With silence.
With money.
With comparison.
With another woman’s perfume on his collar and your work in his briefcase.
Adrian nods once, slowly.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
You laugh under your breath. “For what? You didn’t marry him.”
“No. But I wasn’t there.”
You look at him then.
“Neither was I.”
That sentence sits between you.
Because it is true.
For years, you were physically present in your own life and emotionally absent from yourself.
Adrian reaches into his jacket and pulls out a small leather wallet. From inside, he removes a folded piece of paper, worn soft at the edges.
Your breath catches.
He opens it carefully.
It is a photograph.
Two teenagers at a county fair.
You and Adrian, standing beside a Ferris wheel, laughing at something outside the frame. Your hair is windblown. His arm is around your shoulders. You are wearing a yellow dress you bought for four dollars at a church sale.
“I kept this,” he says.
Your eyes fill.
“I looked terrible.”
“You looked free.”
That breaks you.
Not dramatically.
Quietly.
