Page 89 of The Reunion

‘Right,’ he drawls, and steps closer, readjusting his hold on his still-damp suit jacket over his shoulder. His school tie still hangs loose, undone, around his neck, and my attention is drawn momentarily to it, and then to the triangle of smooth brown skin bared by the few open buttons of his shirt … ‘And that’s why they both insisted they would finish up and couldn’t get rid of us quickly enough? Please.’

‘You’ve completely misread the signals. It’s actually making me feel sorry for you, Ryan, how wrong you are about this.’

‘And your need to constantly be right all the time is incorrigible, Easton.’

‘Incorrigible? That’s a mighty big word, coming from you.’

Somehow, somewhere within this petty argument, Ryan’s gotten up close, or I’ve stepped into him, because now our bodies are flush and my insult doesn’t pack a punch the way it usually would have. It comes out light and teasing, a shadow of what it used to be, and it makes Ryan smirk in genuine amusement. His hand slips to catch my waist, yanking me just a little closer so that I lose my balance and my hands catch his chest to keep me from stumbling.

Neither of us speaks, but there’s some sort of understanding that passes between us in the moment before I close my eyes and his hand shifts to splay across my lower back.

And, as simply and suddenly as that, I’m kissing Ryan Lawal again.

I’m not kissing the guy who used to make my life a misery and needle at me every chance he got, while I practically made it my life’s mission to tear him down whenever I thought he got too big for his boots. I’m not kissing the guy whose smug face makes some angry, feral thing claw inside my chest in a mix of jealousy or resentment or plain old irritation.

I’m kissing someone who knows me maybe better than I know myself, someone surprisingly funny and devastatingly good-looking, who thinks about how I take my coffee in the mornings and isn’t, underneath it all, anything but the person he’s always shown himself to be.

I’m kissing Ryan Lawal and I never want to stop.

But the crunch of tyres and grumble of an engine comes towards me and – that’s one of our taxis. It means our time is up. Tonight is, at last, over.

It could be, you know. Romantic. If you wanted.

I ignore the approaching car and slide my fingers through Ryan’s short hair, deepening the kiss rather than ending it.

Tonight might be over, but that doesn’t mean this has to be.

Chapter Forty-Six

Ryan

‘Most Likely to Kill Each Other’

The car idles for a solid four or five minutes before Ashleigh and I finally peel ourselves apart, and I catch a glimpse of the driver’s unimpressed face. He probably thinks we’re acting like randy teenagers.

He’s not wrong, really.

I look long enough to see that it’s Ashleigh’s Uber, not mine.

Part of me wants to pull her back in for another kiss and ask if I can come with her – we can continue this back at her hotel; I’ll cancel my ride. We can fuck and kiss and stay up talking and anything, everything, to mean this night doesn’t have to end.

Because tomorrow, I know what will happen. She’ll wake up and think of me with all the usual revulsion and condescension, wonder just what the hell she must’ve been thinking to hook up with me, laugh at how stupid I was to suggest this could ever be anything even remotely romantic, and she’ll go right back to hating me.

And then I’ll go right back to hating her, too, and we’ll replace the memories of tonight with excuses about booze and nostalgia and happenstance, and erase them in favour of the bitter ones we both still carry around from school.

We’ll both make our own way back to London, moving in different circles and always conveniently missing each other, and I’ll go back to work and think to myself, What would wind her up the most? What would be so outrageously successful, such a complete win for me, that it’ll drive her crazy when she sees me talking about it on the news or finds an article about it on her phone?

Even as I think it, I cringe. I sound like some kind of reverse stalker.

I walk her to the car, opening the door for her, and I watch Ashleigh physically bite back a comment about how she can get her own doors thank you very much. Her lips fuse into a tight line, but there’s a glint in her eyes that makes her mouth soften into more of a smile as she gets in. Her face is pale and freckly, her ruined makeup washed off at some point earlier tonight, likely with a rough blue paper towel in the bathrooms. Her hair is in limp, damp waves around her shoulders and I want to run my fingers through it.

I brace one hand against the door and the other against the car roof, and lean down towards her.

But, I know Ashleigh, and I know myself, and I think it’s better if – I don’t.

We’ll just keep tonight contained, a one-off. A lapse in judgement on both our parts.

It’s better that way.

---