a master at it.
I yanked my laptop closer and stabbed the keyboard with more force than was necessary.
Savvie,
No, scratch that. Best keep things formal.
Savannah,
It is a surprise. You’ll have to remind me how long it’s been if we meet in the future.
Sadly, my schedule is atrociously tight, so these days I delegate requests like yours to my commercial leasing team. I’ve passed your request on to them—see cc above. They’ll be in touch at some point, I expect.
Good luck with your launch, wherever that may be.
Bryce Mortimer
I hit ‘send’ with one last smug little stab at the button and lounged back in my seat.
An hour later my glee had turned to ash. The button I’d clicked to let me know she’d read my reply had been activated almost immediately.
She’d seen my email. Most likely read it.
Anticipation had risen like an unstoppable tide inside me, only to crash back as the seconds ticked by without a further response. What did I expect? Contrition? Hell, an apology? A plea for me to grant her wish for old times’ sake despite my rightful disappointment in her?
Delusion soured my mouth.
We were both equally successful in our chosen fields. Why would she need a helping hand from me when she could reduce grown men into drooling schoolboys with a flick of her long, seductive eyelashes?
Another sensation stabbed, this time the acrid jealousy I thought was long in my past.
Fuck it. I rose from my desk, determined to put greater distance between me and my laptop before I did something foolish—like fruitlessly click ‘refresh’ on my email. The ping of an incoming message arrested my movement.
Bryce,
Sorry for taking up your precious time. But thank you for the good wishes and for passing me on to your team. I’ve emailed them directly.
Excuse me for saying this, and perhaps it’s just in my imagination, but you sound…cold and distant.
But…whatever. I’m around from tomorrow until the launch date in a little over a month’s time.
I would like to see you again, Bryce, but I understand if your super-tight schedule doesn’t allow it. On the off-chance you haven’t turned into a robot and still like a good steak I’d love to buy you lunch.
Let me know.
Best wishes,
Savvie
PS Since you seem to need reminding, it’s been three years and four months since we last saw each other. Your memory used to be sharper than this. Guess some things do change!
I was torn between grinning at her sheer nerve and cussing at her unsubtle hints that my response was in any way defective. But even as I vacillated between anger and amusement, my gaze remained riveted on the eighth line:
I would like to see you again…
A pulse of resentment sizzled beneath my skin, laced with abrasive disappointment I hadn’t been able to let go in over three long years. That inability to let go, to consign her to my past where she belonged, where I’d successfully archived a lot of emotional crap, was what pissed me off the most.
Case in point: my parents.
Another case in point: my crappy relationship with my siblings, in particular. My extended family, in general.
But somehow, Savannah Knight remained a burr under my skin that wouldn’t be evicted.
Somehow, years ago she’d made it past the barricades I’d erected; somehow even set herself up in her own little bunker, immune from all the shit going on in my life. And every now and then…when I’d felt as if I were drowning, that bunker had been a godsend.
My safe place…until it and she wasn’t.
Maybe I hadn’t dug deep enough to evict her.
Maybe it was time to confront it…her…head-on. Thrash it out once and for all and put it behind me. It’d been festering for long enough and I knew that corrosive wound, coupled with my feelings towards my own family, had contributed to keeping people at arm’s length.
On the family front, I was more than okay with maintaining the status quo. Years of rebuffed advances and the eventual realisation that the Mortimers would never be a close-knit, happy unit like the ones I’d dreamed of had finally put paid to childish imaginings.
Even my brother Gideon’s out-of-the-blue phone call that he’d met the one a few months ago hadn’t dented my cynicism. As for my parents, they’d never wanted me, hadn’t hung around even long enough to see my first day of school before cutting me out of their lives.
But Savannah…
She’d let me believe that, despite hard-learnt lessons, there was a possibility for more…for joy…long after I’d sworn never to let anyone close. Long after a confused eight-year-old had been summoned into a cold study of one relative accompanied by a nanny and informed that the mother who didn’t want him was never coming back, having died when her car went off some cliff in Switzerland. That his hopes of a Disney-style reconciliation were turned to dust for ever.
That child had grown into a cynical teenager, fully steeped in the dysfunction that ruled his super-wealthy, super-emotionally-bankrupt family.
Somewhere along that journey as a fully-fledged teenage malcontent, one Savannah Knight had illuminated my dark soul with grace, humour and a megawatt smile.
And then taken it all away like a magician’s cruel trick.
If nothing else, she deserved a piece of my mind before I relegated her to the past for good. I’d done it with my siblings. I’d achieved it with my parents. With Savannah, all it needed was some good old-fashioned face-to-face.
My answer was shorter than the last. Straight to the point.
Lunch tomorrow. One p.m. My office.
Get your little birds to tell you where if you don’t know.
Bryce
She replied within seconds.
I’ll be there.
Savvie
I wanted to resent the shortened nickname that reminded me so much of our past. Of laughter and secret angst. Of beauty and betrayal. Of daring to stretch the limits of friendship and ending up with nothing but broken promises. And yes, for reminding me of giving in to uncontrollable urges in the privacy of my bedroom.
I wanted to remain steadfast on formal ground. What did it matter, though? Savannah or Savvie, she remained the same person.
The
