Page 16 of When We Are Old

“Okay.” He grinned, eyes shining. “I’m in your bubble.”

I laughed and my chest lightened. “My bubble is growing.”

Mother and Daughter

Ronnie

“So, are you officially dating?” Hannah ripped a bagel into shreds and scattered them onto her plate.

“You actually have to eat some of that, you know? It doesn’t magically transport into your stomach.” I cast a critical eye over her. She’d seemed better the last couple of weeks—a little less stompy and Godzilla like—but I didn’t trust it. No, I didn’t trust it at all.

“And you can’t avoid questions.” She shot me a look so disparaging, she could only have learnt it from my mother.

“Maybe I can avoid them if they are questions you aren’t supposed to ask. I’m the grown-up remember?”

Her eye roll said it all.

“So do I get to meet him?”

“Who?” My voice wobbled, squeaking and then deepening until I sounded like a teenage boy on the cusp of dropping his balls.

“Oh, Mum. Give it up. You chased him down the street, got stuck on a train to Scotland, and since you got home your face has been varying shades of what Annabelle calls, ‘I soooo like him' red."

“You’re thirteen. You girls aren’t supposed to be talking about boys. Or… Liking. Anyone. Ever.”

She smirked. “This is tactical avoidance. We learned about it in PHSE.”

“In what? What's PHSE?”

“Anyway. So, Mr Scotland…”

“You mean Matthew?”

“Oooh,” she made a kissing noise, “Matthew.”

It wasn’t so much I didn’t want to talk about him, because I did, obsessively forever. I could talk about, dream about, fantasize about that man until the earth stopped turning. But at the same time, I didn’t want to freak her out.

Cool, calm, and collected. That’s what I needed to be right now. I was the grown up. I could control this situation.

“What about him?” I couldn’t help it. My heart flapped inside my ribcage at the mere mention of his name, and a red-hot rash spread up my throat and along my face, prickling my skin a shade of deep red. I could see myself in the stainless-steel splashback of the cooker—I’d morphed into a five-foot beetroot. Clearing my throat, I flicked a glance at the clock and then shivered all over when I knew he’d call soon.

Why was Scotland so far away? It wasn’t fair. We’d wasted so much time being angry with each other last week when he rented the apartment around the corner. I could have been strolling around there now, knocking on the door, asking to be let in…

Hannah coughed loudly. “Earth to Mother.”

“Sorry.” I shook my head to clear my spiralling thoughts.

“Welllllll?” She rolled her hand with her consonant. “You haven’t said anything since you got home. What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” Come on Ronnie. You can style this one out.

“So are you dating?”

“I don’t know.” Total truth. “We didn’t really talk about it.” Or actually very much at all—I don’t need to tell her that though.

“Tell me what happened and then I can help you decide.” She tucked her legs up onto the kitchen chair and settled with her arms hooked over her knees.

My face burned far beyond ‘I so like him' red. “Uh. We talked.” If talking is done without words and using lips and hands as the main source of communication.