Page 303 of The Lies We Play

The memory of it before the rest of me can prepare.

I take the first step.

Then the second.

Then the third, the short one, and my foot finds the asphalt of a country I haven’t stood in for ten years. The cold comes through the sole of my shoe. Bella tremors hard at my wrist.

Then stops.

I walk toward him.

He walks toward me.

We stop with only a breath between us.

I look at him.

He looks at me.

Neither of us speaks.

There is a moment I have read about in books and dismissed as fiction, because writers can’t bear the plain truth that recognition is usually small. I am here to tell you it’s not a lie.

Recognition can be enormous. It can fold ten years into the space between two faces and put a woman back inside a body she has been living beside for a decade.

His eyes move once, from the top of my head to my chin.

Then he says, “Hi, baby.”

I melt.

There is no more dignified word for it. I melt into a soft, ruined version of myself because that greeting has always done this to me. That low voice, warm and worn at the edges, the baritone that used to find me in crowded rooms and make my knees question their professional obligations.

My legs actually wobble.

Creed notices.

Of course, he notices.

“I’m okay,” I say, before he can ask.

His mouth almost smiles. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Your face did.”

“My face is innocent.”

“Your face has never been innocent.”

There.

A small bridge.

A little piece of us that’s still intact enough to cross.

I say, “Hi.”

“You’re shorter than I remember.”