If We Were Young: A Romance

by Bloom, Anna

  “Or at yours?” My voice rose with the optimism of an overexcited teenager… because that's what I was. The teenager in me seemed determined to bulldoze her way out.

  “Your face is giving me mixed messages.” His lips quirked.

  Ooh my face. I tried to calm myself down and school my expression into anything other than insane excitement. I couldn’t. My cheeks wouldn’t drop, my eyes wouldn’t stop scrunching.

  I tried again until he laughed loudly. People rushed past us, but we stayed an island on the platform.

  “Now what are you thinking of?”

  “Dead kittens.”

  “Is it working?”

  “No.” I eyed him. “So, you and me, in your house. Just us?”

  “Who else will be there?”

  “Uh. Your children, ex-wife… I don’t know, hundreds of brothers?”

  He laughed and pulled me in tight, my legs sagged as he pressed a kiss to my temple. “The boys will be with my mother. She’s having them my weekends these two weeks while I work on saving the company, so, no, she won’t be there. And it’s too small and I’m there, are two very good reasons for Julie not to stop by; those and the fact we aren’t on speaking terms right now.” Interesting, his divorce was acrimonious—I should have asked questions like that last night instead of just snogging the face off him. “Oh and my two brothers will be falling down drunk at the party so I doubt they will want to be at my house.”

  He gave me too much, my brain couldn’t work that quick. I settled for, “That’s nice of your mum to have the boys.” Swiftly followed by, “Party?”

  “Ronnie. Stop.”

  He dropped my face, disappointingly without a kiss, and caught hold of my hand. In his other he wheeled my small suitcase, his leather overnight bag balanced on top.

  I hesitated as he pulled me away.

  This was it. It was all the dreams I used to have. All the secret wishes I’d hung onto.

  I was going home with Matthew.

  The houses were smart: four storeys and black railings. The road curved a little in an arch, sloping away and around a corner, trees holding the first blush of blossom lined along smart green verges.

  He stopped at door thirty-six. Two pints of milk sat on the top step and Matthew bent low to pick them up, passing them to me as he juggled his keys. “Here.”

  He did it like passing me his milk delivery was the most natural thing in the world. I grasped them in my already cold hands. Edinburgh was the coldest city in the world.

  The door, a pale purple, made me ache with longing. What it would be like to have my own front door again, to not walk through Ma’s vibrant red and glass classic thirties semi every day?

  Maybe my own front door could be like this? Worn and scratched but with a shiny chrome knocker and a round handle centred in the middle.

  “Shit. The heating isn't on again.” He pushed through and flipped the lights. I followed behind, my eyes wide like a child in Santa’s grotto. The ceiling hung low, studded with round lights. The floor glowed like warm honey from the oak floorboards. Our feet echoed, but it didn’t ring with emptiness. It was as though the house had been waiting for him to just step back in through the door. The walls of the hallway were the same colour as the front door.

  It was cold inside, maybe colder than outside, and I wiped at the tip of my nose.

  “Sorry. The boiler is a nightmare.”

  I snorted a giggle. “Not a problem.” Funny to hear Matthew talk of mundane things like boilers. He sounded like a grown-up.

  I needed a reality check fast. We are grown-up, Ronnie.

  “I can get you some extra jumpers down and light the fire in the sitting room?”

  I grinned at hearing him say ‘sitting room’. It rumbled all foreign and exotic. He’d become an adult in my teenage fantasy.

  “I’m sure I will be fine. I never have to worry about things like boilers at Ma’s. She still runs the house.” I tried to look past him. This was his home, not the rented apartment a few streets along from my own house. This was the place he chose to live in.

  He cocked an eyebrow, his cheeks still stained with red from the cold. “Let me guess, you still have your childhood bedroom?”

  “Well, maybe.” I straightened up a bit. “It’s the nicest room and looks over the garden.”

  “Did your parents tell you that when you were a child? Everyone knows the master bedroom is at the front.”

