“I couldn’t face you after that,” I said.
“Neither could I.”
“In the week that followed, I picked up the phone so many times to call you, but I couldn’t.”
“Me too,” she admitted. “Not talking on the phone is one thing, though, but you just left. Forever. Without so much as a message even.A message.”
“I was so emotionally immature at that age. I didn’t fully understand what the long-term consequences of leaving would be. And I hadn’t planned on leaving—it was only after I saw you again that I knew Ihadto go.”
“What do you mean, saw me again?”
I sighed and for the first time since the conversation started I felt a tightening in my throat. This memory always gave me the same feeling. “At the mall. Seven days later, I saw you there. You were just sitting on the bench outside in the food court eating a bag of chips.”
She looked confused. “What about me eating chips on a bench made youhaveto leave?”
“It wasn’t about youdoingsomething, it was about me beingincapableof doing something, doing what needed to be done.” I forced myself to look at her and hold her gaze, like I should have so many years ago. “I wanted so badly to go over to you. IknewI should go over to you. But it was as if I was physically paralyzed. My body refused to move. I just froze. No matter how much I told myself Ineededto do it, I couldn’t. And in that moment I realized that there was no way I was going to be able to stand in front of you, look you in the eye again, not at that stage anyway. And so I did the cowardly thing, but it was the only thing I could think of doing at that time—I left. It wasn’t meant to be for so long either.”
She broke eye contact with me and turned to look at the wall. I watched her closely, watched the emotions swimming over her features. She clenched her jaw, bit her bottom lip. This was still so real and raw for her, even after all these years. Just as it was for me too.
“I felt so shit about myself after that night. My stupid fragile teenage ego couldn’t take it, and leaving felt like some kind of self-preservation. I went to my uncle in theUKfirst. I told myself I was only going to be away for a while. A couple of weeks. A holiday, just to clear my head, and then you started messaging me.”
“Well, I didn’t know where you were.” She sounded defensive.
“I know. It wasn’t the fact you were messaging me that upset me, it was what the messages made me realize.” I paused and looked at her, waiting for her to drop her defensiveness so she could really hear what I was about to say next. “They made me realize how badly I’d hurt you by leaving. I know that should have been obvious—I should have known how badly you would be hurt—but I wasn’t thinking clearly at the time. And the more hurt I could see you were, the worse I felt, and then of course your last message came in . . . That’s when I decided staying away was for the best.”
“What did I say?”
“In your last message to me, um . . .”
“I said I hated you,” she said quietly.
I nodded at her and she looked away again. We fell into a silence that was so heavy and suffocating that it made me physically ache.
“I didn’t,” she finally said. “I never hated you. I just said that because I wanted to hurt you as much as you’d hurt me. I did . . .” She took a deep breath in. Her chest rose with the air filling it up, and she blew it out quickly, as if needing to get rid of it as quickly as possible. “I did . . . I—It was . . . I did love you.”
My heart felt like it was shattering in my chest. “I loved you so much.” The long-unspoken words left my mouth so quickly that I wasn’t even really aware of them until they filled the room around us, and shifted the atmosphere.
I removed the cotton-wool from her foot. “It’s stopped bleeding.”
“Thanks,” she said softly.
“I’m going to put some antiseptic on it. It might sting.”
She looked down at her foot and nodded at me. I reached for the antiseptic and wet a cotton-wool ball with it, I pressed it onto the wound, and she winced in pain again.
“Sorry,” I said. I cleaned the area thoroughly. “I’m sorry about everything, Ash. I’m sorry about how it went that night, and I’m especially sorry for how I acted afterwards. I was young and, honestly, a fucking idiot. I didn’t fully understand what I was losing when I left that day. I should have done it all differently, but I didn’t.”
She sat back in the chair and rubbed her neck, as if that hurt too. “Seems we both should have done things differently. I shouldn’t have messaged Sarah. I could have at least waited. It was wrong of me to do it there.”
I smiled at her. “You would have messaged her the second you left anyway.”
She smiled back. “This is true.”
“You needed her support,” I added quickly.
“Did you have any support?”
I nodded. “I didn’t tell anyone this story for years, until I got drunk one night on grappa with my first client ever and it all came pouring out. He actually encouraged me to talk to you about this now.”
