Nope. I just hit a random guy with the door.
“Oh shit, I’m so sorry!” I exclaimed, stepping out of the bank and moving toward him. “Are you okay?” I put a hand on his shoulder and paused. Familiarity hit me hard—years of touches playing through my mind like someone holding a stack of pictures and thumbing the corners to produce moving images. “Neil?”
He winced as he removed his hand from his face. He looked at me, and then his eyes widened a little. “Sebastian?”
Ah great. First Calvin, now me. Nothing like bumping into an ex in a city of eight million, outside of a crime scene no less, which used to be the only place I had to worry about seeing Neil.
“Is your face okay?”
Neil raised an eyebrow. “Feels like someone hit it with a door.”
It wasn’t funny.
It really wasn’t.
But I started laughing.
And to my surprise, Neil cracked a smile.
“Promise you didn’t see me coming,” he said.
“And intentionally hit you with a commercial-grade insulated glass door?”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t see you.”
“Good.”
Neil looked great. Well, was looking better than he had back in February, that much I was certain of. He was impeccably dressed and had that same sharp expression and handsome face I used to know so intimately.
During the Curiosities fiasco, we’d been thrust into each other’s personal spaces, and it’d been a cop trying to do his job while his pain-in-the-ass ex made everything considerably more difficult. But out here, in front of a bank and next door to a modeling agency and a Greek restaurant, we were just two people. We’d both been off our guard. And for the first time since last Christmas, I was able to look Neil in the face and just feel… okay. About everything.
“What?” Neil asked.
I blinked. “What,what?”
“You’re smiling.”
“It’s nothing.”
Neil massaged his forehead for a minute, lowered his arm, and asked, “How have you been?”
“Are you being polite or really asking?”
“I’m really asking.”
“Oh…. I’ve been good,” I said, hearing the touch of surprise in my voice.
Neil slid his hands into his trouser pockets, assuming that cool presence he always had and seeming nothing like a man who’d just been whacked with a door. “It’s nice to see you.”
“Do I need to bring you to the hospital?”
Neil shook his head, looking just the slightest bit… amused. He glanced down briefly, scuffing the sidewalk with the toe of his expensive shoe. “Heading home?”
I nodded and countered with “What’re you doing around here?”
He looked up and then jutted a thumb over his shoulder at the Greek place. “Picking up a gyro for dinner.”
