She doesn’t turn around. “If you want it.”
I don’t even try to fight my pull to her. I’ve missed this, her. It sits like a hole in my chest, missing her. “Sit down with me.”
“There aren’t any tables.”
“I know a place.”
“Back of the line, man,” the guy behind me says. “You think I’m standing here for my health?”
“Two black coffees,” I tell the barista. I reach past Halston to put a ten on the counter and get a welcome waft of her shampoo. “Keep the change if you make it fast.”
The barista makes quick work of delivering our drinks.
Halston keeps her back to me as she picks up the coffee, inhales quickly enough that nobody’d catch it but me, and heads for the windowsill.
She doesn’t look at me once, but I don’t remove my eyes from her. “What’s wrong?” I ask and let my half-smile rip. “Are you worried I’ve let myself go?”
“I don’t want to look at you until I know what you’re going to say,” she says.
“Idon’t even know what I’m going to say. Are we going to sit back to back?”
“If we have to.”
“I still love you too. How’s that for a start?”
She shakes her head. “I already knew that.”
I get a sense of satisfaction from hearing that. With all the things said between us, how we hurt each other, sometimes on purpose, how I told her I couldn’t let it go that she’d walked out on me, one might think it’d dampen my love for her. Not the case. “Sit,” I tell her.
She does and finally looks up. She’s wearing blue eyeliner. Little minx. With the sun coming in through the window, the blue makes her gray eyes pop. I take the place across from her. “I thought of you the other day,” I say. “Well, I think of you most hours of every day, but, in particular, I thought of calling you.”
She looks at her coffee and flicks the edge of the lid. “I had to delete your number or I would’ve called countless times.”
“Why didn’t you?”
She lifts one shoulder. “It didn’t seem fair. Not until I was ready.”
“So this?” I show her the journal. “It means you’re ready?”
“It means . . . I didn’t want you to forget about me.”
“Never.”
She fails to suppress a smile. “I moved in with Benny.”
I raise my eyebrows. “You have a roommate?”
She nods. “I was nervous to do it, but the alternative was moving to Westchester with Dad or getting my own place again. I bit the bullet and asked if she knew of anyone looking. It turns out her roommate was leaving at the end of the month, and she was actually really excited to have me. I crashed on her couch and officially moved in April first.”
I don’t want to sound like a condescending asshole, so I don’t tell her I’m proud of her, even though I am. “How is it?”
“I don’t mind the smell of sautéed Brussels sprouts. Tuna, on the other hand . . .” She laughs. “Benny has these two cats, and they’re—I mean, they’re just like her friends. Sassy, loud, playful. Her friends are so fun. We meet them after work. We get dinner or drinks or go check out a new neighborhood. Or some of them have side businesses, so we take our laptops to cafés and work side by side. We went to this outdoor movie in a park, where you put a blanket down—”
Her grin fades, probably because I’m staring at her, lapping up every word from her mouth.
“I mean, it’s been hard too,” she says quietly. “Don’t get me wrong. I miss you all the time.”
“I want you to be having fun, Hals. It makes me happy. What doyouwork on? On your laptop.”
