An Old Flame

Chapter 1

Just as I was about to make a move, my mobile began vibrating. Annoyed, I glanced away from the computer screen to see a number I didn’t recognise displayed on the glowing phone. That momentary distraction cost me my life, as the little bastard from Helsinki I’d been pursuing for the past ten minutes popped out of exactly where I’d known him to be and shot me right in the head.
“Dammit!” I growled, pushing away from the desk and snatching up my mobile to answer. “Well?”
I had expected a cold caller, because no one uses a phone to make calls these days, but instead, a hesitant voice filled my ear. “John?”
“Yes?” I replied, “who is it?”
There was a pause, and then. “John. It’s me.”
I frowned. There was certainly something familiar about that voice, but as I was still pissed off about that Finnish kid dancing on my corpse. I couldn’t concentrate properly.
“Who’s me?” I asked.
Another slight pause, and then I heard a pent breath being exhaled. “It’s me, John. Ayesha.”
For a split second I was none the wiser, I was fairly sure I didn’t know an Ayesha, but then I realised that I did. Well, I had, at least, but I hadn’t heard from her for over a decade, and, truth be told, I’d never expected to hear from her again.
“Ayesha?” I whispered into the phone.
“Hi,” came the response, somewhat timidly.
“Holy shi- Aysh! Is it really you?”
I heard a faint snort and my mind raced. I could almost picture the smile that would have accompanied that expulsion of air, I could practically see Ayesha’s face in my mind’s eye, but it had been so long. I tabbed out of the game and immediately logged onto Facebook, searching for her.
“Yeah,” Ayesha answered. “How are you, John?”
I didn’t know what to say. We hadn’t seen each other for so long, and back before she’d disappeared from my life, we’d been close. No, not close, we’d been inseparable. Ayesha had been my best friend and more than that. During our last year of college, when we’d been eighteen, I don’t think a day had gone by that we hadn’t seen each other. Even on weekends, all we’d done was meet up, hang out, spend time together, doing nothing and everything. And then one day, just before our final exams, her father had been diagnosed with cancer, the aggressive kind. Her mother had died when she was just six, and with her father’s diagnosis, she’d been forced to move down south to live with her grandparents and help to care for her father during his remaining days. The day she’d moved had been the last day I’d ever heard from her.
“I mean, I’m OK, Aysh. You?”
“Yeah, I’m OK too.”
So many questions ran through my mind, dredged up from those final weeks I’d spent texting, calling, messaging Ayesha in the hope she’d respond. But she never had. It was like she’d died, with every single one of my attempts to contact her resulting in absolutely nothing but a growing list of unread chat boxes, flowing one way only.
“What happene-, I mean, where ar-, no, I mean. I don’t know. Aysh, is it really you?”
I’d found her old profile on Facebook and clicked on the picture of the young girl wearing an oversized Blink 182 hoody, my hoody, that I recognised so well. That picture could have been taken yesterday, and I was thrust back to our final teenage years as I stared into that slightly blurred image, remembering the nose piercing, the long, black fringe that always concealed one eye, while the other was ringed with black liner that ended in a sharp flick. Ayesha, as she had been back then, as she had been when I’d known her so well.
“Yeah, John. It’s me.”
“I’m sorry, I just don’t know what to say,” I said.
“It’s OK, John. It has been a long time.”
“A long time, Aysh? It’s been over twelve years!”
“I know,” she responded softly. “I’m sorry.”
I blinked. It had been so long that I’d hardly expected an apology, yet with those two, simple words, it was as though the mental barrier that I’d constructed to cope with her sudden absence from my life began to crumble. An old barrier, one that I hadn’t even realised I’d created, yet I could feel it breaking apart as the shock of her contact began to be replaced with excitement.
“Oh, Ayesha! What happened? Why did you never answer me?”
I heard her take a breath before she responded. “My grandparents wouldn’t let me.”
I blinked again.
“What?”
Ayesha laughed softly, yet there was no mirth in it. “They took my phone and my laptop as soon as we moved down there.”
