Chapter Two:
Goodbye, Hello

"Why are you here?"

Becca looked up and, although she was surprised to see him, she felt as if she'd been expecting to every time she'd looked up for the last few days.

After encountering him in the restaurant and giving him her number she'd spent the next three days of her holiday in her hotel room waiting for him to call. She'd managed to plan out all of the places she wanted to visit, fluorescent post-it notes sticking out from every page of her guide book and a map covered in ink folded on her table, but she'd not actually been to any of them. Seeing old buildings and museums suddenly didn't seem as important to her as picking up that phone and hearing his voice on the other end of the line. But by the third day her optimism had turned to annoyance and upset and she'd decided to continue with her plans. So on the fourth day she went out to the Fisherman's Bastion and was entertained, for a while, by the architecture, the street stalls, the performance artists and the beautiful view out over the city. By the time afternoon came she was hearing ringing of telephones wherever she went and eventually could not stop her compulsion to return to the hotel any longer. She was walking quickly through reception when he'd stood up in front of her and asked her that question.

"I told you, I'm on holiday" she offered tentatively. He didn't seem as closed off as he'd been the last time she saw him and she hoped softly spoken answers would keep him calm. Her good intentions didn't work though, at her reply he seemed to grow agitated. He sighed and took two steps backwards, then one forwards.

"Would you like to... come up to my room?" she asked, still softly. He nodded once and after a second's pause she led him over to an empty lift and they got inside. He seemed to stand as far away from her as possible in the tight space and did not appear to want to talk. They walked out of the lift and into her room in silence.

When they got inside she turned to close the door but he got in the way, leaning into him she reached around and shut the door. Their noses were inches apart, his expression was nothing more than one of badly veiled mistrust. Letting out a sigh she drew back and asked, "Do we have to be like this Justin?"

He walked around her and into the room, the silence stretched out as he pretended to look around and check out the view when really he was working at keeping his emotions manageable. She could hardly remember what she'd asked him when he answered finally, "Like what?"

"Like people who hate each other"

"No point in lying"

"I don't hate you Justin, I never did.."

"Look, Mrs Dean--"

"Becca" she corrected him, "I'm not Mrs Dean anymore...". For some reason she'd expected him to be more excited by that news, she'd been saving it as a card up her sleeve but he seemed so agitated now she thought she'd better show it off. The effect of her words was to provoke another look of mistrust and disbelief on his face.

"Ok. Sure. Great." he said, unconvinced, "Look, Becca, what do you want from me? I'm putting together an ok life here. Whatever it was that we had, it ended years ago. You showing up the other day threw me... I can't imagine what we can have to say to each other now."

Becca sank down into the uncomfortable wicker chair that the hotel had provided. What she wanted to say was that this wasn't all planned, that it really was a holiday, that she'd hardly thought about him in years, but what came out of her mouth was, "You came here though"

He perched himself on the end of her bed before grudgingly admitting, "I didn't mean to. I threw away that napkin... Unfortunately I remembered your hotel and..." he raised his hand and slapped his leg as if swatting at a fly, "every time I thought about it, it just confused me, until I knew I had to speak to you." He finally looked at her, "One last time anyway"

He snaked an arm around her middle and she twisted slowly in his embrace until she was facing him. He gave her a grin and then a small kiss on the lips, "Hi"

She returned the kiss, her lips lingering on his as her hands slid down his body beneath the covers as if they'd been away from each other a long time and not sleeping side-by-side in the same bed. His eyes were open so wide that she laughed and then relaxed in his arms, "Morning"

"This has to be the best morning of my life.." he said, wonderment in his voice that made her uncomfortably happy, after a pause he grinned again, "After the best night of my life.."

"Yeah, it was good.." she breathed, glancing over at the chink of sunlight peeping through the curtains and getting a feeling that she would soon have a hangover.

"Good? It was..." he rolled his eyes in search of a word suitable to encompass all that he was feeling, but could only settle on, "Indescribable"

Becca chuckled and tickled a finger between his shoulder blades before admitting, "I suppose it was...". He leant in and kissed her again, she ran her tongue along his upper lip for a second before breaking away, "What time is it?"

He struggled with the impulse to tell her it didn't matter and looked at the clock over her shoulder, "9:16..."

"Check out is at eleven"

"Becca... can't we just enjoy this for a bit longer?" he pleaded, tightening his grip on her and nuzzling at her neck. It tickled. Despite herself she laughed,

"Okay... but we can't be late.."

It was hard to work out what to say to Justin when she didn't know what she felt. She knew that his words had hurt her in a degree that was surprising but she wasn't sure why. After he'd left five years ago she'd gotten on with her life the best she could, and had even enjoyed her marriage for a while before the old issues had started to emerge again. Justin had always been a thought on the periphery of her mind, but she didn't let herself think about him and eventually she became so good at blocking him out that he'd just disappeared.

Confronted by this surly stranger wasn't really like Justin coming back at all, it was like having a conversation with that neglected part of herself that had wandered off. She didn't recognise him or feel anything for him. Except for in flashes. Like when he looked her right in the eye, or when he smiled. Until those moments happened she just felt irritated and confused by his despondency, but then he'd look at her and those emotions would be replaced by regret, shame and a trace of longing.

