If We Were Young: A Romance

by Bloom, Anna

  “I hate to be rude, but that might be all that’s left.”

  “Am I that old?”

  “No,” Fred said, just as Natalie said, “Yes.”

  “Ronnie, I’d take you out, you know that.” I think it was Fred.

  Yes it must have been, because Natalie followed up with. “I could ask my Charlie, see if there are any older single men at his work?”

  The room span, fast. “I think I’m going to be sick. I’m going for some air.” I slid off the barstool and walked in the general direction we’d come in… until I hit something hard. “Bollocks.” I rubbed my face. That hurt, the bang had hit a sensitive spot above my right eye.

  “Ronnie?” Major chords and rainbows.

  “No. Go away, you don’t get to upset me twice in one day.” The solid mass didn’t move. There seemed to be something rubbing along my back. I tried to dodge to the side, but the wall became all-encompassing.

  “Are you going to be sick?” More majors.

  “No. Maybe.” I nodded slowly. My head not moving at the speed I wanted.

  “Come.” His voice was still clipped, but the wall shifted and allowed me to move, strangely pressing against my back. “Is that Fred?” The major chords tightened.

  “Mm. Fred.”

  The wall pressed harder. It must have been made of cement.

  Air rushed against my face, cool and fresh, but my eyesight seemed to dim with it.

  “You okay?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I started to giggle.

  “What’s funny?”

  “You’re so moody. Like an army thingy. Yes, sir.” I saluted but then tilted to the side and the wall fastened along my left.

  “What are you doing out? Celebrating?”

  “Yes. I’m giving the staff a goodbye drink and celebrating getting rid of a complete twat of a client.”

  No answer. The wall pushed me, making my feet move one after the other.

  “And internet dating. Definitely internet dating. It’s my age, I think… It seems I’ve missed the boat at dock, or something.”

  A low grumble rumbled, followed by a beep. “Are you going to be sick?”

  “No.” I nodded into the darkness.

  “Please don’t get sick in my car.”

  I couldn’t promise.

  Wait, his car?

  I breathed in deep. His car smelled of leather, chewing gum, and fabric softener.

  “Ronnie?” His voice lowered, reminding me of something. Reminding me of him. “Open your eyes.”

  “I am.”

  A cool touch brushed across my cheek. “You aren’t.” Was that a smile I heard lifting his tone?

  I cranked an eye open to investigate his lips. God, I’ve wanted to kiss those lips. I nibbled on mine, remembering the one time I got close to my wish.

  “You’re here?”

  He turned in his seat and I stared open mouthed. The suit had gone and even through my wine fog I could see he wore a black jumper that made his dark hair even more so. On his legs were jeans that fit better than mine ever had. They clung to his skin like a love story. His lips curved, the hint of one of his heart-stopping smiles. “You checked in to the bar on Facebook.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  One of his dark eyebrows lifted. “No?”

  My head hurt, really bad. “Natalie.” Her name stamped like a statement that didn’t need explanation.

  He shrugged.

  “Why are you here though? You left.” I tried to find the anger I had pumping through my veins earlier in my office, but it seemed to be hiding.

  “I came to apologise. Little did I know I would find you holding hands with your head designer.”

  Well I was affronted now. “I was not! Natalie was holding my hand; she was breaking the news that I’m too old for dating.”

  He laughed, and it bounced around the car. Wow. I didn’t know he still had the capacity to laugh. It did something funny to my insides.

  “Why were you apologising?”

  “Because I was an arsehole and I couldn’t leave it like that.”

  “You normally do.”

  “That’s not fair, Ronnie.”

  Oh, hold on. I had my anger back.

  “I need to get home. I didn’t tell my mother I was going out.” I cringed as the words ejected themselves out of my mouth.

  He huffed out a blast of air.

  I didn’t need to explain my living arrangements to anyone. Not now. Not ever. Or, whatever.

  “It seemed easier after Paul died. My dad died three months after. It made sense for us to join forces.”

