When We Were Young

It took a while for Erin to come back to the present, alone in her queen bed, her mind holding onto her memory of Charlie for as long as she could, knowing part of his soul lingered with hers after all these years, feeling it stir, reawakening, her body tingling with sensation, relaxing and warm.

She didn't even notice the moment sleep finally came to her.

~0~

Dear Charlie,

Thank you for your email and the kind words you wrote. I'm not mad at Rhiannon for giving you my card. After all, you deceived her. It was a surprise to see you at the wedding. Not an unpleasant one, but I'm going to be honest with you - I'm not sure how I feel about the idea of catching up. Part of me is curious to see how you are, and you do look well, but the rest of me doesn't think it's a wise idea. For now I hope you'll understand and respect that.

Kind regards,

Erin

~0~

>Charles Moss

Hi Erin,

Thanks for your honesty. I completely understand where you are coming from. Take your time, I don't want you to feel pressured. My email was completely unsolicited and perhaps selfish on my behalf.

All the best,

Charlie

~0~

Hi Charlie,

Sorry I left you hanging for a few weeks. Life's busy, but I know you know that's partly an excuse. But here I am emailing you again.

I'd be happy to get a coffee with you. Actually, happy might not be the right word. But I will meet with you, and we can even have coffee lol. Geeze, I'm so shit at this lol.

Ok, so, I need you to know something. I have a 4 year old son and between him and work I don't get a lot of time to myself. I work through the week when Cooper is at childcare, and most weekends I'll have a wedding shoot or two. But I'm free this coming Sunday if you are. However, I can't dump Cooper on Mum (and she might freak if she found out I was meeting with you for coffee!) and I always spend my precious free time with Cooper. So if you don't mind, we could meet at a park or somewhere Coops can run about and play. My suggestions are the Botanical Gardens or Roma St Parkland. Otherwise, I'm open to suggestions.

Kind regards,

Erin

~0~

>Charles Moss

Hey Erin,

You have a son! Wow! I suppose this is where I inform you I have two kids. My daughter Billie is 8 and my son Tyler is 5. Their mother and I are no longer together and I mostly have them on the weekends, and they will be more than happy to play at a park. If you don't mind them coming along, of course. I'm sure you won't lol. Billie is very nurturing of her younger brother, and by nurturing I mean bossy, but she's great and plays well with younger kids. I'm sure they'd both love to play with Cooper too.

Do you mind if I text you to tee up the final details?

All the best,

Charlie

~0~

Two of her closest girlfriends seemed to think it was a terrible idea, advising her meeting a long lost ex could only be trouble. Another friend suggested it might not be so bad to meet with Charlie, especially since Erin was obviously thinking about doing so.

None of these friends knew Erin and Charlie's history, and she was deliberately vague with the details, simply telling them he was her childhood sweetheart, giving an exceptionally abbreviated version of events around their break up at the age of twenty, their love having turned toxic.

"You said he seemed different now," another friend had said, encouraging her. "As you say, there's a lot of years between a teenaged boy who parties hard and gets drunk at every opportunity, and the man drinking soda water instead of alcohol at a wedding reception. Aren't you even curious?"

She phoned Libby, who she'd remained best mates with after all these years. However, Libby now lived in Western Australia, on the opposite side of the country. "Maybe he changed, Rin? He's not an impressionable boy anymore. If it were me I'd give him a chance, even for curiosity's sake."

This was all Erin wanted to hear, having already made up her mind to see him, because she was most definitely curious. She ignored all other advice and tales of catching up with ex's, hooking up and then falling straight back into old habits and routines. The expressions on her friend's faces suggested they were dubious of her intentions when she told them, "We're only going to meet for coffee and I'm definitely not going to start seeing him."

"Famous last words," one of friend warned.

Now she second guessed her decision, Why am I doing this, maybe this is a completely dumb idea...

Too late, because she was on her way, watching Cooper in his Thomas the Tank Engine shirt, staring out the windows of the train with wide-eyed wonder, watching the suburbs of Brisbane flash by, pointing at everything and asking a million questions. She was only half-listening to Cooper, her mind elsewhere with the butterflies making their presence known in her stomach and heart.

