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I must have been staring a little too hard, because he grinned and held out his hand.
“I’m Walker Prince.”
Blinking, I pulled myself out of my trance, eyeing his hand with a raised my brow before I looked back up to his face.
“Mackenzie Henson,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”
* * *
Pop’s hadn’t changed at all over the years. It was still a brick and mortar establishment with a red-and-white canopy hanging over the sidewalk out front, and the decadent scent of fresh pizza wafting out the front doors.
I smiled as I walked in. I hadn’t left the city since college, so I could’ve come by anytime, but I hadn’t stepped foot in this place for years. It was a shame, really, letting myself forget the small joys in life. I’d spent the past several years without much in the way of a social life as I struggled to make my art into a career and got buried under a mountain of temp work that was getting me nowhere.
The bell atop the door rang as I entered, signaling my arrival.
“Welcome to Pop’s…” The voice trailed off. “Good God, Macks? Is that you? Macks, my girl!”
Pop himself was behind the counter, tossing a fresh ring of pizza dough up into the air. He was a broad-chested Italian man, with a deep tan and salt-and-pepper hair pulled neatly back into a bun.
“Hey, Pop,” I said, waving. “Long time, no see.”
“Aye, long, long time, even. You need to come around more! I’ll get you a slice of lemon merengue the Missus made this morning. My grandson will get your order in a mo’.”
I nodded and smiled, taking a seat at one of the tables near the big, open w
indows of the little shop. I was a few minutes early, so I occupied my nervous energy by scrolling through my phone—liking the occasional IG post, eventually moving from social media to scrolling the internet for apartment listings and bookmarking a few of them to check out further after lunch with Walker.
Technically, the whole eviction thing was still a Future Mackenzie problem. Only problem was, Future Mackenzie was going to become Today Mackenzie a lot sooner than I’d like.
But I would be okay. I was good at finding solutions to sticky situations, and luckily, I had a month. Some landlords didn’t even offer you that—
“You look like you’re thinking about something important.”
I glanced up from my phone with a big smile. Walker stood above me, dressed more casually today—though he still looked GQ as hell in the black blazer and slacks he sported. His hair was slicked back again, more tightly styled than I ever remembered it being when we were teenagers. I guessed what they said was true; growing up really did do wonders to a man.
“In a manner of speaking,” I hedged, choosing to keep my current housing problems to myself.
If we were really going to play the ‘let’s be friendly exes’ game, I wanted to at least make myself sound somewhat put together. Admitting I was about to be homeless would be more embarrassing than I could handle, because the truth was, even though I shouldn’t care what Walker thought of me… I did.
I nudged a chair out with my foot. “Sit down. You look like you’re about to buy the place out, not buy a pizza.”
He laughed, mussed up his hair a bit, and sat.
“Been a while.” He swiveled his head around, a fond smile overtaking his face. “I can’t remember the last time I was here.”
“Years. For me, at least.” I smiled. “I was thinking about the first time we met. It was here. You remember?”
“How could I forget? You were the cutest girl I’d ever seen.”
I couldn’t help the blush that warmed my cheeks, but I just laughed and moved on.
“Yeah, well. You were all right yourself.”
It was strange to feel so comfortable with him. I’d almost texted him in the morning to cancel this whole thing, worried being here like this might be awkward and uncomfortable. But slipping into conversation as we ordered our pizzas—double meat for me, and spinach artichoke with parm for Walker, because he couldn’t do anything normal or half-assed—felt easy. Effortless. As if there weren’t seven years of silence between us, as if time had merely paused and then started back up again. It was easy to fall back into our old routines, even if it wasn’t easy to forget. It was a strange duality that left me reeling as I talked about my art and Walker talked about his work.
“…yeah, three years back, dad started integrating me more deeply into the business. That’s when we moved back here from Tokyo. I was overseeing warehouses, meeting with board members, and actually making a difference in the company.”
He sounded so proud of it all.
