A Quiet Silence

I catch your eye across the café and think it cannot be you. Not now. Not here. But it is, and you wander over to me in that unsure way that says are you who I think you are?, and it is, I am.

You sit down across from me, a hopeful little smile on your face. I shut my laptop.

The silence deepens. The barista calls out for a Jeremy, and Jeremy collects his drink. The door opens, closes. A baby laughs. An old man grumbles, the person sitting opposite him sighing in that fond way that only people who are utterly devoted to one another can.

All this happens in a blink of an eye. You clear your throat, and the inevitable begins.

“So. It’s been a while. You look great, I mean… how’ve you been?”

“Yeah, yeah, good, yeah. You?”

“Yeah, alright.”

It’s always tricky to start a conversation with someone you used to be able to read like a book. Not anymore. Your whole library has been closed to me for a long, long time.

“So…”, you trail off. “Do you come here often?’

I snort. “That’s never been a great line, even for you.” You chuckle. “Some friends told me this place doesn’t normally get too busy, so I thought I’d try and get some work done. You?”

“I’m in here most days, yeah. They do great blueberry muffins.”

“Better than Anne used to do at school?”

You laugh. “Yeah, even better than Lunch Lady Anne. Cutting it fine, though.” The barista calls out your name, and your chair scrapes across the floor as you hurry over to pick up your drink. As you flop back down into your seat, I realise how different you look. Gone is the twinkle of mischief in your eyes, replaced instead by faint crows feet that speak of tired smiles. “How long has it been since we’ve seen each other?”

“Five years.”

“Really? Wow, it doesn’t seem like that long at all.”

“Maybe not for you,” I mutter into my coffee.

“Sorry, what? I didn’t catch that.” You look concerned, like you genuinely care, like you actually want to do this. Like you didn’t break my heart and leave me to pick up the pieces, like you didn’t take a piece with you.

The hole in my chest burns. “You just left. You never wrote, you never texted. I was out of my mind. I loved you, and you just left. No explanation! No, please,” I hold up a hand as you start to interject. “Please, just let me say my piece. I think you owe me that much.”

You sit back, looking almost… sad?

I take a deep breath, pushing the anger, the panic, down. “The last time I saw you, you didn’t give me any indication that there was anything wrong. We rocked up to the pub - it was Maya’s 18th birthday, remember? - and we had a good time. She bought us all drinks. We were happy.” I look up at you, my eyes burning. “On the way home, I said ‘I wish every night could be like that’, and you laughed and said ‘like what?’ and I said ‘like that. Friends, and drinks, and you.’ And you laughed again, and kissed me like I was the most important thing in the world. I walked you home, and said ‘see you tomorrow’, and you smiled like there was no doubt about it. And then when I got to school, you weren’t there. I thought you were ill. I rang you, I rang your house, I even tried to find your sister. Nothing. So I came by at lunch, thinking that maybe there’d been an emergency. There was a skip in your driveway, full of broken furniture and old clothes, and your house was completely empty. I didn’t know what to think. I was sick with worry. My parents had to ground me just so I wouldn’t go looking for you at all hours of the day - not that that stopped me. It was like you’d dropped off the face of the earth.”

A tear rolls down my face, and you wipe your own away. “And then I go and hear from Michael - fucking Michael of all people - that you’d moved as far away as possible.. He laughed at me, said you’d left on purpose, that your whole family had wanted to get away from me. From us. I broke his nose, and got suspended for a week.

“I wanted to go looking for you, but I convinced myself that if you’d ever loved me, you’d come back. You didn’t. Forgetting you nearly killed me, but I made myself do it. And life went on.”

I take a shuddering breath, and look up at the ceiling, trying to stem the emotions flowing out of me. Your hands are over your mouth, and you’re crying quietly, eyes red. I sniff, and grab some tissues out of my bag. You blow your nose on the one I hand to you.

A few heartbeats pass as we gather ourselves. My hands are shaking.

You look up at me, eyes swimming. “Can I explain, please?” I nod, wiping my eyes. “I… I want you to know that I loved you. Really, really loved you. I would have gone to the ends of the earth for you. But my parents refused to accept it. They thought you’d corrupted me or something, like their pure child was suddenly turned sinner because of who they decided to love. They didn’t understand that I never had a choice in the matter - much less a choice in loving you. It’s like I was born to be with you. They didn’t get it.

“There’s a reason I never took you home. They treated me so badly for being who I am, I didn’t want to have to put you through that too. Your parents were always so accepting of you and me, I didn’t want you to see what it was like on the flip-side. Once we’d been together for almost a year, I thought my parents had finally come around to me; to us. They could see how much I adored you, even though I rarely spoke of what we had together. My sister was supportive, but there was only much she could do living under the same roof as them.

“The night of Maya’s party, I wanted to ask you to run away with me. I knew you had relatives on the continent, so I thought we could go and stay with them, get jobs until we could afford a little place of our own. I knew it was completely insane, but I thought that as long as we were together, we could do anything.

“But when I kissed you, I knew I couldn’t ask you to leave. That place was your whole life, and asking you to run - to leave it all behind and just be with me - would have torn you apart. So I never even suggested it. I wish I had, now. Hindsight is a bitter thing.

“When you dropped me off at home, I’d made up my mind to stay, to endure the pain of not being the person my parents had always expected me to be, just for a little longer. Just until we’d finished school, and I could leave them behind for good. And then my parents told me that we were leaving. Right then. They broke my phone. They’d already smashed my laptop and piled up most of my belongings in a corner. They said it was all for my own good. They said we were moving away to try and start again, be a proper family, that I’d go to a stricter school, that I would be allowed no contact with the world until I got every last trace of sin out of my body. Every last trace of you out of my mind.

“They dumped all our things outside, said they’d arranged for them to be dealt with. I tried to run, but my father pulled me back. Said I’d wind up dead if I tried to leave. I could hear the threat in his voice. I was too scared to try and fight back. So we got in the car, and we left.”

You put your head in your hands, and I can see how ashamed you are. How broken. “Please, please believe me. I never wanted to leave you. You were my whole world. I thought if I played it safe I could find a way to contact you, but they were so watchful of me that I never even got the chance. The minute I left school I rented a tiny flat with the money I’d saved up over the years, and took my sister with me. I had to work three jobs to keep us stable, but I managed it. The first chance I got, I came back to try and find you. But your parents said you were long gone, and wouldn’t tell me where. I miss you every day, thinking about what I could have done differently. How if I’d just asked you to run with me, we’d still be together.”

I stare at you, my mind a blank. Everything I’d ever thought about why you left… none of it could compare to the truth. “I’m so sorry I blamed you. I tried to hate you for it, for leaving, but I never quite managed it.” You give me a weak smile. “And your parents?”

You sniff. “Dead. Car crash, a year ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No. They deserved it.”

Silence falls again, and it's quieter than it was before. More peaceful. Healed.

When we leave the café, the space between us smaller than it has been for so long, I turn to you. “It was good seeing you.”

“Yeah, you too.” You look down at the pavement, scuff your shoes on it. “Would you, um… would you maybe want to grab a drink sometime? I mean, if it's not too much too soon, I just thought-”

“Yeah,” I interrupt you. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

We smile at each other, and the future beckons.