Undone

Afterlight Letter, Vol. 6

She had told herself it would be fine.

Seeing him again. Being in the same room. Having a conversation like two adults who had history and had survived it and were perfectly capable of an ordinary evening without anything catching fire.

She had believed this completely until he walked in.

Then she had believed nothing at all.

He looked the same. That was the cruelest part. She had spent a significant amount of time in the months between imagining that absence would have changed him somehow, softened the effect, introduced some flaw she had previously overlooked. She had been thorough and deliberate about this. She had almost convinced herself.

He looked exactly the same.

Same way of moving through a room like the room had been expecting him. Same quality of presence that preceded him slightly, that made her aware of him before she had conscious reason to be. Same mouth. Same hands. Same way of existing in the world that had always made her feel, against her better judgment, like the world was more interesting than she had previously given it credit for.

She turned back to her drink.

Her heart was doing something unreasonable.

He found her in twenty minutes. She had been counting.

Not looking for him. Simply aware, with every cell she possessed, of exactly where in the room he was and whether or not that distance was changing. It had been changing for twenty minutes and now it had reached its conclusion and he was beside her and the smell of him hit her like a physical thing, like weather, like a memory she had spent months trying to file somewhere it couldn't find her.

"You look beautiful," he said.

No preamble. No hello. Just that, quietly, like it was something he had been holding since he walked in and had finally decided she deserved to know.

She felt it move through her from her throat to the base of her spine.

"Don't," she said.

"Don't what?"

"Say things like that."

He was quiet for a moment. She could feel him looking at her profile, the particular quality of his attention which had always been one of the most intimate things about him, the way he looked at her like she was something worth understanding rather than simply wanting.

Though he wanted her. She had never doubted that. It had always been both things simultaneously and the combination had always been more than she knew how to hold.

"I've missed you," he said.

She closed her eyes briefly.

"I know," she said. "I've missed you too. That isn't the problem."

"What's the problem?"

She turned to look at him then because she couldn't not. Because twenty minutes of proximity had already dismantled most of her composure and looking at him directly was both the worst idea and the only one that felt true.

He was closer than she had realized.

Close enough that she could see the exact expression on his face, which was the one she had loved most and trusted most and been most undone by, which was simply him, unguarded, wanting her and not pretending otherwise and somehow making that feel like a gift rather than a demand.

"The problem," she said, "is that I spent four months getting over you and you walked in twenty minutes ago and I'm not sure any of it took."

Something moved through his eyes.

He lifted his hand and she thought he was going to touch her face and her breath stopped completely.

He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Slowly. His fingertips barely grazing her jaw, the lightest possible contact, and yet she felt it everywhere, felt it in her hands and her throat and somewhere deep in her chest where the feeling had always lived and apparently had never left.

"Four months," he said softly.

"Four months," she confirmed. Her voice was not entirely steady.

"I tried too," he said. "I was terrible at it."

She laughed despite herself. A real one, surprised out of her. He smiled and it was the smile she remembered, the one that changed the quality of whatever room it was in.

She looked at his mouth.

This was a mistake. She knew it immediately. Because once she had looked she could not stop thinking about it, about the specific knowledge she had of him, about what it felt like to be kissed by someone who kissed you like you were something they had wanted long enough to be patient about.

She looked away.

"What do you want?" she asked. Quietly. Genuinely.

He didn't hesitate.

"You," he said. "I want you. I have always wanted you. I want to take you home and I want to talk to you until three in the morning and I want to make you laugh and I want to be the person you reach for when the room gets quiet. I want all of it. I haven't stopped wanting any of it."

The words landed in her body rather than her mind.

She stood in them for a moment. In the honesty of them, the weight of them, the particular relief and terror of being wanted that completely by someone you trusted completely to mean it.

She put her hand on his chest.

Felt his heartbeat, faster than his composure suggested. Felt him go still beneath her palm like something that had been held carefully and was trying not to show how much effort that required.

"If I say yes," she said slowly, "we don't get to do the four months again. I can't."

"I know," he said.

"I mean it."

"So do I."

She looked at him. At the steadiness of him. At the way he was looking at her like she was the only thing in the room worth looking at, which he had always done, which had always made her feel simultaneously seen and completely vulnerable.

She had spent four months trying to want something smaller than this.

She had failed completely.

"Okay," she said.

One word. Small and enormous simultaneously.

His hand found her waist. Not pulling her in, simply resting there, warm and certain, like something returning to where it belonged.

She leaned into him slightly.

The room continued around them. Glasses, voices, light. None of it relevant. None of it touching the small warm world that had reformed between their bodies like it had never been interrupted.

"Take me home," she said.

He pressed his lips to her temple. Slow. Deliberate. Like a sentence being completed.

"Yes," he said.