  I pulled a face. “Okay. Homeowner extraordinaire. So you never lived here with Julie?”

  Gah, I hated her name on my lips.

  “God no. I bought this once we separated.” I breathed a sigh of relief. “Thankfully I’d put some money aside, so I had something to fall back on. I wanted somewhere the kids could feel at home when they were with me.” He paused, his gaze on my face. “They were very young. Trying to leave their mother was a bastard thing for me to do. They didn’t ask to get pulled into the middle of it.”

  I nodded. There were so many things I still didn’t know. I’d been so wrapped up in finding him again, in the magic of our reconnection. I hadn’t thought much about what he’d been through. Well, apart from when I hung out the bunting and flags at the news of his divorce… but in my selfishness I’d forgotten he had children who’d been hurt.

  It wasn’t my fault, but I could feel for them all the same.

  I guess if the truth be known, I found it hard to imagine Matthew as a dad. It hadn’t crossed my mind that he might have felt that way when he helped me pick up Hannah the night before.

  Complications seemed to jump out at me from every direction. I tried to bat them away, but they danced just on the edge of my consciousness.

  “It must have been hard.”

  His gaze became all-encompassing. “Yes. And in some ways no.”

  I slid myself against the hallway wall, torn between hearing his answer and wanting to run through his house and looking at all his belongings.

  “In what way no?”

  “I’d rather my children knew me happy. I tell myself that it will be better for them in the long run.”

  “And are you?”

  I held my breath for his answer.

  “Yes.”

  Suddenly the pale purple hallway took on a different meaning. This was his happy place, the colour of the walls he’d chosen in his bid for his own happiness away from a failed marriage.

  “Here.” His tone scratched with gruffness and he leant across me to turn a brass handle on a white door. “I’ll get a fire on and then the kettle. The shop won’t be open until nine, so we have some time to kill before we can go there.”

  He began to slip away, back into that formality we hadn’t had between us on the train. I opened my mouth, desperate to say something that would make him stay in the now, but as usual there wasn’t anything there. “Thank you.”

  I eyed the hallway and he gave a short laugh. “You want to go and be nosy?”

  “I do think I should see the facilities before I give up the dream of a warm hotel.”

  “It will be warm I promise.” My legs quivered as he met my gaze. “Go on then. I’ll organise some tea.”

  Pulling my coat tight around my middle, I paced off down the hallway, my boots echoing on the floorboards. At the end of the corridor was a kitchen that you had to step down three stairs to get into. It was all black tiles and chrome fixtures, but the walls were still the same purple of the hallway and front door. It was nice, warm and homely. “You have an AGA,” I called over my shoulder.

  “I do.” I jumped out of my skin, not realising how close he stood behind me. Close enough that his breath warmed the skin on the back of my neck. “And honestly, if we don’t get the heating working, we might be drinking our tea with our arses against it.”

  I laughed loudly.

  “I like a nice warm arse.”

  He chuckled and then did what I’d been hoping for. He pressed a kiss into my neck, and I shivered all over.

  He kissed me in h
is house, in his safe, post-divorce space. That had to mean something, surely?

  “Go on. Keep exploring.” The man was as hot as melted caramel, but he was also stupidly naive. He had no idea I was about to dive into his underwear drawer.

  I followed the kitchen, past the warmth of the AGA and down more steps into what must have been an old scullery but was now a utility room with a washing machine and dryer. A back window overlooked a small courtyard garden. The sky hung bleak, and it looked green, like it held secret snow it planned to dump when everyone least expected it.

  “It is weird. I can’t imagine you using a washing machine,’ I shouted back to where he was stood in the kitchen peering into a cupboard that probably housed the boiler.

  “I don’t put new clothes on every day.”

  “Isn’t your father-in-law ridiculously rich?”

  He mumbled something that I couldn’t hear so I just ignored it and moved on. By the time I’d inspected the dirty washing hamper, finding small boys socks with dinosaur patterns and more delicious grey sweats, he was pulling mugs out of a different cupboard. I held the socks a moment; they pulled me from the dream state I’d slipped into. These small socks belonged to a boy, Matthew’s child. A child from a life he’d had without me in it.

