I pull it out and stare.
Tilda.
Me.
A cheap instant print from years ago, slightly overexposed. We’re standing outside a street food stall under festival lights, shoulder to shoulder, both of us laughing at something off-camera. I remember the stall: grilled river skewers, too much spice, a vendor who flirted with everybody equally and meant none of it. I remember Tilda stealing the pickled onions off my plate because she claimed mine looked better seasoned. I remember her mouth curving before the laugh actually arrived, like joy surprised her and then won anyway.
In the picture, she’s wearing that dark green jacket with the torn cuff she never replaced because “fabric still functions even if men don’t.” Her hair is loose. Windblown. One brow lifted. Beautiful in the unshowy, lethal way she always was.
I look younger. More certain. More stupid.
“Ah,” I say under my breath. “There you are.”
The ache comes low and old.
Not dramatic. That would almost be easier. No, this is the quieter kind. The bruise you stop noticing until somebody presses a thumb directly into it.
We were a disaster with excellent chemistry.
That’s the kind version.
The truer version is that I loved her in the selfish way men sometimes do when they still think wanting and deserving are interchangeable. I loved her heat. Her mouth. Her fury. Her intelligence, even when it pinned me to the wall of myself. I loved how unimpressed she was by my reputation, how she cut through my nonsense like she’d been born with a blade in her hand.
I did not, however, love her properly.
Properly would have meant stability. Honesty. Showing up when charm stopped being enough. Properly would have meant not mistaking my own restlessness for destiny. Not asking her to build a future on a floor that kept moving under her feet.
I turn the photo over.
On the back, in my own old handwriting, is a date and one line:
Still can’t believe you agreed to dinner.
I smile despite myself. “Neither can I.”
The shuttle lights dim slightly as we pass into a quieter segment of the route. Outside the port, stars burn cold and clean against the black.
I think about the last real conversation we had. Not the final texts. Not the ugly drifting aftermath. The last one that mattered. Tilda standing in a doorway with her jaw locked, asking me, very calmly, whether I intended to build an actual life or just keep decorating the edges of one. I made a joke. Of course I did. A slick, clever, cowardly little joke.
She looked at me like something inside her had gone tired all at once.
I’ve replayed that look more than I admit.
Not every day. I’m not that sentimental. But enough.
The thing about memory is that it sharpens whatever still has hooks in you.
A flight attendant pauses by my row. “Can I get you anything, sir?”
I glance up.
“Do you have absolution?”
She blinks.
I smile. “Water’s fine.”
When she moves on, I tuck the photograph back into the guitar case, but not all the way. Just enough that I can still see the edge of it.
