Page 20 of If We Were Young

We still hadn’t heard about the pitch. Every moment that passed I could sense the ending of my company like when you knew you’d reached the last chapter of your favourite book.

“No emails.” I tried to put on a brave little soldier face, but now I teetered more towards sulking toddler.

Her face fell, and I felt a little sorry for her. Natalie probably desperately needed a pay rise; hell, they all did. I didn’t want to lose any of my staff to another firm that could pay more, but there was no chance I held a position to compete.

I’d hate to not look out of my office every day and see her peering into her compact mirror. If someone offered to pay her more that could happen.

Until.

“Oh, you had a Facebook request on your computer. You’d left the page open, Ronnie, anyone could have looked at your stuff.” She said this like nothing could be more obvious. “So, I accepted it for you.”

The post fell out of my fingers and I launched myself with an impressive rugby tackle at the computer while shouting, “Noooooo,” like I acted in a slow-motion outage for a lame action movie.

Natalie wheeled out of my oncoming approach and I smashed my thigh into the side of the desk. The whole thing gave a precarious wobble. No, nononono, no.

I grabbed the screen and turned it towards me. Sure enough there it was. You and Matthew Carling are now connected on Messenger.

And again. No, no, no, no, no. His little picture, a casual shot which looked like a holiday snap, taunted me.

Out of nowhere the memory of the feel of his hand on the back of my neck flashed into my head. Zap. Boom. Hand, neck.

I grabbed the bin and puked straight into it.

“Ooh.” Natalie’s eyes lit with curiosity.

“No. I’m not,” I told her before she could go running around the office telling everyone I was knocked up in some second coming immaculate conception.

“Get out,” I snapped. Without asking why, she slid from my seat mumbling under her breath about an overreaction.

I stared at the screen and his message blinked at me, blinding my eyes. Hi.

Hi. Fucking, hi.

What the hell was going on?

My hands stuck to the smooth surface of the desk, the sweat greasing out of my pores acting like a natural form of superglue. My legs shook on my wheelie chair.

Hi.

He didn’t even say ‘Hi’ to me at the reunion. If my memory serves me—which it always did with him, because that’s what stalkers do—he’d just stared at me, slightly surprised, his eyes wide. No smile. No real recognition. No flicker on his face.

Hi.

I stared at the word, an enigma.

What was I supposed to write back? Hi? How are you? Remember when we were best friends, and I trailed you around like a lovesick puppy, so much so that people joked I was your stalker. Because I am, just so we are clear on that. Oh, and by the way, what was wrong with Myspace? I thought it was an excellent experiment in social interaction and accidentally made friends with Polish girls with enormous boobs.

I couldn’t deal with this.

It was one ‘hi’ too far. Grabbing my bag, I marched straight out into the open plan office. “Drinks are on me.”

I never did this anymore. Not since that Christmas, but what the hell, the way things were looking this could be the end of us soon anyway. The least I owed them was a drink. Or, two. Three.

Stewart from accounts lifted his head, a confused expression on his face. His gaze narrowed, his face scrunching up like a dog who’d been offered a chocolate bar but wasn’t sure if it was supposed to take it or not.

“What?” I asked him, rifling through the contents of my bag and checking that I had my purse with me.

He hesitated, shifting a little in his chair until his arse hovered two inches above the seat and it looked like he directed me an uncomfortable bow. “It’s only two in the afternoon.”