Alighting from the train at Roma Street Station, Erin led Cooper down the station's stairs, then stalled at the first café they came across to buy a juice for Cooper and coffee for herself, which only encouraged the butterflies. Again, she wondered, Why am I doing this?

They arrived at the playground, and there Charlie was, sitting on a seat in the shade of a tree, looking relaxed, sipping a coffee exactly like hers, watching the goings on around him. Erin's heart beat faster and she stopped, surveying the scene in front of her for a moment, noting there were many parents and their children about, which was probably a good thing, because they'd not be alone.

"Come ooonnnn, Mummy," Cooper whined. "I want to play!"

"Sorry, buddy," she said, moving towards the playground. "Um, I want you to meet someone first. An old friend of mine."

"Do I have to?"

"Yeah, of course. He has a little girl and boy who might play with you."

She took his hand, knowing full well it was for herself, comforted by the act, rather than for her increasingly independent son.

"Hello, Charlie," she said, lifting her sunglasses from her eyes to her hair, and Charlie turned to her, looking up and smiling, then standing.

"Hey, wow, great to see you, Erin."

"Likewise, I think."

He chuckled a little, and she wondered, He's not going to hug me and kiss my cheek is he? Because it might be weird.

He didn't hug her, and instead he crouched down to Cooper's level. "You must be Cooper. Your Mummy told me about you."

Cooper hid behind Erin's legs, wary of Charlie, who smiled at him, and then Cooper smiled too and pointed, saying, "The happy snowman!"

"Uhh, okay, sure!" Charlie laughed. "I'll be a happy snowman if you want me to be. And I have little helpers. There they are, come and we'll meet them."

Erin smiled, already feeling better about the meeting. They followed Charlie over to a girl with long black hair and who was scaling a climbing fort, and a younger boy with curly dark brown hair who waited at the top. Charlie spoke to them, "Billie and Tyler, this is Cooper and Erin."

Tyler considered Erin and Cooper with a stand-offish stance, however, the girl looked to them with dark almond-shaped eyes which were unlike her father's striking blues, and she smiled and then spoke in very confident and precocious tones. "Hello Erin, nice to meet you. Daddy told me you were his best friend back when he was in school."

Erin smiled. "That's right. I first met your Daddy when we were younger than you even. I think we were six at the time. He was very kind to me when another boy was saying nasty things towards me."

"It was so long ago I can't even remember," Charlie said with a slight chuckle. He looked again to his daughter. "What I do remember is we used to play a lot of soccer in the school yard back then, like you do with your friends. Now, would you mind playing with Cooper while I talk with his Mummy?"

"Sure," the girl said, climbing down and taking Cooper's hand. "Tyler and me are wizards and this is our castle. You can join us if you like. I'm Harry and Tyler is Hagrid, and you can be Ron because your hair is red. We need to find you a wand so you can make spells."

Cooper looked to Erin for reassurance, and she smiled with encouragement, and the kids began to play. Cooper looked to Billie, telling her, "My Mummy has a box of magic spells from Grandma's garage, but she took it home."

Billie turned and smiled at Erin, one witch to another, then Erin turned to Charlie. "They have great imaginations at this age, don't they?"

"Yeah, especially Billie. She's inherited her mother's creative gene."

"You said Billie is eight and Tyler is five?"

"Yeah, Billie's eight going on twenty-eight. She's already decided she's going to be an astronaut if she can't be a wizard. We read the first Harry Potter together and she wants a magic wand and a flying broom for Christmas. Tyler is five and wants to be a dinosaur."

"Today Cooper wants to be a train driver. Last week he wanted to be a postman because they get to ride a motorbike."

Charlie chuckled. "Apparently I'm a snowman. What do you want to be?"

Erin tried to think of a smart-arse quip, but all of them sucked, so instead she said, "I want to be a good Mum."

"You look like a great Mum."

"I try."

"Don't we all," he said, his voice knowing.

They stood watching their children play, Billie clearly enjoying having two boys to boss around now, Cooper and Tyler going along with whatever she said. Erin sipped her coffee, aware Charlie was at her side doing exactly the same thing. She couldn't help the thoughts creeping in, Is this what might have been if we'd lived our once upon a time, happily ever after dream? Both of us standing around together and watching our children play?

She immediately dismissed the thought, knowing it was silly, but the thought was on the loose somewhere in the recesses of her mind. There was silence between them now, so she spoke.

