pulling down my bottom lip, so I sighed with every molecule of air.

  My gaze swept over his face and hesitation ran through me. The smile had gone, the laughter and the fine lined crinkles it traced had evaporated. Matthew no longer looked like the boy I loved. The one I craved.

  A man had taken his place.

  “Ready, Ronnie?” He lifted my leg and drove himself closer. The one thing I’d always needed hovered just at the tip of my touch.

  “I don’t know who you are.” My hands slipped against his skin.

  Chuckling low he dotted kisses across my collarbone. “Does it matter?”

  With my eyes closed I fell back, falling, flying, clawing onto him.

  I reached blindly for his face trying to pull him closer.

  “Imagine what it would be like when we are awake.”

  “What?”

  I blinked at the stranger in front of me. He’d moved. He stood in the corner of a lift, his gaze on the floor.

  “Look at me.” He didn’t hear me though. My insides ached as the doors shut.

  “Fuck.”

  I woke and thrashed against the duvet. Jesus. My body scrambled back down from the point of orgasm.

  Okay that was a new development in dream land.

  Very, very new.

  With a groan, I reached for my phone to check the time. So I hadn’t done what Ange had suggested at all. I hadn’t forgotten Matthew Carling and left him behind. No. I’d X-rated him and brought him bang up to date in a sexed-up version of my teenage fantasy.

  Fuck.

  * * *

  “Oh my god. Oh my god.”

  Monday morning, I slipped down the stairs and charged into the kitchen, banging my portfolio and laptop bags with me. They thudded on every step.

  “I’m bloody late.”

  Ma put down the paper and adjusted her glasses. Hannah slumped at the table; Godzilla eating chocolate pillows. “Isn’t today the big presentation?”

  “Yes. Yes. Yes. Hannah, please, are you ready?” I started to pull on her chair. “If you want a lift, you need to come now.”

  My blouse clung to my stomach and under my arms. Whether my roll-on deodorant would survive the meeting, I didn’t know. I could only wonder why I didn’t roll it on my stomach too. And the tops of my thighs. My thighs were sweating as they clung onto my dream. I’m going to fuck you into oblivion…? My dreams had never been so shady before. Shaking my head, I tried to force it out of my mind. “How do I look?” I asked them both.

  Ma glanced me over. “Hot, darling,” I preened for one whole second. “It’s only March. Have you thought of re-joining the gym?”

  “The gym can’t help me grow seven inches, Ma. And no, I don’t have time for that.”

  “You’d have plenty of time if you weren’t Facebooking or whatever it’s called.”

  Aha! I knew she’d been looking over my shoulder the previous night. I shot her a glare, catching Hannah smirking. “Right, listen. I cannot under any circumstances get called to the school today. Okay? I mean, no days would be better,” I amended, “but definitely not today.”

  Hannah regarded my concise and to the point parenting with an eye roll and a slurp of chocolatey milk. “And I really have to go now, so you come now and get a lift, or can I trust you to make your own way there?”

  Her eyes brightened. “I can get there.”

  “Hannah! You have to text me as soon as you get through the gates.”

  “Can’t use my phone from inside school.”

  My turn to eye roll. “Okay. Outside the gates. Be safe, okay?”

  “Muum.”

  Ma’s mouth popped open, ready to tell me that my priority should be to get Hannah to school, but I spun and dashed for the door. Once I had my hand on the latch, jiggling my handbag in the other to double check my keys were in there, I turned back for the kitchen doorway. “I’m trusting you.”

  * * *

  I couldn’t stop thinking about the dream. It burned hot under my skin and ate away at me with the zeal of an ant’s nest over Haribo.

  My PG dreams of Matthew had pitched into porno land and I had a sneaky suspicion they’d printed themselves all over my face.

  What was that?

  The meeting with Supersaver Foods had crashed into ground-zero because I’d sweated so much, Amanda Simpson, the Head of Business Strategy, had asked if I’d had the flu.

