Ren’s smile widened. “Yeah. She has complete and total disdain for me.”
“Well…smart woman,” Sarah joked.
His eyes were warm. “You haven’t changed.”
“I’m more pessimistic than I used to be.”
“You were always pretty pessimistic.”
Sarah glanced over to see Liam approaching. “Well, I should…” Sarah started gathering her things. “It’s great to see you! I’ll come watch you guys again.”
“Please don’t,” Ren said. “Don’t sit out here in the cold. We should get coffee, catch up.”
Sarah was certain that he didn’t mean a word of it. “Yeah. My number is the same, if you still have it.”
That strange expression was back in his eyes. “I still have it,” he said.
“We should go to a museum or something. Let me know.”
It seemed best to leave the planning in his court. He was married; she didn’t want him to think she was hitting on him.
He nodded, watching her with the same unreadable expression. Friendliness? Pity?
“Hey,” Liam said, breathing hard as he landed next to them. “What’s going on?” He glanced between them.
“We were catching up,” she explained. “We knew each other at McGill.”
“Oh, okay,” Liam said flatly. “Want to get going? It’s freezing.”
“Yeah.” She met Ren’s eyes, feeling a wave of genuine affection. “Good to see you.”
Ren’s eyes flicked between her and Liam as if he were deliberately hiding his thoughts. “Yes, definitely.”
As they walked away, Liam slung an arm around her neck and kissed her on the side of her woolen hat. “I hope you weren’t cold,” he said. “I told you not to come.”
“It was fun,” she insisted.
“So you’re going to hang out with Durand?”
“I think he was just being polite,” she said quietly.
Liam nodded, glancing at her cup of coffee. “Is that warm?”
“Pretty warm. You should have it.” She tried to hand him the cup, but he shook her off.
“I hate lukewarm coffee. Can we stop for an espresso or something? I’m freezing.”
Liam lefther in the coffee shop to head home for his early shift in the E.R., so she found herself curled up alone on her sofa by nine at night, her knees still chilly from the hours in the cold even now that they were tucked safely under a fleece blanket. She had decided to track down some of Ren’s articles for theToronto Starand had spent the last half hour reading his work on her laptop, using the heat from her aging laptop battery as an electric blanket. Ren’s voice in his writing had the same biting perspective she remembered from school, even if his subjects were fairly mundane: bike theft, political grandstanding, new trends in cybercrime.
One article read, ‘Even people unfamiliar with Mr. Sitka’s politics are likely familiar with his eponymous restaurant chain, renowned for both its twenty-page menu and its even longer history of labor disputes.’
Or from another article: ‘The compost bin serves as an apt metaphor for the fate of the community garden itself: it’s hard to tell what will turn up next, but it may not be pretty.’
His photos were even better, sharp, and well-composed. Not all reporters took their own pictures, but Ren had an eye for framing and wasn’t afraid to pick an angle and commit to it. She wondered why she’d never spotted his name in the paper and realized it was because she never read the local news. It was hard enough to think about the fate of the world, let alone restaurant fires and housing policies that she could do nothing about. Now the articles charmed her, full of his sharp perspective and dry wit. She thought of all the times he used to love making big, blanket statements back at school:
‘All Polaroid photography looks pornographic. That’s its entire appeal.’
‘People who like Nietzsche are intelligent, but people who love him are bitter male virgins.’
