Reader, I Followed Him | Fiction | Rachael Thorp
Reader, I followed him
Reader, I followed him.
Because why wouldn’t I? The hastened gaze and swiftly diverted eye contact quickened my heart and left me with little choice. Curiosity piqued and I furtively darted between cars and cyclists, focused on reaching vantage ogling point. His stance was clear and his footfall purposeful whilst my feet struggled into a faster cadence. I sidestepped a huddle of tourists, wove diagonally across the street and had a sudden flicker of doubt; the prominence in my head of actually looking at him head on, face to face, lessened as I gained speed. Would he even remember me? Did that matter, asked the other half of me – it needs resolving. Follow! And so I did.
I stumbled along the uneven concrete, cursing the multi generation groups of families out for a casual stroll who created a blindness to that cord jacket-clad back. Flickering memories strobe lit my conscious and I felt back to that summer when we’d shred our dreams. Not dreamlike but woven thoughts, our upcoming post-graduation time, shared and spoken aloud over pints and chips, hands held and eyes locked. His eyes had such shine to them, his hand grasped more tightly, almost shouting as he exclaimed wed take ourselves off to adventure for some months, abuse the remainder of our not quite grown up and yet not a teenager lives, plunder our student loads and overdrafts before the days shortened and real life would creep into existence.
Our mutual vagueness of the immediate future, and a shared refusal to begin to put into effect the real life awakening that we would have to endure following this hiatus, seemed whimsical and romantic. That hazy shimmer of unknowing was part of our experience, that bliss of the present and absorbing yourself in it.
Vagueness. Opaqueness. I had a much higher clarity now, in both my recollections and in my current life, of being. I also had a distilled sense of his, projected by my brain and emotional woes of abandonment. My thoughts retracted as I focussed on his retreating stature. Now.
Damp perspiration on my back, I was more determined to catch up and to demand an answer, answers. How dare he have left me waiting twenty years ago, desperate for him to call me, anticipating our dusky weeks of dreaming and drifting, our passion for life and each other. Was that his idea of a vague and veiled desire, or had he been sending a clearcut message – which I still couldn’t read. I wanted and would demand answers.
Rachael is a middle-aged book nerd holding a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing, and almost an MA in Environmental Humanities. The two merge to embrace my life in a small rural town in Wiltshire. An aspiring essayist and producer of thoughts, she displays a whimsical love for life and daydreaming, with slight nostalgic yearnings.