"I really didn't come here to find you Justin... This is all just a..." she searched for an adjective then unable to find one that fitted her mood continued, "coincidence. You can believe otherwise if you want to, but that's the truth"

"Oh" he stood up quickly, "then, I suppose this is goodbye again. Finally"

"No" she sprang up, "No, please, lets talk for a bit, we can't part like this and then... never see each other again?"

"Parting like this would be better than last time..." he resisted, but then sat down again once more. She lingered for a moment in case he was about to jump up again, then retook her seat as well. She'd won him around quite quickly, she wondered if he had just been testing her.

"Stop it Justin!" she reprimanded, squirming away from his attention. She pulled her wrist out of his hand and took a step backwards so that he could no longer kiss along her jaw line as he had been doing. Too emotional to mask his feelings, she watched as at first he looked hurt, and then annoyed.

"This is our last chance Becca, our last hour together, can't we just enjoy it?"

"You have to get on this train" she said, looking up at the television screens and reading the times, "I have to be back tonight and you have to be back before me so that..." her voice trailed off.

"No-one notices" he finished for her.

"Yes" she sighed. Then after a second she turned around, "Platform 5, 47 minutes..."

"No need to worry then.." he reached out and took her hand gently, she forced herself to smile through the concern and then moved closer to him slowly. His smile was more genuine when he kissed her. People were walking around them, talking, eating, fighting for places on the cold metal benches. But for this last 45 minutes it didn't matter who saw them.

He slid his arms around her and pulled her against him. She dropped her bag onto the platform and put her left hand up to his face while her right traced the contours of his back. Her fingers wrapped themselves around his hair, his hands slid inside her coat, underneath her top and beneath the clasp of her bra. She let out a soft moan. The announcer blared loudly from a speaker above their heads and they stumbled apart.

They exchanged the briefest of panicked looks before they worked out where the noise had come from, then both laughed. Becca picked up her bag, put her free arm through Justin's and walked with him away from the speaker. When they reached a quieter platform that boasted no other passengers, she tugged on his arm to stop him from walking. He shot her a quizzical look and she explained with a grin, "Well, we do have 36 minutes..."

"I am sorry..." she tried to get him to look her in the eye but he had become introverted again, "... for how it ended. Justin? Some of the things I said just weren't fair.."

"They were true though--"

"No!"

"Yes, they were." he scratched at the stubble growing around his chin, "I was bad for you."

"We were bad for each other" she compromised. He shrugged, as if to say he didn't see much of a difference between their two definitions. She tucked her hair behind her ears then leant forward, elbows on her knees, in an attempt to get him to look at her. She smiled when he did so, "You seem to have managed all right since anyway.."

What she had intended as a compliment put a scowl on his face. He seemed to bite his tongue for a second, opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it and then stood up again, "You have--" the fingers of his left had curled into a fist, "You have no idea--" he dragged the fist over his head, slowly uncurling the fingers and scratching his scalp. "Becca... forget it." He walked past her and to the door, "Forget we met the other day, forget I came here... enjoy your holiday. Forget everything Becca."

He was pulled back at the door by her hand grabbing at his arm. He tried to shake her off but she held on and pulled him around to face her. For a moment she caught the glimpse of a tear in his eye before he jerked away from her and wiped at his face. Speechless but now sure that he wasn't leaving, she backed off and sat down in the place he'd vacated on the bed, her eyes fixed on his face.

He turned slowly, expression composed once more into apparent apathy. This time he looked at her though, his eyes trained on hers in an unnerving way. Now, more than ever before, she felt like she was talking to Justin Burton again, for the first time in five years. Tears prickled at her eyes but she forced them back. If he could be mature about this, so could she, there were some things that needed saying, "Justin... I am sorry... for the way I treated you back then.."

He shrugged, dismissive again, and uttered with his trademark naiveté of years ago, "All break ups are hard."

"Not just the at the end. The stuff in the middle, hell, even some of the stuff at the start... I did so many things badly back then... " she waited a beat to see if he would come in with his own apology but then soldiered on, just happy that he was finally listening, "I can't say I've thought about you much. Blocked you out more like.. Until these last few days when you were all I could think about. I really need to know if... if you're ok, if I can help you with anything... if I--"

"--screwed me up for life?" he asked, catching on to her train of thought.

"I suppose."

"If you're feeling guilty Becca, don't. If all you need me to say is that I'm ok, then I'm ok. If you want me to forgive you, I forgive you." his voice raised a little as he continued slowly, "Don't. Worry. About. Me. Anymore. You said you wouldn't when we last spoke in Chester--" she winced at the memory, "--and I held you to that. I didn't worry about you either." he broke eye contact with her, turned and opened the door, "So... goodbye Becca. I hope you've heard what you wanted to hear. Have a nice life, I mean that..."

"Justin!" she called, no longer forcing back the tears, "Please.."

"Don't Becca..." he whispered, half way out of the door with his back to her, his voice hard, "Stop being so pathetic. Just... let me go."

"Goodbye Justin.." she said, fighting down everything else she wanted to say. She could not bare to look up and watch him leave, so instead closed her eyes and wiped at her wet cheeks.

He paused at the doorway and looked back at her. His eyes were dry, his expression resigned. She had her face in her hands and could not see him still standing there. He tried to take the final step out of her room but found that he couldn't. He told himself he was stupid. Sighing he leant his head on the door frame and, still unsure why he was saying it, said quietly, "I'll pick you up at seven. Tonight" and then added, "Don't expect too much" before finally disappearing down the corridor before she could look up.