Page 14 of The Reunion

Shaun laughs. ‘Pretty strong, isn’t it?’

‘Mm,’ I murmur. ‘I don’t drink much these days.’ Not beyond a few mimosas once a month, or a glass of wine over dinner with Curtis every so often as a bit of a treat.

Deciding I’m finished babbling for the moment, Shaun takes a breath and says, ‘Yeah, it’s great, isn’t it? Bryony did a brilliant job. And it’s good to see all the old crowd.’

‘Even RJ?’

The question slips out before I can stop it, accompanied by a tilt of my head and sceptical look. Shaun never forgave RJ for flirting with me at Morgan’s New Year’s Eve party in Year Twelve and even got in a bit of a fight with him during a friendly game of five-a-side one lunchtime. It was the only time Shaun ever got detention; I’d been thrilled by the idea of a boyfriend who defended my honour, even if RJ was only a harmless nuisance.

There’s a beat as the memories flash in front of Shaun’s eyes, too, and he shakes his head with a warm chuckle. The sound is like treacle, sticking to me slowly, dragging me down with it. ‘Well,’ he says. ‘Maybe not him.’

We lapse into silence. Bryony’s cheesy playlist moves from Dizzee Rascal to Taylor Swift’s ‘Love Story’, and the sound of it seems to bleed through my whole body, the lyrics suddenly the only thing I can think about. I try to count my heartbeats instead, even though I know this silence has already stretched on too long and is verging on, not awkwardness, but that old intimacy that we used to share.

That, apparently, we still do.

I say the first thing that comes to mind in an attempt to break it. ‘D’you remember when I sang this to you for your birthday?’

It’s the worst thing I think I could have said. It’s one of those sweet but cringeworthy memories of being young and in love – doing something worthy of the movies and feeling on top of the world at the time as you set a new high bar for great romances, but also fills my adult self with horror at how I ever thought standing in front of a boy and singing a love song to him was a better idea than buying him a LYNX Africa gift set, or even a good idea at all.

It’s also a terrible thing to have brought up, because it makes me think of standing in Shaun’s bedroom and sitting on his lap to kiss him afterwards, and letting his hands roam underneath my school blouse for the first time.

‘I learnt it on your guitar,’ I add quickly. ‘I – don’t remember being very good. Gosh, the cringey things we used to do in the name of romance. You poor thing, having to suffer through that performance.’

Shaun’s smile pulls up higher on one side. ‘We have very different memories of that birthday, in that case. I didn’t exactly feel like I suffered through it, given—’

He stops abruptly and the most endearing blush steals across his cheeks. It stains the tips of his ears bright pink.

Instead of talking about my boobs and the unsure, excited fumbling around that day in his bedroom, he clears his throat and turns to face the rest of the room before asking me in a strange, rough voice, ‘Is that your Curtis, then?’

My Curtis.

‘My fiancé,’ I say and the word tastes like ash, as if just allowing myself to entertain these memories of my relationship with Shaun, his smile, the way he says my name … has poisoned it. I follow Shaun’s gaze across the hall. ‘Yes. And – you brought Aisha with you?’

He nods.

He takes a short, sharp sip of his drink, and then another. And another.

‘She’s very pretty. She seems lovely.’

‘She is,’ he tells me, still in that strange voice.

This is wrong, it’s all so wrong. When he posted online that they were engaged, I felt genuinely pleased for him when I commented to wish them both a big congratulations. We were so far in the past, and their photos together were very sweet. Likewise, Shaun congratulated me on my engagement announcement on social media, but I felt no differently over his comment than anybody else’s from school or old uni friends.

But this is wrong. Talking about our partners feels wrong. Not talking about them feels wrong.

A man walks up to us. Or rather, he walks up to the table to get himself another drink, and we happen to be right in the way. I know he’s one of the rugby lads, but his name dances right at the edge of my memory. I can remember sitting in the row behind him in French and how he’d lean his chair right back into my desk, and I know he was always acting the class clown – often only being reined in by Ryan, rather than any threats of detention from the teachers. His sense of humour tended towards bullying rather than genuine comedy, as I recall.

I can remember having to pair with him for a French oral exam and the way he laughed about the word ‘oral’ every time someone said it, but can’t remember his name. It’s funny, the things my memory has decided were worth storing in the archives, and what information it threw in the bin.

He swaggers up to us with a broad grin. ‘Alright, you two?’

‘Hey, Freddie,’ Shaun says, and – yes! That’s it! How could I have forgotten Freddie Loughton? The smell of ale clings to him, and he’s clearly tipsy enough that I assume he was in the gang who went to the pub before coming here. ‘How’s it going, mate?’

‘All good, all good, can’t complain, y’know?’

We shuffle out of the way as he helps himself to the spiked punch with a sloppy pour, and drops spill onto the papery tablecloth, staining it pink. Shaun’s arm bumps into mine and I have to swallow a gasp at the heat that emanates from the touch, the flutter of excitement I feel over the electricity in that simple connection. Is it still there, or is nostalgia playing tricks on me?

I peek over at Shaun, only to find him straightening up immediately and tucking his arms close into his sides. The blush is still on his cheeks, or perhaps it’s a new one. I watch the motion of his throat as he clenches his jaw and swallows, hard.

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