My project in Creative Writing for Beginners: Bringing Your Story to Life course

My project in Creative Writing for Beginners: Bringing Your Story to Life course

Another time, another place

My exam is finished. I glance at my phone. There is a missed call. It's from him. My heart flutters and a warm glow spreads from my stomach upwards and my face is flushed. I don't care. He called me, just like I knew he would!
After that last weekend, he said we would never see each other again. But I had known it wasn't true. I don't know how I had known, but something deep inside, something primal, had known that he felt what I felt.
It didn't matter that the weekend had been a disaster from start to finish, and very nearly didn't happen. My mother had been furious that I was going away with a man I hardly knew. A man she had not been introduced to. It did not improve her mood when he stopped at the gate and hooted for me to come out, instead of doing the proper thing and introducing himself. “This is Brett” He says when I reach the car “you will be sitting on his lap”. I very nearly turn around and walk away and some would say that that is exactly what I should have done The back seat is filled with people too. Four, in fact. Two of his friends I had met previously and two girls I had never seen. They are very jolly and more than a little drunk. It didn't matter. I got in the car anyway. I wasn’t going to miss the chance to spend more time with him, even if it was the last time I would ever see him. Especially if it was the last time I was to see him!
We drove for hours. To a place that was barely an hour away. We got lost, looking for our accommodation: “something starting with a B”. Do you know how many place names start with a B in this area? Quite a few, actually, we soon discover.
Around midnight, we abandon the search for the “place starting with a B” and head to the casino; to the bar, naturally. We make merry for a couple of hours and then renew the search for the lodge with a name starting with a B. Somebody eventually remembered the name and we drove in at around 5am.
After a short rest, some sustenance and a shower, we head back to the casino. It also has a water park, so there is more than enough to keep us busy. We don’t get much time alone, him and I. He takes me away from the group the next morning so we can breakfast alone. I wolf down a waffle with ice cream. He barely touches his bacon and eggs. There is so much we don’t say. The stifling silence is the polar opposite of that first night we met.
That night that should never have happened. That party that I shouldn’t have been at. I sat in the car for at least twenty minutes working up the courage to walk into that place full of strangers. “This is Craig” my host introduced us. He stuck out his left hand to shake and I fumbled with the keys in my own left hand to shift them. I looked up and our eyes locked. (It sounds cliché, I know, but that was exactly how it happened.) For what must have been two seconds, but what felt like eternity, I saw the entire universe. I traveled through all time. I knew all the secrets and learned all the answers. We started talking.
We talked. And we talked. And we talked some more. It felt like I had finally become. There was no separation between us. We had been forged in the same fire. We went for a drive and had some coffee. I couldn’t stop chattering. He put down his cup of coffee and said: “If you don’t stop talking I’m going to kiss you until you do.” I fell silent. And then the spell broke. I shouldn’t have. I know that now. He simply said: “In another place, in another time, we will find each other again.”