Evan walked through the short black gate, let it swing closed behind him, and then made his way to where she stood at the small bistro table. His smile grew. “Hey,” he said. His voice. It washed over her. A ray of light. A hand in the dark. Fingers linking with hers. You’re not alone.
“Hey,” she greeted him, and she couldn’t help the way her smile widened too. It felt good. Effortless when so much in her life had felt forced this past year. Slow and lonely.
“You look good,” he said. “Damn good.”
“So do you.”
“Your hair,” he said. “It’s lighter.”
“Oh.” She ran a hand over it, shrugging in a girlish way, surprising herself with how much she liked that he’d noticed. “Highlights,” she explained, feeling ridiculous for her response. As if they were nothing more than old classmates who’d run into each other unexpectedly. Next they’d speak about the weather.
It’d been a year since that day he’d left her house after his father had shown up to fetch him. All but dragged him away. It was still so hard to believe. She’d told him they both needed time to process, and that had been true, though the further truth was probably that they’d both be doing that in some way or another for the rest of their lives.
They stood there for a minute, the air thick with all the words she knew they wouldn’t say. All the things for which no words existed, really. And that was okay, she supposed. They both knew. She guessed they always would. She gestured to the table where a thermos of coffee and two white mugs sat. “I wasn’t sure if you’d want to eat or just have a coffee.”
“Just a coffee,” he said. “I ate earlier.” They both sat, and the waitress approached them, her eyes hanging on Evan. Noelle took a sip from her cup as he told her no menu was necessary.
“I’m so glad you called me,” Evan said. “This is . . . wow, this is great.”
She almost hadn’t. She’d hemmed and hawed for weeks after making arrangements to be in San Francisco for Paula’s grandmother’s funeral. She hadn’t known the woman well at all, but Paula had asked if Noelle would accompany her for support, and she’d been happy to do so. “So tell me how you’ve been,” she said.
Evan poured himself a cup of coffee, took a sip, and then sat back in his chair. She could see what having the money to hire the best plastic surgeons could do. His face held no trace of the beatings he’d taken. His left hand came to rest on the table, and her heart clutched as she saw that that part of him, at least, still held the faint physical proof of his trauma. Her gaze traced the white hairline scars before she raised her eyes to his. He was watching her as she studied the surgical scars. “I’ve been good,” he said. “Pretty good anyway. Stanford is . . .”—his brows moved in two different directions before he decided on the word—“intense.” He smiled, but it appeared tight.
She tilted her head, studying the clench of his jaw, the way one shoulder had inched up. “You don’t like Stanford?”
Evan laughed, his shoulder dropping. “I can’t hide anything from you, can I?”
Noelle’s lips tilted, but she kept her eyes on her coffee as she stirred in another packet of sugar, only raising her gaze when Evan cleared his throat. He squinted out to the street where a woman was going by with a dog almost as tall as her. The woman struggled and yanked on the leash, and it was unclear who was walking whom.
“No, the truth is, I . . . well . . . I hate it.” He let out a breath. “There it is. That’s the first time I’ve said that even to myself. I hate it,” he repeated, as if confirming it for himself.
“Why do you hate it?”
Evan sighed. “It feels pointless. You know, I sit in these classes, and they’re all talking about corporate governance and executive leadership, and I just keep thinking how fucking useless it all seems. It’s like I feel myself careening toward the exact life my father leads, and it . . . fuck, it feels like a death sentence, Noelle.”
The exact life my father leads. His father was a mogul with every luxury money could buy. And yet . . . Noelle understood exactly what Evan meant. “I think it’s fair to say we see the world differently now than most people do. For better or worse.”
Their eyes met, understanding passing between them. He tapped the knuckle of his unscarred hand on the table for a moment. “Yes, but I still don’t know exactly what that means or . . .” He let out a frustrated breath. “How to apply it to my life.”