Through nothing

We veered awkwardly towards each other for half our lives, but never quite intersected. Two existences on slightly differing trajectories, a crucial fraction of a degree of difference which meant that our lives always slid around each other’s. Underpasses, flyovers, roundabouts. Constantly in motion, but never quite stopping.  I remember hearing about your job in town planning, I smiled at that.

You, I recall, always mistrusted romance. So I’m not going to dwell on how things could have been different. The time on the beach where we didn’t quite kiss. That moment when we both came back home after Uni, one last summer before the adult world, and had a long chat that went nowhere. These are the tropes of the romantic film, but they’re always resolved by act three.

And we’ve stayed there ever since, bit part players in each other’s lives. I remember that text you sent late at night at a time when it was the last thing I needed to hear. I remember when we were both in London at the same time on business and met up for dinner. Each of us said we hadn’t changed.  But each time the instant dissolved. And life has a way of rolling over the top of you. I couldn’t bring myself to look at your wedding photos. I don’t know how you felt about mine, I never asked.

One of the problems of the connected age is that you stay in each other’s lives forever. It’s also one of the best things about it.

They pulled the houses down round here down a few years ago, but nothing’s yet been built on them. Stripped of the buildings, the roads look futile, they lack context. In some instances they seem to stop short in the middle of nowhere, elsewhere they run dead straight through nothing. Here or there the odd house still stands, like a tooth in a ruined mouth. I don’t understand the process behind this. Maybe, if we ever met again, you could explain it to me.