Even after not seeing her for months, it’s comforting to see all her lines and freckles, the curls, the green of her eyes.
If this is all I get—because let’s face it, she didn’t exactly invite me over—it will probably sustain me for weeks. It would kill me, as well, but let’s hope.
Hope is the only thing I have left anyway.
We stare at each other, not moving, as if we’reafraid that the next breath, next step, next word will fuck everything up again.
For all I know, we’re still in the agonizing limbo we’ve been navigating since everything imploded. But, fuck, if her dinner invitation didn’t give me hope.
Yeah, hope is all I have left.
It wasn’t much of an invitation, but it was a tiny opening, and I’m going to stick my foot in that door even if it potentially crushes me again.
But I just stand here like an idiot, clutching a cat carrier in each hand, and offering all the eloquence of a lamppost.
Pitt mews—loud and offended—snapping me out of whatever haze her face, her presence, her fucking existence has thrown me into.
Her eyes flick to the carrier. “Are they—?”
I nod and gently set them down beside her. “They wouldn’t shut up the entire flight. I figured… you might miss them.”
I hope you missed me too, is what I want to say.
Dropping to her knees, she moves the carriers farther inside and unzips the front flaps with trembling fingers.
Pitt shoots out first, elegant as ever, tail flicking like he owns the place. Clooney follows, slower and suspicious, before trotting toward a patch of sunlight by the window like a man on a mission.
They roam the room as if they remember it. Like they’ve always belonged here.
Unlike me.
I’m still standing in the doorway, all six-foot-four of me taking up space I feel I no longer have a right to.
This used to be my house.
But it only took a few moments to see it came alive with her in it. Better. Brighter. Breathing.
Like me in her presence. Finally breathing. Finally feeling slightly brighter. Hoping to be better. For her. For me. For us.
Watching her kneel there, murmuring soft nonsense to those damn cats, glowing with something like relief… I feel it down to my bones.
The reality—one I orchestrated—is still tragic, though.
They’re home.
And I’m not.
I’m about to turn around, leaving her to enjoy the reunion, when Cora looks at me.
“You’re here,” she breathes.
I find purchase with my hand against the door frame, because I want to sweep her into my arms and never let go.
“I didn’t want to send them with a stranger.” I smile at her.
She blinks a few times. “But you’re here.”
“Obviously.” I shrug, and my foot moves forward, but I think better of it.
