If We Were Young: A Romance

by Bloom, Anna

  “I felt like an arsehole not getting out of the lift to help you.”

  “Good.”

  I picked up another prawn cracker but then turned it to dust with my fingers, the small particles glistening like snow against the red napkin.

  “Paul’s death must have devastated you.” A tightness hardened his tone.

  Another shiver ran across my skin. “It made me angry. I’m still pretty angry.”

  “I tried to call when I found out.”

  “You did?”

  “No. I mean, I dialled and then hung up.” He dropped his gaze again and a little dart of warning jangled my brain. My gaze hovered over his fingers looped around his glass.

  “Why did you become a businessman? What happened to the art?”

  When his gaze met mine, he arched an eyebrow. “I could ask the same question.”

  That’s true he could. I shook my head and flashed a grin.

  “Why did your marriage fail?”

  The waiter hovered with his pad.

  He didn’t answer, so I pushed more. Saying anything that popped into my head. “Angela says there are two types of friends. Those who fuck and those who don’t.”

  “Is Angela the oracle on everything?”

  “No.” I sighed. “Hannah prefers her to me though.”

  “I doubt that.” He leant forward, and I watched and held my breath as his hand slowly came to rest under my ear. “I thought I could do this with you again, but now I don’t know.”

  “Know what?”

  “Friends? Maybe Angela is right?”

  “Maybe.”

  He leant back in his chair. “Internet dating?”

  “No chance. I’d rather be celibate.”

  His gaze swept across me, leaving a burning trail of fire behind. “My marriage ended because it exhausted me.”

  “Tired of being married?”

  “Tired of lying.”

  “To who?”

  “Myself.”

  I glugged some wine, and the waiter leapt forward from his perch on one of the other tables.

  “You like?” he asked.

  Matthew looked at me and I looked at him and we both smiled. Stupid smiles that absorbed half of our faces. “Ho Fun,” we both said at once.

  The waiter nodded and shook his head like he remembered us for reasons not that fond and walked away pocketing his notebook as he launched into a tirade of Mandarin as he entered the kitchen.

  Alone again, I restarted. “Why has it taken five years for you to get divorced?”

  “Money.”

  “Why did you take on Supersaver Foods?”

  “You.” He grabbed his chance to question me. “You didn’t know why I was angry that night. Why didn’t you punch me? Question me?” I shrugged and his lips quirked. “I forget your articulation disability.”

  I shrugged again and gripped my glass tighter.

  “You never had that at uni. In class yes, but not the rest of the time. Why?”

  “You.”

  My heart raced with the speed of a runaway train in the Midwest during a bad cowboy movie. Choo choo puff puff.

  “Why can’t you be friends with me again?”

  I stumped him. He looked at me, blue and slate, unfathomable.

  When he talked again, he whispered, “Why did you get married so soon?”

  I shook my head. Any question apart from that one.

  “Are you staying in Scotland when this is over?”

  “Yes.”

  A sting in my eyes made me blink.

  “What’s your apartment like?”

  His lips curve. “Boring. Grey and mustard. What’s your house like?”

  “My mother’s.”

  “Why do you let other people tell you what to do all the time?”

  I shrugged. “Did you ever want to kiss me?” Oh, Ronnie. Let’s just throw it all out there.

  I bit my lip and his gaze held mine.

  “What’s the best thing about being your own boss?” Okay, not an answer.

  “Freedom.” I sighed. “That’s not true. Being my own boss means I don’t have to worry about puking or being too scared to talk. It’s my safe zone.”

  I flinched under his gaze. “Why’s it failing then?”

  My chest ached a little. “I don’t know.”

  “I might.” I didn’t want to hear him analyse my business failures.

  Aha, I had a question. “Did you marry her for her money?” There was no way to phrase it without being rude.

  “No.”

  “Love?” My voice croaked.

  “Maybe.” His face tightened. Liar. “Why are you still wearing your wedding ring?”

  “It reminds me of how angry I am.”

  “Aren’t you tired of being angry?”

  “Were you?”

  He cracked a heart-stopping smile. “No.”

  I smiled back. Stupid.

  “I’ve missed this.”

  I nodded, calming my heart. “Me too.” I took a sip of my drink. “I’ll be sad when you go back to miserable Scotland again.” Total truth.

  “You thought I was an arsehole all this time?”

  “You are.”

  He reached across the table and he held his palm up waiting for me to place mine within his wide grasp. I did.

  God, it felt so good.

  Like finding your favourite pair of slippers at the back of a cupboard and then sliding your feet in and remembering how comfortable they were.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “That you are like a pair of slippers.”

  “From you I take that as a compliment. Am I well-worn and much loved?” A trick question.

  “What do you think it would have been like to stay friends?” My heart ached at the thought of him always being in my life. What it could have felt like. That ray of warmth like the sun shining through a window and settling on your back. That was what Matthew used to be.

  “Ronnie. It would never have happened.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  “Why?” I asked again. A whisper.

  “Because Angela is right.” He held my gaze and I warmed in the pit of my stomach.

  My shoulders fell, a weight pushing them down. “I know.”

  The food arrived but neither of us picked up our chopsticks.

