Page 18 of A Lifetime of Afters
When Harley brought him up in conversation, I squirreled away every tidbit of information. She worried about him, said he seemed fragile somehow. Brittle.
My heart ached for him. I would have gladly been there for him, but he didn’t want me.
I listened, I asked questions, but I never started those conversations.
This, us being together like friends, felt both new and old. I wanted more of it.
“You want to play chess?”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Backgammon. I seem to remember you were the chess champion at school.”
“Well,” I huffed, teasing him. “Not all of us could be popular jocks.”
He snorted out a laugh. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. I was lucky. Most of the people in that circle peaked in grade twelve and it’s been downhill for them ever since.”
With the game board set up on the coffee table between us, the fire crackling beside us, and our drinks in front of us, we reverted back to the well-established patterns from our childhoods. Gentle teasing, fierce competition.
I won the first game tidily. The second proved to be more difficult. Probably due to Harley’s wine coolers. Those things had always been a weakness of mine. They tasted like the Kool-Aid from my childhood and went down much the same way.
“Getting me inebriated and claiming a victory is morally repugnant,” I groused.
Straight white teeth flashed in his beard a second before he threw his head back and laughed. “Morally repugnant?” he teased. “I offered you a drink. One. Any more are on you.”
I held up the bottle and eyed the inch or so left in the bottom. “It’s just that they taste so good. And the more I drink, the better they taste.”
“Yes, well, I think I’m going to cut you off now.” He stood and held his hand out for my bottle.
I tipped my head back and held his eyes while I drained it. Stormy eyes. As changeable as the Irish sea, as my mother used to say.
Passing him my empty bottle, I challenged, “Truth or dare?”
He laughed again, that raucous burst of joyful noise I didn’t realize until that moment had been missing from my life. When he looked back down at me only to see a small smile on my face, he chuckled in surprise. “Oh, you’re serious?”
“As a heart attack,” I asserted.
“Okay,” he replied carefully, placing my empty back down on the table before sitting back down.
Swinging my legs over the arm of the large chair I’d claimed, I lay back and watched him.
Sitting on the middle seat of his massive couch, he leaned forward, elbows resting on his spread knees, eyes to the floor. He tapped the tips of his long fingers together.
I waited. Unwilling to let him off the hook. After all this time, I deserved an answer. An explanation. Even if I didn’t deserve it, I wanted it.
Finally, he leaned back and stretched his arms along the back of the couch. “Truth.”
Excellent.“At one time, I thought you were interested in me. Was I wrong?”
“No.”
I blinked at the baldness of his reply. ‘No.’
One word. A single syllable.
Two tiny letters.
My world shifted.
“Why didn’t you pursue me?”
