I just say, “Get out.”
He does not move for a second. Then he picks up the folder, gives me one last look, and walks out.
I’m alone again.
I stand there for a while, staring at the rain on the glass, the half-finished drink on the desk, the city pretending none of this matters. Then I sit, take out my phone, and do the one thing I tell myself not to do.
I open her picture.
It’s not even a good one. Not polished. Not posed. She’s half-turned away from the camera at her desk, laughing at something Owen must have said, hair falling over one side of her face, coffee in her hand. I took it off a security still the week after she left, because apparently that is the kind of man I became without even noticing.
I stare at it longer than I should.
Eight months.
I have spent eight months trying to function without her and failing in ways no one gets to name out loud. I work. I threaten. I drink more than I should. I hit back harder than necessary. I sleep badly. I wake up angry. I sit across from women I should want and feel nothing.
Then I look at her face on a screen and feel everything at once.
Pathetic, I know.
I zoom in anyway. Her mouth. Her eyes. The line of her throat.
I remember exactly how she sounded when she laughed in Cancún. How she looked in my shirt. How she went still the first time I let her touch the scars.
My chest feels tight all over again. I lock the phone, unlock it, open the picture again.
This has to stop.
Either I find her or I bury this properly. Those are the only two options left that don’t end with me blowing up everything around me.
I grab my coat and leave before I can think better of it. I don’t take a driver. I don’t take security.
I just need air, movement, something outside the office and the war and my father’s voice. The city is cold and wet and full of people who don’t know my name unless it helps them.
I walk for almost an hour without paying much attention to where I’m going. Midtown, then lower. Past restaurants packed with the dinner crowd, bars spilling noise onto the sidewalk, women in heels stepping over puddles, men smoking under awnings and pretending they’re not waiting for someone to save them.
I keep my hands in my pockets and my head down. Then I stop.
A restaurant window.
Warm light. Small tables. The kind of place people go when they still think dinner can fix things. And through the glass, I see her.
For one second, I actually think I imagined it.
But no. Zatanna.
Dark hair. Soft sweater. The turn of her face I would know in a room full of strangers.
All the air leaves my lungs.
She’s here.
I move closer to the glass without meaning to, just enough to be sure. My pulse is suddenly hammering so hard it feels violent. I haven’t prepared for this. I’ve thought about it, cursed it, wanted it, but I have not prepared for the reality of just seeing her.
She’s standing near the front, not seated. Talking to someone. A man.
He says something. She steps in and hugs him. Everything in me goes cold.
