Page 25 of The Reunion

‘Oh! That’s nice. Is she quite artistic, too?’

‘I mean, I wouldn’t say some of those art girls were exactly masters of the craft,’ I deadpan, remembering the showcase they did in Year Thirteen that me and the boys were harangued into attending after school one day, because a couple of Steph’s friends were involved, and Josh had a crush on one of them. Steph smiles politely, not quite laughing at their expense but not disagreeing, either. ‘Aisha works in PR. She did a fine art degree, too.’

‘Wow! Gosh, isn’t that fab? She works for a makeup brand, doesn’t she?’

‘Yeah. Always coming home with freebies. She’s even got me into a skincare routine, and now I don’t know how I ever coped without it.’

Steph laughs. ‘That’s a far cry from when you used to trail around the shops with me and no matter how many times you asked, you never quite understood why I needed cleanser or how moisturiser was different from makeup remover.’

‘I’ve received a pretty thorough education since then.’

‘Does she enjoy it there, then? Is that what she wants to do? Not that she shouldn’t want to, I mean, it’s just that she’s a couple of years older than us, isn’t she? So I thought maybe this was, you know, her big plan, but that’s a bit unfair of me to assume …’

To save Steph from herself, I say gently, ‘Yeah, she likes it. She’s happy there for now, but she’s not especially attached to the company or the industry. If the right role came up somewhere else …’

‘Oh, that makes sense. How did you two meet?’

It’s on the tip of my tongue to say, I don’t want to talk about Aisha, but I choke back the words and swallow them, hating myself for even thinking them. But this whole party feels so confined, so surreal, a piece of nostalgia carved out for one night and one night only, and I know that when we leave, Steph and I will default back to polite comments on the other’s life updates we bother to share on Facebook, and something about that feels like it would rob us of …

I don’t know. Maybe not more, but …

After everything we were to each other, after the way tonight has already proven that connection is still there, it feels like we owe it to our younger selves to have a proper, real conversation. We were so respectful of giving the other space after our break-up, there must be so much left unsaid.

And I know we can’t hide out in the library all night long, but it feels too blunt to treat this like a meeting with a set agenda. And we’re not hiding, per se, or anything else, so voicing the fact that it feels like there’s a time limit on this will only add to the feeling that something about this is … seedy.

Which it isn’t, so I just say, ‘Dating app, actually. And here we are. How about Curtis? You guys met at work, right?’

Steph stands up straight, shoulders squared, giving off the impression that she’s in a job interview. ‘We didn’t get to know each other properly for ages. For months it was just a case of saying hello if we walked past each other or smiling if we were in the lift at the same time, or a bit of small talk if we were both getting coffee …’

‘Since when do you drink coffee?’ I blurt, and immediately cringe. ‘Sorry. Just, uh … You always used to say the smell made you feel sick. Gave you a headache.’

‘I used to think olives were gross, too,’ she says with a smile, though her eyes are downcast. ‘And now I always order them for the table when I’m out with people.’

I want to ask her when she discovered that she liked coffee. If it was out of necessity for the caffeine to see her through early commutes and less a ‘liking’ than a habit, or if it grew on her gradually until she dared herself to try a cup and realised her tastes had changed. I want to know the ins and outs of the story, the way I used to know every scrap of arbitrary information about what made her Steph.

But it’s not my place, and we don’t owe each other that anymore.

Then I notice her bite the inside of her cheek and see the little wriggle she does, like it’s a story and explanation she’s talking herself out of telling me. I wish she wouldn’t. I don’t know how to tell her I want to hear it.

‘Anyway,’ she says, before I can prompt her about her newfound liking for coffee, ‘one day the machine in the office wasn’t working and he did a Starbucks run for a few people, and brought me one even though I hadn’t asked. We just started talking more after that, and … It just … happened, I suppose.’

‘That’s nice.’

God, what a paltry bloody response. Nice. It sounds hollow and empty, even if I mean it sincerely. Even if it’s hard to imagine Steph falling for some guy who bought her a Starbucks, because I’m so stuck on the image of her pulling a face, nauseated, from the mere mention of the brand.

We lapse into quiet and I know she must be thinking about how disingenuous I sound, what a crappy thing it was to say. I bet it’s made me come across as some sort of weird, bitter ex, but if I try to address that, I’ll probably just dig myself a deeper hole.

This was probably a bad idea all around. Maybe she doesn’t have anything left unsaid, nothing she wants to talk about, and I’m not sure what to say now I’m faced with the opportunity, the silence and the privacy. I want to apologise but I’m not sure what for, since we’re both happy and have moved on with our lives, and I worry that whatever comes out of my mouth next will sound false and shallow in the wake of ‘that’s nice’.

But then she looks at me, eyes sparkling, and says, ‘I got a job in the campus coffee shop in my second year, doing a few hours a week. I thought it would be a nice way to make some more friends, and …’ Her face screws up tightly and her laugh is embarrassed and hearty. ‘Oh, it was so silly. Me and my best friend I’d made from halls in first year, we both got jobs there because we thought it’d be a good way to find a boyfriend. Not that we ever had the nerve to write our number on a cup if we did serve a cute guy. But it seemed like a really good fantasy at the time. I think I’d gotten accustomed to the smell a bit more from generally being on campus and stuff, so it didn’t seem so awful when I got the job. Anyway, I only really got into drinking it after a bad night out.’

‘How do you mean?’

Steph winces, pulling a face at me that smacks of sticky nightclub floors and day-long hangovers. ‘Too many Jägerbombs. And I mean, way too many. I don’t even remember what we were celebrating, but I know two of my friends had to basically carry me home because I was in such a state that none of the taxis would take me. I couldn’t face a Red Bull when it got to exam season and at that point, a cappuccino seemed like the lesser of two evils. It was a lot nicer than I thought; I remember being very pleasantly surprised.’

A grin splits my face. ‘I can’t imagine you getting into such a state. You’d barely touch a cider if we went to a party.’

‘It was very much a one-time thing, believe me. I’m still not a very big drinker even now.’

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