  “You know we’ve never even kissed. This thing we had might be made up.” I was taking a wide leap. I was using the information he gave me in the car the other night; the fact he was so angry after seeing me ‘kiss’ someone else. His acknowledgement that he knew my silence on the doorstep that fateful evening might not have been my final answer and I’m leaping off the edge of reason with it.

  “Angela again?”

  “Maybe.” I shifted forward. Why did the table seem so big? Like an ocean. “Why didn’t you kiss me?”

  He still held my hand, still ran his middle finger along my lifeline like an old habit he couldn’t break.

  Actually, I didn’t want to hear his answer. I shifted my hand and grabbed at the nearest fork, harpooning it into the giant share plate of noodles. I shovelled some into my mouth and then groaned as I began to chew.

  Matthew arched an eyebrow, his smile slow and so sexy. “Good?”

  “God, yeah,” I mumbled around the mouthful.

  “Worth waiting for fifteen years for?”

  His gaze levelled directly, and it ate into me a layer at a time. What was he saying? Asking? “Yes.” I took another mouthful to detract from the flush on my cheeks and he laughed, leaning across the table with his long arm and brushing his finger across my chin, wiping at some sauce.

  “In that case I’m going in.”

  “You should.” Another mouthful, another moan.

  I’d slipped into wanton noodle eater mode. I didn’t care. It could have been the Sake, but I became warm and loose, like a stiff hinge that’d been given some oil.

  I watched as Matthew lifted his chopsticks to hi
s mouth and slurped some noodles in between those luscious lips he owned. I warmed even more at his own groan.

  He chewed, watching me, his eyes bright. “Definitely worth the wait.” The way he said it, that black ink in his gaze. He wasn’t talking about noodles.

  I put my fork down, my appetite vanishing.

  Around us the air crackled with possibility.

  Was this something?

  Were we turning it into something over a plate of noodles?

  Was it nothing? Just two old friends out for dinner. Was I reading into everything all wrong, again?

  I opened my mouth to speak, but the words just evaporated. All the words. Not just, why? How? But all words I’d ever known.

  It was the Ronnie curse.

  I flinched a bit as he reached for my hand. “I thought I understood your silences. I respected them as your quirk. It’s only now I realise that I heard the wrong things in them.”

  I nodded. Still no words.

  “You let other people talk for you, tell you the right thing to do and then you try to please them.”

  “I don’t.”

  He lifted an eyebrow and put down his chopsticks. The waiter stared at the giant mound of food still sitting in the middle of the table and I tried not to feel guilty.

  “Who suggested you move in with your mother after Paul died?”

  Having Matthew say Paul’s name like that rang with a jarring note. It made it intimate, made my marriage exposed. His unspoken question ran towards me like fingers of a river reaching the sea. Why? When? Why? To save myself, I spun it around.

  “What happened with Julie?” I wanted to stab myself in the eye, even speaking her name out loud. It was the most hated of names, up there with Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, except Julie was worse.

  It was her.

  The shadow.

  The frown.

  The skin around his eyes tightened. Just like it always did the whole time I’d known him. From the moment he crushed my innocent heart one night, shoulder to shoulder with me, when I leant my lips against his cheek, and he shifted away and told me he already belonged to someone else.

  The sharp cut across my chest oozed from the old wound. “Ronnie, please don’t.”

  God, that hurt to remember.

  “We are very different people.”

  No fucking shit; I wanted to say. No, I wanted to shake him and scream in his face, I could have told you that after knowing you for just weeks. I could have told you that the first time I saw your shoulders drop at the thought of catching the train home to see her.

  “You always were though.” I don’t know how I kept my tone moderated, but I did. It came out all silky soft and genuine. Inside, I raged like an inferno. “You knew that anyway.”

  He lifted his attention from his half-eaten plate and the hunger in his gaze made me drop my hands to my lap so he couldn’t see them shake.

  “A marriage based on a lie is a difficult one to maintain.” I squirmed under his gestapo gaze but couldn’t quite look away. “Don’t you think?”

  “My marriage to Paul wasn’t a lie.”

  His lips pressed into a slender line and for the millionth time since we met, I wondered what they would feel like against my skin.

  “Are you done?” He motioned to the food. I tried not to think of starving people in the world as he motioned his hand at the ever-watching waiter.

  “Can we box it up to go, please?”

  The waiter nodded, but then paused and looked between us. “You were away, yes?”

  God, he did remember us.

  Matthew’s gaze glanced across my face. “Just visiting.”

  My stomach hurtled at a million miles an hour until it was just a trail of dust left by a falling star.

  He picked up the bill, waving away my offer to pay.

  We buttoned our coats in thundering and loud silence. The waiter gave us a cheery wave. He’d be looking forward to not seeing us for another decade.

  Shooting a side eye at Matthew as we hovered at the door to the restaurant, I tried to visualise another fifteen years without him here.

  He was going back to Scotland in a week.

  It had always been the same thing with him. Scotland—home. Always been there. Always an unknown to me, things he’d never talk about.

  It was like finding a locked cupboard in someone’s home and not knowing what was behind the door. The longer it stayed locked, the worse your imagination made it. Dead bodies, chains hanging from the ceiling, garden gnomes; things you don’t know but can only guess at.

