The fight drains out of her face. She shakes her head. She knows what it would mean. My name attached to hers all over again, people pointing at the boy, connecting dots she’s spent years keeping apart.
“How old is he, Jojo?” I use the voice. The one I never meant to weaponize. The quiet tone that used to tell her I loved herbetween classes, the one I’d use when I’d drop her off after a date and didn’t want the night to end.
“He’ll be ten in June.”
The math hits instantly. My chest tightens. My lungs forget their one job.
I step back. Look at her, really look. She can see the hurt in my eyes. I know because she lifts her chin, hardens her jaw. She’s decided not to care.
“What’s his name?” I barely manage to get the question out. My voice sounds like it belongs to someone else. Someone who just got the wind knocked out of him.
“Noah.”
Noah. My son’s name is Noah.
“When can I meet him?”
She laughs. Not the laugh I remember, the one that used to fill my truck on summer nights. This one is hollow. Bitter.
“You can’t. There’s no need.”
Something snaps in me. “What the fuck do you mean I can’t? I have a son. A son that you kept from me. And you’re telling me I can’t meet him?”
“What makes you think he’s yours?”
The words hit like shrapnel. I watch them leave her mouth in slow motion. Pain spreads across my face before I can catch it, and I see the small flash of satisfaction in her eyes. She wanted that to hurt. It did.
“You’re telling me you cheated on me? Is that it, Jojo?”
I’m beside her before I think it through. Her perfume hits me first. No, not perfume. It’s the flowers. It’s her. It’s the same scent that clung to my pillowcase for weeks after I left. My heart starts hammering. Over the years I’ve wondered if I’d built her up in my memory, made her more than she was. Standing this close, I know I didn’t. If anything, I sold her short.
The memory comes uninvited. Our first time. Her dorm room. The Burberry cologne she bought me, the same one I’m wearing now because I never stopped. Her whisperedI love you, Liam.My forehead against hers. The way her body moved with mine like we were writing a song neither of us had heard before.
You’re forever my girl.
Her face is flushed. Chest rising faster.
“Why are you flushed, Jojo?”
“Please stop calling me that.” She’s begging now. The tough front is cracking.
I step away. Lean against the opposite side of the counter, giving her room she didn’t ask for but desperately needs. “Sorry.” The word tastes wrong. Too small for everything it needs to carry.
I start messing with my lower lip again. She stares at my hand like she wants to rip it away from my face. Some things never change.
“Did you cheat on me?”
She won’t answer. Won’t even look at me. But I know. I’ve always known. She didn’t. She’s just making me work for the confirmation, punishing me with silence because she can.
“You don’t get to come in here and demand answers, Liam.” The fire is back. She straightens up, spreads her arms wide, gestures to herself, to the shop, to everything she’s built without me. “You’ve been off playing rock star. You’re the famous Liam Page. You left this. You leftme.There’s no room for you here.”
I laugh. Can’t help it. “That’s not very hospitable of you. Whatever happened to the old adage that you can always go home?”
“People don’t disappear without a freaking phone call or letter for ten years. People don’t show up at your dorm andbreak up with the one they said they love and never return phone calls.”
Her hands cover her face. She didn’t want this. Didn’t want to crack in front of me. I can see her fighting the tears, shoving them back down through sheer force of will. She’s shed enough over me. I know this. I’ve always known this, and it’s the thing that keeps me up at three in the morning staring at hotel ceilings.
“People change,” I say. It’s the lamest, most pathetic response in the history of language, but it’s all I’ve got.
