I’ve given up caffeine a while back, and I’ve grown partial to the green drinks they serve back home, but those don’t seem to have made it all the way out east yet.So I opt for a green tea.
“This is nice,” she says as we move to wait for the drinks.“Just like old times.”
She’s talking breezily enough but there’s an edge to her tone.Finally.Because from the way she’s been talking, smiling and touching me, I was beginning to think the last ten years never happened.Or that we’d been together this whole time.Like nothing had changed.
“We found Ghost,” I tell her and watch her pretty face and eyes flip through a bunch of emotions.Most of them sad and ugly.
“And we killed him.”
More emotions follow, not all of them dark.There’s something very close to joy amid them.
“So it’s over?”she finally breathes.“Angel is finally avenged?”
The barista is calling our names, but she doesn’t seem to hear it.I collect our drinks and lead the way to a table for two in a window nook.Outside the currents of people are still flowing by relentlessly.
Her cheeks are even rosier and she’s still breathing hard, but it’s all just from hearing my news now.I’m gonna let her have a moment.Mostly because I don’t know what to follow up my news with.
“Who caught him?”she asks.
“We did.”
There’s an incredulous tone to my voice until I realize she probably has no idea whatwehave become in the years that I haven’t spoken to her.Back when Angel died and Bella was still the love of my life we were just a bunch of kids riding motorcycles and occasionally scaring off a drug dealer or pedophile.But mostly we rode motorcycles and partied.
“Byweyou mean Rogue and Zane and them?”There’s bitterness in her tone.
“Yeah, among others.We’ve established a real motorcycle club and our sole purpose is hunting down criminals,” I explain.
“And what’s it called, this motorcycle club of yours?”
She smiles, but it’s a sad, wispy little thing.
“Rogue Angels MC.”
She nods.“Nice.Figures Rogue would want to honor her.And get his name in there too.”
“Rogue likes the fame and attention, I’m not gonna lie,” I say.“But he’s still the most selfless man I know.”
She smiles again and touches my hand lightly.It feels like a butterfly landed on it.“You’re the most selfless man I know.”
“How do you figure that?”We knew each other well once upon a time.But that time is long gone.
“I mean, look at you, coming to tell me this news when everyone else has long since given up on me,” she says.
She’s not wrong.We have all written her off.Myself included.And the longer I spend with her, that is fast starting to seem like the biggest mistake I ever made.It always had seemed that way, but I could rationalize it before.Those rationalizations have no power to stand up to her pretty face and the sweet sound of her voice, which I’ve missed even more than I realized.Or her touch.Or her smile.Or the way her eyes glow like brushed gold, making everything right, and good, and nice.
“So, what have you been up to?”I ask, because I really want to know.
Her eyes widen again, but then she looks away at the currents of people outside the window and it’s like a part of her flows away with them.“You don’t want to know.”
Then she snaps her head back, fire in her eyes as she looks at me.“But I’m clean.I’ve been clean for five years, or will be next month.November 5this my sober anniversary.”
It took her five years to get clean after we parted ways?Sounds like a nightmare.All alone, friendless, a whole continent removed from anyone she knew and loved.
“Your aunt and uncle didn’t straighten you out?”I ask.
The last time we spoke, she was being shipped off to live with them like some Italian, female version of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
She shakes her head.“Not even close.They gave up on me too, after I went down… everyone did, at that point.”
