Friday 13 February 2015

The Rendezvous


My fingers still smelled of the vinegar from my fish and chips lunch while the salt on my lips was from the wind blowing in off the sea. I stood on the promenade with a bastardised version of an Otis Reading song in my mind as I watched the waves roll in then watched them roll away again. I was on time but my contact was late. This was the first time in 20 years I been back to the seaside town I’d called home for over twenty years. I’d never particularly planned to come back. But the email had piqued my interest just enough and here I was back in the town that had made me the man I was.
‘She’ wasn’t my first, in fact she wasn’t my second or third either but they do say that the fourth time is the best. We’d been young, clumsy, and naïve but we’d believed we were in love and we’d made enough love to have a surplus. But puppy love never lasts especially when one of the puppies grows up to be a bitch. 
She’d unceremoniously dumped me for a Rottweiler called Richard, I got a job offer in Manchester and that was that. Until that is this mysterious email asking me for a rendezvous. I didn’t even know how she found me, but I guess small seaside towns have ways of revealing secrets.
I looked at my watch and then looked up and down the promenade but there were only seagulls struggling in the wind and a mother and child chasing pigeons. I’d give her 5 more minutes then I would struggle against the wind myself.
I smiled to myself as I remembered strutting my teenage stuff up and down this prom. Jesus such little stuff, so much strut. The Fresh Prince had replaced Otis as my earworm of choice as I remembered summer times past. Then I saw her waddling towards me; either she’d put on a ton of weight or she was 6 months pregnant. Well at least she won’t be telling me that’s mine, I smiled to myself before smiling at her and holding out a hand to shake.
She took my hand and went on tiptoe to kiss both my cheeks.
‘Let’s go to Giovanni’s,’ she said.  I nodded and smiled. Giovanni’s was an institution, it had been there all of my life and according to my dad all of his too. Julie and I had shared weak, milky tea there on many occasions.
‘You’re looking well.’ I said, lying through my teeth. Julie looked tired and drawn like the creature growing inside her was sucking all of her life.  She smiled at me as if she knew that I was lying.
We chitted and chatted, catching up on life and loves of ourselves and school friends.
‘So what’s this big thing then?’ I said quoting her email.
‘Well’ she said, patting her belly, ‘this little fella’s yours.’
I laughed. It had been 20 years since I’d seen her last, even I knew enough about women’s bodies to know that that didn’t add up.
‘I stole your sperm, I told you I would,’ she said through my laughter.
‘I stole it, froze it, and 6 months ago, I used it.’
I looked at her, she was surely taking the piss. This wasn’t possible. I remembered she had joked about stealing my sperm, she’d even put some in a tube, but it was a joke.
‘You’re joking.’ I said - she shook her head.
‘I don’t want you to be the father but I am glad you are the father and I thought you should know. I kept that little vial just for fun but then when I hit forty and I was still childless I began to wonder. A doctor friend of mine told me it was useable. You were always the best, good stock, good genes.’
I shook my head, this couldn’t be true. Obviously some bloke had left her in the lurch and she was trying to coax a sucker into believing it was his child. I was not going to be that sucker.

‘Nice try,’ I said. I stood up, struggled with the zip of my jacket and then left Giovanni’s for the last time.
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1 comment:

  1. What a dose of romanticism on this eve of St Valentine's Day, hehe:-) I suggest today's archive story is Unromantic Lyrics poems:-)

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