Page 31 of The Reunion

‘I don’t think you know me half as well as you think you do, Lawal. And anyway – at least I’m not still swaggering about the school hallways like I own them.’

‘Please,’ Ryan scoffs, and, just like that, the tension shifts – returns to our usual back-and-forth. ‘If either of us felt some sense of entitlement to this place, it was you. Or do I need to remind you of the fact that you forced the school to display your certificate for that essay competition in the trophy cabinet?’

The words – the memory – make me jerk backwards. I’d forgotten all about it. Ryan can’t possibly have held some kind of grudge over that all this time? Just because I pointed out to the Head of Year how unfair it was to only display sporting accolades and not academic ones … Which, I totally stand by as an adult.

I cross my arms. ‘I won a national competition. You – what, kicked a ball better than the school down the road? Whoopee. Your glory days are long behind you; it’s a bit sad you’re still clinging to the memory of them, when I highly doubt any evidence still exists here. That trophy probably went in the bin before long.’

‘Oh, what, like they’ll have kept your award, because it was so much more important?’

I doubt that, too, but I just shrug one shoulder, rather than give him the satisfaction of being right.

One of his thick, dark eyebrows arches, pulling the side of his mouth up with it. ‘Want to bet?’

The tension is back with a vengeance, crackling like static before a lightning storm near my ears, and, suddenly, I cannot get back to the party soon enough. I’d take the humiliation of everybody else laughing at me for thinking I had a shot with Freddie over this. Anything but stay here and indulge him in a fight.

I’m not sure I’d win. But for now, at least, I have the last word.

‘What, you want to go wandering around the school just to see if they still have your old rugby trophy? Give me a break. Isn’t it time you grew up already?’

I make sure to shove him with my shoulder as I walk past, even if it doesn’t make him budge or stumble in the slightest, and almost definitely leaves me with a bruise. Damn rugby arms. Damn him.

Until he calls after me, when I’m nearly back to the doors to the hall. ‘Chicken. I should’ve known you’d still be the same stick-in-the-mud you always used to be.’

There’s no pretending I didn’t hear that, and I can’t bear to let him one-up me. I stop, turn on my heels and cross my arms. ‘I am not a stick-in-the-mud.’

He takes a long, loping stride closer, head tipped back slightly and a glimmer in his eyes that just smacks of triumph, and riles me up immediately. So like him to celebrate a victory when the fight’s still on.

‘Yes, you are. Boring, uptight … Pretending you’re better than everybody else.’

I move towards him. The corridor becomes a chessboard where we both only move in one direction; the difference is that he’s only a pawn, and I’m a queen. He just hasn’t realised that yet.

‘I’m not pretending. I am better than everybody else.’ Some of them, anyway. Him, specifically.

He steps closer again. ‘And too much of a goody two-shoes to break the rules.’

I come up level with him. Closer than before. His face is doing a weird thing I don’t usually see on Ryan, where he seems to be fighting a smile. If it’s a poker face, it’s a shitty one, and I elect to ignore it.

‘And yet, you’re the squeaky-clean politician who has to toe the line if he wants to keep his job.’ Checkmate. ‘Welcome to the stick-in-the-mud life, Ryan.’

I poke a finger into his torso to drive home the point, in the space just between his ribcage and his stomach. It’s a firm wall of muscle I try not to notice. Battle won and war still not over – because it’s never over, not between us – I snatch my hand back and, if I walk briskly enough, I’ll be back in the hall before he can come up with a retort better than ‘I know you are but what am I?’

But then …

Then he breaks the rules.

He catches my wrist as I move away, holding me in place.

And he winks.

‘Come on, Ash. For old times’ sake.’

And, fuck. I’m suckered right back in. I tell him, ‘Fine,’ even as I tell myself, Game on.

It’s … wholly uncomfortable. This whole thing. Him. Me.

This is far from the first time I’ve spent any time ‘alone’ with Ryan. There was many a time at school when we’d loiter in the corridors after the bell rang to bicker over something, usually to do with school council. One time we were so into it that it was a full hour after the buses home had all gone before we realised.

But this is different, and I don’t like it.

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