Including the physical intensity as I sat in the passenger seat of our vehicle—Old Betsy, as we called her.
“You look like you saw a ghost,” he mentioned as he put the truck into drive.
“Something like that,” I muttered as I sat back in my seat and brushed the palm of my hand against the side of my face. I needed to shave. It had been a while since I gave my thick beard some TLC, but truthfully, my mind hadn’t been in the greatest place over the past few months.
April was a hard month for me, but that evening felt like a burst of light.
Karla East.
As I live and breathe.
She was the last person I expected to run into when Chase and I received the call to a bookshop, that was for damn sure. I knew it was her the moment I saw her. Her eyes. God, I missed her eyes. Piercing blues that matched the sea at dawn. There was something so different about her eyes than the last time I saw her, though. I wasn’t exactly sure what the difference was yet, but there was something about her gaze that felt different. In a good way. Maybe. Heck, I didn’t know. All I knew was it was hard as hell to pull my stare away from hers.
Leaving her side when Chase called me was hard, too, and ever since I’d sat back down in Old Betsy, Karla’s voice had been echoing in my ears.
What are you doing back in Chicago?
That question was easy. After my father passed away, he left my childhood home to me. To say I didn’t handle his passing correctly would’ve been an understatement. I spiraled hard, and I pushed Karla away. I felt awful about it, too, but I didn’t know how to handle losing yet another person in my life. I’d hardly had time to recover from losing Rian. Losing my dad shortly after felt harder than I wanted to admit.
When I found out on my eighteenth birthday that my fatherleft the house to me, I figured I’d sell it. Yet when I went back to Chicago to handle the paperwork, I stood outside of Rian’s bedroom door, and I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let it go. So I moved in. I asked Maa to come with me, but she was convinced that there wasn’t much for her in Chicago anymore. I understood that. It was hard for her, after losing Rian. Dad’s passing probably was the nail in the coffin for Maa’s connection to Chicago.
Regardless, I stayed in Chicago.
Since I moved back all those years ago, I thought about Karla often. A small part of me wondered if she was still there, walking the same streets that I walked. Riding the same bus that I rode. Drinking at the same bars that I’d drank at.
I foolishly daydreamed about us randomly crossing paths. As if life was a romantic comedy and God was the author. After years passed and our crossing didn’t happen, I let go of the idea. Besides, I disappeared all those years ago because Karla would’ve made me face my feelings. I wasn’t interested in doing that at all. Instead, I kept myself busy. With work, with basketball, with women.
Anything that kept me from thinking too much was good for me. It seemed as if I hadn’t felt deep emotions in years, and that was how I liked life to be. That was why I was known for my random hookups with women. They’d come for a night and leave right in the morning. We’d say we’d see each other again, but we both knew we’d never see each other again. I liked it that way. No deep feelings. No real conversations. Just meaningless sex and fake connections.
Then Karla had to go and screw up my rhythm. She had to knock my system off kilter.
The moment I saw her eyes, I felt a burst of energy inside my chest. Every inch of my body heated up.
The echoes of her voice kept vibrating off my skin. It wasn’t until she knew her grandmother was all right that her tone calmed down. If honey were a sound, it was Karla’s voice. Sweet, with a slow whisper of crackling warmth.
What are you doing back in Chicago?
While she looked a little different, she was still the same. Same eyes, same build, and same smile. She was curvy, too, thicker in the hips. I liked that. I loved that. She looked remarkable.
She didn’t hide in all black anymore, either. She dressed in color.
I liked that change. She looked good in lavender.
Her hair wasn’t dark anymore; it was a light golden tone and had been pulled up into a high ponytail. That was another change I liked. She used to always hide her face with her hair. Now she let it show. Her scars were still there, too, and they were still beautiful.
She looked different, but the same.
She looked less broken, more healed.
I loved that for her. I wished that for me.
“Spit it out, man,” Chase said, tapping my leg before focusing on the road. “What’s up?”
“Nothing. I’m good. I knew the woman at the last stop.”
Chase’s brow shot up. “You knew her?”
“Yeah.”
