“Authority. Delayed gratification. Certain kinds of red wine.”
The correspondent grins. “Physical weaknesses.”
“Ah.” I pop the rest of the pastry shell into my mouth, chew, swallow. “Gravity, probably. I’ve had mixed experiences.”
That lands hard enough that three nearby people laugh at once. Good laughter. Unforced. Full-bodied.
Mine joins theirs before I think about it, loud and warm and reckless enough to turn heads.
And then, in the middle of it, something shifts.
Not in the room. In me.
That old animal sense. The one that notices attention changing direction before your mind catches up.
I’m still smiling when I glance across the hall.
At first I register only fragments.
A woman near the edge of the crowd.
Dark blue dress.
Pinned-up hair.
A posture so controlled it practically hums.
Then she goes absolutely still.
So still it cuts through all the movement around her.
My laughter dies in my throat.
No.
For one impossible heartbeat, the room goes thin and strange around the edges. Sound drops away from me. The music is still playing, glasses still clinking, people still talking, but it all recedes as though someone shut a glass door between me and the rest of the world.
She’s staring at me.
Tilda.
Every part of me knows her before thought catches up. The line of her mouth. The sharp, intelligent set of her shoulders. The way her face goes unreadable when feeling too much would be dangerous. She looks older than the photograph in my guitar case because time has passed and life has teeth, but she’s still so vividly, devastatingly herself that my body reacts before my mind does.
Heat.
Shock.
Memory.
Gods.
Tilda.
She doesn’t move.
Neither do I.
The reporter beside me is still saying something, waiting for an answer I no longer hear. My hand tightens around the stem of my glass. Across the room, Tilda’s expression has gone white and hard with disbelief, like she’s just seen a ghost show up overdressed to a cocktail party.
