When We Were Young Read online

  When We Were Young

  A Rose Haven Prequel Short Story

  Elin Annalise

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  When We Were Young

  Copyright © 2019 Elin Annalise

  All rights reserved.

  Elin Annalise asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  First edition, October 2019

  Published by Elin Annalise

  Cover Design by Elin Annalise and Canva

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval systems, in any forms or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, without the express written permission of the author, except for the purpose of a review which may quote brief passages.

  The author can be contacted via email at [email protected]

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  Do You Want to Know More about What’s in Store for Emma and Oscar?

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  Emma

  Damn it.

  It’s snowing again.

  I grip the steering wheel tighter through my driving gloves—Mum got them for me, but I’ll never admit to anyone that I actually use them. Not since Jenna laughed when she saw them on my kitchen table.

  Mildly warm air blasts through the air-vents. The windshield is starting to steam up, and I change the settings for the air, try to get it hotter, even though I know it’s no use. The heater’s been faulty for weeks, and I can’t afford to fix it. Didn’t even think I’d drive this car again. I haven’t done so in a while, been trying to save on costs, but of course when I found Oscar’s album in my boxes of university stuff, the journey was inevitable, even though for twenty-four hours I’d pretended it wasn’t.

  I’d told myself I’d do nothing.

  But here I am.

  I glance at the satnav. Two minutes until I get there.

  Two minutes until I see him again.

  My heart pounds, and I get that giddy feeling in my stomach, one I haven’t properly felt in years. Because I only ever get it when I see him in person. At first, it was a good feeling. Then dread mixed into the concoction.

  Last night, I looked at his photos—trawled through them, going back years, just like I’ve done countless times, from under my duvet, from the end of the bar, from the overcrowded train. So many times, I’ve seen him, seen him happy. With her. Blond-haired Celine who smiles in many of his social media photos from the last two years. Whose eyes sparkle. Who makes Oscar smile in the way only I used to be able to. A way that—

  “Shit.” I see the patch of ice on the road just in time, ease onto the brakes, and carefully steer around it, all the while staring through the six-inch clear gap in the windshield.

  Okay. I need to be more careful. Can’t get distracted.

  But of course I’m distracted, because this is Oscar. My Oscar—until he wasn’t.

  I glance across at the passenger seat, where his photo album sits, then back up at the road. Still barely any traffic. At just before noon on a late November day, most people are working. I was surprised when Oscar said he’d be home at this time. Thought he’d be in the office or something. Still, he’s the boss so he can probably take off any time he wants.

  Or maybe this is a snow day.

  I turn the wipers’ speed up. I used to love the snow.

  The sky is a heavy gray blanket—a promise of more snow—slowly being obscured by heavier, faster flurries. Over breakfast this morning, I looked up the weather for Carrington, Oscar’s town—it’s not supposed to snow heavily until the evening, when a minor weather warning will be in place. But it’s snowing like this now.

  We may not get much snow at Rose Haven, the seaside town I grew up in and returned to after university, but three years ago I spent a winter in Scotland, working for a farmer, and learned how to handle a vehicle in treacherous winter conditions.

  I hum under my breath, flex my fingers inside the gloves. They’re starting to go numb. I didn’t put on a coat. I don’t know why. Maybe I’d assumed a miracle would happen and the heating would somehow work. Stupid. I shiver in my jumper.

  “Your destination is on the right,” the satnav says a moment or so later.

  I flick the indicator on and make the turn, slowly, careful of the gray slushy snow at the side of the road, and park at the edge. There are no cars here. All the houses have garages, big ones. A couple of the houses already have Christmas displays on their lawns. Inflatable reindeer and snowmen.

  Last night, when I looked up Oscar’s place on Google Maps, I was going to look at Street View, get a good look at his house from the safety of my room, but I didn’t. I don’t know why. Maybe I didn’t want to see where they live. Even though I knew I was visiting today. And it was my decision to come here. I could’ve thrown the album away, pretended I never found it. Or I could’ve mailed it to him.

  But I didn’t do either.

  Because what we had—even though it was years ago—I still feel it. Oscar was too important to me, and I know how much this album means to him, and I want to see his reaction when he gets it again. Shortly after we broke up, I saw his tweet about having lost the album. I was glad when I saw that, because I wanted him to feel pain. I wanted him to feel as alone as he’d made me feel.

