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You saw her and your first thought is,
"Run."
But you can't even look away. How can you even move? You are frozen in place.
Inevitably, she turns your way. There is panic in her eyes, but you're not offended. You're sure you had the same look five seconds ago.
You raise you hand. Wiggle your fingers.
She raises her hand too, and with that sparkling Michalchuk smile, she waves.
She doesn't move, and you don't either. For the next five minutes, she stares at you and you stare back from ten feet away. You wonder if the gap can close. If either of you can muster the guts to move closer. Or just walk away.
Your chest is tight.
You miss her so much. Which is so stupid. You were young. She was too. And at that age, everything is intense. There are probably things that had happened slightly differently than you remember. The sweet ones not as sweet and the bitter ones not as bitter.
So move, idiot.
Move towards. Away. Doesn't matter.
Just. Move.
Sometimes, you'll have these dreams of her. In them, she's an eternal teenager. You are too, of course.
When you wake up, your heart aches. Physically. You can feel a twinge in your chest and for the whole day, you're useless. There are no pills or oitments for it. You just have to let it pass like a flu. On your commute home after work, you yell, "FUCK!"
You don't want to miss her. Not now. Not ever.
But you do. Sometimes, for a whole week. Sometimes, for a quick minute.
She's there. Always. In your head.
And now, she's standing in front of you.
You take a step forward. And another.
You're not sure how many steps you've taken. It feels like a big, long one.
Suddenly, she's right in front of you.
"Hi, Alex."
You exhale. You can't quite remember when you last took a breath.
"Hi, Paige."
***
You don't open your eyes. Partly because your eyelids aren't ready to open. And partly because last night felt too much like a dream.
Something is pressing on your elbow--something with hair tickling your upper arm. It smells familiar. Reminds you of idle afternoons in Paige's childhood bedroom; opened textbooks and notepads sprawled on the bed, ignored as you and her whispered to each other about a future neither you nor her believed in.
You curl your arm and pull her closer despite the ache in your chest.
You're missing her even though she is lying right next to you.
"Good morning, stranger," she says like she knows what you're thinking.
You keep your eyes closed, letting your lips curl into a content smile. Savoring her through all your senses but sight.
"Is it?" you ask.
"Which part?" she replies.
You almost blurt out, "Good."
You don't because you have learned to control your jackass impulse. To refrain from lashing out when you have that heavy feeling in the pit of your stomach that comes intermittently in your life. That your therapist says originates from experiences of abandonment from your mother.
"She tried her best," you'd tell your therapist because she did. What you received from her was the best she could ever give you.
"Doesn't mean you don't deserve a mother who puts you first, or at least, above an unreliable partner," your therapist would remind you.
It's an obvious answer. You didn't need a therapist to tell you that. Still, you spent a couple of years pushing against the idea because it sounds like every problem you've ever had comes down to 'mommy issues'.
Then you got tired of hurting people. Of chasing finish lines no one else saw. In a race where you supposedly outran the hurt before it caught up to you.
You succeeded, more or less. But it didn't give you any sense of accomplishment. Instead, you became numb.
When you told your therapist that you were ready to trust, she was ecstatic.
"How?" you asked her, thinking it would be a few lines of wisdom that you were supposed to mull over until the next appointment.
Instead, you were given homework. Which you should have expected after having been in therapy for two years. The details are boring but the gist of the lesson is what happens in real life is way less dramatic than the version that happens in your head.
Most of the time anyway.
"Is it really morning?" you ask Paige.
"Yes, sweetie."
You know she is rolling her eyes. To her, you are an eternal fuck up--the worse half of Palex. You've made peace with it. No matter how hard you try--no matter how much you're 'slaying life', you will never be good enough for her. So, getting a ball between those ever moving goalposts will only eat away at your self-esteem.
That makes more sense when you are not in bed with her.
With her lying next to you, you fall back to old habits. You find yourself craving her approval.
"Breakfast?" you ask, finally opening your eyes.
"I don't really feel like putting on pants," she replies.
"You don't have to," you tell her as you pick yourself out of the bed. "I'll throw something together in the kitchen and we can have breakfast in bed."
She's squinting doubtfully at you and you know she is recalling that time she visited you while you were a grad student in UBC. In your defense, you were tits deep in your PhD thesis and grocery shopping was the last thing on your mind. Your entire diet during that dark month consisted mostly of coffee and donuts from a Tim Horton's close to your apartment building.
"Your faith in me is the beacon of my dark dark existence, Paigey," you say instead of trying to defend yourself. You want to bathe in the delight of her surprise when you come back with a wholesome meal approriate for the time of day.
She laughs because that is the kind of joke you and her make with each other. You can't make that joke with anyone else in the world. They would just feel sorry for you.
Marco calls. He knows Paige is in town and he is offended that she hasn't made plans with him.
Paige covers the bottom of her phone. "Hey hun, he's asking where I'm staying. Do you mind?"
"Tell him whatever you want" you answer.
She lies and tells him that she got a quaint little Airbnb in a part of town she knows he hates. You can hear him grimace from across the room.
"Shit!"
You hear the dreaded ring of FaceTime.
"He wants to see the place," Paige says.
"He can't," you tell her. "He knows what my apartment looks like."
"You guys still hang out?"
"Sometimes."
"I can't pick up."
