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The thought’s there, wrong, and feeling somehow right, before I can stop it. I get it, sense memory.
There’s an ocean of water under our bridge.
“Nadia, long time.”
She’s prettier than I remember, and here I thought it’d be the other way around. But my memory’s wrong. It forgot little details, like the way she holds herself like she’s scared and pretending to be fierce when her back’s against the wall.
That little scrawny kid with the big green eyes who looked up at me with an expression of such in your face attitude that screamed, ‘yeah, what are you gonna do about it?’.
The fierce intelligence that says she’s a girl going places.
It’s all there. As always. Layers formed on that bare-faced little kid who wore her emotions so blindingly bright you could feel them. They settled, smoothed down beneath the layers of life that built her into a young woman, but I see it.
All below the surface, all there for anyone paying tight attention.
Then there’s the rest of her.
The mouth so full and lush that as she grew formed into something of interest, something a man wanted to kiss. I didn’t think it was quite so soft and inviting until I noticed when she looked at me with love at sixteen, and I ended up . . . ended up wanting what I couldn’t have. And it’s still the softest, most inviting mouth I’ve ever fucking seen.
The long, straight hair and the palest honey of her skin.
It’s all there. Attitude, looks, everything.
It’s a fucking punch to the chest.
She’s too skinny. Nadia’s a woman made for a little curve to her, and being too skinny is a sign of stress.
So’s a call out of the blue.
She also didn’t go anywhere like I feared, and it breaks the ghost of my heart.
Fuck.
All this, the reaction?
Just the jolt of memory meeting reality, that’s all.
“Diego,” she says again and there’s nothing warm, not a drop of welcome in the flat, cold tone. “Why are you here?”
“Because, Longstocking, you fuckin’ called, so I came.” I deliberately drop the old nickname.
She doesn’t even flinch.
“You hung up on me.”
“You said diddly-fucking-squat.”
“I don’t need you anymore. Go away.”
Sighing, I straighten. “Yeah, you not fuckin’ answering pissed me off, but it wasn’t unexpected.”
“I’m not in the mood for this.”
My heart clenches. She sounds beyond tired, slightly diminished, and that’s not right for Nadia.
I don’t want to tell her one reason I called was to ask if she was married, had kids. It's a stupid thing because I don’t care and can’t do anything about it.
Except I’d have heard.