  But I don’t want him to feel alone anymore.

  “Well, someone’s raking it in,” I mutter, and I’m surprised by how bitter I sound as I stare at his house.

  It’s Victorian in style. Tall, three stories. It looks impressive, like a horror film could be set there, but that’s about all I can say. I’m not Jenna, I don’t know about architecture. It just looks expensive. If I didn’t already know that he has a good job, I’d know it just by looking at his house. But I do know. For someone who hasn’t seen him in seven years, or been his girlfriend in eight years, I know a surprising amount about his life.

  Of course, I’d been following his LinkedIn and Facebook anyway, and regularly checked his Instagram, so I knew the basic stuff—or at least what he shared or was tagged in—but after I found the album and sent him that message, I looked for Oscar on every other social media platform I could think of. I combed through every post of his for the few years, looking at all his photos of cars, nights out, landscapes, cats, and Celine. I just felt like I was justified in looking for him because I’d messaged him. And it was like an addiction, discovering everything that he was right now. It didn’t feel right, trespassing through his photos, his happiness, but I couldn’t help it.

  And he owes me it really. After what he did.

  There’s a little garden in front of the house, and I stare at the snow-covered lawn for a moment. Tiny blades of grass are trying to poke through, and it makes the lawn look prickly. Not smooth.

  He always said how he liked the smoothness of my skin against his.

  We’re on my bed, and his hands roam over my thighs. His touch is soft, but firm. Gentle, but meaningful.

  I sit up and pull him closer, then down with me.
>
  “Take your shirt off.” My voice is breathy, and then I’m helping him to get it off.

  Skin against skin, and I can’t get close enough.

  I pull in a deep breath, take my driving gloves off, and drape them carefully over the wheel. Then I open the door and grab the photo album. My legs shake as I get out of my car. Snowflakes cling to my face and hands, and the air feels colder than ever.

  And I smile. I don’t know why.

  Actually, I do. It reminds me of our first date, and how Oscar said it’s chilly today.

  He took me hiking. My first official hike, and I hadn’t known what to wear, so I’d just worn ordinary clothes. Jeans and a jumper. A thin raincoat.

  By the time we got up onto the mountains, I was shivering. Oscar took off his coat and I protested, said I was fine. And that’s when he said it—that it was chilly today—and he wrapped me in his coat.

  I smile at the memory and—

  Oscar opens the door before I’ve reached the paving slabs by the little welcome mat. Someone’s already cleared the snow from around the entrance, but I can’t imagine it was him. Not unless he’s changed.

  Of course he’s changed. It’s been eight years since he broke my heart.

  When we were at university, I’d never have guessed he’d become a businessman. Not when he studied English literature and was president of the pottery society by our second year. But he’s successful now. And I look at him. Oscar Cooper, the twenty-eight-year-old whom I shouldn’t still feel things for—but I do.

  He stands in his doorway in jeans and a red flannel shirt, and he looks...the same. That’s all I can think as I reach his doorstep, the photo album in my hand. Oscar is the same. Those dark eyes that I know so well. Oscar, with his nearly black hair that I ran my fingers through too many times to remember. I loved doing that.

  “Hi.” My voice is quiet, meek. Not like our last words that deafened me over and over again. I couldn’t stop hearing them for months.

  Oscar nods.

  Time stops, and I stare at him. I thought this would feel weirder, that maybe I’d break down crying, the chasm in my heart ripped open again just upon the mere sight of him.

  But it doesn’t happen.

  He just looks like him, and I just feel like me.

  Two people who used to know each other well—and I can almost hear Jenna’s indignant exclamations, the exclamations that will come when I tell her I went to see Oscar: “Are you mad? He hurt you. Emma, I’m not picking up the pieces again.”

  But there will be no pieces to pick up this time. I’m tougher now. And I’m only here for one reason.

  I clear my throat. “Here it is.” My knees feel a little weak as I hold out the album for him. I haven’t put it in a bag or anything, and snowflakes are getting on it. I brush them off quickly. The leather cover is cracked, but it still has that old smell to it. When I found the album, I held it to my face, inhaled that smell, and remembered when he first showed me it, ten years ago.

