John’s face softened now. “I’m sorry that you never patched things up after, well…”
Chloe felt her face flush red. She hugged her arms across her chest. John’s words transported her right back to third year—the whispers, the questions, that awful moment on the lighting bridge.
“After he got a girlfriend who couldn’t stand me,” she said, shooting him an empty smile.
“To be fair to Susie, would you have wanted your boyfriend spending that much time with the person he thought was his soulmate?” He rubbed the stubble at his jawline and shifted his gaze to Richard. She took her sunglasses off her head and folded them on her lap. At the front of the bus, the doors finally clunked closed.
“When they broke up, he could have got back in touch. He didn’t,” she said.
“Maybe he was embarrassed,” John said quietly.
“I tried to reconnect, you know. A few years after uni, I emailed him—”
“Chloe.” John’s voice softened. He cleared his throat. “Can we not go over all that again?” Right. John hated being caught in the middle, back then too. It had all fallen apart so quickly, after that night at the theater. Sean told her he loved her, that he wanted to be more than friends. She didn’t feel the same way. Some part of her wanted to, it would have been so easy…but her body, some primal instinct inside her, had said no. She’d done everything she could not to make it awkward, to show him they could still be friends, still sit on her bed and write plays. Then two weeks later he had a new girlfriend, someone from the year below. Suddenly he didn’t “think they should spend so much time together.” John had tried to remain neutral, refused to talk to one about the other. Kiko too. But the reality was, they’d each picked a side.
“Sorry,” she muttered. Then before she could stop herself, she asked, “Do you think we were? Soulmates, I mean?”
“I don’t know if I believe in soulmates.”
“But if you did?”
He looked down, clearly uncomfortable. “It’s not my area of expertise.”
The bus pulled away from the station and Chloe was glad for the distraction of motion.
“Well, I have a boyfriend now anyway, so…,” she said airily. The soulmate comment had unsettled her for some reason.
“Ah yes, the elusive Rob Dempsey,” John said. “Where is he? Are you renting him by the hour?”
“Ha ha. He was on the bus we missed.” She glanced at her watch; it shimmered gold in the sunlight that streamed through the bus window. The face of it had some strange quality where it looked a different color in certain lights. She’d seen it blue, green, even translucent.
“Nice watch,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“Always helpful to have a watch that doesn’t tell the time.”
“It tells the time,” she said, tapping it, though she hadn’t actually worked out how to make it tell the time. Now that she thought about it, Avery had never called it a watch, only a device. Maybe itdidn’ttell the time. John held up his wrist to show her the analog watch he was wearing. It had a cream face, simple black hands, and a worn leather strap. It looked familiar, and she realized it was the same watch he’d worn ten years ago. Richard pressed his nose against John’s leg and John reached down to stroke his smooth velvety head.
“No wonder she missed the bus when she’s got a watch too smart to tell her the time,” he said to Richard. Chloe elbowed him in the ribs and he laughed. There was the John she recognized.
“That is not why I missed the bus, doofus. It’s just on some weird setting.” She covered the watch with her right palm.
“Let me see,” he offered, but she pulled her wrist away. Time to change the subject.
“So, John Elton, apart from getting a dog and a haircut, what else have you been doing with yourself?” She shifted slightly, turning her body toward him. As she looked at him, she took in the more nuanced changes in his face, how he’d grown into his features. His cheekbones were more defined now, the soft roundness of his face replaced by something sharper, more mature. The lines around his eyes had deepened, as though his expression had been seasoned by amusement. She noticed a few new imperfections too, the kind that only served to make a face more interesting: a scar above his left eyebrow, a patch of skin near his jaw where stubble failed to grow. There was a quiet confidence about him. And while John had never smiled as readily as some people, it meant that when he did smile, it felt all the more gratifying, like feeling that first warmth in the sun after a long winter.
“What are you staring at?” he asked, raising a hand to his chin.
“Look at you, all grown up,” she said with an overblown smirk.
“I see you haven’t,” he said. “Still teasing me.”
“I’m not teasing you. I’m just seeing you in a new light, Tiny Dancer.” She grinned, then reached out to squeeze his knee.
He put his free hand over hers, slowly removing it from his knee, and she felt a flush of embarrassment that he was not laughing. As he did so, her watch flashed, a mauve line shooting across the screen.
“Don’t,” he said, his voice soft but firm. She felt a strange swooping feeling in her belly and turned to look out the bus window while she tried to shake it off.
