The only major change is in her eyes.
That brightness, that zest for life, that liquid longing for something to surprise her—that’s all gone. And in its place is something dark and sad and lost.
I put the shadows in her eyes.
She blinks and tries to smile at me. “Hi,” she says unsurely. Her voice is still husky, still makes all the nerves at the back of my neck misfire. “Brigs.”
“Professor Brigs,” Melissa says, and I briefly tear my eyes away from Natasha to look at her. “I’m in your class.”
“Aye, I know,” I say to her before looking back at Natasha. I’m grappling for words. What is there to say? Too much. “How are you? I…it’s been a long time.”
“Four years,” Melissa fills in. “Natasha was in France. What were you doing?”
I frown at Melissa, giving her a pointed look. “Do you mind giving us a minute here?”
She raises her brows and looks at Natasha for an answer.
Natasha gives her a quick smile. “It’s okay, Mel. I’ll text you in a bit.”
Melissa looks between the two of us, obviously not believing it’s going to be okay. I can’t really blame her. It’s been four years, and she had to have been there through the aftermath. Bloody hell, I think back to the things I said to Natasha on the phone that night, sick with grief and lashing out at the only person I could blame other than myself.
Finally, Melissa says, “I’ll be at Barnaby’s getting us our beer.” And then she goes, leaving the two of us alone.
“It is you,” Natasha says slowly, frowning as she looks me over. “I didn’t think you’d be teaching here.”
“I didn’t think you’d be going here. Are you a student?”
She nods, swallowing thickly. “Yes. Finishing my master’s.”
She had just started the last year of her master’s degree when we broke apart, excited to start on her thesis. I would have thought she’d be more than graduated by now. Maybe working as a teacher already.
“So you were in France for a while?” I ask, trying to learn more, trying to keep her here, talking to me. Trying to pretend that I can do this.
But I can’t do this.
Just breathing the same air she breathes hurts me.
I inhale and look down, rubbing my hand on the back of my neck, trying to get stabilized.
“Are you okay?” she asks quietly.
I stare down at her feet. She always said she had clown feet, and I always thought they were beautiful. She’s wearing pointed black boots, and I wonder what color her toes are painted. Her toes were nearly a different color every day. I remember trying to write and she’d try and stick her feet in my face to distract me, giggling her head off.
The memory cuts me like a knife.
The memory has a hard time coming to terms with the woman before me.
“I’m fine,” I press my hand into my neck, wiggling my jaw back and forth to diffuse the tension. I shake my head once and look up at her, giving her a half-smile. “No. I’m not fine. I can’t lie to you.”
Though you did once. The last time you ever spoke to her.
“Should I go?” she asks, forehead furrowed. Worried. Prepared to walk.
Let her go.
“No,” I say quickly. I straighten up. “No. I’m sorry. This is just…you’re the last person I thought I would see today. I just need to process this. That’s all. Because…well…it’s you. You know? I mean, bloody hell, Natasha.”
But maybe she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. How I’m feeling. Maybe I’m a fleeting image from her past, dust on a negative. Maybe she hasn’t thought of me at all in these four years and I’m just another man she’s met on the way.
It can only be for the best, I think.
She nods, her face softening. “I know. I don’t know what to say either.”
I quickly look behind me at the classroom. Thankfully there isn’t a class after. “Do you mind, I need to grab my stuff from the classroom. You’ll stay right here? Do you have to be somewhere?”
Her expression becomes pained, torn. But she shakes her head. “No, I’m done for the day.”
I give her a grateful smile and move quickly down the hall and back into the empty classroom. I snap up my notes and my computer, shoving them into my briefcase.
Then I stop and place my hands on the desk, leaning against it, and hang my head down. I take in a deep breath through my nose, and when it comes out of my chest it’s shaking. My legs are trembling, the world is spinning, spinning, spinning on a terrible axis.
Holy fucking hell.
To rise from the ashes only to have them rain on you from above.