Page 65 of The Reunion

We stare at each other for the longest time. Another beep-boop sequence sounds in the span it takes us to gawp, and gape, and blink, and let it all settle in: how close we were to kissing each other, that we both wanted that kiss, that it would have involved both of us cheating on our partners …

And, that the fire alarm is currently blaring at full volume behind us, more aggressive than I ever remember it being. There’s a tinny, artificial layer to the sound that I feel in my teeth, and Shaun looks visibly panicked at the noise.

‘That’s the fire alarm,’ he shouts over it.

‘Yes!’ I shout back. I bend down to pick up my bag, even though you’re not supposed to do that. How many fire drills did we go through at school where the teachers told us to leave all our things behind? One time, we ended up shivering in the rain without coats or umbrellas. Morgan got a cold and her mum came in to shout at the Head of Year about it.

But, still, I collect my bag and use the opportunity to turn my face away from Shaun. In fact, I angle my entire body away from him. My heart is in my throat, although I don’t believe that has anything to do with the grating noise beep-booping away on the other side of our little stoop, or even worry about a potential fire somewhere in the building. I feel my usual, more pragmatic side returning, as if a layer of ice has been coating it all this time and now melts away. Most likely, one of the rugby lads has slipped out of the party and pulled it for a joke. Hiro did do that once, during a mock GCSE exam. And I can’t hear screaming – just distant, firm shouting, that reminds me of a teacher calling a class to order as they’re ushered outside.

So my racing pulse, the vice-like grip around my lungs, the acrid taste in my mouth … I know that’s all down to what almost happened with Shaun.

And …

I consider it for a moment, use these few precious seconds alone to weigh the tumult of emotions coursing through me, to see what rises to the surface above everything else. Disappointment? Guilt?

It’s … relief.

Followed very quickly, of course, by a crushing wave of guilt, and a montage of memories from recent years.

‘Here,’ Curtis said, and handed over one of the Starbucks cups from the paper tray balanced carefully in his large, square palms, and it made me blush because I realised how much attention I accidentally paid to his hands whenever I saw him working the office coffee machine. Stunned at the coffee he brought me that I didn’t ask for, I took it and said thank you, and that straightforward smile he always had looked so strange. A little bit shy, I thought, if I didn’t know better. And didn’t he maintain eye contact for just a beat too long, there?

‘How are you so bad at this?’ I laughed while a bowling ball clattered – yet again – down the length of the gutter, and all ten pins remained standing. Curtis looked equal parts infuriated and baffled, but it was all carried with a good-natured sigh and a mutter that he was just letting me win … and absolutely, categorically, wasn’t only just used to bowling with his niece and always having the bumpers up.

‘Do you like it?’ he asked, and there it was again: the flicker of nervousness in a face that always looked so sure whenever I saw him around the office. In court, he could deliver closing statements like the course of entire lives didn’t depend on how good he was at his job, but here he was, so hopeful and worried over the Valentine’s dinner he planned for us in his apartment, with rose petals scattered and white pillar candles lit.

The tickle of a beard and moustache that one time he participated in Movember and the fit of giggles I was in when he finally let me shave it off, and we kept cutting it into funny shapes that ended with a Magnum PI look, and the so-bad-it-was-good impression he did. The warm arms wrapped around me on the sofa in an evening, and the tissue he would silently pass me when he knew I was about to cry at the movie we were watching. The pack of pastel-pink flashcards he ordered online for me when I started studying to gain more qualifications, and the wink he gave me when he produced a set of matching highlighters from his back pocket, and my all-too-childish squeal of delight over something so simple, that meant so much to me.

The giddy bliss. ‘Yes!’ I screamed, and he laughed, because he hadn’t even finished asking me to marry him, hadn’t even opened the ring box yet, but I was already launching myself at him to kiss him.

I can’t smile over the flood of memories; they come hard and fast, snatching my breath, and leaving me only with the confusion and shame at the idea that just moments ago, I was about to kiss another man.

Is all of that really a mistake? Not real enough? Is it worth throwing away, for the first boy I fell in love with?

Those aren’t questions I have time to answer right now, though, because my attention is stolen by Shaun shaking the door with more force than is really necessary to open it, and the sensation of something being wrong settles cold and heavy in the pit of my stomach.

‘Shit. Shit!’ He mutters under his breath and heaves on the door handle again. It jostles in the frame, but doesn’t give way.

‘What’s happened? What’s going on?’

He steps back with a sigh, tossing a hand at the offending door in exasperation. ‘It’s …’ He groans, bending forward with both hands braced on his knees, and he laughs dryly. ‘Remember they used to have a brick that always propped this door open? Like, always, even when it was freezing cold or bucketing down with rain?’

‘Yes,’ I say, and my eyes scan automatically over the shadows that now consume us, and I spy the outline of said brick, and … ‘Oh. Oh, no. The deadbolt slips.’

‘The deadbolt slips,’ Shaun confirms, giving the door handle another half-hearted yank as if to demonstrate. The deadbolt he unlocked to get us out here has fallen back into place, firmly locking us out of the school and stopping us from going back the way we came to rejoin the others. ‘Priya must’ve knocked it out of the way when she went back inside. We’ll have to go back in around the front.’

Back …

Yes, a clipped voice in the back of my mind says. Back in, to the party, because this ‘catch-up’ of yours is over; it’s time to return to reality and stop living in the what-if.

Is Shaun glad that we didn’t kiss? Does he regret the missed opportunity and think he’s lost his chance and shouldn’t try again? Do I want him to?

No, I don’t have time for these questions, either.

I slip my phone out of my bag, thinking that Curtis might worry if there’s a fire alarm and he can’t find me – I ought to at least let him know that I’m okay and will see him in a minute. But the screen has a hideous, brutal crack stretching from the top corner and won’t turn on; it must have broken when I dropped my bag earlier. A flutter of panic erupts in my chest. What if Curtis has been looking for me at the party, texting me, and what if my lack of reply has made him worried?

He … would have been right, to worry. To be suspicious. I can’t believe I ever betrayed his trust like this. I hate the idea that I might have been causing him pain all this time, while I was living in this nostalgic little daydream with Shaun.

‘We should go back,’ I say, as much to convince myself as anything else. ‘We’ve been gone a while. If the fire alarm’s gone off, I don’t want … anybody to worry.’

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