Of all the scenarios I’d imagined during the months I’d spent pining after Ayesha, I’d never even considered that to be a possibility.
“I wanted to write to you, of course, but they forbade it,” she continued, and then she put on an accent that I’d heard her do so many times when she had been angry at her dad, “I was to be a good Pakistani girl.” She paused before resuming in her normal voice, “and I wanted to rebel, you know, I really did. But my father was so ill, and I, I just couldn’t fight on two fronts.”
“Ayesha,” I whispered, a few moments after she’d fallen silent.
I heard her sniff. “I know, it’s no excuse. I should have found a way to let you know.”
“No, no,” I protested, “no, of course not. You had much bigger things to worry about.”
“I am sorry,” she repeated.
“You don’t have to be,” I told her. “Seriously, I can’t imagine the shit time you must have been going through.” I struggled for something to say. “Aysh, I’m just so sorry you had to go through all that alone.”
“Thanks,” she said weakly. “But I’m still sorry.”
“Oh, Aysh,” I floundered, trying to think of something that might comfort her. “I wish I could give you a hug.”
A little sound reached my ear and a sudden thought occurred to me, something she used to do when we were talking on the phone together.
“Hey, do you still have my Blink 182 hoody?” I asked, and before she could answer, “maybe you could put it on and pretend like I’m hugging you?”
She laughed softly and sniffed again.
“No, John,” she said, “I don’t still have it.”
“Aw, that’s a shame,” I responded, smiling.
“Yeah,” she agreed, sighing slightly. “I outgrew those clothes a long time ago.”
“Tell me you’re joking, Aysh!” I grinned down the phone. “Are you trying to tell me you don’t still wear those black jeans with more tears than denim? The chain belts, the spiked sleeves?”
Ayesha’s laugh this time was deeper, more genuine. In fact, her voice was deeper than I recalled, more resonant, somehow, and slightly breathier.
“No, John, I outgrew all of that. And belts, ugh, what a nightmare.”
I glanced down at my own clothes. A band t-shirt, jeans and a belt. “What’s wrong with belts?” I asked.
“I don’t do the whole emo make up anymore either. And all my piercings are gone, except the ears.”
“Your grandparents?”
“Yeah.”
We fell silent for a few moments.
“Where are you now?” I asked. “Are you still with them?”
“No,” Ayesha responded quickly, snorting softly. “They’ve, well, they’ve sort of disowned me.”
I frowned. “Disowned you?”
“Yeah.”
“Why? And where are you now, then?”
There was a pause, and then another released breath. “I’m back in town,” she said.
“What!” I exclaimed. “Aysh! Wow! Where are you? I’ll come over.”
I hadn’t even realised that I was standing before I’d crossed my bedroom and exited into the hall, grabbing my car keys on the way.
“Wait,” Ayesha said, “I, well, uh, John, things aren’t just like they were.”
“No?” I asked, pulling on my shoes. “Of course they’re not, Aysh, but that doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“No. You’re my friend, shit me, you were my best friend.” I grabbed a coat, switching hands with my mobile. “You tell me your address, and I’m coming over to give you that hug.”
She laughed nervously. “John, I- I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why? I asked, pausing with my hand on the door handle of my apartment.
“I don’t know,” she said, sighing. “I’ve changed.”
I laughed. “So have I, Aysh! If you’re expecting some skinny teenage muppet to show up on your doorstep, you’ll be sorely disappointed. I mean, I’m still a muppet, just nowhere near as skinny or teenage.”
Ayesha laughed. “You’ll always be skinny to me,” she responded.
I grinned. I had been thin and gangling growing up, whereas Ayesha had been curvy and soft. We’d used to joke about how well we suited one another, opposites attract and all that.
“Good, then that’s settled. I’m coming over.”
“Oh, John-“ she began to protest.
“What is it, Aysh?”
I heard her take a breath and then heard that breath catch in her throat. “OK,” she said at last, and then told me her address.