Chapter 5 the meeting

Chapter 5

It started with a phone call.

Nothing planned.

Nothing arranged days in advance.

No reservation. No carefully chosen place. No conversation about what either of them expected to happen when they finally stood in front of each other again.

Just two people talking late at night, the way they had been doing more and more often.

Nick was home, stretched out in front of the television, although he couldn’t have said what was playing. Isabella had become good at doing that—turning everything else into background noise.

Her voice came through the phone.

“What are you doing?”

“Watching TV.”

She laughed softly.

“Sounds exciting.”

“Very.”

He smiled.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m in the city.”

That got his attention.

He sat up a little.

“In the city?”

“Yeah. Just hanging out.”

They kept talking.

Nothing unusual at first.

The same easy rhythm that had developed between them. A little teasing. A little sarcasm. The kind of conversation where one subject disappeared into another until neither person remembered how they’d gotten there.

But underneath it was something else.

They both knew it.

For days, the possibility of seeing each other had floated around the edges of their conversations.

Never quite a plan.

More like a game.

A suggestion disguised as a joke.

What would you do if I was standing in front of you right now?

You’d probably be nervous.

Me? You’re the one who’s going to be nervous.

They had flirted around the idea without forcing it into reality.

Reality was different.

Phones were safe.

A screen allowed distance.

A person could type something bold and then put the phone down. A laugh could hide nervousness. Silence could be blamed on being busy.

Standing face-to-face offered nowhere to hide.

Nick had wondered about it more than once.

Thirty years was a long time.

What if the connection only existed because of the distance?

What if the memories were doing some of the work for them?

What if they met and discovered that whatever had once existed between two young people belonged exactly where it had been left—in the past?

There was another possibility he didn’t allow himself to think about as much.

What if none of that happened?

What if seeing her made everything stronger?

That possibility frightened him more.

He glanced at the clock.

It was late.

Close to eleven.

A reasonable person would have finished the conversation, said goodnight, and gone to bed.

Nick had spent enough of his life being reasonable.

He stood.

“I could come see you.”

There was a pause.

Not a long one.

But long enough.

“What?”

He grinned.

“I said I could come see you.”

“Now?”

“Why not?”

Another pause.

He could almost picture her face.

“You’re crazy.”

“Probably.”

“Nick, it’s eleven o’clock at night.”

“I know what time it is.”

She laughed, but he heard something underneath it.

Nervousness.

Maybe excitement.

Probably both.

The moment suddenly felt less like a joke.

“You’re serious?”

He looked around the quiet room.

The television continued playing to no one.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m serious.”

And just like that, the idea became a decision.

⸻

On the way into the city, Nick had plenty of time to reconsider.

He didn’t.

But he thought about it.

A lot.

He found himself gripping the steering wheel a little tighter than necessary.

He laughed once, alone in the car, at the absurdity of it.

He had spent years walking into situations most people would have considered stressful without giving his nerves much consideration.

And now?

A woman he’d known most of his life was making his stomach turn over like he was twenty years old again.

What the hell am I doing?

The thought came with a smile.

His phone sat nearby.

Their last messages were still on the screen.

He imagined she was nervous too.

That helped.

Then he wondered what she would look like when he first saw her.

Pictures didn’t count.

Video didn’t count.

Nothing could recreate that first second when another human being was actually standing in front of you.

He wondered if there would be hesitation.

Would they hug?

Would they stand there awkwardly and laugh?

Would one of them suddenly become painfully aware that thirty years had passed?

For the first time since he’d gotten into the car, Nick seriously considered the possibility that this might be a mistake.

Then another thought came.

I’m already going.

And somewhere beneath all the questions was something simpler.

He wanted to see her.

That was enough.

⸻

Isabella had more time than she wanted to think about what she’d agreed to.

The moment the call ended, the reality of it settled over her.

Nick was coming.

Not someday.

Not when circumstances were easier.

Not after they had discussed it a hundred times and created some careful plan.

Tonight.

She checked herself almost unconsciously.

Then caught herself doing it.

“What am I doing?”

But she was smiling.

She couldn’t stop.

The nervousness was different from anything she had expected.

It wasn’t dread.

It wasn’t regret.

It was anticipation so strong it made her restless.

She had spent years becoming good at control.

Managing.

Planning.

Thinking ahead.

This had none of those qualities.

This was spontaneous.

Probably foolish.

Definitely complicated.

And she wanted him to come anyway.

That realization stayed with her.

For all the responsibility in her life, for all the roles she carried, there was suddenly this tiny pocket of time that belonged to nobody else.

And Nick was driving toward it.

Toward her.

⸻

Then he saw her.

Whatever Nick had expected to feel disappeared.

There was no awkward adjustment.

No moment of trying to reconcile the woman in front of him with the girl he remembered.

There was simply Isabella.

His first thought wasn’t complicated.

There she is.

And then she looked at him.

Really looked at him.

The smile came across her face almost immediately.

Nick felt his own answer it.

Neither of them seemed able to stop.

For a few seconds, they just stared at each other.

It should have been uncomfortable.

