It Never Really Happened by Jaime Gill
*****Guillem arrives late, as always, rapid-firing apologies at his boss as he bustles through the beach bar and pulls on his apron. He stops at my table first, pointing to my near-empty glass. “Another beer, Miss?” Miss. Sweet, when I’m old enough to be his mother. I smile and shake my head.
*****The day has begun its slow death so I pretend to watch Barcelona’s sky ignite, but behind my sunglasses my eyes slide towards Guillem. He carries a deflated-looking cake to a noisy German family and sings happy birthday in a sweetly broken voice. My son couldn’t sing either.
*****I peek over the sunglasses to see his dark eyes reflect the candles. My son’s eyes.
*****Sometimes I wonder if this is all a cruel trick I’m playing on myself. Does Guillem really resemble Michael so much? It’s been two years since I saw my son in the flesh, could my memory have faded? Their faces aren’t identical, Guillem is more lupine. But then I see those eyes—exactly the same tree-bark brown, exactly as wide and thick-lashed. And his height, his gap-toothed grin—so similar I sometimes struggle to breathe.
*****He doesn’t recognise me, thankfully. Each time I return to this bar—after spotting Guillem by chance on that strange first holiday alone—I change my appearance slightly. I dye my hair, wear different clothes, find new sunglasses to hide behind. I become one more tired sightseer from the tourist hordes.
*****I know what Guillem would think if he did recognise me, this middle-aged woman turning up alone three times a year, watching him. He’d think I was a stalker. He’d act differently around me. He’d lose his Michaelness.
*****He answers his phone now in hushed Catalan. He glances my way and my heart stutters. Is he talking about me? But then his gaze slides lazily away. His tone suggests he’s talking to a girlfriend. Why had I presumed him single?
*****I am not single, though I feel like I am. I tell my husband I’m visiting different cities when I travel, not returning to Barcelona. The one time he asked why I go away, I told him travel helps me forget. What a lie. But kinder than the truth—that it’s unbearable being alone with him now that he barely leaves the house. If making hearts beat was a matter of will, I’m not sure he’d bother.
*****But I’m not a fool, though I act like one. We’re both trapped. He stays home, staring at football matches he wishes he was watching with Michael. I fly here to stare at this doppelganger stranger.
*****Guillem lopes over to greet a new customer. He even moves like Michael, and I drift into one of my exquisite, agonising fantasies. It never really happened. My son didn’t overdose alone in a wretched bedsit I’d never been invited to. He faked his death to escape his addict friends and came here to live by the sea—to be clean, free, and begin again.
Jaime Gill is a British-born writer living in Cambodia, where he works and volunteers for nonprofits across Southeast Asia. He reads, runs, boxes, travels, writes, and occasionally socialises. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in publications including Missouri Review, Sun Magazine, The Forge, Fractured Lit, Litro, Trampset, and Oyster River Pages. He’s won awards including a Bridport Prize, Luminaire Prose Award, and New Millennium Writers Award, and been a finalist for the Bath Short Story Award and Oxford Flash Fiction Award. He’s also a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. He’s currently writing a novel and more short stories. Learn more and sign up for his newsletter at www.jaimegill.com or follow him on www.x.com/jaimegill, www.instagram.com/mrjaimegill or https://bsky.app/profile/jaimegill.bsky.social.
It Never Really Happened was first published in New Flash Fiction Review.
Photo by Tomi Saputra
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