If We Were Young: A Romance

by Bloom, Anna

  His hand scorched on my skin, burning me up from the inside out.

  And yes.

  But the word didn’t come.

  He waited, never taking his gaze off my face.

  Then when it was clear I wouldn’t say anything, he pressed his lips into the corner of my mouth, just like he did once before.

  It wasn’t a full kiss.

  It was half a promise.

  Pushing just at the edges of my lips, it swirled his scent in my senses until I was high on fabric softener and soap.

  With his half kiss he made me see the truth. He rewrote the past. Because I could turn now and my own kiss would be my yes.

  I could have turned all those years ago and my kiss would have been my yes.

  It wasn’t him who’d not been one hundred percent. It was me.

  It’d always been me.

  His expression when he pulled away was a broken picture frame, a shiny image slipping out from under glass. He knew that I now knew.

  This was never about him and her.

  It was about me and him.

  Most specifically me.

  Theory

  “You never knew how I felt.” I clutched at my chest as I pushed away. “All those times when I waited, and you didn’t know how I felt, so you waited too.”

  He bit on his bottom lip and I groaned like a wildcat.

  “It wasn’t even about me not saying yes on that doorstep. The doubts had always been in place, the question on the doorstep was you confirming your doubts were true.”

  “Were they?”

  I pushed my palm against his coat and the wool pressed back. “Matthew, I—”

  He shook his head. “It’s okay, Ronnie.” Stepping back, he held his hand out. “Come, let’s get you home.”

  How many times had he said that to me before? Remind me again why you are living at home and not with us?

  I shook my head forcing away the memory, but it hung around, its echo taunting.

  Because Mum says it’s easier this way.

  In my head his laugh reverberated back at me.

  He always thought I was spineless and that I wasn’t showing him anything different, because I wasn’t any different.

  My thoughts spiralled too quick to catch.

  Still, we stood in the street, the rain drenching us until we were like layers of wet newspaper. Wet and half-disintegrated, yesterday’s news.

  No, I was different now.

  I was.

  “Where is your flat?”

  He cocked an eyebrow and then glanced up the road. “Two streets away.”

  “Take me there.”

  “Ronnie, it’s not a competition of who can push each other the most.”

  “I know. Take me there anyway.”

  I wanted to stand in his space and breathe his air. I needed to see beneath the external layers. See if I was right about the man he was. See if the man in my head was the same as the one I once thought I was in love with.

  “It’s not much. It’s only rented.”

  “Don’t care.”

  We walked in silence, just our hands talking as our skin rubbed together. When he stopped again, he pointed at a black door up a short flight of steps.

  “In there?” I whispered.

  He nodded.

  I followed him, my fingers wrapped tight around the edge of his coat as he walked up the stairs first. My numb legs happy to be towed along.

  I walked in behind him. The space of the cramped hallway was small, and I hugged his back, my cheek resting on the curve of his shoulder as he turned to an internal door and opened it with a brass key.

  I kept breathing him in, memorising the smell of his rain-soaked coat, the imprint of it against my skin.

  “Here we go.” His chords were gruffer and tighter. All Scottish pines and fresh air.

  I pushed past him into the white space: white walls and oak floor. Grey furniture, all clean and nice, a decent rental in an old Edwardian conversion.

  There was a small round coffee table. Moving away from the shape of his shoulders, I stepped closer, bending to touch the notepad and pencil. Crouching down, I flipped open the page of the notebook and saw sketches inside, bold strikes and soft smudges.

  They were how I expected him to feel against me. Bold and soft, his hard into my softness. Two halves to the same coin.

  The sketches showed me everything.

  Like they did the first time I ever found his drawings, the ones away from lectures. His thoughts and secrets on scraps of paper.

  My legs creaked as I straightened up. His face dark with wariness, his eyebrows knitted together, raindrops still clinging through his hair.

  I pressed into him, moulding myself to the shape of his chest. I had to look up, tilting my head right back as I lifted my fingers to his face, the curve of his cheek, the cut of his cheekbone.

  “Tell me more about this theory.” My voice didn’t sound like my own. It belonged to another woman far braver than me.

  His breath fanned across my face. “I believe that if something is so natural, so right.” His lips lowered, brushing against mine, a feathery edged tickle that had me inhaling him in. “Then it will be beyond measure, beyond compare.”

  I might die. I’d waited for this for so long, never realising that it was mine to give. I always thought I had to wait for him to make the move, to ask if he could. I never grasped the fact that he did that every time he held my hand.

  This kiss would kill me.

  I knew it already. Eighteen years in the making and my soul reared up, ready to fly.

  “Wait.” I pushed my hand against his wet coat. “What if we kiss and it means we can never be friends again?”

  “We can’t be friends again, Ronnie.” My toes scrunched at his tone. They were black and white the things he saw. “You know that.”

  My heart ached over acres of time. Fifteen years since, fifteen years in the future. What would thirty years feel like without him?

  Would it be better or worse for this moment?

  “Ronnie.”

  It was the way he whispered my name that had me closing my eyes.

