We'll Meet Again

“You got me going today at college,” Sandy said. “I was so angry. How could you do that to me?” She looked at Scott, her blue eyes pleading to understand. Scott avoided her gaze and continued looking for stones on the bank of the pond; a task made slightly easier this late in the evening by the light of the half moon carpeting the way before him.

“In front of all my friends as well?” Sandy continued. “Do you know how that made me look?”

^[i]“Your vanity and my vanity will never be friends,” Scott said as he tossed a stone into the pond, breaking the still surface.

“Ooh, that’s deep. Look that quote up last night?”

“But that’s why I did it,” Scott continued ignoring her. “I figured that it was the only way to crack through that tough exterior of yours—” he crushed the flat slate in his hands before hurling the fragments toward the pond, “—and humiliating you in front of your friends finally made you feel what it’s like to be me, and during that moment we could connect.”

“So calculating,” Sandy sat down on the grass. “Now I know what goes on behind those brown eyes of yours. You walk around so quiet, thinking, keeping yourself to yourself and all the time you’re working out how to hurt me.”

“Not hurt, just bruise.”

Sandy looked away and watched the bats circle round the trees behind her, darting, swooping, and diving. ^[ii]“Like fallen apples, they will lose their sweetness at the bruise, and then decay.”

“Very good, I must be rubbing off on you!”

Sandy returned a forced smile. “You didn’t leave much bruising though; full on emotional scaring more like.”

“You’ll heal—” Scott said as he turned away from his pond skimming and sat on a fallen tree trunk behind Sandy, “—you always do. You’ll run back to your friends ready for the next shopping trip and you’ll forget the day I broke you like a horse.”

With that Sandy was quickly up on her feet and turned to face him. “God, you really hate me don’t you?” She spat.

Scott was caught off guard by her reaction. “Err, not you,” he said backtracking, “just—” He took a deep breath and contemplated the hole he was digging, “—just everything you stand for.”

“Oh, is that all? Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“If you like,” Scott said. “You’re a mystery to me; a rich girl that I like.”

“Like? Are you sure about that?”

“Yeah, you always hurt the ones you love.”

“Resorting to cliché’s now?” Sandy said. “That’s a little below you—”

“Nothing’s too low for me.”

Sandy smiled honestly this time. “Anyway, I thought it was bruise?” She sat on the trunk beside him.

Scott was watching the birth of new stars on the canvas of night sky; slowly twinkling into view and creating the complex map that he knew so well. Sandy noticed that his immersion into space was preventing him from answering her, but she cared little as she followed his gaze around the cosmos as he mentally joined up the dots to the constellations.

“I think I love you,” Scott said finally, “always have from the first moment we met in class.”

It was Sandy’s turn to be surprised. She turned to say something to him but just sat there open mouthed.

“Remember, when you called me a nerd in front of all your friends?” Scott continued oblivious to her. “So much for my vanity.”

“Yes, I remember,” said Sandy regaining her composure. She gave out a stunted laugh and shook her head as she recalled that day. Not one of her best introductions to a new potential friend. “We didn’t get off to a good start really did we?”

“No, I don’t s’pose we did,” Scott finally looked at Sandy. “I don’t know what it is,” he looked around. “From the first moment I hated and loved you, I needed to be near but keep you away. I’d see you every day and it would tear me up that I couldn’t be with you, but every time we spoke I just got angry. I was really confused but I think I finally saw it in your eyes today, saw it in your soul, and I know you did too,” he sighed. “I just need to work out what it all means.”

“Yes, there was a moment,” Sandy agreed. “I think that’s what wound me up the most. There we were in the middle of an argument, when suddenly a strange feeling came over me—”

“Like you’d been there before?” Scott interrupted.

“Yes.”

“Like you were arguing with someone else?”

“Yes—” Sandy started to fidget nervously as she remembered the feeling from the sports hall earlier. There had definitely been a moment as she looked at him. Everyone else in the room had seemed so distant, lost in a fog. A fog surrounding Scott and her as they talked. But this was before the argument. Before he’d started humiliating her in front of her friends. She’d looked into his eye, and it was there; something behind those eyes. It made her uncomfortable. It made her uneasy. And so she had started shouting.

“About something else?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think that could be it?” Scott asked as took hold of her hands.

Sandy looked down at her hands now nestled between Scott’s palms. She considered removing them, considered getting up and walking away. But she couldn’t. “Be what?”

“That we’ve done this all before, that—”

“You mean in some past life or something?”

“Maybe,” Scott said as placed his hand up to her head and started to stroke her long red hair. Sandy reacted, pulling away at first before allowing her head to tilt and be cradled by his hand. They looked at one another and once more allowed their gaze to intertwine as they stared into each others eyes and through into something else.

Sandy felt the anger return. He stomach turned as she saw the vision of something else, something not yet clear. She started to pull away but she was losing herself in his eyes, those eyes, oh so sweet eyes. Her hands involuntarily tightened their grip on him as his stare penetrated. Her heart raced, the adrenalin pulsed as she fought her fight or flight instinct. And then it was gone; they broke through.

“Rhoda,” said Scott softly, “is that you?”

“Yes, Zach.”