On the sidewalk, Owen touched her shoulder. Sarah turned and opened her eyes. In that first glimpse, it seemed that he hadn’t changed at all. He’d filled out some since he’d been a teenager, gotten more solid. His skin was rougher, more wrinkled, and there were threads of silver in his dark hair, but his face, his smile, his eyes…
“Sarah,” he said. “Wow. Hi.”
Sarah’s heart stuttered. She felt unbalanced; flushed and dizzy, and she could tell that he knew what she was feeling. It had always been like that between them. He’d always known. Don’t ever play poker, he used to tell her. Everything you’re thinking, it’s right there on your face.
She cleared her throat. “Owen. My goodness.” She tried to draw the armor of wife and mother and successful professional around her even as her traitorous mind jumped to think of what else had happened on the day of the dare. I’ll bet you can’t make it the whole way across swimming butterfly, she’d said, and Owen had given her his easy smile, and said, If I do it, what’s my prize?
Sarah curled her toes hard into the soles of her shoes, hoping the discomfort would bring her back to the present, away from herself at eighteen and the memory of gleaming young bodies in the water. She smoothed her hair and cleared her throat again. “I didn’t know you were in New York.” She hadn’t known anything about him. They hadn’t spoken since that summer had ended, and he’d dumped her via email and, in spite of her entreaties, had refused to call or write and tell her why.
“And you’ve been here how long? Since college?”
“Since college,” Sarah confirmed. “How about you? Do you live here now?”
She longed for the answer to be yes. She also feared it. Owen that close; Owen in her city, with Eli barely making eye contact with her these days, was a dangerous situation.
Owen rolled his shoulders, a gesture she remembered. “For the next six months. I’m on assignment.”
“Doing what?”
“I’m an FBI agent.”
“You are?”
“Want to see my badge?” When he reached into his back pocket, his shirt and jacket pulled tight against his chest. Sarah forced herself to look at his face as he pulled out his wallet and showed her his badge, then extracted a business card, which had his name—Owen Lassiter—and the FBI’s logo. She ran her thumb over the embossing, with the sensation of the air being too thin, of the world subtly tilting. When she and Owen had been teenagers, they’d told each other their secret ambitions, their most grandiose hopes and unlikeliest dreams. Sarah told him now she’d wanted to be a concert pianist, even if she’d already put that dream aside, unwilling to hang her whole future on the vanishingly slim possibility that she was talented and hardworking enough to rise above the rest of the would-be stars. Owen had wanted to be a writer, a journalist like Sebastian Junger or Jon Krakauer who would travel the world, covering wars and disasters and sporting competitions. “But I’ll probably end up in law school,” he’d glumly concluded.
“The FBI,” Sarah said to Owen. It made sense, she realized. Owen had always loved superhero movies and westerns, and maybe his chaotic childhood, his multiply married parents, might have drawn him to the black-and-white dichotomies of law enforcement. She couldn’t stop looking at him, comparing the man on the sidewalk to the boy who lived in her memories. “No law school?”
“Yes, law school. But no office job, thank God.” He gave her a grin. “This is a lot more fun.” He smoothed his tie, his eyes on hers. He was looking at her, she thought, like he knew exactly how she looked without her clothes. Which he did. Although her body, after two kids, was a long way from the body he’d remember, Sarah thought, and spared a moment of anger at the idea that she’d ever found flaws in herself when she was eighteen.
“What about you?” asked Owen. “Music?”
“Music school administration,” she said, and hoped it didn’t sound as pathetic out loud as it did in her head. “I like it. I used to teach, but it turns out what I really like is developing a curriculum and doing outreach in the community. Figuring out how to make lessons and instruments accessible to anyone who wants them. And there’s the fundraising—” She made herself stop talking.
“I always thought I’d see you onstage,” Owen said. Sarah felt her heart expanding, her face heating with embarrassment. She shook her head.
“You were so good,” said Owen.