  It happened. The brush, the push, the tentative little nudge of a kiss. Delicate and sweet, it began like crushed rose petals and sherbet. Until my eyes opened and our gazes locked, and the sherbet became chocolate of the darkest and bitterest kind.

  I gasped in air, about to dive off the highest board.

  His fingers fell to my coat, tugging at the zip. “I can’t possibly prove the theory if you’re wearing wet wool. It needs to come off.”

  I laughed, my nose brushing his cheek as he slipped my coat off my shoulders. I pushed myself against his chest trying to keep warm. The dampness of his own coat soaked through my shirt and with a giggle I stepped back, unbuttoning his and pulling it off, letting it thud on the floor with mine.

  Then we became two people with no more excuses.

  He leant down again. “This is it. You and me.”

  I wanted to mind snap the moment. The rub of his slight stubble, rough and scraping; his fingers as they slid into my hair, burying deep in the strands like they’d always known the secret path to take so that their touch made me shiver down to my toes.

  It would be goddamn awful if this kiss wasn’t everything.

  His long dark lashes closed just as our lips touched, and for a split-second I watched them flutter against his skin until I submitted myself to blindness and sensation alone.

  One push, then another, harder, longer. I sighed, opening my lips a little, my breath escaping into his mouth. The hand holding mine tightened, one palm burning into my scalp, the other pressed into my back, branding me with the size and shape of his hand so I’d never forget.

  The next push was firmer still, its minted hardness rolled into the softest of velvet. His head slanted, locking our lips the way our hands had always held.

  My tongue flicked into his domain, searching for his, tentative in its approach; but I needn’t
have feared, because his waited ready and it slipped and slid along mine, pushing and tangling.

  Everything about me sang until I was nothing more than an aria in the Royal Albert Hall.

  Our tongues danced to a tune, pressing and giving, relenting and then seeking. I groaned from my toes into his mouth and his hand on my back slid up my spine to the top of my neck and back down again.

  Flames ate away at me.

  In the pit of my stomach a terrible tightening stretched along my limbs until I was boneless and hollowed.

  Every inch of my skin craved him.

  I should never have feared the kiss, the story of my soul. It was a tale he’d always known.

  His sigh whispered.

  I never wanted this to end. Never wanted to breathe or think, never wanted to speak or move ever again. Just this kiss in this moment forever. It was all I wanted.

  Delicate, the dart of his tongue dove playful and fun, followed by a deep and delicious sweep that told me he could give me more. It was the soft and hard of my dreams. Feathered and light, as strong and unforgiving as iron.

  And I wanted it forever.

  “Matthew.” I trembled his name. It flourished in my chest like the unfurling of a vibrant wildflower.

  I spoke though, mid-kiss, and it broke the magic. His deep hold on my mouth lessened and the all-encompassing deep dive became little splashes in shallow water.

  Another peck.

  Another brush.

  His forehead pushed into mine. Both our chests heaved with the same rhythm.

  For a long, unquantifiable length of time we remain tangled in the silent stretch of the moment.

  “Did you prove your theory right?” My legs wobbled and his hold on my back tightened, firmly clamping me to his chest. And what a chest, wide and strong. It bruised hard against me.

  He smiled, eyes closed, and I watched those dark lashes again, hurriedly sketching them in my brain so I didn’t forget the way they fluttered, a slight curl at the tips.

  Inky pools met me when he opened them up. “I think you need to answer that.”

  I laughed, my hands wrapping themselves into his jumper. “I think you did.” I smiled, my heart growing by the second, trebling in size. “More. Please.”

  Smiling, he leant down and pecked a kiss on the corner of my lips. “I should get you home before I take this to a place we can’t come back from.” I burned hot. Take me to that place.

  I turned and looked into the rented apartment, the blank canvas with no recriminations and memories. “I could stay.”

  I couldn’t stay. I’d never hear the end of it. Ma would have kittens and her finger would shout. Hannah…well, what would she think?

  “I want to stay,” I amended. I never wanted to leave this moment. I didn’t want to step back out of the door and be Ronnie Childs-the widow again. If I could have, I’d have stayed there with him, where it would only ever be Ronnie and Matthew. The one thing we only ever should have been.

  “Come on. I’ll walk you home.”

  “There really is no need. It’s just around the corner.” My eyes flew open. “You knew where I lived, didn’t you? How did you know I moved back home?”

  He shrugged, but his lashes dropped.

  “Matthew?”

  The moment pounded like it flexed around the edges.

  “Angela.”

  I pressed my hand into my chest.

  “Oh.”

  Why didn’t she tell me?

  “I was very drunk. It was a few months after I’d asked Julie for a separation.” I couldn’t help but sense he held something back, wasn’t telling me everything.

  I blinked, stupidly. Why the hell hadn’t she told me this?

  “She just said you’d moved back into your mother’s house.”

  “Yes.” My voice wobbled though. Oh my god. She knew he wouldn’t be bald and fat. I wrote a note on my mental shit list. “Why did you rent this place?”

  He shrugged, but his gaze remained unflinching as he stared at me.

  “I should go home.”

  He nodded and released his hold on me, and I shivered an icy chill. Bending at the knees, he picked up my coat and then held it out for me to slip on. Once I had my arms in, he buttoned me up like a little dolly.

