Day 18 of my drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble:

Johnny

I used to come here every Friday.

I was sixteen, he was twenty. I drank Pernod and black, thinking it made me look sophisticated. I listened to his stories, and hoped he'd ask me to go home with him. He never did.

A figure hunches over the bar, just like he did, leaning forwards on his elbows. Beside him, a girl clutches an Aperol Spritz.

It's him. Still the same, still twenty, despite the decades.

I pause, and rub my eyes until he's no longer there.

The girl laughs, and flicks her hair, as if she's listening to a story.

When I was 18, I moved away from the town I’d grown up in. Many of my friends did the same. For a few years we’d all be back over the summer, or at Christmas, but slowly people built up lives elsewhere.

My favourite teenage haunt is no longer hauntable (it’s in the process of being converted into flats). Pubs we used to frequent have changed hands, changed decor, or just changed.

Occasionally I’ll see someone, and think: is that….? And no, it usually isn’t. It’s just someone of the same height or build, but twenty-five years younger.