I close my eyes and stomp on the feelings threatening to return.
Friends,I murmur to myself.Friends.
I repeat it in my head until it sticks, then open the driver’s door and get in.
VIC
I glanceat Sean as I climb into the passenger seat of his Discovery. With Lucky staying with Hailey while we go to get the tree, it’s just the two of us. Have to say, when I got up this morning, this was not how I saw my day going. I glare at the house at the back of the pub, hoping Hailey can feel it through the brick because I know she’s set this up.
What she hopes to gain from it is beyond me.
Sean and I might have had a brief encounter years ago, but we’re strangers now. I know nothing about the man he is today, and he knows nothing about me. Yes, I find him hot. Who wouldn’t? But that doesn’t mean we can just jump right into where we left off when we were nineteen.
“So,” I say, shucking out of my coat and gloves and setting them on my lap.
He glances at me, as he takes his own coat off. “So?” He grabs mine and leans over to put them both on the back seat.
I get a waft of shower gel or aftershave. Whatever it is, it has me leaning a little closer before I catch myself. He smells good. Like the outdoors, somehow, and it suits him. He’s wearing a long-sleeved thermal, and it looks soft and warm, the dark grey making his eyes seem bluer somehow.
I want to touch it. Want to stroke a hand over the swell of his biceps and feel for myself. I sit back in my seat and snap my seatbelt on to prevent me from making a fool of myself. The silence threatens to return to the awkwardness of before and I decide to just jump right in. No point beating around the bush when we both know what’s coming. “You left,” I say, surprised by the whoosh in my stomach as I say the words. “And you never came back.”
He sighs, hands tightening around the steering wheel as he pulls out of the car park. “I did, yeah.”
“And you never told me why, not really.” I thought it would be hard to talk about after all this time, but apparently not as the words start to flood out. “You said we’d keep in touch, but when I tried, your replies got less frequent until they stopped altogether. Without so much as a goodbye.” My voice catches, the hurt in it loud and clear.Fuck’s sake. I thought I’d put this behind me years ago, but clearly I’m still a little bitter.
He sighs again, then curses under his breath. “I did that too.”
“Why?” I whisper, shifting in my seat so I can see him better. “If you didn’t want to talk to me anymore, you could’ve just said.”
“I know.”
“I really liked you,” I mutter, turning back to look out the window, frustrated. I thought we were finally going to clear the air, but he’s giving me nothing, and him just agreeing with everything I say is starting to irritate me. “How far is the Christmas tree place?” I ask, sullenly. The prospect of spending the next hour with him is no longer as appealing as it was.
“About five more minutes.” His fingers clench and release on the steering wheel, and he stares straight ahead. Just when I think we’re going to spend the rest of the drive in silence, he lets out the heaviest sigh I’ve ever heard. “I really liked you too,” he whispers, then glances over at me.
I see nothing but sincerity in his eyes, and the warmth in my chest is immediate. “What happened?” Despite it being ancient history, I’m suddenly desperate to know. “Why didn’t you come back, and why did you just stop replying to my messages?”
Three days might not seem a long time to fall for someone, but I’d liked him for ages before that. And those three days had been amazing. Well, at least they were for me. We’d clicked in a way I hadn’t experienced with anyone. Naively, I’d thought it meant something, and when it ended, I’d been gutted. But not only that. “I was worried,” I say when he doesn’t seem inclined to answer. I laugh and rub a hand over my eyes, feeling off-kilter all of a sudden. “I know it was fucking stupid, we hardly knew each other, but when I didn’t hear from you after, I thought something had happened to you.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and I realise with a jolt that we’ve come to a stop. He switches the engine off and turns to face me. “I was young, Vic. The bottom fell out of my world, and it was all too much and too sudden. I had to go home and I didn’t have the time or the headspace to deal with anything else. Including you.”
Oh.
I’m not sure what I was hoping to hear, but knowing that he experienced something awful doesn’t make me feel better. I think I’d rather he’d just got bored with me, than that. I glance down at my hands, not sure I can face whatever expression he’s wearing now.
I feel stupid for making a big deal out of something that he probably never thought twice about. Embarrassed isn’t a strong enough word for me right now. I glance out through the windscreen, at the rows and rows of Christmas trees waiting to be cut down and carted away.
“Hey.” A warm, strong hand grips my chin and Sean gently turns my head to face him. “That weekend we spent together was amazing and intense, and when I left your room, I had every intention of coming back the very next day.” He smiles as he drags his thumb over my stubbled jaw, and my pulse kicks up a notch. “I’d never felt like that before... or since.” He says the last bit so quietly, I wonder if I was supposed to hear it. “But fate had other ideas.” He lets go of me and it takes all my willpower not to grab his hand as he sits back in his seat.
It’s been nineteen years since I’ve felt his touch, and yet it still sets my body on fire.
Fuck.
I want to push for more, to ask what happened that took him away from London and kept him away.
Away from me.
But I sense he’s said all he’s going to say. We’ve reached a sort of truce, and I don’t want to ruin that. “Okay,” I say, like I’m drawing a line under the past, and hope he gets my meaning. I’ve held on to this for way too long, whether I realised it or not, and it’s time for me to let it go. I hold out a hand. “Friends?”
