Page 10 of The Friend Request

I’d just had my first kiss at fourteen years old, and the boy who’d kissed me was the most important person in my world.

From then on, nothing was the same. Not the library, not lunch, not the walk home, not the way I stared in the bathroom mirror before bed, not the way I fell asleep. Everything had Ross in it now – his voice, his mouth, his hand on my jaw, the way he’d said my name like it mattered.

He was fixed inside me. Lodged somewhere behind my ribs where I couldn’t reach him and couldn’t remove him, even if I’d wanted to.

Chapter Five

I shouldn’t be here.

The restaurant is small and busy, tucked down a side street in the centre of Bristol. I’ve never been before, which is partly why I chose it. Little chance of bumping into someone I know from Keynsham. No chance of someone from Olivia’s school spotting me through the window and mentioning it at parents’ evening. I picked somewhere I’d never have to come back to, as if that makes it better.

It doesn’t.

Ross is already at the table when I arrive. I see him through the glass before I go in, sitting near the back, reading the menu, a glass of red wine in front of him that it seems he hasn’t touched. He’s wearing a dark jumper with the sleeves pushed up and his hair is damp at the temples, like he walked here in the rain, and for a second I just stand on the pavement and watch him the way I used to watch him across the library when we were fourteen.

My stomach turns over.

I push the door open, and the warmth hits me – garlic, bread, wine, the low hum of conversation and clinking glasses – and I’m halfway across the room before he glances up. His face changes when he sees me. He doesn’t grin, stand, or make a scene. His expression just shifts and softens, the edges of his eyes creasing as if he wants to smile but is holding back.

‘Kim,’ he says.

‘Hi.’ I pull out the chair opposite him and sit. My hands are shaking, so I put them in my lap where he can’t see them. ‘Sorry I’m late.’

‘You’re not late.’

‘I feel late.’ I pick up the menu because it gives me something to focus on that isn’t his face. The words swim. I can’t take in a single thing on it. ‘Have you ordered?’

‘Just the wine. I didn’t know what you’d want.’

‘I don’t know what I want either,’ I say.

We both hear the honesty in those words, and for a moment, neither of us says anything.

A waiter comes over, and I order a glass of white wine without reading the list. Ross orders another red. The waiter disappears, and I’m left sitting there with no menu to hide behind and nowhere to put my eyes except on the man I’ve been thinking about for weeks.

He looks good. I hate that he looks good. It would be so much easier if he’d changed beyond recognition – if the years had made him someone I could sit across from and feel nothing. But he hasn’t. He’s leaner than he was at school, and there’s grey at his temples that wasn’t there before. The lines around his eyes are deeper, but his face is still the same face. The same mouth. The same way of watching me like he’s trying to read something written very small.

‘You look terrified,’ he says.

‘I’m not terrified.’

‘You’re gripping the edge of the table.’

I check. He’s right. I let go and put my hands flat on the tablecloth. He smiles – that quick, lopsided smile I remember from the library, the one that used to undo me – and heat climbs up the back of my neck.

‘I’m just a bit nervous,’ I say. ‘It’s been a long time.’

‘Twenty-odd years.’

‘Thanks for doing the maths.’

He laughs, and the sound helps me relax. I pick up my wine when it arrives and take a sip that’s closer to a gulp. The cold sharpness of it steadies me, and I sit back in my chair and appraise him.

‘So,’ I say.

‘So.’

‘This is strange, isn’t it?’