"So tell me..."

"Grant and Genevieve showed me the..."

They'd both spoken at once.

"Sorry, you go first," she said.

"No, no, you go."

"Um, okay. You were going to mention the photos of your friend's wedding. It was...good to see you. Like, it was a massive surprise, of course, but I guess it was good to see you all the same."

"Yeah, it was a surprise to see you too, but you're a wedding photographer and weddings are your natural habitat. Sure, there's many wedding photographers Grant and Genie could have picked, but they clearly wanted the best."

"Ahh, flattery," she said, smiling. "Your forte."

"Nah, flattery suggests insincerity. Like I was going to say, they showed me their photos and you did a fantastic job."

"Taking fantastic photos is my job."

"This might sound a bit stupid or strange, but I'm a little bit proud of you, and I bragged to them we were once friends and each other's first sweethearts."

"Okay," she said, not knowing quite what else to say. "Thanks, I guess."

"Yeah, I know, like I said, it's weird. We've had nothing to do with each other in fifteen years and then I tell you I'm proud of how good you are at the thing you trained to do. But I am proud, I can't explain it, but there you go, take it or leave it."

"Well, thanks, I'll take it," she said, smiling. "You were there in my formative years of playing about with photography."

"Yeah," he chuckled. "Though weddings are a bit different to the derelict buildings we'd explore and setting off fireworks in stormwater drains or twirling rings of fire for your long exposures."

"Gotta make money somehow and it's not going to come from photographing urban decay and fancy pyrotechnics."

"Weren't those the good old days, urbexing over the city's hidden places for your photography. Fun times."

"Those were definitely fun times," she answered without hesitation, then smiled. "We did some crazy things back then."

"Yep, and some days were not so good either, ay."

She pursed her lips together. "Yeah, well, we were young and still learning about how to do life I suppose."

"Absolutely. And now we're older and much wiser, and every day I realise I still have so much to learn."

Erin took her eyes off the kids and turned to him for the first time in the conversation. "You've definitely changed."

"I bloody hope so," he said, his eyes meeting hers.

"Yeah, you've definitely changed," she said again, smiling. "It shocked me when I saw you among the guests at the wedding. Because I was contracted to photograph the wedding reception too, I actually felt sick about the prospect of running into you there. I couldn't believe it when you were drinking sparking water and not beer or wine or whatnot. I didn't know what to expect from you, but I never thought I'd see you drinking water over alcohol, that's for sure."

He nodded, then looked away from her, towards the kids. "Yeah, I totally know where you're coming from, and it's completely understandable. I wasn't always the best behaved, and I'm sorry for everything."

"Water under the bridge, right?"

"Yeah, I hope so. I did grow up, I think. Mostly. Apart from using it in cooking, I haven't touched alcohol in about twelve years."

"Wow, good for you! That's great, Charlie. I'm actually kind of proud of you too."

"I'll take that," he said, giving her a smile. "It was a process, of course. A lot of downs before the ups. Our, um, break up was only the beginning, but I'm not even sure if I realised it then. I'm not making an excuse here either, because all that shit was on me. But yeah, I had some bad habits which took me a while to recognise or break from."

Erin thought for a moment. "But you did recognise and break from them."

"Yeah, like I said it was a process. After you left me I lost a few other friends, like Lib, as you know, and others from uni. They just stopped hanging out with me, and I was increasingly hanging with other guys who...enabled my behaviours."

"Nik's mates?"

Charlie pursed his lips and nodded. "Yep, Nik's mates. They were arseholes...and so was I. No excuses here, I was messed up, drinking, taking drugs, getting smashed each weekend. I'll be honest, it wasn't even fun most the time, it was quite pathetic and stupid." He paused and Erin didn't know what to say, so she said nothing. Eventually Charlie said, "Then I met a girl and somehow I hadn't killed all my brain cells and decided I didn't want to screw things up again. Somehow I sorted my shit out as best I could."

"I guess we all make mistakes so we can learn from them and become better people."

Charlie sighed and then smiled. "Yep, one hundred percent."

They sipped at their coffees in silent unison again, watching Billie instructing Tyler and Cooper to place leaves they'd collected from the surrounding garden into the centre of a circle they'd made with rocks. "This is our potion," she said to the boys, pointing at the leaves, and held up a stick, declaring, "And with my magic wand, I'll make our first spell!"

