When We Were Young

The Butcher

Hammersmith, London - 1998

"If I profane with my unworthiest hand, this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this. My lips, two blushing pilgrims ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss."

He took her hand and helped Sabrina stand up from the tree swing, their eyes locked on each other's. Slowly, he lifted her hand to his lips and she then spoke the lines she had long since memorized, just from practicing with him so often.

"Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, which mannerly devotion shows in this. For saints have hands that pilgrim's hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmer's kiss."

"Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?" he stepped closer to her until there was mere inches between them.

"Aye, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer," she scolded him gently, trying not to let her elation show.

"Oh, then, dear Saint, let lips do what hands do, they pray: grant thou, lest faith turn to despair."

"Saints do not move, though grant for prayer's sake."

"Then move not while my prayer's effect I take," he leaned in close as she held her breath and closed her eyes. She caught a faint whiff of his Tommy cologne and nearly swooned. He let out a nervous chuckle and kissed her cheek before quickly backing away.

"Thanks, Ray...I uh...I have to go," he stammered, gathered his things and zipped out of there like a startled animal, not once making eye contact. Sabrina remained standing next to the swing, her heart still pounding against her ribcage even after he was long gone.

***

Flight 2218 from the UK to the US - Present day

"James, I hate it when you make me do this," he grumbled as he sat down next to his manager. He was distracted then by a fellow passenger asking for his autograph and a picture of them together. He happily obliged, settled into his seat again and popped his earbuds in.

"You have to have a frame of reference. Learn from your mistakes," James clicked 'play' and suddenly, Ben was on the screen, a dodgy recording of one of his Hamlet performances.

"Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a
breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest;
but yet I could accuse me of such things that it
were better my mother had not borne me: I am very
proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at
my beck than I have thoughts to put them in,
imagination to give them shape, or time to act them
in. What should such fellows as I do crawling
between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves,
all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to--"

He cut his own performance short by snapping James' laptop shut, "I've seen enough, thank you."

He may as well torture me through Romeo and Juliet too.

Without fail, the words within almost every Shakespearean text brought her back to his thoughts. Back when he knew her, he'd torture her by rehearsing constantly, to the point where she knew every play he'd ever done, word for word. Of course she complained incessantly, but he knew she secretly loved it.

Do I dare call her?

She's probably married.