Like it had six syllables. Like it was the sexiest word in the world.
Before the conversation could turn naughtier, the music shifted, and the lead singer tapped the microphone, said hello, and launched into the first song.
“More champagne and then we go stage dive?”
“Absolutely. Let’s start a mosh pit.”
We did neither, but a few minutes later, we were watching the band, listening to the music, and drinking another round. Someone bumped into me, and I moved closer to Michael. Before I knew it, we were shoulder-to-shoulder, hip-to-hip, swaying to the music.
By the time the band finished, we’d polished off another glass or two. The buzz was headier, and so was the intoxication from the music, the low lights, the energy, and this whole night that felt like a cocoon of possibility.
I wiped a hand over my brow. The club was hot.
“Let’s step outside,” he said, “where it’s cooler.”
I nodded, and once again, his hand was on my back. He guided me to the tall glass doors that spilled onto a terrace attached to the club. As he opened the door, he reached for my hand, holding it as we walked to a bench and sat down. Groups of club-goers were scattered at nearby tables.
He traced my palm lightly with the pad of his thumb, and my heart sped up. That barest touch was bursting with heat. Electricity flared between us. We could power the lights at this club, the billboards down the street. I barely understood how it was possible to be like this with someone I hadn’t seen since that unexpected and heartbreaking day when we were both twenty-four. I’d been going one way in life; he’d been heading in another. Seeing him then had been as close as I’d ever come to the fire of temptation. I hadn’t given in.
Now, we were both thirty-four, and my heart stuttered just from being near him. This torch might have flickered to a soft, ashen glow in years past, but it could turn fiery and bright in an instant. “I’m glad you were free tonight,” I said. “I’m glad you asked me to the show. I’ve had an amazing time. Most of all, I’m glad you said yes. I’ve been thinking of you.”
“You have?” His voice sounded stretched full of hope, like he was holding all the world in that two-word question.
Like my answer had more power than I would have ever suspected.
7
Michael
This was what I’d wanted, but knowing she’d been thinking of me barely scratched the surface of my curiosity.
My voice was low, rough. “What do you think about?”
“How you are,” she said, her gaze locked on mine. “What you’re doing. What your life is like now.”
I licked my lips. “And that’s why you wanted to see me?”
“Yes.”
My skin was hot. My bones vibrated. Want sounded damn good to me. After feeling like she’d slipped through my fingers in Marseilles—my head had understood, but my heart had rebelled when she’d walked away from me—I liked being wanted by her.
“So, were you wondering if I’d gone gray? Or bald maybe?” I teased, running my hand through my thick hair. Now that she’d revealed a modicum of truth about tonight, I could return to this zone, where the terrain wasn’t rocky and fraught with so many jagged ridges.
She laughed with her mouth wide open, her white teeth straight and gleaming. How I’d adored that smile of hers, the way she quirked up the corner of her lips when something was particularly funny. “I see you’ve held on to it all,” she said.
“And yours is even redder.” I gestured to her long, lush locks. Then I figured, Fuck it. She’d said the words I most wanted to hear—that she was thinking of me. I touched the end of a wave of her hair. It had been auburn before—now it was almost a dark cherry red, and so soft.
I let go.
“So is that what you wanted? To check out my hair color? Maybe to see if I grew wider?” I asked, patting my flat stomach.
“Looks like you’ve maintained your boyish figure,” she said.
Perhaps that was all tonight was. A check-in with the past. I was worn so thin with wanting something, anything from her, but I had to remind myself this was only one night, only drinks. I was the one who was investing this moment with too much importance. Hunting for a deep, meaningful reason—one like Michael, I had to tell you I never stopped loving you—was pointless.
I scoffed. She wasn’t here to say that, even if she had been thinking of me. Thinking was nothing. She was here for the class-reunion effect. To say hello, to check me out, and to breeze back out of town when she was done shooting skinny models in skimpy clothes. I needed to get the fuck over her. More importantly, I needed to get out of my own head, and stop thinking that a letter that smelled like rain meant Annalise Delacroix wanted to curl up on my lap and tell me she hadn’t forgotten me either.
We’d been torn apart by time and distance, not by hurt or anger or falling out of love. No one had cheated. No one had said unforgivable words. No invectives were lobbed, and no terrible secret had come between us. Our biggest foe when we were younger was miles. Thousands and thousands of uncrossable miles. We’d tried to fight it with letters, a seemingly endless stream of them. But after a few years of letters and phone calls, we were in college and too far away from each other. It wasn’t going to happen. It wasn’t meant to be. I didn’t have enough money to fly to see her, nor did she have the funds or her family’s permission to return to see her beau. The flames turned to flickers, then to low embers in the ash.
But the fire burned again tonight.
I couldn’t resist. “And you look as beautiful as I remember.”
Music from inside the club seeped out to the terrace. She lowered her forehead and whispered “Thanks” at the same time a lock of hair slid over her eyes. My opportunity. I slipped my index finger under those strands and brushed them off her forehead.
She raised her lashes and looked up at me. “So . . .”
I ran my finger along the side of her temple. My pulse thundered under my skin. “Ask me what else I haven’t forgotten.”
Her green eyes shone with a hint of something, a flash of desire. She tilted her head curiously, taking the bait. “What else haven’t you forgotten?”
All the world around me slowed and stilled to this moment. The music seemed to emanate from another dimension. The waitress walking past us operated in a parallel universe. I threaded my fingers into her soft hair, letting it fall like silk over my skin.
One more taste and I could stop longing for her. Stop lingering. I could finally put to rest the arguments my ex-girlfriends had waged over the years, insisting I was hung up on someone else. I was going to take the one thing that had strung me up all these years and get it out of my system. One kiss and I could say goodbye to my first love.
“How you like to be kissed,” I said, my fingers curling around her head. She gasped quietly, arching her back.
Her voice was soft as the question ghosted across her lips. “How?”
“Like this.”
Gently at first, I pressed my lips to hers. My heart stopped, and my blood stilled, as if it simply had to make sense of this new input before it could reengage. Kissing Annalise again. It was as if a new map were being written, a new route sketched out. So this was what it was like to kiss her once more.