What Was Left Unsaid.

Less than lovers, but more by a stretch than friends, Sam and Lou had escaped work for a stolen evening and reached a place where the skies were endless. Above them each cloud was perfect, a bilious accumulation of grey edged in bright sunlight. To the south the grass dropped away off the edge of the world and the tops of distant tower blocks rose like toadstools over the horizon line, above which darker skies threatened to erupt into a storm. A bottle of whiskey sat between them on the yellowed grass, a little less than half already gone. Thinking themselves adults, they had drunk more of it than they should, but it was too early in the evening for either of them to regret it yet. It felt more like a farewell than they had planned. 

A flame crackled into existence, Lou’s latest lighter brought close to the unlit cigarette between her lips. “I thought you were trying to give up?” Sam had phrased it as a question, but her answer was already curling skywards in a line of smoke.

“Shut up Sammy.” She cracked a smile. His laughter filled the evening air, the first flash of lightning falling earthwards. Sam watched the reflection of it dance across Lou’s glasses. 

“Alright, but only if you share.” She passed him the cigarette as the thunder rolled out across the city, and he shifted slightly, turning away from her to watch the lightning. It wasn’t raining on them yet, but the moisture of the storm crept through the streets, winding its way towards their stretch of grass. 

“We should do this more often, while we still have the chance.” Words lingered, unsaid at the end of Sam’s sentence, hanging in the damp air between them. He was watching the storm closely, as if trying to find some pattern in the forking brilliance of the flashes, some rhythm in the booming sound that followed. 

“Yes, we really should.” Lou’s answer too was heavy with the unvoiced, questions and apologies building on her tongue and mixing with the alcohol. A nearer strike of lightning broke through the eggshell of their moment, the world around them saturated for a split second with vivid tones before the crash of thunder followed, much closer on the heels of the lightning than its predecessors had been. The world faded back towards grey. 

The rain had begun as a sort of misting drizzle but by the time either of them noticed it was falling in proper droplets. Lou put her hood up, tucking her mass of curls into it in the futile hope that she could escape without it becoming a frizzy mess and Sam laughed, running a hand through his own hair. “God it needs cutting.” he mumbled, half to himself and half to Lou. Even without sunlight’s touch, Sam’s hair tended towards red, though he would never admit to it out loud, and it was only becoming more pronounced as it grew out. 

“Don’t you dare.” she replied, tousling the damp strands with a free hand. “I love it longer like this.” Sam sighed, knowing full well that he would end up not doing it now. He flicked it out of his eyes and shook the rainwater from his hand, turning back towards the heart of the storm. Lou fumbled with something in her bag, Sam looking at it hopefully, not against the idea of a little more liquid courage, but it was only an umbrella. The two of them moved closer together, close enough to both keep mostly dry, and shared a smile. Little by little, savouring the taste now as the bottle grew closer to empty, they finished the whiskey as the light began to fade from the sky. 

She nudged Sam with her foot, ready to ask the question that was poison in her throat, but it got caught on thorns of pride and refused to take shape in the evening air. He looked back towards her, smacking away her shoe in playful revenge, a smile on his face. “What?” he asked, pretending at annoyance. Instead of asking, Lou stubbed out the end of the cigarette that had begun by being hers with a sigh.

“Nothing really. Will you miss me?” 

“What kinda question? He asked, the incredulity in his voice only slightly overacted. “Of course I will you idiot.” She smiled at that, reaching over to touch his hair again, but he ducked the movement, a slight frown on his face. He opened his mouth to offer something, a question forming on his tongue before he swallowed it back. Lou grinned suddenly, her smile a burst of white lightning against her dark skin. 

“Watch who you’re calling idiot, who was it who managed to get their face somehow wedged into the netting of a hammock? Not me, if I remember correctly.” 

“Lou we were twelve.” sighed Sam, but the smile they shared belied his exasperation. 

“Ah,” Lou shot back, a reminiscent gleam in her eye, “I remember it well.”

Neither of them could quite come out with it in the end, the question, the suggestion, but it was all either could think about when they at last parted ways. Both of them would regret not saying it afterwards, when she had left and somehow it was already too late.

“Come with me.”

"Can I come with you?"  

Lou had even written it down, the envelope an unfamiliar object in her hands that she had sealed her hopes within. She fiddled with it in her pocket as she walked home, regretting not handing it to Sam as soon as they'd met up. She simply had not had the courage to close the distance between them. The rain was coming down harder now, and the bottle of whiskey they had shared was heavy in her hand. It was empty. She ought to throw it away. 

Lou found, when she was fumbling for her keys as she got to the front door of her block of flats, that she was still carrying that bottle. A plan began to form in her mind. It just about fit in the biscuit tin she’d hurriedly emptied out to fill with memories. She smiled. After a moment Lou removed it, pulled the letter she had written from her pocket and put that in first. The bottom edge of the envelope was damp, the rain having cunningly crept into her pocket somehow, and she narrowed her eyes, debating just throwing it all out. Her memories of the evening would be enough. She closed the lid without throwing either item away, taped the box shut and put it into the last of her bags that remained half packed. When she woke the following morning the memory of it had been gently blurred by her hangover. It faded into the back of her mind as last minute emergencies began to present themselves for inspection, and by the time she was packing her last few things and kissing her mother goodbye she had forgotten the box entirely.

When she found it many distant years later, the faint splotches along the crease line of the letter would remind Lou of the rain that had poured down on that last night she’d spent with Sam. As the years drifted by they would always mean to meet up, always mean to visit, always mean to rekindle what they’d almost had. For one reason or another, it would never actually happen. Perhaps that was why, one evening more than a decade after they had spent that evening watching the storm, her tears came so fast. 

As Lou reread the curling, unhurried script of her late teenage self she couldn’t help but think, God, they’d had something special. Her and Skinny Sammy McCath with the almost-red hair and the easy smile and by god the greenest eyes she’d ever seen. Why hadn't either of them done anything about it? She didn’t know. Had it been fear of rejection, or perhaps of ruining their friendship? That was how she’d rationalised it at the time. Perhaps is had been merely nerves, or that self-preoccupied teenage need to seem cool. Either way, it had been stupid. The memories of his laughter were quick to come back to her as Lou reread the little jokes she’d written into this letter, unsent and unseen. Then it was his bright, bright sneaky grins that rose before her mind's eye.

After sitting for a long time, hands that had been lined by time resting on old paper that bled memories, Lou realised that she could still remember the mobile number he’d had when they were young. With fingers that shook she dialled it, barely able to breathe, sure he would not answer. In a silent flat on the other side of the country a phone began to ring.