Between Us

by Mhairi McFarlane

Perhaps that was the magic of any holiday: it lifted you out of the familiar and gave you a brief aerial view of your life in progress. It made you confront your world’s smallness in a vastness of opportunity.

The Brian Club was merely a nice-to-have for him; for Roisin, they were everything. They were the point.

Roisin had forgotten how great a cook Dev was. He had that signature of the truly confident, in that he never tried to do too much.

Everyone held their phones aloft to record the scene; the modern ritual.

They were compromised, and complicit. Taking with one hand and trying to say “stop” with the other.

She wondered why everything had to be smirked and snarked at now. Except she was pretty sure she knew why. Easier to let go of something you had spoiled.

It was an earlier version of themselves they hadn’t exactly forgotten, yet it was still a jolt to be confronted with it. Somehow, you always lost the detail.

“You know when an idea is reckless and stupid, but you know in your bones, from the very first moment you have it, you’re going to act on it? Any time spent debating it is pointless. It’s merely therapeutic. It won’t stop you.”

“The price of love is grief.”