Page 48 of If We Were Young

“You were kissing some guy, God knows who. It doesn’t matter now; I can see that. I’ve been harbouring all this anger that you let me down, but it was stupid. I mean we were never anything to each other apart from friends, were we, Ronnie?”

His dark gaze lingered on my lips.

I couldn’t get my mouth to work. What was I supposed to say?

“Matthew.” I swallowed around his name. “I never kissed anyone else at uni. The only person I ever came near to kissing was—”

“I saw you. You were wearing that awful bright-pink fluffy jacket.”

“No. Angela borrowed it.” I dragged in a deep breath. “I remember because I froze as I ran all the way home once you broke my heart.”

He ran a rueful hand through his hair, his facial expression uncontrolled with open shock. “Angela?” His gaze trained on some distant spot out of the window.

“Yes.”

His sigh echoed mine.

Oh God. “You’ve been hating me for fifteen years?” It hurt, deep down in my gut. “Fifteen years I’ve been wondering why you never called, why you forgot about me, and it’s because you were angry with me.”

His handsome face with the high cheekbones and the dark brows, winced. “Fuck.”

“That’s what you said that night too.”

His face marred with excruciating agony, his attention still focused out of the window. He was watching the past; I could almost see the reflection of it in his eyes.

I didn’t know what to say. Not because I didn’t have the words, but because I genuinely didn’t know what was happening. Everything seemed alien, foreign. The past rewrote itself around us as we sat in his car.

In my chest, that aching hole left from that night singed around the edges. Fifteen years was a really long time to be angry with someone.

“You should have asked me.” I hiked in a breath. “You should have asked me, Matthew.”

He nodded and then turned. I swallowed at the intensity of his gaze. “I should get you home.”

I nodded and it hurt. I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to sit in his car by his side. My insides twisted and turned in recognition of knowing I could sit by his side and talk for hours, but also knowing that those days were long past.

Why didn’t he ask me? He’d just turned and told me to fuck off. So rude and hurtful, spiteful.

Why didn’t he ask me?

“Take me home, please.”

He nodded, and then we drove; a silent word war taking place between us. Every so often he caught my menacing and never-ending mental tirade with a side eye. “Left here, please.”

He gripped the steering wheel, his lips muttering slightly, and I shot him a glance which he snatched with a glare of his own.

Yeah well, buddy, you aren’t the only one angry now. “Right now, please.”

We both breathed like bulls in the ring. “Just here on the right.”

The car idled.

I held my breath as he reached over and opened the door. Then I breathed in deep in case I never got to inhale greedy mouthfuls of the leather and mint again. Which I wouldn’t.

This really was it.

It was that moment on the doorstep all over again. Except this time, it really was goodbye.

This was beyond repair and I knew there was no friendship left. It really had ended those fifteen years ago. A stupid friendship that was never meant to be.