  His gaze mesmerised me. It almost sucked the wine out of my system. “Still doing everything to keep everyone else happy, Ronnie?”

  “Not everyone.” My mind flickered to my Sahara dry spell and my cheeks warmed. Not helped by the fact he looked like that, and his car smelled all nice, and wine controlled my brain.

  “I’m sorry I hurt you in that club all those years ago. I was so…” He glared out of the window and I was glad I wasn’t the glass. I’d be cracked in two.

  When he turned back, it felt like I’d slipped into the past as a secret intruder. Vulnerability lined his face, his lips turned slightly at the corners.

  I wanted to touch him, to smooth my palm against his cheek.

  I didn’t.

  “You can’t blame me for not having a clear answer. You turned up out of the blue. You’d left me only an hour before to meet her, then the next thing I know you were back on the doorstep asking me if I’ve thought about something that I didn’t know you’d put on the table.”

  His fingers tightened on the steering wheel, and his chest, wrapped like a delicious present in black wool, heaved slightly. “You’ve always been so careful. I knew that. And I knew you struggled with articulating. So that’s why when I went to the train station to meet Julie, I told her I needed a break. I sensed the words you wanted to say inside you, and I was willing to wait.”

  “What?” I sat up against the leather seat, my hands sliding. What exactly was he saying?

  “It took longer than I thought. I mean it came as a bit of a surprise to her. I got back and went to the club to find you. I wasn’t even going to say anything. I just knew I’d made the right decision.”

  I stared at him wide-eyed. “Why didn’t you say anything? Even just as your best friend that’s big sharing news.”

  “Because I saw you kissing someone else, Ronnie. I saw you outside the club. And then I realised why you hadn’t said yes to me. Because you weren’t interested in me in that way. I felt like the biggest dickhead ever.”

  “You saw me what?” Shit, I needed to drink some water or something. My brain had stopped working normally.

  “You were kissing some guy, God knows who. It doesn’t matter now; I can see that. I’ve been harbouring all this anger that you let me down, but it was stupid. I mean we were never anything to each other apart from friends, were we, Ronnie?”

  His dark gaze lingered on my lips.

  I couldn’t get my mouth to work. What was I supposed to say?

  “Matthew.” I swallowed around his name. “I never kissed anyone else at uni. The only person I ever came near to kissing was—”

  “I saw you. You were wearing that awful bright-pink fluffy jacket.”

  “No. Angela borrowed it.” I dragged in a deep breath. “I remember because I froze as I ran all the way home once you broke my heart.”

  He ran a rueful hand through his hair, his facial expression uncontrolled with open shock. “Angela?” His gaze trained on some distant spot out of the window.

  “Yes.”

  His sigh echoed mine.

  Oh God. “You’ve been hating me for fifteen years?” It hurt, deep down in my gut. “Fifteen years I’ve been wondering why you never called, why you forgot about me, and it’s because you were angry with me.”

  His handsome face with the high cheekbones and the dark brows, winced. “Fuck.”

/>   “That’s what you said that night too.”

  His face marred with excruciating agony, his attention still focused out of the window. He was watching the past; I could almost see the reflection of it in his eyes.

  I didn’t know what to say. Not because I didn’t have the words, but because I genuinely didn’t know what was happening. Everything seemed alien, foreign. The past rewrote itself around us as we sat in his car.

  In my chest, that aching hole left from that night singed around the edges. Fifteen years was a really long time to be angry with someone.

  “You should have asked me.” I hiked in a breath. “You should have asked me, Matthew.”

  He nodded and then turned. I swallowed at the intensity of his gaze. “I should get you home.”

  I nodded and it hurt. I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to sit in his car by his side. My insides twisted and turned in recognition of knowing I could sit by his side and talk for hours, but also knowing that those days were long past.

  Why didn’t he ask me? He’d just turned and told me to fuck off. So rude and hurtful, spiteful.

  Why didn’t he ask me?

  “Take me home, please.”