"Don't."
"What do I tell him?"
"I'm naked, hun," you do your best Michalchuk impression. "Let's do dinner. Real face time is better anyway."
A piece of crumpled paper has suddenly materialized in Paige's hand. A second later, it hits your head. When you look up, her thumbs are busy tapping at her phone.
The ringing stops.
"What'd you tell him?" you ask with a smug grin.
"Not what you said."
"You paraphrased?"
Paige chuckles. "What can I say?" she replies, head tilted sideways. "You inspire me."
The lack of sarcasm in her voice trips you up a little. You don't let yourself read too much into it. That only leads to late nights alone in your bed, missing her.
"Wanna join us tonight?" she asks.
You shake your head. "Nah, I got…a thing."
You don't have anything against Marco. He's your first queer adjacent friend and that earns him a special place in your heart. Plus, hanging out with him is never boring. He knows you and you know him, so you don't have to try too hard when it comes to conversation. But when he's with Paige or vice versa, you tend to feel out of place. It's another high school dynamic that you would rather not relive, even if it was mostly pleasant for you.
Growing old changes you. Your attachment--your feelings to things. At thirty, you can become indifferent to things you used to love when you were thirteen and start getting fond of things you used to not understand.
"What are you doing in the meantime?" you ask Paige.
"I'm going to my parents'. The plan was always to stay with them but then…" she trails off.
You grin. "I'll give you a ride."
***
As puzzle pieces, you and her fit perfectly, but the resulting picture is all wrong. Anyone can see that the pieces you make and the pieces she makes are from two different boxes. It's only a wild coincidence that your box is missing the pieces that match the exact shapes of the pieces available in her box.
"Don't you want to come in?" she asks. "Say hi to my mom? I heard you're grocery buddies now."
"Oh yeah, me and her are super tight. We've had some deep conversations about produce at the supermarket."
"It's like you're still in my life and yet, you're not."
"What does that mean?" you ask.
"You and Marco still hang out," she says.
"Not a lot."
"Still. And you're all cozy with my mom."
"What do you expect I do?" you say. "Ignore your mom and pretend that I don't know her. Jeez, Paige, I'm not fifteen!"
"Now, what does that mean?" she asks now.
"I have a freaking PhD. Every time I go to the bank, they ask me if I am thinking of buying a house because I can afford the loan now," you tell her. "But I don't, because I've been taking care of my mom's rent. I get invited to fancy dinner parties almost every week and I don't fly into rage when I see expensive chocolates. It just makes me nauseous, which I am super good at hiding. But you'll always see me as that girl who got you high at college fair."
Losing your cool so suddenly doesn't exactly make the case for adult well-adjusted Alex, but you're too angry to care.
"I don't need to live vicariously through your family and friends because I can't get over you," you add when the pause you had allowed for her to have her say is not filled. "I'm not that pathetic. I have my own life which just happens to be in their vicinity. That's why--"
Paige lets out a wry chuckle. "That's so far from the truth, I--" her breath hitches. "I don't think that, Alex. In fact, before yesterday, I didn't think that you think of me at all. You know what I thought? I thought that I am a messed up loser that cannot stop missing her ex-girlfriend from high school, who, by the way, seems to be living her best life according to Instagram stories." She sighs. "I guess I was right."
She's not but you're still cautious. You can't just jump whenever she has one foot hovering off the ledge. She can still take a step back when you're already falling to your death.
"It turns out that all I had to do to have you back in my life," she continues, "was come back to where it all started."
"You can't trust Instagram," you say.
"You're not kicking ass at life?" she asks.
"Well, does grading papers while letting Netflix play in the background most nights count as kicking ass?"
"What about the fancy dinner parties?"
"I may have included invitations to my work colleagues' kids' birthday parties."
She snorts. "You go to kids' birthday parties?"
"I go to enough of them," you admit, "so that people at the faculty don't think that I'm some kind of a hermit."
"That's an image I would like to see."
"Me as a hermit?"
Paige playfully slaps your shoulder. "You know what I mean."
"It's a pretty boring picture," you tell her. "I am usually one of the few adults with no kids so it's mostly me making small talk with anyone who isn't occupied with making sure that their child is socializing properly."
"How's your mom?" Paige asks.
"If you're looking for someone frozen in time," you exhale. "She's good now I'm paying her rent."
"You have an apartment. A job. You make a mean frittata. Take care of your mom. And make small talk at parties. Sounds grown up to me."
Her eyes meet yours. She tucks a strand of hair on your forehead behind your ear.
"Need help with your baggage?"
"Funny," she mutters. "The carry-on in the back, no. The metaphorical one...look, what I said before, about wanting you in my life, I mean it. But I don't want to mess up your life."
You're not sure what she's saying. There wasn't a question mark but it feels like there was a question somewhere in there.
A question she's not quite ready to ask.
A question you aren't quite ready to answer.
You're worried it comes from temporary endorphin and nostalgia. You lean your head forward and place your lips on hers instead.
It reminds you of the first time you kissed her. That moment of hesitation before reciprocation.
When it's time to pull away, you and her linger, touching foreheads instead of lips. An attempt to hold the moment still for as long as either of you can. Before all the things unsaid can bubble up to the surface.
"See you around?" you say.
"You will."
It sounds like a promise and despite yourself, you hope she will keep it.