Charlie chuckled at his daughter's antics. "Like I said, she's all about Harry Potter."

"She has such a good imagination," Erin said, genuinely impressed at Billie's ability to keep Cooper and her brother involved and enthralled.

"It's her gift. Last year she was into Frozen, which I think we watched at least a thousand times, and she was running around pretending to be Elsa and making Tyler be Anna. She'd cheekily tell me I was Olaf, the snowman, so I found it funny when Cooper called me a happy snowman. Maybe I give off a snowman vibe or something."

Erin flushed. "I was...um, he found my old photo album of our ski trip to New Zealand and saw our snowman. He asked...he asked who you were and I said you were my friend."

"You didn't lie to him, since I was your friend."

"Best friends," she said without thinking, nodding in agreement. "Cooper said you looked happy and I told him you were."

"Yeah," Charlie said. "I've found kids to be pretty perceptive."

Erin nodded. "Yours look like happy kids, Charlie. You've done well."

"I have," he said. "And I'm not just saying it, I know I have. And I can always do better. Their future scares me sometimes, mainly because I worry they might be like me. Billie looks so much like her mother, but I see certain behaviours I'm sure she gets from me, and I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. If she wasn't playing with the boys right now, I know she'd be halfway up one of the trees or dangling by her legs from the monkey bars, or jumping off the top of the climbing frame there. She pushes hard to get her way too, sometimes in creative manipulative ways, but other times she can be downright aggressive about it, and I wonder if she's a mini-me sent to teach me a lesson."

"It's how they all are, I think," Erin replied, gesturing towards her son. "Cooper's similar and I have to let him do his thing to some degree, but I'm always fighting the urge to helicopter parent."

He smiled. "Cooper looks like a good kid, and I'm sure you're doing a great job. I always thought you'd make a great mum."

"I try my best, but feel guilty because I have to work all the time." She contemplated Charlie for a moment, then asked, "I suppose you're curious about Cooper's father?"

"I am, but wasn't going to press you about him."

"Nah, it's fine. He's an engineer working in mining but he's also an amateur photographer who mainly takes arty shots of mining equipment and other industrial stuff. We met at an exhibition where he was showing his work, and we ended up together for four years. Things weren't bad, but he spends a lot of time in Central Queensland, always travelling back and forth. We broke up a year after Cooper was born, mostly because he was always away, and I was feeling like a single mum anyway, but I wasn't going to move out to woop woop to raise my kid."

"Wow, okay. Does he...does Cooper see his father?"

"Yeah," Erin said, sighing. "When Liam's back in Brisbane he spends time with Cooper, but it's always too short and a bit random and poor Cooper doesn't get it. He's unsettled for days after his father leaves, and the situation's my biggest bugbear, but it is how it is and I can't do much about it."

"I don't get it, Erin," Charlie said, then hesitated before continuing. "Like, no judgement, but personally, my kids come before everything."

"You're totally judging," she said, feeling defensive all of sudden. "Liam's a good guy and he's a good Dad to Cooper when he's around."

"I guess I am judging. Sorry, I suppose Cooper's father's situation is different to mine."

Erin sighed again. "It is what it is and I'm doing my best with Coops. My brother moved back here a few years ago, so Cooper has another male role model."

"I have to say, your brother was one big scary mother-effer. In a good way, I suppose. He was very protective of you and he gave me a talking to I'll never forget."

She finished her coffee, disappointed it was empty, and said, "I remember. If I recall correctly, he told you never to speak to me again."

"That's right, he said never ever, ever, and I thought about him when I ran into you. He's not going to hunt me down, is he?"

"He might, the Army gave him a particular set of skills," she said, half in jest. "Connor's heart's in the right place, even if he often sees the world in black and white. But family always comes first with him, no matter what. Anyhow, that's my story, what's yours?"

He gestured towards the children and said, "You mean their mother?"

"Yeah. Is she the one who saved you?"

"She is, actually. Joanne sorted me out, quick smart."

"I didn't mean to sound snarky when I asked, and I'm glad she did sort you out." Erin then gave him a friendly punch on the shoulder. "You needed it."