Page 29 of The Reunion

‘I mean, you used to be so …’ He pulls a grossed-out face. ‘You know? But now, you’re so …’ He puffs out his cheeks, blows out a long breath, eyes me up and down and waggles his eyebrows for good measure. ‘You know?’

And to think, he really believes this works.

He sweeps a hand over his hair and starts regaling me with the story of that time he scored the winning try in a school rugby match as if it wasn’t twelve years ago and as if I cared even back then. Does he realise how insufferable he is? This laddish attitude might’ve appealed to some girls when he was a teenager, but surely it can’t actually woo women now? The man is a child. A toddler. He’s a walking advert for weaponised incompetence, I’d stake my life on it.

‘But, like, obviously I hit up the gym a few times a week,’ he’s saying, and I don’t know how we got here but also, don’t care. He steps closer and places a hand behind my head against the poster of Bryony from the yearbook, taped up on the notice board. The paper crinkles as Freddie positions himself up close, side on, his torso pushing against my arm. ‘Do you work out?’

It’s such a line that I laugh, because, God, does this buffoon hear himself?

My eyes land straight ahead to the dance floor, where Ryan is dancing with Bryony and paying her no attention, because he’s looking this way. Staring hard, mouth in a tense line, jaw clenched.

Is he mad that I’ve stolen his friend’s attention, proved myself worthy of it somehow when he always deemed me so beneath them all? Good. I want him to know how wrong he was about me.

Because I’m the bigger person, I don’t give him the middle finger – but I’m not above turning to Freddie with a false, flirty smile and laying my hand on his measly bicep and giving it a squeeze.

‘Not much,’ I finally answer him. ‘Maybe you could give me some tips. Show me a proper workout, sometime.’

Eyes widening, he shifts a bit more in front of me. ‘I could definitely show you a few things, Ash. Yeah. Sounds good. Do you have Snapchat?’

I weep for the women unlucky enough to swipe right on this idiot’s dating profile. Truly, I do.

But I just know Ryan is still watching, and other people must be, too, and I don’t want to lose face. I can’t prove him right by chickening out – have them all know I’m still a square and boring and unsexy and drab. So what if Freddie Loughton wants to flirt with me and so what if I end up snogging him? He wouldn’t be the first guy I kissed on a night out just because, even if I wasn’t totally into him.

Anyway, tonight, I’m a cool girl, the it girl, the envy of everybody, and if this were ten years ago, that kind of girl would die for the chance to kiss Freddie Loughton.

I’m debating my response – I do not want to give this man my number, but neither am I about to download Snapchat for him – when there’s a high-pitched squeal and a body slides right in between us, so close and moving so fast that my bra is knocked askew.

Bryony has sandwiched herself right in between us, her hip knocking me backwards and out of the way as she sidles up to Freddie and manoeuvres him slightly away from the wall, so she’s now the one he’s caging in. She blanks me completely, not so much as acknowledging my existence, as she bats her eyes up at him.

‘Oh my God, Freddie, I totally missed you on the dance floor! You have to dance with me – you were always so good! You’ve still got moves, haven’t you?’

I stand there, stunned by her behaviour, but Freddie doesn’t seem to care that I’ve been replaced – is only interested in the warm female body fawning over him right now. His attention is stolen completely.

Which, really, is Bryony’s MO. She always wanted to be the centre of it all.

I shouldn’t be so surprised that she couldn’t even stomach me having a sliver of spotlight for just one night, ten years on, but still – it stings. It’s a rejection after her early display of friendship and affection, and, worse, there are even more eyes on us now. Her voice fucking carries. She makes such a spectacle of herself doing just about anything, and this is no exception.

I notice a couple of boys pointing and some girls snickering behind their hands, and I hope the heat in my cheeks isn’t as obvious to all of them as it is to me. I hope they can’t see it written all over my face, or the tears that threaten, prickling at the backs of my eyes.

‘Come on, big boy,’ Bryony is saying, her hands pressed flat to his chest as she pushes him back towards the dance floor, her body already twisting in smooth, sultry motions in time with the music. ‘You don’t want to waste your time over here. Show me what you’ve got.’

The second they’re out of the way, I make a beeline for the exit.

I don’t rush, don’t hunch my shoulders, don’t let my expression shift from the bored one I school it into on instinct.

Not that I’m running away. And not that I’m about to hide in the toilets for a quick, angry cry like I used to have to do sometimes between school council meetings and biology lessons, because I’m not seventeen fucking years old anymore. I’m an adult, and an emotionally mature one with a grip on herself at that.

But something about this reaction makes me feel so much more like myself than who I was ten minutes ago. I’ve spent the night peacocking for these people I don’t even think about most of the time, and certainly won’t think about much after tonight is over.

I guess I got too caught up in my new popular-girl mystique and this burning need for validation.

And I can’t even blame that on Ryan. I’ve been parading and performing for everybody; he’s bottom of the list of people to impress, because it’s always been easier to think of him as someone whose shoulders I can stamp on to lift myself up.

Which is mean, and petty, and an irrefutable fact.

Am I always this bad? Or do these people – this school – just bring it out in me, now that I’ve grown up and moved on, left them all in the dust?

With the hall and the music and the party and all my self-centred, careless old classmates firmly behind me, I falter to a stop outside the cloakrooms and an impulse roots deep in the pit of my stomach that cries out for me to just go. Walk away – an Irish goodbye, how glamorously dramatic it would look, too – and call a taxi and go back to my hotel, maybe get a chippy tea on the way and then polish off that and the rest of my hip flask of tequila from the comfort of a plush hotel bed. How dreamy that sounds, rather than wringing myself out just to prove to everybody how fantastic my life is.

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