  Rain fell in a steady mist and he glared up at the dark sky, pulling his coat tighter around his neck. “We can order a cab if you don’t want to walk?” The midnight and slate swept over me.

  No, I almost shouted. If we drove this would be over too quick. “I don’t mind rain.”

  His lips curved with a secret.

  “What?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing. Just part of a theory I have.” He motioned me off the doorstep and I hovered on the pavement, waiting for him to make his stride so I could match it. His legs were twice as long as mine, but I’d always kept pace with him.

  In his hand the noodles in their container swung in a white plastic bag. Without saying a word, he slipped the bag into his other hand and then clasped my fingers in his.

  It was an instant weave, fingers knotted.

  We’d walked halfway towards the small parade of shops when he pulled me over towards a bus stop. Under the shelter huddled a man in blankets.

  “Here you go, mate. We lost our appetite.”

  “Chicken or beef?” The man looked up at us from under his hood.

  My mouth flapped open and I was just preparing my finger to wag when Matthew’s laugh rumbled through me. “Beef.”

  “Black bean sauce?” The homeless guy cracked us a smile.

  “All the way.”

  “Then thank you, sir.”

  Matthew cocked his fingers in a salute and pulled me away.

  “That was kind,” I said once our feet were back in time.

  He shrugged which made our fingers squeeze tighter. My tummy tightened. “Too many people are hungry in this world.”

  “Is that why you want to save the business?”

  I stumbled as he looked at me. “Some of it.”

  My heart raced too fast. “So tell me about this theory.”

  His lips curved slightly, but I was an addict and I needed to see more. I wanted a full smile. I wanted his laugh to rumble through me. “You might not want to know.”

  “Oh, I do, believe me.”

  “What if the theory means you have to speak? To say things, even if they make you uncomfortable?”

  I stared at his face. “I’d do it.”

  “Big words, Veronica.”

  My heart: Boom-de-boom. Boom-de-boom. The train ran faster over the tracks. Normally I’d slow it down, bring it to a standstill at a station and take a breather, but I couldn’t.

  He stopped walking and turned me by our joined hands until our chests were nearly touching. His coat brushed mine and it pushed against my skin. My nipples hardened.

  “The theory?” It exhaled out, all breathless and soft, like falling into a vat of feathers.

  He lifted our hands, his thumb pushing against the back of my hand, leaving fingerprints on my skin. I imagined if I could see it, it would be blue and grey like his eyes.

  “We’ve never kissed.”

  Oh God. My stomach plummeted with the minor chords. “No.”

  “And physically we don’t know if we are even compatible.” His gaze swept over me. “I mean, you’re a wee lass.”

  “Wee lass! Don’t you…”

  “But.” His gaze intensified. Heaven crashed to earth and obliterated us.

  “But?” Shaky and wanton, I warmed on the inside like a chocolate fondue.

  “Since I’ve known you, it’s been the most natural thing to hold your hand. From the earliest days even when I knew I
shouldn’t, I still did it. It felt like nothing and everything all at once.”

  I breathed in slow. Lest I might pass out.

  “I thought you held my hand under the desk that day because you were trying to calm me down from a panic attack.”

  He shook his head, his gaze never once breaking from mine. “No. I held your hand because I couldn’t bear another moment of not touching you.”

  “But…”

  The heat of his palm burnt into mine, liquid gold spreading up my arm.

  “So I think if holding your hand feels like everything, then what happens if I do this?”

  I forced myself to maintain eye contact as, with his free hand, he used a finger to trail up my throat and along the edge of my coat collar. I held in my breath as he then ran it along my cheekbone, around my ear, slipping into my hair.

  “You almost kissed me once.” I stuttered the words, each syllable gushed with the pound of my heart.

  “I know.” I could taste his breath, feel the warmth of his mouth hovering just above mine. Sweet Sake and Matthew combined. I wanted to inhale him.

  “You could have. I wouldn’t have minded.”

  He nodded and brushed his lips closer still. I wet mine with my tongue and it tanged at the almost taste of him. “The thing with my theory.” I had to strain to hear his whisper over the rushing in my ears. “Is that I’m pretty sure it’s because it’s meant to be perfect. You can’t deliver perfect half-hearted, or half promised. It has to be one hundred percent.”

  “But you’re leaving in days, assuming I can help you with the rebrand?”

  The intensity of his gaze ate me alive. “That’s why you have to be ready to speak, because I need you to say the words. Tell me you want it.”

  My stomach plummeted to the core of the earth and he gave me a small, but almost sad smile. I ached all over as it registered with me. What he wanted.

  He wanted me to be the one to ask. He’d done it once already, and I’d hesitated.

  I opened my mouth, ready to say yes, three tiny and easy to pronounce letters, so simple and easy, but with so much weight and meaning I could drop them at sea and they’d never surface again.

  Because yes.

  But what about him leaving, and Hannah, and our companies? What about Ma and her finger of doom? What about the fact he was leaving? I couldn’t ignore that point. His life was in Scotland, it had always been in Scotland, and I was here in London where I’d also always been.