I froze, body tense and ears perking up.
Disbelief was a living thing in my body.
There was no way it was her.
I looked up quickly and felt my eyes widen. Holy shit.
She was walking toward me.
She hadn’t yet noticed me. Her eyes were focused on the ground and she was talking animatedly to a man.
He walked beside her and I squinted in the sunlight. He looked oddly familiar as well, but I couldn’t place him. Her, on the other hand, I would have known anywhere.
“Hailey,” I said loudly, raising my hand over my head.
A few people turned their head at my loud call.
I didn’t think about my action. That in itself was unusual.
I had learned to be a very methodical and precise person in the last few years. The military did that to its officers. I learned to think every step through before doing acting on it unless a life or death situation activated my instincts.
Seeing Hailey, I just reacted. There was no rhyme or reason. There was just a burst of all-consuming emotion that let impulse rule.
I was back to my old self.
Seeing her made it impossible not to react.
I didn’t know what I was going to say to Hailey. I just knew I couldn’t let pass her without saying something. Without seeing those beautiful grey eyes look into mine.
She jumped at the sound of her name and looked over at me with wide eyes. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, but I could tell it was longer than I remembered. She wore the same glasses on her face and her eyes looked exactly the same: grey with a hint of blue. I walked over to her slowly, letting her shock wear off.
When I approached her, her eyes roamed over my face like she couldn’t quite believe it was me.
“Hi,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
My voice sounded breathless, like I had just sprinted a mile. But it was the sight of her that had adrenaline flowing through my veins.
“I go to school here,” she said.
Her words were slow and reluctant.
“Really?” I asked. “Wow. I didn’t even know you were still in the area.”
“I could say the same about you,” Hailey said. Her voice was becoming more guarded with every passing second and her eyes watched me carefully.
I knew she was sizing me up. I could tell she was nervous. My heart was beating faster by the second, but I couldn’t let her know that.
“I just got back a few months ago,” I said. “My tour ended so I moved back home.”
“With your mom?” Hailey asked. “How’s she doing?”
When she asked about my mom, her voice softened.
“She’s okay,” I said. “Doing a lot better. It’s been five years now, so…”
I trailed off, not wanting to talk about my father. This wasn’t the way my conversation with Hailey was supposed to go. We were not supposed to talk about my dead dad or my depressed mom.
She was supposed to see me and be overwhelmed with how good I looked, or want to get together like we used to. My confidence was supposed to attract her like it did all those years ago.