Part 8

They hugged like they just separated yesterday. First a quick, rushed hug filled with energy, then they looked into each other’s eyes and smiled, and then another long hug that may have gone on for more than four Mississippis because their arms felt like home. Then they sat across each other and sat in silence with broad smiles on their faces.

“I can’t believe you bought this place.”

“Well, after mom passed, there wasn’t much else for me to do, and Frank was hanging it up. I couldn’t let this place go to the dogs. But what brings you here, Ms. L.A.?”

“I…” She lingered, “I hung it up. I loved the work, but it was just too much. Five years was just enough. And no matter what, L.A. is just relentlessly crazy. I’m moving home.”

“Six years.” He corrected her and his eyes twinkled. “Wow. Well, it’s just… it’s… wonderful,” he said, and reached for her hand. She felt the warmth of his rough fingers, and she held them tight. Then she gently moved her hand deeper into the palm of his. They smiled, and started to talk again about all the things that had happened. Their families and children, the people they loved, the people they lost, and the people they had in their lives.

“Do you ever wonder what our life would have been like?” she asked.

He thought for a moment. “No. Not anymore,” he said.

“Why not?” she asked in surprise.

“Because I don’t want to daydream about the life we didn’t have. I want the one we could still build now. That’s why this.” He looked around the diner. “I wanted to keep that memory alive, but I also wanted to leave a place for you – a place you could always return to. A place with an orange sunset and two people walking into a centre of a star hand-in-hand.”

“I think we should go out for our first date,” she said, and squeezed his hand.

“I’ll need to buy a leather jacket.” He smiled.

“And I’ll get a shlumpy sweater and work boots.”

They were seventeen again, and outside the large orange sun was slowly setting behind them.

***

He brought her roses and wore a leather jacket. He left the price tags on to make her laugh. She wore a shlumpy sweater, jeans, and working boots covered in paint she used to wear in the gallery warehouse. They went to see a bad movie. They ate popcorn, and when the story turned ludicrous, they shouted, “oh, come on,” and threw popcorn at the silver screen. They stopped at the diner for a flat coke with maple syrup on ice and apple pie, and then he walked her home like they did all those years ago. And she invited him in, and they sat, and talked, and drank wine, and when it was too late, she invited him into her bedroom.

After an eternity of yearning, their hands and their lips came together, their bodies traversed the decades of longing, and all history dissolved into one pulsing moment. They were back where the time had once stopped for the first time. The years between them folded inward, one after another, until there was only the warmth of his hand, the softness of her breath. Everything they had been to each other – the people they had pretended to be, the people who had waited without admitting they were waiting – existed together now.

She touched his face in search of the years. He looked at her with the same astonishment he had felt all those years ago. They knew what time could take. And still, somehow, it had brought them back together. They slowly kissed, again and again. There was no need to reclaim the years. It was only the two of them in this moment, and the strange, beautiful knowledge that some moments do not pass. He put his arms around her, and they slept like two kittens in the calm, silent night, under the painting of two people walking into the centre of a star hand-in-hand.