Page 71 of Roadrunner

“That’s a good story,” I said.

“Most of them are, if you wait long enough to hear the whole thing,” Riley said. “People don’t change because someone gives a speech. They change because something actually happens and they’re standing close enough to feel it.”

I thought about that longer than the sentence probably warranted, turning it over the way I turned over most things he said now, looking for what it meant about the two of us sitting at this particular table.

I laughed. It arrived easy and unguarded, the way laughter did when you were somewhere you felt safe.

He watched me laugh.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “I forgot what that sounded like.”

I looked at him.

“Your laugh,” he said. “I forgot what it sounded like.”

I didn’t know what to do with that. So I did nothing. Just sat with it and let it mean what it meant.

“I forgot a lot of things,” I said quietly. “And then I got here and remembered all of them at once.”

He was quiet a moment. He understood that.

“Does it feel strange?” he asked. “Being back.”

“No,” I said. “That’s the strange part. It doesn’t feel strange at all.” I looked at the table. “It feels like the other thing was the strange part.”

“The other thing,” he said.

“California,” I said. “Joshua. All of it.” I looked up. “This feels like the thing that was always supposed to be happening.”

He held my gaze.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “It does.”

He drove me home back to the hotel at ten.

We sat in the parking lot in the dark with the engine off.

“Thank you,” I said. “For tonight.”

“Thank my mother,” he said. “It was her idea.”

I laughed. “I’ll thank Della,” I said. “I’m thanking you too.”

He looked at the hotel. “Arthur doing okay without you?”

“He’s fine.” I reached for the door. Then I stopped.

I turned back and kissed him.

Not long. Not complicated. Just deliberate. The way things are when they’ve been decided rather than arrived at.

He was still when it started. Then he wasn’t.

I pulled back.

His eyes stayed on mine, waiting.