Page 6 of If We Were Young

“Ange! You can’t say things like that.” I held in a growl of frustration. “This is easy for you. You’re ‘Angela’.” I air quoted her name. It’s just her: Angela. “You slept your way through university and revelled in it. Hell, there wasn’t a person on campus who didn’t know who you were.” Ange smirked at me, but I didn’t give her a gap to launch into a sordid tale I probably didn’t want to know. “I wasn’t like that, was I? Remember? I was the shy one who never put her hand up.”

“No… You were the one who spent three long, and can I say fucking repetitive, years obsessing about the same guy.”

She doesn’t mean to do it, because she doesn’t know, but her words punched into the depths of my Matthew vault.

Matthew.

Matthew.

Him.

With an excruciating lungful of air, I stood, and then blew it in another misted breath on the glass in front of the hotel bathroom mirror.

Then I said it, “He will be bald and fat.” I didn’t just say it. I almost shouted it. I made it rattle in my soul hoping that the words would imprint on my psyche, lest I should ever forget the possibility that he could be bald and fat now.

“Ha! See, and even if he isn’t, it shouldn’t bother you. It’s been fifteen years for Christ’s sake.”

Wincing, I lifted the edge off my memory box. “I’m not an expert on such things, Ange. But I don’t think he was built to go bald and fat.”

“Are you kidding me? With that hairline he’ll be lucky if he’s not sporting a full peninsula by now.”

Bless her, she tried to make me feel better, but her little white lies just made it worse. Last time I saw him he was twenty-one and so beautifully perfect he somehow imprinted himself onto my retina so that all I could ever see was him.

“You’ve got that look on your face again.”

“What look?” I glanced in the mirror, only seeing fine lines and under eye bags.

“The ‘Matthew and me’ look.”

“Shut up. I have not.”

You see, you can whittle the problem about Matthew and me down to one painful and desperate truth. That there was never a Matthew and me.

It went something like, ‘Matthew and… oh look there’s his sad side-kick, Ronnie’.

Just him.

It was a depressing truth of my life. The problem of Matthew and not me.

Ange laughed and then pushed me out of the way of the mirror and smoothed her fingertips over her perfect skin. “Exactly! He wasn’t even there last time. He was too busy living his corporate high life. I don’t know why you’ve got your panties in such a twist.” She paused and pouted her scarlet-stained lips at the mirror. “I really need a cigarette. You’re killing me here. I’ve only had five smokes all day because you’re a certified flight risk.”

“It’s about time you gave up. The day my mother expresses her concern, you know it’s bad.” I extended the truth. I think the words had been, ‘Hopefully she will smoke herself to death’.

“This reunion is a waste of our time. We could have been out having some real fun. I hardly get to see you these days.” I crossed my fingers behind my back. Since Ange had moved to Scotland for work, our girls night outs had whittled to monthly instead of fortnightly. This would get me out of the reunion if nothing else would.

She laughed in my face. “Oh no, I’m not falling for it.” For a moment her face dropped into a rare serious expression and her hands landed on my shoulders. “Ronnie. You need this. You’ve been living in the past for too long.” She peered at me closer and I cringed a little. Sometimes I thought she could read my mind. Her and Ma were similar in more ways than I’d like to admit. “I don’t know what it is,” she peered closer until we were almost nose to nose (mind reading positioning at its most efficient), “but Paul died and then this ridiculous thing you’ve always had for Matthew came back worse than ever.”

“Ange…”

“Darling, you need to see him so you can realise he’s an utter spineless dickhead and then you and I can get back to our normality.”

I stretched a smile on my lips. “What’s normality?”

“You doing whatever it is you do in that office of yours.”

“You don’t even know, do you?” A laugh built up in my throat.

“You draw pretty pictures and look at that fit Fred’s arse?”