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Forty Years and Fifteen Minutes

Michael Summerleigh

    She recognised him in a heartbeat, had wondered all along if he would be there, even if he’d not been on the list...never forgotten...she’d gone round the room twice before she found him, realised it was where she should have looked for him in the first place... well out of the way...by himself...buried in a corner...
    She walked across the banquet room slowly, afraid he would look her way, afraid he wouldn’t; that she would call his name and he’d turn, not recognise her...or worse...
    ‥Toby,” she said...softly...in the exact moment he turned in her direction and saw her, his eyes going wide and she could feel herself trying not to cry, and read something on his face that made her want to die at his feet and run for her life, all at the same time...
    She whispered ‥Toby,” again, reached across the last few breaths between them. ‥You came...” she said, and he nodded, barely moving his head staring at her, swallowing hard.
    All the other guys were wearing suits, sports jackets and ties, creased trousers and polished shoes. Showing off success with shiny new clothes to offset all the time gone by. Toby was in his jeans, a chambray shirt frayed at the collar and the cuffs, his boots scuffed and cracked as if it was yesterday. Four decades gone and all the years had simply ignored him...never even dreamed of touching him...except that he really didn’t look anything like the boy she’d known anywhere but deep down inside his eyes.
    He swallowed again and his answering whisper was so low and hoarse that she could barely hear him, or make out the sounds that were her name he said:
    ‥Cory.”
    And she nodded and put her arms around him, could feel the back of his shirt wet with perspiration, tasted the familiar acrid smell of him, where they’d sat together at a single lab desk through two years of high school homerooms.
    ‥Oh...Toby...” she said his name a third time, and then over and over again because she couldn’t think of anything else to say that would be relevant to the strange violent crash in her heart and the wave of sadness making it so hard to breathe.
    ‥Here I am,” he said.
    ‥Why didn’t you write to me...or call...?”
    She felt him shrug, and then pull away from her embrace, looking down at his feet...she expected him to kick at the polished wooden floor as if it were dirt under the bare toes of an eight-year old, but he took another step back from her and sighed...
    ‥You stopped being Cory Sanchez.”
    Oh please Toby don’t,” she said. ‥I couldn’t stop living. You disappeared. You never said anything. You just took off. One morning I went looking for you and you were gone.”
    He put his head down.
    ‥I know, Cor,” he said. ‥I wasn’t blaming you. It’s all on me, I know that.”
    She couldn’t stop herself; there was still something so sweet and so helpless in his face, and looking at him brought back a flood of memories...being adrift together... hanging on to each other in the face of too much...something...Life...
    She put her head down on his shoulder and wept.
    ‥Cory don’t cry...please don’t cry...I just wanted t’see you...one more time. I don’t care about anything in between. Don’t cry, fuck please don’t cry...”
    She couldn’t stop. It was more than two years since Sean had paid in full for all the Marlboros...years and years of giving him what was left after Toby had gone. It wasn’t that she hadn’t loved him, only that she had never given him what he deserved for loving her. Because she never forgot Toby.
    ‥I knew you would come,” she admitted to him and herself. ‥I knew you would be here. Somehow I knew. There’s an extra suitcase in my car and I’ve got a note for the kids. I never stopped missing you....so badly...there were nights when Sean was inside me and I couldn’t think of anything or anyone but you...”
    Gently, ever so gently he put his hands on her shoulders and moved her just far enough so they could look in each other’s eyes...see the tears running down each other’s faces...
    ‥Don’t, Cory,” he whispered. ‥Don’t even think about it. You can’t go with me now, like I couldn’t go with you then.”
    She reached up with both hands winding themselves into the grey and gold curls that streamed down either side of his face.
    ‥I can go anywhere, Toby.”
    ‥Not anymore,” he said, shaking his head. ‥Not anymore...”
    There was a sound from somewhere outside their misery...something he seemed to know was coming as he looked past her...clenched his hands on her shoulders...let go...stepped away...
    ‥They’re here,” he said, and for a moment he was again the beautiful boy she had known-loved-died-a-hundred-times-for when she was sixteen years old.
    ‥They’re gonna take me back. I’m never gonna see you again...”
    She said ‥Toby...?”
    ‥I got totally fucked up and I killed someone, Cory. It was a long time ago when I knew I wasn’t good enough for you. I got drunk and I was angry. I knew I could never come back...”
    She turned. Saw half a dozen black suits running towards her she realised his hands were gone from her shoulders and she felt adrift in some horrible soundless storm.
    They ran past her...following Toby’s (bread-crumb?) trail out some other exit from where the class of 1979 celebrated having survived so well.
    She heard three gunshots...tried to remember him begging her not to cry.

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