“I guess I’m just enjoying seeing you again.”
“You are?” My neck snapped, a cartoonish double take of sorts.
“I take it you’re not?” He smiled at me. It seemed faint and forced.
“Honestly, I wouldn’t call this the highlight of my life—that’s for sure.” I sipped my champagne again and watched him over the rim of my glass.
“Sorry. I wish it wasn’t so tense,” he said, and I couldn’t quite believe my ears.
“I’m not sure how you thought us seeing each other for the first time after everything that happened would be anything other than tense.”
“Didn’t you ever imagine this? Us meeting again,” he asked.
“Nope,” I lied.
“Not once?”
“Never,” I lied again.
“Well, just because you didn’t doesn’t mean we can’t talk, right?”
“About what?” I asked.
“Well, what have you been up to the past thirteen years?” he asked casually. His strange cool casualness, his entire relaxed vibe from the first moment I’d seen him, was almost stranger than us sitting here. Since seeing him, he had shown not an ounce of shock, or reticence. He’d never looked awkward or unsettled. In fact, all I’d seen was a man who clearly exuded the kind of confidence that most people could only dream of having. I didn’t know what to make of his attitude, so I stopped trying to figure it out.
“I became a cinematographer,” I stated, taking another sip of the champagne. I could taste it was the good stuff, the stuff that actually came from that region of Norman cows and vineyards in the Champagne valleys. This was the epitome of romance, and I was supposed to be on a romance detox.
“I know that. But what else?”
I took another sip and scrutinized him. “Is this what we’re doing? Chatting as if nothing ever happened? Old friends who’ve bumped into each other and now we’re have a chinwag over cheese?”
“Why not?”
“Why not? I could give you fifty reasons why not . . .” I sighed. “I don’t really have the energy for fifty reasons, to be honest. I’m way too hot and way too tired for this.”
“Don’t give me fifty reasons, then. We used to talk for hours. Do you remember that?”
“Not really.” Another lie, because of course I remembered. It had been the thing I’d missed most when we’d broken up, or when he’d run away, because technically we hadn’t officially broken up. We used to sit for hours, my head in his lap, him playing with my hair while I talked about absolutely nothing and everything all at once. Late-night calls tucked under our blankets, talking to each other until we began to fall asleep and then listening to each other breathe as we did. Being able to have entire silent conversations with each other in the classroom, just with our eyes and facial expressions. Telling each other our every desire, fear, and worry. Talking was the thing I’d missed most. Sure, I had Sarah and my friends, but Logan and I had talked in a different kind of way. A way that was totally unique to us and a way I had never experienced since then.
“Of course you do, Ash,” he said.
“No, not really, Logan.”
“I don’t go by Logan anymore. It’s Max,” he said, through a very tensed jaw. Ha! Not so nonchalant now.
“Okay, sorry. I can try and do that, Max.” The second I said it, his jaw unclenched and his shoulders relaxed.
“Thanks,” he said weakly, and I could sense the genuine hurt inside. It was clear all his previous cool-calmness went away when we touched on this issue. His name, his father. I’d always been able to sense what he was feeling when we were together. I didn’t like that I found myself still being able to sense it now. I shuffled around uncomfortably. There was nothing about any of this that I liked. I did not want to be sitting here and that must have shown on my face.
“You look like you’re planning your escape,” he said, forcing a faint smile.
“I am,” I admitted.
“I’m not,” he said in a voice that grabbed my attention in a way I wished it hadn’t. “I’m happy to see you, Ash.”
“Happy?” I scoffed. “Well, that makes one of us.”
“I know. You’re making that very clear.”