  It was stupid to feel a pang of jealousy, but it sat there in my soul all the same.

  Back along the purple hallway towards the front door I dodged into the room he’d pointed out as a sitting room.

  Except it wasn’t a sitting room at all. Instead it was a playroom. Grey carpet and cream walls, this time the furnishings were purple. Even down to a crocheted purple squared blanket thrown over the back of the grey sofa. It was a playroom with masculine overtones. Toy cars and a racetrack were against the far wall near the fireplace and there was a basket filled with dinosaurs.

  I ached again, just like I did at the front door and then with the socks.

  On the mantelpiece were frames holding pictures of Matthew and two boys with blonde angel hair. My eyes prickled as I picked one up.

  Matthew was grinning, his eyes shining. The bigger boy had his arms hanging around his neck while Matthew held onto the small one, his hands so big they were nearly the same size as the baby.

  It hurt so much more than I thought it would; the life he’d lived without me.

  Putting the frame back down I returned to my discovery search. A stack of hardboard picture books—most of which I recognised from reading to Hannah—sat on a white shelf. My gut wrenched.

  On a whim I stopped and turned back to my bag still in the hallway and fished my phone out.

  Love you.

  And I did. Even when she became Godzilla. Even when she made my eyes sting.

  Even when she sided with Ma over me.

  Even when she got suspended.

  Lv U. Hv Fn. C U 2mrw.

  Wow, she answered. In text speak, but she answered.

  Putting my phone back in my bag, I took a moment to look at my wedding ring. It’d been on there for half as long as I’d been married with no real purpose. I couldn’t seem to take it off though. I still clung onto the safety net that Paul provided. Still hung onto my anger at him for letting me down.

  “You okay?”

  I glanced up at Matthew and swallowed the lump in my throat. “Yes. I’m about to go and inspect your sock drawer.”

  “Oh, well, I don’t want to get in the way of that.”

  “Are they all matching?”

  I thought of his sharp suits, the shirts cut impeccably across his shoulders. I recalled the man in the cosy cotton casualwear that had me wrapped in his arms.

  I thought the socks could be the key.

  “No. They aren’t. Feel free to sort them.”

  One step. Two steps, and I stood toe to toe with him, my hands sliding around his neck. “I think I like you so much more now I know your socks don’t match.”

  “Such a relief.”

  I chuckled but it lasted the short flight of a bird with its wings alight. “I need to say something.”

  He lifted an eyebrow and watched me.

  It took me a moment to get the letters ordered in the right formation in my brain. A bit like scrambling fighter jets at the outbreak of war. I ordered them around until they made sense.

  “It hurts, this life you’ve had. It sounds silly thinking we could have always been friends, and maybe you are right, maybe it never would have happened. Seeing you married would have hurt me, even just as your friend, but seeing the life you have without me, I think it hurts more. I can’t help but wonder how much pain I’d be willing to take for you.”

  An expression of complete shock greeted mine. I don’t know which of us was more surprised I’d spoken out so frank and honest.

  His lips crushed mine and he edged me back into the wall, his hands gripping my arms.

  Science

  I was suspended breathless and shivering as we swiped and dove, pushing and pulling, our teeth clashing like the delicate clink of silver against a china teacup.

  I was the teacup and I had taken myself close to smashing.

  I’d do it to myself though. No one else would get to take me there. This would be on me. If I could take my heart and give it bravely, without fear of consequence, then I’d own the repercussions. I could blame no one else.

  On a backwards count from three, I broke my lips from his. His breath rasped with a ragged edge, reaching into my mouth and pulling me closer. “I have a theory.”

  “Oh, you do?” I almost melted at the deep burr of his tone.

  “It’s that some things are meant to be perfect. Some of us are designed to fit together just so: big and small; tall and short; black hair, blonde. Perfect opposites.”

