Page 3 of When We Were Young

“Stories?” I ask.

“Like what they were doing just before each photo.” He points to one of them at the pier. “See? Look at my mother’s face. She looks a little annoyed. I reckon something happened right before that photo. And my dad’s holding an ice cream, but she isn’t. And look at all the seagulls.”

I start to smile. “You think one took hers?”

Oscar nods. “Grandmother says I like ice cream just as much as she did.”

We pour through more photos together, and his eyes start to lighten and the tension rolls out of his body.

“Look how in love they are in this one,” he says, touching the photo softly with his thumb.

I want to tell him not to actually touch the photo, but I don’t. I just look—and they are in love. You can just tell. The photo is simple, just the two of them, holding hands in a park. But love really does radiate from them.

“That was a year before...” Oscar says.

I nod, and then he’s leaning closer to me. I smell the coconut of his shampoo as his lips brush mine. Softly, at first. Then harder.

Maybe this isn’t the right time for it, but my lower stomach is aching for him, and I pull him on top of me, need his weight on me. Oscar pushes the album to the side, away from us, as my hands roam over his back. We kiss and kiss, and I need to be closer to him. Every part of me wants him, and he goes for my neck with those sensuous lips of his.

I smile as he sucks my skin gently, his hands squeezing my breasts.

Now, this album is a heavy weight of the past in my hands. A weight I need to shed.

“Thank you.” Oscar takes it so carefully, cradles it against his body like it’s one of his precious cats—oh, last year, Celine posted so many ‘artistic’ cat photos and tagged him in them. “You didn’t have to—so thank you.”

I nod. There’s a tenderness in his eyes. A tenderness that speaks to me—that makes him look even more like the Oscar I knew.

A lump forms in my throat, and I try to swallow it down. I have to, else I’ll cry, and I can’t cry. Not here. Not now.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, and I don’t know why I’m the one apologizing, when it was all him.

But maybe it was me too.

I knew how he felt about love, yet I still said it. My flaw was wanting him too much—wanting it to become something more, something soul-defining.

He bows his head a little. “Me too.” He exhales hard, then shrugs slightly. “I’ve just boiled the kettle—if you want to come in?”

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