Mara’s boots shuffled closer until they were even with my lower field of vision. She'd tucked her jeans in the same way she used to. The last time I’d seen her, that was the same. Nothing about me was the same for her though. Which rang like an off-key gong inside my head. When she crouched down, I didn’t flinch away. A small line formed in the middle of her forehead. Concern etched in every new crease I didn’t remember seeingbefore.
The woman who had been shot in the head sat in front of me with concern on her face. Oxygen rushed back in as I sucked cold air down from the still open doorway. Spots danced in my vision, playing across the dust motes in thesunlight.
If I blinked, maybe she’d go away, and I could go back to thinking she abandoned me. That would be better right? The woman you love left you forever. Not the woman you loved forgot every second youshared.
She didn’t offer assistance or words of concern; she simply watched me. I didn’t feel judged or surveyed. The sympathy in her eyes chipped at the edges of the icy wall I hastily repaired around my heart. It was enough for me push off the floor. She mirrored my ascension, and we stood toe totoe.
“I think I need a drink,” I said, more to myself thanher.
Her gaze burned into my back as I skirted the bar and grabbed a bottle of whiskey. I poured a glass for myself and paused as she movedcloser.
She’d climbed up in the stool, still watchingme.
“Why are you staring at me likethat?”
Confusion flashed across her features. “Likewhat?”
I poured another glass and handed it over. It was interesting to watch her inspect the drink before taking it back in one gulp. Not a flinch after she swallowed, despite the fact I knew that this particular vintage singed on its waydown.
With a finger, she nudged the glass back toward me. “I don’t likeit.”
I couldn’t help the snort which rose up. Instead of pouring more, I snagged her a beer from the cooler. Another gulp, no reaction, then, “That’sokay.”
I threw back my own drink and let it eat away some the pain from the last four years without her. “I think you should start at thebeginning.”
For the first time since she approached me, nerves seemed to surface. “I only know what I was told and what I read. I can’t remember anything for myself past enlisting. It’s like the minute after I signed that paper, everything iserased.”
My body threatened to betray me again, so I anchored myself to the bar. “You don’t remember…” I couldn’t finish thesentence.
The laughs. The jokes. Her pale skin still so perfect under dingy hotel room lighting. All gone. The only memory of us she now had revolved around adolescent drama and hormone filledrebellion.
She held up the folded papers. “I havethis.”
I reached out, and she placed it in my hand almost with reluctance. I handled the bundle carefully. It was a stack of printed paper folded together in quarters. The edges were soft and a littledirty.
I opened them carefully and scanned the top page. My own words stared back at me in the first email I sent to her after I woke up in an emptybed.
The email that would start one of the best years of my life. I couldn’t read it. The words stared back at me, calling me a coward for being unable to face it after what she went through. I wanted to rip them apart, vent some of the feelings bursting me at the seams. How had we ended right back where we started? I was still the boy who can never leave, and she was the girl who couldn’t get away fastenough.
Instead of ripping them, I folded the paper up and gave them back toher.
I dropped onto my elbows on the bar and stared at the grain in the oiled wood. What did this mean? Besides the fact that I needed to let four years of anger go. Four years of trying to move on from her yet found every other woman lacking. Four years of trying to find her and coming up empty. Four years of wanting and needing andpraying.
What did a man do once his prayers were finallyanswered?
I glanced over at her, and she watched me in the same way as before. Not judging, absorbingmaybe?
“Why did you come here, Mara? What do you want?” It was the gentlest question I couldask.
She met my eyes unflinching now and squeezed the papers tight in her hand. “I want this. In the year's time you and…I emailed back and forth, it felt real. As I read over every word, both yours and mine, it was like I could see a tiny glimmer of the person I was before theambush.”
“Why didn’t you email me or call or come back sooner?” It was less gentle than the first question, but it was the one shredding me right now with its claws and teeth and accusations. Could I be so unlucky in love that the only girl I cared for came home with amnesia. They said fate was cruel. I would call hersadistic.
“I guess I was scared." She shrugged. "At first, because of how I looked. They had to shave my hair off to do the multiple surgeries. Then the scars. And finally, it was the time. I was afraid if I found you after all this time, you would have moved on, and I’d have missed the one shot I had. Or maybe, I feared Iwouldn’t.”
I soaked in the sight of her as much as she did me. “And now, how do you feelnow?”
She swallowed heavily. I watched it in the line of her still swanlike neck. “Nervous, mostly. Curious too. I’m more wondering what you are thinking. I thought I might lose you there for asecond.”
