Before You

I couldn’t find a way to make that settle inside me, so I had made a choice.

Still, as I looked into his eyes, I remembered all the happy times we’d had together. And I was reminded of the tingling he’d caused in my stomach, the way my heart had clenched when I thought about him touching me.

I put my right hand over it while it thumped in my chest and said, “How are you?”

He didn’t answer immediately. He let his eyes roam my face, dipping to my lips, going around my cheeks before he returned to my stare. “I’m not going to say things are good.”

The circles under his eyes were darker than before. I was sure he was back to not sleeping well.

I heard a plane overhead, distracting me from that thought, bringing me to a new one. “Have you been traveling?”

If Jared wanted, he could log in to any social media site and get his virtual fill of me. He could watch videos where I talked about food and ate. He could see pictures of my life, businesses I was promoting, places I’d visited during my recent drive around New England.

I saw nothing from him.

Besides the memories I’d stored in my brain and the pictures I’d taken with my phone, he didn’t exist. So, those were the things I held on to.

“I just returned to town this morning,” he said.

I didn’t know why I needed the answer. Why I was still standing here, speaking to him. But this was the only place I wanted to be right now. “How long were you away?”

“The whole time, Billie.” He let that set in and then added, “I just came back to sign my closing papers.”

I felt the shock shudder through my chest. “You’re moving?”

His eyes turned even more intense, and he shifted his body against the building. He didn’t come any closer, but it felt that way as I inhaled his scent. I tried to ignore it, focusing on his news rather than the way my body was responding to his cologne.

Jared loved his condo. He had worked with the architect to design it just the way he wanted. I was so curious as to why he would sell it. But getting that answer would make me feel closer to him, and right now, I was having the most difficult time staying even this far away.

“How’s the food business?” he asked.

As he changed the subject, I glanced down at his shirt, stopping at the two open buttons and the small amount of hair that peeked out.

Details.

I was soaking in each one.

“It’s getting better,” I replied. “I’ve been booking jobs within driving distance. My taste buds still aren’t what they were, but I’m able to work, and that’s a huge improvement.” I clasped my hands around the coffee, trying to get them to stop shaking. “I sent you an email. It was returned.”

Even though Jared wasn’t in my life anymore, he had paid for a service, and I was under contract, so I continued to feature the restaurant on my channels. Before I’d sent him the quarterly report, I’d wondered if he would reply to my email. I certainly hadn’t expected it to go undelivered, especially since that was one of our only open lines of communication. But I assumed that was his way of telling me the business side of our deal was over.

The last part of us severed.

“Billie …”

The sound of my name hurt.

I heard it all the time in his voice, but it was only in my head. And with it came his arms and mouth and tongue, and it was okay because it wasn’t really happening.

“I’ll do anything for you to forgive me.”

With Jared gone, I’d had time to think, and one of the things I’d kept circling back to was Flight 88. The operator of the drone hadn’t intended for it to hit the engine of the plane. Now, it was something he would live with for the rest of his life. And now, the survivors were left with the aftermath of what that crash looked like. By the operator admitting fault, it didn’t make our pain easier. It certainly didn’t make anything about what had happened all right. But it had given us closure.

That was what Jared and I needed.

My eyes welled with tears. I’d been fighting them. I had known they would come eventually, but I’d been trying so hard to hold them off. “When you got in your car,” I said, licking the drops from my lips, “I know you didn’t intend for that accident to happen. I know you were just trying to get home, and falling asleep behind the wheel is the last thing you ever wanted.” I took a breath, my throat tightening. “And for that, I forgive you.” One day, I hoped to forgive him for lying to me, but I just wasn’t there yet.