Page 15 of The Reunion

Not nostalgia, I decide. It’s still there.

Freddie stops to face the two of us. He brushes some of his heavily styled sandy hair back even though it’s so full of product that not even a rainstorm could budge it. ‘So what’re you guys up to these days?’

I tell him that I’m a paralegal and studying part time; Shaun says he’s in HR, but thinking about looking for a new job since there’s not much progression available in his current company. Freddie, it turns out, works in investment banking in Manchester.

‘Do you like it there?’ I ask politely.

‘Can’t complain,’ he says. ‘Work with some right arseholes, but the money’s good.’

I pinch my lips and notice Shaun giving me a sidelong look. He’s busy trying not to laugh – probably thinking the same thing as me: that it sounds like Freddie fits right in with the other alleged arseholes in his office.

‘Did you bring anyone along tonight?’ I ask then, because he’s still standing around with us.

‘Huh? Oh, nah. The bird I’m seeing, it’s just casual. This isn’t her scene.’

‘Oh. How long have you been with her?’

He shrugs. ‘Since September.’

Shaun’s tone is dry when he says, ‘Only ten months or so then. Very casual.’

It goes right over Freddie’s head. He grins and raises his drink. ‘Exactly, mate. You get it. I mean—’ A laugh bursts out of him, and his eyes dart down to the diamond sparkling on my left hand, visible where my fingers are wrapped around my cup. ‘Only took you, what, ten years to put a ring on it. You get it.’

I flush. ‘Oh, no, that’s not—’

And Shaun is saying, ‘Er, we aren’t actually—’

Freddie slings his arm around my shoulder though, with a camaraderie we have never shared and which makes me stumble a little now. ‘Ah, you two were always a cute pair. Bae goals. You’ve got a real keeper on your hands here, Shaun, mate. Don’t let her get away. My old French buddy, huh?’

I brace myself for the inevitable ‘oral’ joke, a reflex honed and never quite forgotten, it seems, and note with surprise that Freddie has kept hold of those inconsequential, unremarkable memories of school, too.

He doesn’t bother with the joke for once, though, and Shaun seems stunned into silence by his words. Neither of us put Freddie right when he meanders back off to where Ryan is holding court in the middle of the hall, surrounded by people eager for a piece of him. I should go and say hello, too, but I don’t want to be a pest, or interrupt anything.

We both stand quietly as Freddie leaves, and then I hear the heavy rush of breath as Shaun exhales. I look over in time to see his shoulders sag, and he draws his gaze up to meet mine. There’s a sadness in those eyes that hits a nerve, calls out to the ache buried deep in my heart where he used to take up so much space, and all I can do is stare back at him and think, I know.

The song changes; someone shrieks with laughter nearby. Reality beckons.

‘Um, right,’ I mumble. ‘I suppose I ought to—’

At the same time, Shaun says, ‘He’s right.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Freddie. He’s right. You were a real keeper, Steph.’

‘I—’

I don’t know what to say to that. I don’t know what I can say to that, because there’s a niggle of doubt about what he truly means. That he shouldn’t have let me go? Or is it merely an acknowledgement that what we had was good, back when? I think I know which it is, but … I know that replying to it will be dangerous. The words sound like a promise; the truth is, they’re a grenade.

And then Josh is calling to him, beckoning him over to go help with the pizzas that have just arrived, and Shaun gives me a small, sorry smile before he leaves me standing there with my thumb trapped on the trigger, and the potential to implode everything simmering underneath the surface.

Chapter Nine

Hayden

‘Most Likely to Succeed’

I, for one, think I have been extremely successful in socialising tonight. And, more impressively, have not screamed in anybody’s face when they express sympathy for the turn my life took after school. It’s also nearly an hour and a half into the evening, and I’m still here.

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