"Hi," he says, and she smiles, and it's all just like it used to be.
"It's been a long time," she says. "A long, crazy time. Ah — I can hardly believe it." Her fingers pleat her sleeve nervously. He thinks he's still in love with her as he watches her fingernails, oval and rosy and neatly trimmed.
"Hella long time, chiquita," he says carefully, letting his intonation sing-song in the old way from before, before they learned not to let the past creep into your voice, and she raises her eyes to his gratefully.
"I missed you," she says softly, and the sound of her voice, softening over the vowels like honey melting on a biscuit, drawn out long and country, spreads itself on his skin. He wants to touch her, but he won't, not yet. The cut edge of what they've been through is still too raw.
"What was it like?" he asks instead. She tucks grain-blonde hair behind her ear and her clear blue eyes go thoughtful, cloudy with memory, foggy spring sky.
She sighs, looks down. "Falling," she murmurs. "Falling down and down and knowing it was the end, and hearing the whistling of his wings, and knowing they were...wrecked, and the knowing, the whole time we were falling. That it was over."
"You don't have to —" he starts, and then stops himself, because he wants her to. He wants to hear the details and wants to hear them from her mouth, butter and honey and the milk of her. "Look," he says, and then, "look. I spent a long time waiting for you. You had to finish up with stuff, I know. And it was fun while we were there —"
"Sometimes," she says, bitterly, and even that makes him feel good because it's good that she's still able to say what she thinks and doesn't she deserve to be bitter, after everything?
"Yeah, sometimes," he agrees. "Sometimes it was the fucking shits."
She looks at him sharply, and then laughs, short, helpless. "Foul mouth on you still, City Mouse," she reprimands him, gently, and he lets himself reach out to smooth the pale thick strands of her hair over her forehead, milk and cream, he sees it smooth and pristine through his fingers and he can almost feel through the callous of his fingertips.
"Still scolding me, Country Mouse," he says, low in his throat and it rumbles satisfyingly through his chest, rattling through his bones and up along his arm and through to his fingers, and she shivers.
"For you," she says, looking at him keenly from behind her glasses, and how much does he love that she still wears them? "For you, how was it?"
But he shakes his head and draws his fingers down the heart-shape of her face, the gentle dip of her cheek and the rounded chin, and she moves closer to him without hardly realizing it. "I don't need to talk about it," he tells her, and now she's close enough that he can see the glimmer of the light in her hair and it's always fascinated him, the incandescent shimmer of all the different shades of gold and white and champagne, the smell of her like apples and sunshine. "I'm glad you're here, Paigey."
She waits until his mouth is skimming hers and they're breathing with each other, slow and peaceful, before whispering his name.
February 2003
He hardly knows what to say when he sees her, just as golden as he remembers.