  The kiss seemed far away now.

  Apart from in my head where it whirled around free-fall.

  “I’ll come up with some better ideas for the rebrand by Monday, I promise.” I scrabbled for something to say.

  His frown flickered, becoming scored on his face. And his look said it all; is this all you have?

  “I’m sure you will.”

  “Don’t worry about walking me home. I’ll be fine.”

  I peered through the open windows at the night sky.

  “Sure you will, but I’ll walk you anyway.”

  I knew there was no point arguing. So we walked along in silence once he’d locked up the front door behind us.

  “It’s a nice conversion.” My brain scrambled to make conversation. “I looked into something very similar a few years back, when… well, you know why.”

  He nodded. “Why didn’t you? Did you think it would be too hard by yourself?”

  “Yes. Maybe. Ma said I’d get lonely.”

  “Have you anyway?” I cast him a quick side eye at his question. “Got lonely?”

  “Sometimes.”

  It only took a few minutes to get to the big semi. The lights were still on. My chest tightened as I stared at the curtains lit around the edges.

  There would be questions to answer. Questions I would have to dodge in my desperate need to get up to my room and lie on my bed face first and analyse the kiss. The Kiss.

  Maybe the only kiss ever worth having.

  We stopped outside the path to the front door. “Goodnight, Ronnie.”

  He seemed to be moving on from our kiss rather easily. Maybe he got his theory answered, and it wasn’t everything.

  Leaning in close, brushing his cheek against mine, he turned slightly and pressed his warm lips against my skin. “I’ll see you Monday.”

  “Sure.” My answer wavered in the cold night air. “Sure.”

  His fingers rose and brushed across my cheek, the scrutiny in his gaze intense. “Aye, sure.”

  My stomach flipped at the deepening of his brogue.

  He turned, and I watched him walk away, every single step he took, wanting to call him back.

  Girl Talk

  “What… shit!” I shrieked when Hannah moved at the kitchen table as I snuck through the door, my stealth mode hampered by wobbly leg syndrome. She should have been asleep, that kiss lasted six hours at least. My lungs had gone without air for so long I might have slipped into a timeless coma.

  “How was your date?”

  A tang of burned bread hung in the air and my tummy grumbled.

  I flung my bag onto a kitchen chair and pulled off my damp jacket, reaching for a toast crust on her plate. “It wasn’t a date.”

  She smirked then raised her eyebrows, yeah, right. All teenagers smirked. None of them realising that every adult within their vicinity could read their face as clearly as they could read a billboard.

  “It wasn’t like you think.” I swallowed the dry crust and turned to flick the kettle on, but then changed my mind and switched it back off again. I should get to sleep. Maybe think of this rebrand now that it only had a week to become something.

  “Where did you go?”

  I huffed and turned, leaning my hip against the counter. “Why aren’t you in bed?”

  “Because I’m worried about you. If you are out late at night, I should know where you are.”

  “Very funny.”

  She rocked back on the kitchen chair, but I didn’t have the energy to tell her off for swinging on Ma’s chairs. I used all my energy on the kiss to blot out all other kisses.

  “We went to Ying’s on the High Street.”

  Hannah pulled a face. “Isn’t that the place Dad alwa
ys wanted to go to, but you always said no?”

  “Yes, that’s the one.”

  “Was it nice?”

  I shrugged. “We gave most of it to a homeless man.”

  “A homeless man! What about your starving daughter?”

  I shot her the ‘mum’ look. “Where is Nonna, anyway?”

  “She went to bed. She made me go too, but I snuck back down afterwards because I was still hungry, and I knew she’d tell me off for snacking on toast.”

  I glanced at the time on the clock. Despite the kissing, the clock said it was only ten thirty. “That’s early for her.” I frowned. “No crime drama to keep her entertained?”

  “I think she was cross. She said the man was a friend of Ange’s and could only be bad news.”

  I frowned, making my forehead hurt. “No. That’s not true at all.”

  “Ah, aaaaah! So it was a date?”

  “Hannah!”

  “Mum. I really don’t mind.” Her smile dropped for a moment. “I know you’ve got to move on. You were thirty when Dad died. I don’t expect you to never meet anyone else.”

  “Hannah, it’s not like that.” I wished it might be that straightforward, but it wasn’t.

  She nodded and all too late I realised we were in the midst of a serious conversation. My daughter wanted to talk to me about the prospect of me dating. My chest tightened, that steely band settling back into place. I fought against it.

  “Your cheeks were bright red when you walked in.” She pointed a look at me.

  “It’s cold out there. Here, feel.” I pushed my fingers down the back of her pyjamas and she screeched. I laughed and the band of tightness eased.

  “Anyway. I just want you to know that I’m cool with, whatever.” Her hands waved with the universal teenage sign for whatever.

  “Thank you, but it really isn’t like that.” I sat down on the chair opposite her, my brain fogging up with that kiss. I mean, that really felt like that.

  But nothing else had been said. I guessed Monday I’d see Matthew at work as a client, and I knew he was going back to Scotland. His time here in London was brief—little chance of rebuilding a friendship, let alone… my stomach dipped.