“Actually,” I say (I’ve practiced this bit), “I’m kind of taking a break from alcohol at the moment.”
He looks surprised for a split second before blinking it away. “No worries. What do you fancy instead?”
We don’t talk too much more until our mocktails have arrived and we’ve ordered courses one to three of a total of five. And then Max lifts his glass and says, “I loved getting messages from you. I’ve missed you being in my life, Luce.”
The abbreviation of my name feels flattering and intimate—like we’re right back in his room at halls, making out on his single bed, sharing a bottle of red wine so cheap it made us wince. Half-undressed, laughing into each other’s necks as friends knocked on his door, trying to track us down. We did a lot of that at uni: sneaking off together, hiding in darkened lecture theaters, behind buildings, in bathrooms with the lights off.I love you, Luce, he’d whisper, his mouth on mine, and I’d feel so frenzied I could barely say it back.
I smile and sip from my glass, hoping my face isn’t flushing with nostalgia.
“Hey, how was your interview?” he asks.
I fill him in, tell him I got the job.
“That’s incredible, Luce. Congratulations.” Max locks eyes with me, shaking his head, because he knows—he knows what this means to me, the chance to get to write for a living. It’s all I ever talked about the whole time I knew him at uni.
“Thank you.” I realize I’m fighting the urge to well up.
He raises his glass to mine. “Well, here’s to you. And your new life in London.” We both take a sip. “How are you finding it so far? Must feel pretty different to Shoreley.”
I lied a little when he called, told him my move had been in the works for a while. I couldn’t bear for him to think our meeting had influenced my decision at all.
Max visited me back home in Shoreley on just three occasions during university holidays, because the rest of the time he was either studying or doing internships. Max’s degree was one of those where the breaks were really just another form of study leave.
“I think different is what I need right now.” I mean, Max is right—Londonisa world away from Shoreley and particularly Tash’s place, where the stillness was so loud it sometimes buzzed. Here, silence is only a concept—it can’t be found, I’ve learned, because the rumble of the city is a stereo you can’t switch off, even at night. Rattling train tracks, sharp blasts of music, the commotion of voices. The city is a restless creature, but I’ve taken pleasure from its fitfulness. It has stirred me up, switched me on.
“Luce.” Max meets my eye. “Did you ever make it back to uni, to finish your degree?”
I shake my head. And then I find myself hesitating, because—despite everything—I want to tell him all about what happened after I left, including what went on with Nate. I feel as though he would understand, because he was always compassionate to a fault. It was Max who’d insist we demonstrate in support of good causes at uni, whovolunteered to make peace with our unreasonable neighbors on Dover Street, who stood up for someone in a law seminar if they expressed an unpopular opinion.
But as quickly as the right moment comes, it passes. And now, across the table, Max is grabbing my free hand with his.
I don’t flinch, trying not to let my mind travel back to that Friday night nearly a decade ago, when we were standing on the bridge over the river next to the railway station in Norwich. Max was heading home to Cambridge for the weekend. I can still picture him so clearly, in his favorite jeans with the scuffed knees, and oversized woolen coat. Our final autumn term had only recently begun, and it was pouring with rain.
“Please don’t go.” I was too numb at that point to even cry.
“I’m going to miss my train,” was all he said, his voice vague and watery.
I didn’t want to beg. I couldn’t. So I just watched him walk away, over the bridge and out of my life.
I take in his face now—those gray, searchlight eyes, the gentle beckon of his lips—and I am filled with sadness. For all the years we lost. For all we might have been. For everything that happened after our abrupt, inexplicable end.
“I know this is coming about ten years too late... but I’m so sorry, Lucy,” Max says, squeezing my hand like it’s the most natural thing in the world to do. In this moment, it would be easy to imagine we never broke up, because we’re carrying on pretty much where we left off. Which is enjoyable and confusing all at once—like reading a brilliant book with some of the pages missing. Or arriving at the cinema halfway through a really good film. “I wish things hadn’t ended the way they did.”
He loved me back then, and I knew it. Just the way my parents—only a year older than Max and I had been, when they met—felt it. They still feel it today. They’ll have been married thirty-four years this September.
Max was unlike any guy I’d known at school, or our other friends at uni. Effusive and expressive, he was vocal in his adoration of me, and eager for everyone to know it. He would flick bar snacks at the people who teased us—Married already?—before gripping my hand even tighter; would make a big show of kissing me in the middle of wherever we were. Pubs, roads, university corridors. We talked about our future all the time: moving in together, marriage, kids. We were bold enough—and sure enough—to want it all. It didn’t even feel fanciful. It just felt like... fact. We were meant to have met in that kitchen on our first day at uni, and we were destined not to leave each other’s side.
Until the night he ended it. Just like that.
I blamed myself at first—thought I’d demanded too much of him—but he kept saying it wasn’t that, that it wasn’t my fault.
Of course, it crossed my mind he’d met someone. Not at uni—I was fairly confident about that—but perhaps at the law firm he’d interned with over the summer. Maybe someone who’d be heading to London the following year too, to complete the LPC, the next step in qualification for aspiring lawyers.
And yet, despite everything, none of that really made sense. Max wasn’t a cheat, a liar. If he’d met someone else, he would have just told me. Wouldn’t he?
I look into his gray eyes now, heart drumming in my chest. I want to ask him again what was going through his mind when he broke it off that day in September nearly ten years ago. Was it just the classic fear of commitment he kept denying? But we’re in the middle of a nice restaurant—hardly the right setting for turning your heart inside out. Feeling tears crowd my eyes, I slide my hand out from beneath his as our starters arrive.
“Let’s talk about something else,” I say, swallowing my emotion away. “Tell me about your holiday.”
