17
Unannounced
By Emily Larkin
She shows up unannounced, and talks as though continuing a conversation we’ve been having for hours, when the truth is I haven’t seen her in a year. Rather than barrelling into my house, as she has on previous occasions, she draws me out of it, until I’m in the driveway, shielding my eyes from the sun and wondering if any of this can be real.
‘– it really is a lovely day, and, like I said, there’s no sense spending it indoors,’ she concludes, or maybe just pauses. It’s hard to tell, and I don’t wait to find out.
‘Tayla, what are you doing here?’
‘Shaking you out of your winter gloom,’ she says.
‘Spring is here!’
‘No, it’s not...’
‘Metaphorically!’ She takes my arm, and this small, casual contact sends a familiar zing of anticipation through my bones. I don’t understand. I shouldn’t look into her honey eyes and feel undone, and newly stitched together. It’s been too long, and she should be a stranger to me now.
She has no right to show up, with selective amnesia.
I tug free. ‘Tayla, I’m busy, okay?’
She stares, shock welling in her eyes.
‘We can’t hang out. You know that it’s not like that anymore.’
Tayla breaks eye contact – and when she looks at me again, it’s with hypnotic power. Before I can understand what’s happening, I’m climbing into the passenger seat of her car parked in the street, and letting her take the wheel. Tayla always had the capacity to make me do crazy things, and maybe being apart has weakened my ability to resist. She is dizzying, perplexing, and trying to understand her is like tracing salt patterns thrown on ice.
Tayla turns to me before starting the car. ‘Okay, some ground rules.’