Second Chance Meeting

The last time you saw him, you were both nineteen. He wore a faded green t-shirt that was wearing thin at the seams and you got your hands up under it quick as you could; ran your palms over his shoulder blades; kissed his neck. You were desperate that last time, weren't you? Desperate as Hell because he was leaving – Omo was going to college and you were stuck in Lewisham with parents you couldn't stand who couldn't stand you.

'Jesus, Johnny!' he'd gasped when you pulled him close, nearly winding him as he hit you with the full force of your strength. 'Calm down, yeah? It's not as though I'm leaving forever. I'll be back to visit mama and papa in a couple of months. We'll see each other then.'

But you were seventeen and wiser than you gave yourself credit for. So maybe he wasn't leaving forever, but anything could happen in a couple of months, you thought. All that you knew for sure that was that his mum was at work and his dad was at the local getting pissed like usual and the house was empty and he was all your in that moment and for a few precious moments more. So you were desperate, yes, when you kissed him, and all you could think as the two of you made love in his tiny bed was, 'Don't leave me. I love you. I love you.'

He did leave you though, and it didn't take long for everything to fall apart after that. You got into a massive, bloody fight with your parents and when you walked out onto the street there was nowhere for you to go. You considered briefly going to Omar's father and asking for help, but you couldn't bring yourself to. What would he say when he saw that all his hard work had been wasted on you?

You slept anywhere that had a roof (and some places that didn't ) and started stealing to keep yourself alive. It wasn't leap from that until you found the National Front boys. They lived on the streets too, and they told you that the reason you were out and alone was all the fault of immigrants like Omo and his papa. You resisted the idea for a while because Omar's family had always been so good to you, but the longer you kept company with the NF boys the more you began to see that Omar had abandoned you to go to college and make himself superior to you and his papa was a drunk who had built you up for failure.

When Omar was due to come back from college on a break you didn't go to see him. Instead, you marched through the streets with the NF brandishing a broken bottle and yelling at the top of your lungs: 'Kill the immigrants! They take our jobs! Chuck 'em out!' You saw Omar's papa in the crowd and you didn't give a fuck. Why did an alcohol-soaked Paki have any right to live in Britain and bring up his over-ambitious half-breed son to one day take a job that you deserved?

Five months later Omar's mother threw herself onto the train tracks behind their house. You blamed him for that, too. Omar's black, Paki father forced his proper, white, English wife to kill herself. That night, you and your mates sat in the basement of an old flat complex and talked about killing him to get revenge. It was all talk, of course, but it made you feel better. Every time you talked about hurting Omar and his family you pushed a little bit more of the blame for your fucked up life away from you, and it felt good to not have to take responsibility for once. It felt really fucking good to vandalize and loot and destroy. Your mates thought the world of you, and that's all that really mattered.

So you didn't expect to see him tonight. This is the very last place you would have ever expected to have run into him, and most certainly not because you've been consciously avoiding anywhere he might go for months and months now. You didn't know he was even in the car until he got out of it, completely ignoring your friends as he made a beeline straight for you. He recognized you, alright, which shouldn't surprise you since it's only been a little over a year since you last saw him.

Omar walks up to you with purpose and jumps up lightly to the other side of the barrier. He holds out his hand for you to shake, so you reluctantly take yours out of your pocket and grasp his hand briefly before stuffing it back in your coat. Touching him... it leads your mind to other directions – to the last time you touched him – and you can't let yourself think about that now or ever. You don't look at him – you can't – so you stare at the car in the distance, but from the corner of your eye you can tell that he's smiling broadly and you start to feel your shoddily-constructed wall of hate erode just from his presence. It isn't fair. He shouldn't be allowed to do this to you.

You participate in the conversation he forces on you with what you hope is disdainful arrogance – sarcastic boredom at the very least – but then he says something and you can't help but look at him. Big bloody mistake at it turns out – he's still every bit the boy you fell in love with at school, and just looking at him makes you smile, though you try to tamp it down. You want to hate him. You want to hate him so much, but you can't.

Your friends come over and cluster around the two of you, ready to beat the hell out of him or back you up in the attack at your word. You ask him if he likes them, trying to warn him off before they decide not to wait for your word and treat him like a novelty punching bag. He asks you to call him – he's still at the same number – and with a smile – that private smile he'd always used to reserve for when the two of you were together Back Then, that smile which was equal parts fond and knowing – he turns and jumps off the barrier, starts toward the car.

You watch him walk away for a couple of moments, stare at the back of his black suit and remember how good it was the last time the two of you were together – running your hands over his feverish skin, kissing him until he laughed and begged for mercy, lying over him, pressing him into the mattress as the bed-springs creaked and threatened to give way under your combined weight. More than that, though, you remember the love you felt for him, the desperation you had to never let him go, the terrible belief that if he got away everything would be destroyed. You can't help but remember you predicted right, and it feels like that again, right now. All of a sudden you want him more badly than you can ever remembering hating him, so you try your luck.

'Leave 'em there,' you call to his retreating back, ignoring your mates' sceptical expressions. 'We can do something. Now. Just us.' Then you stand there, unable to stop yourself from hoping, thinking about kissing him again, about the image your pale hands would make against his dark skin as they'd wrap around his waist.

'Can't,' he replies, still smiling as he turns and walks away from you. It was a long shot anyway, you think, and you laugh genuinely at his cheeky reaction as much as at yourself for hoping. You realize now that you're doomed to always be in love with him, even after fourteen months and your flirtation with fascism and his abandonment. You're screwed, royally fucked where he's concerned, and now the only thing to do is win him back. If it means taking the job he's offering, you'll do it, but you're going to make him wait for a while first. He can't play with you without getting something back.

You watch him drive away and see the rest of your life open up ahead of you.