  He nodded, and then we drove; a silent word war taking place between us. Every so often he caught my menacing and never-ending mental tirade with a side eye. “Left here, please.”

  He gripped the steering wheel, his lips muttering slightly, and I shot him a glance which he snatched with a glare of his own.

  Yeah well, buddy, you aren’t the only one angry now. “Right now, please.”

  We both breathed like bulls in the ring. “Just here on the right.”

  The car idled.

  I held my breath as he reached over and opened the door. Then I breathed in deep in case I never got to inhale greedy mouthfuls of the leather and mint again. Which I wouldn’t.

  This really was it.

  It was that moment on the doorstep all over again. Except this time, it really was goodbye.

  This was beyond repair and I knew there was no friendship left. It really had ended those fifteen years ago. A stupid friendship that was never meant to be.

  I should have spoken, and he should have asked.

  Those two things could never be rewound.

  His fingers curled around the handle of the door and he gave a push, his body rocking against mine slightly. He turned, his face so close I could almost taste his skin.

  I tore my eyes away. Under the sleeve of his jumper were those faded threads of cotton. I reached a finger and ran the tip along the edges, half cotton, half warm skin. He didn’t take them off, despite his anger.

  “I’m sorry.” His whisper rushed along my face.

  “Me too.”

  Coffee

  It was with shoes of lead I walked into the office the next day. Natalie smirked as I slunk in through the door trying to make myself so small no one would see me.

  I was only five foot two. But even I couldn’t get that small.

  “Morning, Boss.”

  “Mm.” I shot her some pistol fingers and then fell into my office. My head pounded with the tramp of a hundred elephants and my mouth tasted like a wild bear had used me as a litter tray.

  I wished I could say it was all a dream. That I hadn’t discovered that Matthew had ignored me for fifteen years, all because he thought he saw me snogging someone else. Of course, if I thought about it, the fact he’d been that angry would be a pause for thought, but I wasn’t there yet. Or anywhere even close.

  No.

  I’d woken to find my scrawl on my bedroom mirror in eyeliner.

  I hate Matthew Carling

  In jet black.

  I needed that eyeliner too. I looked shit. My eyes puffy, my skin pale.

  I blinked hard at the sun in the form of yellow roses sitting on my desk. Thank God I had my sunglasses on, otherwise I’d have been blinded. “Where did these come from?” I called into reception, minimising the sound to the barest whisper in case I ruptured my remaining brain cells.

  “Delivery this morning. There’s a note,” Natalie called back.

  Her need to get up and watch me open the small envelope was almost palpable. I eyed the small rectangle of white stuck on a stick between two of the sunshine roses. It didn’t say my name on the front, but it did say ‘count me’. So I did.

  Fifteen yellow roses.

  My heart pounded with an unsteady boom and cursing myself, with no real attempt to stop the movement, I reached for the small envelope and slipped my finger against the glued edge.

  I counted the roses again just to make sure. Definitely fifteen.

  “You know yellow is for friendship,” Natalie called. I could almost hear her dying on the inside while she politely waited in her chair.

  She didn’t need to tell me. I’d received yellow roses before. I still felt the pang of disappointment they weren’t red.

  Wiggling my finger under the seal, I pulled it open, splitting the envelope clean in two until I just held a small card containing one word in familiar writing.

  Coffee?

  My legs buckled like a newborn giraffe’s and I plopped down into my seat. The chime of my phone coincided with a vibration against my tummy. Still staring at the flowers, I dug into my bag and fished out my phone.

  Matthew Carling: Hi.

  We’d circled back to ‘Hi’. Last night in his car it felt very much like goodbye. At least it did to me, but I did have a significant Pinot filter switched on.

  With my head on the desk, sunglasses digging into my cheek, I tried to unravel it all.

  Nope. The fermented grape juice train was chugging too loud.

  For fifteen years I’d been thinking about Matthew Carling, wondering what I did wrong. Even when I shouldn’t have thought about him, there he still was, owning real estate in my headspace.

  All this time and he was angry because he thought he saw me kissing someone else. Why?

