She stares at him, unable to move, feeling her mind trying to disconnect, trying to not be here.
“Joey, please,” he says again. “I came all this way. I just want to talk to you.” He glances up at the dark sky. “And it’s starting to rain.”
Even now, nineteen years since she last heard his voice, Drew sounds maddeningly, infuriatingly reasonable.
She reaches forward and turns the deadbolt, and then reaches up to flip the security latch. She steps back as Drew pulls open the door and steps into the kitchen. He takes off his ball cap, shakes off the moisture, and then puts it back on.
He looks around. He takes in the kitchen, the food simmering on the stove, the kitchen table where she was wrapping lumpia, and then his gaze is back on her. She realizes then that the red insignia on his hat is a dinosaur claw shaped like a basketball. A Toronto Raptors hat. Because it’s Drew Malcolm. From Toronto.
“Do you think you could put down the cleaver?” he asks.
Paris opens her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. She’s imagined this moment a thousand times, of course, in various scenarios, this one included, but now that it’s actually happening, it feels nothing like she expected.
“You’re scaring me right now,” Drew says. “You have this look on your face, and I can’t tell whether you’re going to kill me or ask me if I’m hungry.”
“I’m scaring you?” she says, incredulous.
“Joey.” Drew’s voice softens into a gentler tone. “It’s me. I came here straight from the airport. I didn’t come all this way to hurt you, I promise. I just needed to see for myself that you’re really alive. And here you are. Alive. And you should know that despite everything, I’m really glad that you are.”
“What do you want, Drew?” she asks.
She hates the way her voice sounds, small and timid. It’s like she’s nineteen again, hoping to find a place to stay, armed only with a duffel bag and the cash she stole from Maple Sound, facing Drew in that shitty little basement apartment kitchen with the checkerboard floors, crossing her fingers that he’ll see past his preconceived notions since it’s clear he knew who she was. Only now, it’s Drew standing in her decidedly not-shitty kitchen, and she’s still hoping he’ll see past everything he thinks he knows and allow her to explain.
Drew steps forward slowly, his hands up. When he’s a couple of steps away from her, he reaches forward and carefully takes the cleaver out of her hands, and places it in the sink. He then lets out a sigh of relief. As if he actually thinks she might have whacked him with it.
In fairness, she did consider it for a split second. But that’s because he surprised her, and she was panicking.
“You faked your death?” Drew says. “Are you fucking serious?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?”
She looks up at him. He looks down at her. She forgot how tall he is. There are specks of rain on his glasses. She doesn’t know what to say, other than to apologize. If their positions were reversed, she would be angry as hell, too. And in this moment, standing in front of him, his body less than two feet away from hers, she suddenly can’t remember why she did it, why she ran, why she ran away from Toronto, why she ran away from him.
Drew is waiting for her to say something. She needs to say something. Anything. Goddammit, speak.
She bursts into tears.
He steps forward and wraps his arms around her, squeezing her tight, and he feels different but the same, and he smells different but the same, and as terrified as she is that he’s found her, he’s here, and she’s glad. She feels his lips brush her hair. He breathes into her ear as he speaks slowly and evenly, enunciating every word.
“I am so fucking mad at you.”
* * *
“Are you hungry?” Paris asks.
He chuckles, as if he knew she would ask that, and nods. “Starving. Last thing I ate was seven hours ago.”
“I’ll fix you a plate,” she says. “There’s beer in the fridge. Help yourself.”
She sticks a few rolls of lumpia in the air fryer, then putters around the kitchen. She fills a plate for him, and then a plate for herself, scooping freshly made rice out of the cooker before spooning a generous amount of adobo on top. Pancit, too. It feels good to have a task that allows her to be busy so she doesn’t have to look at him while she compiles her thoughts. She can feel him watching her, and is suddenly aware that she’s wearing the oldest, baggiest sweats she owns, her hair in a loose, messy ponytail. She pulls two beers out of the fridge.