It wasn’t.

Thirty years should have created distance.

It didn’t.

If anything, the years seemed to collapse under the weight of something neither of them could explain.

“You actually came,” she said.

Nick smiled.

“I told you I was coming.”

“I didn’t think you were serious.”

“When am I not serious?”

She gave him a look.

“Do you really want me to answer that?”

And there it was.

The banter.

Immediate.

Effortless.

The tension broke into laughter, but the magnetism remained.

If anything, laughing made it worse.

Because now it wasn’t simply attraction.

It was familiarity.

They began talking, but Nick had trouble concentrating on the words.

He kept looking at her face.

The expressions he’d started recognizing again through photographs and screens were different in person.

Alive.

The way her eyes changed when she smiled.

The way she looked at him and then looked away before returning almost immediately.

Small things.

Things he couldn’t stop noticing.

And she was doing the same to him.

Neither seemed particularly interested in pretending otherwise.

There were other people around them.

Conversations.

Movement.

Music somewhere in the background.

Nick couldn’t have described any of it later.

The room seemed to narrow until Isabella was the only thing in focus.

Once or twice he caught himself simply staring.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“You’re staring at me.”

“I know.”

She laughed.

“Stop.”

But she was still smiling.

“I haven’t seen you in thirty years. Let me look at you.”

Something in her expression changed at that.

Not dramatically.

Just enough.

And Nick felt it.

The joking had opened a door to something neither of them was ready to name.

So they returned to laughing.

For a while.

⸻

The nervousness they had both feared never arrived.

Or maybe it had arrived and transformed into something else the moment they saw each other.

Nick felt almost ridiculous.

Butterflies.

Actual butterflies.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d experienced anything quite like it.

There was something adolescent about the happiness of it.

Not immature.

Unprotected.

That was the difference.

Adults learned to protect themselves.

They learned restraint.

Consequences.

Timing.

They learned all the reasons a feeling should be examined before it was trusted.

But sitting beside Isabella, Nick wasn’t examining very much.

He was simply feeling.

He reached toward her almost without thinking.

A hand against her arm.

Then her shoulder.

Nothing dramatic.

Nothing calculated.

He just wanted the physical confirmation that she was actually there.

She didn’t pull away.

That only made him more aware of her.

Her skin.

Her face.

The closeness of her.

At moments he caught himself touching her with a familiarity that probably should have felt inappropriate considering the years between them.

But it didn’t feel like thirty years.

That was the problem.

It felt like absence without separation.

As though some part of them had remained exactly where they’d left it, waiting for both of them to return.

He knew there were boundaries.

He knew the situation was complicated.

So did she.

Those truths hadn’t disappeared simply because the moment felt good.

But for those few hours, the complications existed somewhere outside the room.

Nick wasn’t proud of that.

He wasn’t ashamed of it either.

It was simply true.

They sat close.

They talked.

They laughed.

They looked at each other far too much.

Every now and then one of them would become quiet, and the silence would carry more than the conversation had.

Then one of them would make another joke, almost as if they both understood that staying in the silence too long might force them to acknowledge what was happening.

Hours passed that way.

Far too quickly.

Nick couldn’t remember the last time time had behaved like that.

Usually, adulthood made hours heavy.

Schedules.

Obligations.

Things waiting to be done.

That night, time disappeared.

⸻

Eventually, reality began pressing against the edges of the evening.

It always did.

There was a world waiting outside this strange little bubble they had created.

Nick knew he would have to leave.

Isabella knew it too.

Neither seemed eager to be the first person to say it.

He looked at her again.

That same smile was still there.

So was his.

“Why are you still smiling?” she asked.

“You’re smiling too.”

“I asked you first.”

Nick shook his head.

“I don’t know.”

But he did.

He just didn’t have language for it yet.

Or maybe he did and wasn’t ready to use it.

There were too many years between who they had been and who they were now.

Too many lives lived.

Too many responsibilities.

Too much history still sitting unopened between them.

But none of that had prevented this.

If anything, it made the ease of the night harder to understand.

Nick had worried that seeing Isabella again might disturb the memory he’d carried of her.

Instead, the opposite had happened.

The girl he remembered and the woman sitting beside him had somehow become one person.

Different.

Older.

Changed by life.

And still unmistakably her.

When the time finally came to leave, Nick felt the reluctance immediately.

So did she.

There was no grand declaration.

No promise about what came next.

Neither of them was foolish enough for that.

Not yet.

But something had changed.

Before tonight, whatever existed between them could still have been explained away as nostalgia.

Messages.

Memories.

Two people enjoying the surprise of finding each other again.

Now they knew better.

They had tested the distance.

They had stood face-to-face.

And the connection hadn’t weakened.

It had become undeniable.

Nick looked at Isabella one more time before walking away.

She was still smiling.

So was he.

Hours earlier, he’d left home on impulse, wondering whether seeing her again might answer some of the questions that had been building between them.

Instead, as he headed back into the night, he realized something.

Seeing Isabella hadn’t answered anything.

It had given them an entirely new set of questions.

UNKNOWN

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