“What’s that?”
“You’ve never been in my bedroom before.”
He considered. “That’s not entirely true.”
“No?”
“Your old bedroom is my office now.”
Silence swallowed up the small room again. After another long moment, she opened her eyes again and sat up. “You know that window in the corner? The one that overlooks the park?”
He nodded.
“I used to have an old armchair next to that window,” she said wistfully. “My parents had these long velvet curtains that I would drape over the arms. It made it feel like a little cocoon. I would curl up there with a book and read for hours.”
He let the words sit in the air for a moment.
“Is it uncomfortable?” he asked, his voice low as he took a step toward her. “Having someone else live there now?”
She shook her head. “No. Just sad.”
Shit. “I’m sorry, Anne. I didn’t mean—”
“Wait.” Her head tilted to the side, a drunken motion. “I just remembered something else.”
He waited as she narrowed her eyes, like her brain was trying to catch the thought.
“You speak Spanish.” She said it like it was a revelation.
His eyebrows bobbed up. “Yes?”
“When did you learn Spanish?”
“I lived in Argentina for seven years,” he said, trying not to smile at the way her brow furrowed. “How did you know I spoke Spanish?”
She waved a hand randomly at the space between them. “After I graduated from Columbia, I created a fake Instagram account so I could follow you. In one of the reels, you speak Spanish.”
An old scar along his heart began to ache again.
“I didn’t know you were checking up on me,” he said.
She rolled her eyes. “Just because you blocked my number doesn’t mean I stopped caring about you.”
His heart dropped. He hadn’t thought she knew that. The only way she would have was if she had tried to call, if she had taken the time to notice that it rang and rang without going to voicemail, a telltale sign.
“Annie…” His voice faded.
It was the first time he had used her nickname in eight years.
He hadn’t even meant to—it had just come out. Like it had been there on his tongue the entire time.
She stared at him, as if waiting for him to continue. When he didn’t, she frowned, her eyes half closed. “I should get ready for bed.”
She stood up, a slight sway in her stance before she started forward to a door. There were a million things he wanted to say in that moment, to stop her and pour out his thoughts and feelings, get the past eight years off his chest. But when she reached the doorway, all that came out was, “Annie… I didn’t know.”
She stopped and turned around. Whether she picked up on the old nickname was impossible to tell. She had always been hard to read, even after a few glasses of wine.
“If I had known it was your dad’s apartment, I wouldn’t have put in an offer. I wouldn’t have done that to you,” he continued solemnly.
