Page 44 of If We Were Young

“Once.” A snap of a bark that threatened to make me crumble.

My chest crushed; a spring petal smashed underfoot.

“Why are you so angry with me? If anything…” I stopped. Too late.

“If anything…” He rolled his hand again, and I wanted to bite it off like a feral dog.

“I should be angry with you. The last time we saw each other you were so rude to me, appallingly so, and that was it, three years of friendship over. But now you sit there like…”

“Like…?” Did he not want his hand?

I gnashed my teeth and spat out, “Like I hurt you.” It was ludicrous to even say it. He was the one who hurt me.

“Listen, Matthew. I’m sorry if the fact I couldn’t speak that night, couldn’t get the words right has upset you, but surely you don’t still think about that? You’ve been living a pretty amazing life. Look at you, the CEO of a huge company. Neither of us are who we once were.”

There’s no way he could think of that night the way I did. That moment of being suspended on the doorstep. Stuck between what I wanted and what I thought was the right thing to do, unable to articulate either.

His gaze intensified; heaven fell to earth as the blue melded with black. “I thought we’d be friends all our lives, regardless of how you responded to my half-hearted suggestion of something more.” He was all minor chords now, rolling hills and subtle but steady rain.

The booming pound in my chest threatened to swallow me within its beat. I’d become one with the sound. Never ending, I’d roll with it unable to break out of its grasp.

“You asked me if I ever thought about if we could be anything more.” I withered away on the inside, drying like a desert about to be blown apart by a stiff breeze. “And I said…” I stuttered. “I didn’t know.”

Stupid words. Stupid, stupid words.

My memory skipped to later that night, flashing lights, and a packed dance floor. “And then you told me to fuck off, which was incredibly ungallant of you.”

His fist curled, but I ignored it. His face etched into a mask of fury, his eyes blazing, but I wouldn’t stop now.

I was talking.

“So, if anything, I should be angry at you for being the rudest arsehole I’ve ever met. You fooled me for three years. Three bloody years of me thinking you were unlike anyone else I knew: sincere, sweet, noble. Three years and then for you to just turn to me like that and say that, like I was nothing to you.”

His fist landed on the table. “That’s not how it was at all.”

“Oh please. Don’t you…”

He stood, pushing back from the table. “I don’t think this is helping anything.”

“Well we aren’t saving your company, are we?” My chest heaved with an empty ache.

His eyes dimmed to almost black. “No, we aren’t.”

Silently, he picked up his jacket and walked for the door and I fell back in my chair, not realising I’d perched so far forward as we spoke. I hurt at the absence of him in the room. The bang of his fist on the table seemed to echo, remaining in the place he’d sat. That wasn’t how it was at all? Well it was; that’s exactly how I remembered it. I’d never forgotten it. Never gotten over it no matter how much I tried.

My outburst would have been almost soul cleansing if it hadn’t hurt so much.

I wiped at a tear as it slipped along my cheek and left a hot sticky trail in its wake. He’d broken my heart that night. I’d been foolish to hold on to the heartbreak for so long.

Still, I’d said it now.

I could let it go now.

“He’s so rude.” My palm pressed into my face, holding my head up. I knew I’d sat in the same position too long and would have a red mark that would look like slap-cheek syndrome.

“He really doesn’t like you.” Natalie looked like she sympathised. “He’s so incredibly hot, but you know what they say, perfect on the outside, rotten on the in.”

She was so right. That’s how he was now. “No.” I waved my hand, just like he did earlier. Sarcastic and offensive. “No, he really does not like me.”