  Man-flu, in the sense that my fanny had been set alight by nothing more than a wet dream.

  “Psst,” Natalie stage-whispered from the office door. I had my back to the desk fan, the cooling air breezing through the chiffon of my blouse to my armpits.

  The whole office could hear her famous dulcet whisper that sounded like she was stood in a market shouting, ‘Two punnets of strawberries for a pound. Two punnets of strawberries for a pound’.

  “Yes?” I tried very hard to not pull faces around my staff. It was important on a managerial level, to maintain a level of maturity around those on your payroll. Also, the fact that during the first year we were open, when there had only been three of us, I'd got so plastered at the Christmas party I'd fallen over on the dance floor. I knew they still whispered about it now, mainly Natalie whose words always reached my ears regardless of her location.

  “It's the school.” She winked at me as I stifled a groan, somehow managing not to drop my head onto the desk and hide my face under a sheaf of A4 paper.

  This call, any parents knew, was like someone daubing the outside of your house in red paint stating, ‘Shit Parent Lives Here’. I couldn’t deny it either; the calls were becoming increasingly frequent.

  At least Hannah had done as I asked and held off until after the pitch meeting with Supersaver Foods.

  I glared at the flashing light on the desk phone—line one. Let’s call it the direct connection to Shit Street. Swallowing hard and letting it pause for five flashes—I mean you never knew they might have hung up—I plastered on a smile and grabbed the handset and sung, “Veronica Childs.”

  I um’ed and ah’d in response to words muttered down the line, refusing to look up at Natalie who still leant against the doorframe, her eyes alight with curiosity. Turning, I gave her my shoulder, not that I expected her to retreat to her own desk.

  “Sure, I will be there in half an hour.” I said before hanging the phone back in its cradle with a little more force than necessary.

  “Problems at the school?” Natalie slipped in and perched a hip on my desk. Her skirt, I noticed for the first time today was miniscule, her tights patterned with diamonds. Usually I noticed her outfits because she matched her lipstick to them.

  I groaned, just a little. I c
ouldn’t help it. I wondered if she’d stop me if I dropped to my knees and banged my head in the drawer of the filing cabinet? “Just . . .” I didn’t know what else to say. I bit my bottom lip and pulled myself under control. Tears wouldn’t get me anywhere; they hadn’t achieved anything in the last five years and nor would inducing a migraine with a filing cabinet. This was all laid on me. Only I could deal with this.

  Well, I had to. There wasn’t anyone else.

  I let her slam up to her room, then followed, making as much noise on the tread of the stairs myself. Each slam of my foot into the worn carpet bashed like another hammer against my heart. It pounded and echoed.

  Was there anything I didn’t fail at? Apart from obsessing and stalking?

  Without knocking, I opened her door, forcing myself through the barricade of shoes and teddy bears she’d thrown at the door. Her face was turned to the wall; her shoulders high.

  “We are talking. Now.” I made my way further into the room, ignoring the sound of snipping coming from outside the window. If I could hear Ma trimming Dad’s old roses, then she’d be able to hear me yelling like a banshee. I hadn’t bothered making eye contact with her as I stormed up the garden path. Feeling her onyx eyes bore through the window as we pulled up in the car was enough. She’d be adding this onto her Ronnie’s failures list.

  “Graffiti?” I exploded. I’d kept it calm in Mr Jewson’s office, but this was too much. “Last week it was fighting… this week…” I could barely believe it. “What the hell were you graffitiing?”

  My head pounded, my vision blurring around the edges. I could feel the beginnings of a parenting aneurysm coming on.

  The hunched shoulders of my daughter didn’t drop as she refused to turn around. I didn’t know where the girl with hazel ringlets and wide eyes had gone, but I’d lost her.

  It felt like she’d also slid over the edge of a cliff by a snowdrift, pulled from my grasp as I’d tried to hang on to what we were.

  My stomach churned, delving and twisting into a tight knot caused by the ulcer creating illness: parenting.