  It seemed so juvenile. So ridiculous.

  My phone vibrated again.

  Matthew Carling: I appreciate that right now I’m the biggest dickwad in the universe.

  I couldn’t help but smile. I clicked on the reply box.

  Ronnie Childs: I can’t argue when you state the facts so articulately.

  I thrust my phone back in my bag. It vibrated again and it took me a whole millisecond to grab it back out of my bag.

  Matthew Carling: I have to get the train back to Edinburgh. Can I buy you a coffee?

  Ronnie Childs: Okay…

  I think the ellipsis communicated my confusion of the entire basis of why we were having this conversation at all.

  Although…

  Ronnie Childs: Thank you for the flowers.

  I could see him typing. His words fluttered as dots at the bottom of the screen. My heart fluttered with them.

  Matthew Carling: Coffee?

  I looked as rough as old boots, my skin grey, my eyes bloodshot. I hated to think what my breath smelt like.

  Ronnie Childs: When?

  Matthew Carling: Downstairs.

  He was here? I thrust out of my chair and grabbed my bag. “I’m going for coffee,” I shouted.

  “Latte, a double shot,” Natalie called, but I ignored her, just like I ignored my eyeliner message to myself this morning.

  The lift couldn’t go down fast enough. I breathed in deep. The tight band around my chest I expected to feel, relaxed looser. The Matthew effect.

  I launched out of the revolving door like a bat straight out of hell.

  He waited by the door, leant against the glass windowpane, wearing a long overcoat and dark trousers with chest-loving wool. His face held a frown until he saw me, then it evaporated, slipping away and morphing into a bashful smile. He pushed away from the glass just as a blonde head bobbed into my line of sight.

  “Boss Lady, I’m late, I’m late.” Fred pushed a kiss against my cheek. Never ever had he done that before. “How’s the hangover? Anyway, I was thinking abo
ut the clubbing thing and…”

  “Fred.” I elbowed him out of the way. Matthew’s smile clouded like rain on a picnic. “I’m busy.”

  For the love of God, he caught my hand and wheeled me around. “I was thinking, shall we look at these disastrous shops this afternoon?”

  “Fred, I don’t even know if we’ve still got the job.”

  “Oh, of course. That man will be back to glare at you. I think he might be addicted to it.”

  The man in question began to turn and walk away.

  “Sod off, Fred.”

  He grinned and backed away, his cardboard coffee cup balanced in his hands. “Clubbing this weekend? It’s not really a club, more a bar.”

  “Leave now, or you’re sacked.” I meant it.

  “Going, going.” He skipped off and darted across the road to the office.

  “Wait, please.” I chased after Matthew. He hadn’t got far, but I wasn’t built for speed.

  “Sorry.”

  I flinched at his gaze.

  “It was a stupid idea.”

  “No, no. I love stupid ideas. They are my favourite, I promise.”

  He’d stopped, but he looked torn between leaving and staying.

  “What time is your train?”

  “Soon.”

  “You came all this way for a coffee before catching a train?”

  “I said it was a stupid idea.”

  “The morning isn’t complete without a cappuccino.”

  “You hate coffee.” His lips loosened into the start of a smile.

  “Aha! No, well, actually yes, but then I had a child and realised coffee is essential to existence.”

  A definite smile flickered his mouth.

  “And you don’t have to go somewhere with Fred? Do your staff always kiss you good morning?” A shadow chased across his face.

  “No! I don’t encourage it.” I started to laugh, and his shoulders dropped.

  “That’s good to know.” He motioned for the coffee shop and guided me forward. I held in my breath like a lock of emergency air as his hand grazed the base of my spine, pressing into a place I was sure his large hand was made to fit. “I haven’t got long.”

  “Okay.”

  He’d come all this way. Kingston was miles from Euston and the train to Scotland. It had to be for something. A kindle of hope bloomed in my chest; not hope for romance or anything of that sort. I wouldn’t be a fool again, but I’d grasp at the slightest chance of friendship.