  “I think you’re taking credit for my theories.”

  I held my hand up. At dinner the other night he’d wanted me to say the words. Here they were.

  I dug down deep, scraping them out of my scared and petrified soul. “If we don’t try then we will never know how perfect it could be.”

  His smile liquified my insides. “Now she gets it.” He lifted me easily in his arms. With my back against the wall I slotted my legs around his waist, attaching my mouth to his like hot superglue. “Ronnie,” he sighed my name and it sparked like a match to an abandoned firework.

  Heat and desire scorched through me. I’d whittled to dry tinder in a heatwave.

  I didn’t need to worry about talking now. Could show.

  “We’ve got to get to the shop,” he muttered, not breaking his kiss so it came out as a slur. His delicate touch cradled my face.

  “I know. I’ve got to check your sock drawer too.”

  His kiss hardened, teeth nipping at my lower lip. His fingers pulled on my ponytail, sliding out the elastic and then slipping against my scalp. I quivered as the sensitive touch sent tingles down my spine.

  “I should take you to the socks.”

  “Definitely. I can’t live without seeing them.” His fingers dug into my thighs as he secured me in place.

  He walked us up the stairs, me still clamped around his waist, and all I could think was; this is fucking it. This is it. It’s Matthew, and it’s me.

  Perfect.

  Wouldn't it be hideous if this wasn’t perfect?

  I didn’t need to worry though.

  There wasn’t a single part of this that wasn’t on a level I could comprehend. His fingers were deft, smooth and cool as they undid my coat. When it hung undone, his touch lingered ever so lightly over my jumper, his thumbs pushing against my shoulders and melting into my bones.

  “It’s too cold.” He paused. A frown flickering. “This isn’t perfect.”

  “Take the coat off, Matthew. Perfect is workable.”

  His lips answered, desperately. The coat dropped some place in the hallway. I didn’t care. I’d find it sometime never when this was done.

  He kicked at a door, edging us in backwards and I cranked an eye open to take in the same purple walls and wh
ite bedding. Simple wooden furniture. Strong and robust; good fucking thing too, because I wanted to destroy it with his legs tangled around mine. I kicked off my boots and they clunked against the floor as they landed. He held me tighter still, fingers hard, while he used the toe of one shoe to kick off the heel of another.

  I shivered and pressed myself against him. His mouth sunk hot on my throat, his teeth grazing until I groaned slightly, tilting back my neck so he could get to more. The strands of his dark hair brushed like silk against my cheek as I reached my lips and swiped my tongue along the outer edge of his ear. I wanted to high five myself as he shuddered. I licked again, bringing about the same response.

  “God, I so want to take my time with you.” He pressed his words into my neck.

  I nodded. Yes please, take your time with me, take it so slow I want to die. I’ve waited so long now that to suspend the moment would be the most pleasurable torture.

  The words didn’t come out. I just kissed him harder, tangling my tongue until our kiss was so fast that I forgot how to draw air.

  Who needed to breathe anyway?

  I didn’t. It was overrated.

  I pulled at his jumper and T-shirt, sliding my hands under the material so my palms lay flat on his stomach. Oh, well hello.

  I had to break the kiss to have a look, and to breathe. Turned out I did need oxygen after all. “What is this under here?”

  “Ronnie?” He chuckled and it was adorably self-conscious. I really did want to eat him up with an ice cream spoon. Ducking my head, I investigated the flat smooth skin my hands found.

  “Oh, wow. You’ve got a masterpiece down here.”

  “That’s just my stomach, Ronnie.”

  “It’s very flat and…” It was no good, I had to press my lips against it. He shivered and I ran my hands further up as I straightened and met his gaze.

  “I can’t believe you are here, that this is happening.” The sharpened edge of his face dissolved until I stared at the bashful expression of a boy I once knew.

  Apart from the Matthew now was different, with thickened muscles, strength that didn’t exist before. He would tear me apart.

  “So, the theory.” My voice wavered.