  We are sitting in my room, on my bed. His back is against the wall, and the album is in his lap. I’m next to him, cross-legged. His fingers shake as he opens the album.

  “It’s all I know of them.” There’s sadness in his eyes, and I reach out, touch his hand.

  He smiles, grateful.

  Together, we go through the pages. He shows me his parents, young and in love. Thirty-seven photos of them. Some glossy, some a little creased.

  “I’ve got stories for each one,” he says, and his voice is low, quiet.

  “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?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Oscar

  I hear her car arrive. Old, rattling, an engine that sounds like it’s had much healthier days. But as soon as I hear it, I just know it’s her. She’s a minute late. Just one minute. I smile, despite myself. I suppose that’s an improvement.

  I cross to the window and watch as a small red car—an old Skoda—parks outside. I can see her inside it, blond hair tied back. Her windows are a little steamed up, and I can’t see her expression as she sits there.

  And this is it.

  My stomach tightens, and I take a deep breath as I watch her. This is it. This is when I see her again. I wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans. Shit. Why am I sweating?

  Outside, Emma opens her car door, then leans across for something before she gets out. She carries my album in one hand, not close to her body, as snowflakes swirl around her. Even through the window, I can see that the tip of her nose is pink. She hasn’t dressed for the weather.

  Oh, silly Emma.

  But that’s her. That’s what she does. Carefree, my grandmother called her, that first time I introduced them. I’d brought Emma back for dinner. I’d made a shepherd’s pie the night before and Grandmother had heated it up for six o’clock, the time I told her that Emma and I would arrive.

  In actuality, we were late. Emma’s always late—but, together, we’d be later still, stopping for a few quick kisses that would turn into more...

  I watch Emma tread carefully across the frozen grass. She’s dressed simply. A jumper and skinny jeans. Worn-looking trainers.

  She looks good. A little older, obviously, but I don’t mean that in a bad way. She’s grown into herself.

  And she’s beautiful. She never used to tie her up, but doing so draws attention to the structure of her face. Her small nose and high cheekbones.

  So beautiful.

  And she’s here. That has to mean something. That she wants a second chance with me just as much as
I do with her.

  I close my eyes, just for a second, before I move to the front door, and open it. Then I wince, realizing it’s a dead giveaway that I was watching her from the window and knew when to open the door.

  “Hi.” Her voice sounds different.

  I nod—because I don’t know what to say or if I can even speak. Having her here feels wrong. She wasn’t supposed to resurface from my memories, but here she is—and she’s bringing a flood of them with her.

  The time we went swimming in the lakes, during that hottest summer, when she persuaded me to skinny dip with her. How we kissed with the water around us.... The time we went away together. Our first holiday, Paris. Going on a midnight tour. Then the Christmas holidays. Kissing her in the snow, my arms around her, the fur of her hat tickling my forehead... The time we lay on my bed, entwined, talking. Talking about the future we wanted—the future I said I wanted with her.

  How, two months later, I told her it wasn’t working.

  I swallow hard, and I want to block it out—because how can I explain it and tell her I’m sorry? How can words ever be enough?

  But she’s back now, and I search her face for any trace of anger. I don’t find any. She’s calm, and I don’t know how she’s so calm when I was so mean. When I cut her off completely, gave no real reason. When she saw me with those other girls so soon afterward. She never said anything about that, but I saw the sheer hurt in her eyes as Jenna led her away.

  “Here it is,” she says.

  Emma’s holding out the album, and I reach for it, both hands at once, as if it’s going to be heavy.

  “Thank you.” The album is heavier than I remembered, and I hold it against my body. “You didn’t have to—so thank you.”

  It feels strange, holding the album after all these years. Inside it are the only photos of my parents. I never met them. My mother was in labor with me and my father was driving her to the hospital. A lorry plowed into them.

  I was delivered by emergency C-section.

  Apparently, I was a miracle.

  And this album—this weight against my torso—is all I have of them. My grandmother sorted out the photos carefully, she wanted me to have a connection to my parents, to know them. But she’d never talk about them. It made her too sad, and I never wanted her to be sad.