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“I don’t know what to do.”

I lean forward across the table. “Me neither.” Her face mirrors my smile. “I simultaneously want you, want to bury you, fuck you, best you, hold you, and forget you.”

She sips her wine. “Good luck with that. I’m unforgettable.”

I rib her right back, “You’re telling me, you let a single day pass without thinking of me?”

I hope to hell she thought of me. It would be like we were in this together and I wasn’t the only one hung up on the pain. Or the intense FOMO.

“Oh, how I wish I could have left your arrogant ass in the dust without ever knowing it was you.”

I say as earnestly as possible, “You don’t actually mean that, do you?”

Her mouth pulls into a straight line and she shakes her head no. She shifts in her chair and her eyes start to dance in the Parisian-like light of this café.

“I wish we were in Paris.”

She looks quizzically at me. “You know, I can’t go back there. I tried once. I had a panic attack in Gare du Nord station. After puking on the platform, I turned around and went back to the safety of England through the Chunnel as fast as I could.”

My mind is reeling. That’s surprising. It’s the one place on this earth I feel connected to myself and my heart. And to her.

I change the subject away from our direct heartache. “You followed my brother, but did you know…” I drift off. I don’t know if she knows about my shoulder and why I didn’t enter the draft. Very few know the real reason, but the world does have something to hang the story on. Did she at least know that story?

Lizzie takes an earnest tone and stares at the ceiling before speaking. “Not sure what I’m hiding. It’s not like I’ve been living a full-on, balls-to-the-wall life. It’s been a half-life since you.”

My heart seizes as she speaks. The air is too thick and heavy around us. It’s weighing us both down. She gazes at me as she unfolds a piece of her missing decade.

She leans forward and offers more of her missing puzzle. “I watched game replays to see if you were behind the bench at your brothers’ games. You were only there once.”

“I’m usually up in the suite.”

“Ok. But I did. I knew. I watched your game replays on YouTube or ESPN or wherever there was college football until it was too painful. Until you kissed a cheerleader on the jumbo cam.”

I ball my hands into fists. The first of my run of perfectly lovely women I wouldn’t commit to.

“You got married, so don’t step to me with that bullshit.”

“Let’s try to keep this civil. I was jealous then, not now. It was the last time I watched. I’d scan stats or game summaries to make sure you were doing well. It was the only way. It was painful to watch you be fine after ditching me.”

“Correction, woman. You ditched me. And I was far from fine. I’ve never been fine, just reinvented.”

My voice is rougher and more vulnerable, but not angry. There’s no malice in our conversation, only frustration and ignorance. I want to be enlightened why those fucking twelve weeks have painted the blueprint of my life.

She swallows what I assume is a baseball-sized lump in her throat. In a hurried tone she says, “Then you got injured. I reached out to your coach after a couple of months to try and find you, but he said you vanished.”

The sound of the busy bistro masks a bit of our conversation, and I’m grateful for the distraction of forks clinking on small plates and glasses sliding across their wood tables. The bar bottles are jingling and a loud joyous gaffaw bursts from a man two tables down as he backslaps a red-faced laughing man. I’d paint all this noise if I could, but it would probably come out with her fucking face again.

I look at her and say, “Where were you? After my injury and a couple months of rehab, I flew out there. You vanished from your home, and your school. I emailed and called your dad at work.”

“Oh my God.”

“I know. I was quite the idiot thinking if I could just see you, things would fall into place.”

“They might have. Nothing’s ever felt totally right.”

I say, “The last time I tried to find you, your dad replied with your wedding invitation. When I read his obituary I reread the part, ‘survived by his only daughter, Elizabeth’ repeatedly.” She shifts to a seat next to me. I turn to her. “It was the first piece of information on you in eight years I could find.”

She takes my hand and squeezes but says nothing then puts down some cash.