Page 35 of Truth Be Told
She looks different; her hair is pulled up and tucked under that knitted hat, and she’s holding a pink stainless steel tumbler in one of her gloved hands. She looks businesslike. She looks as though I interrupted her.
“Stella,” I say.
“Cohen.” She exhales the name, her breath freezing in the air between us. The surprise in her voice is painfully obvious. “It’s… it’s good to see you again.”
Why haven’t I heard from you?are the words I want to immediately say, but I hold them back. Now’s not the time for that, and that’s not my style anyway.
“I thought I might see you around someday,” I say.
“Yeah, me too. I usually don’t walk this way to work, but I thought I’d check out the scenery today. I heard they started decorating for Christmas.”
I instinctively look up at the street light above us; a twinkling gold star hangs below it, resting right above our heads. “It’s a little late for that,” I say.
She looks up too. “It always is.” She lowers her head back down, her breath still visible over the top of her scarf. I hold the possible weight of her words in my mind as she continues, “Did you see it last year? They didn’t even start to put them out until the week before. My friend thought it was a bummer, but I reminded her that it’s Christmas.”
She now clutches the tumbler, which I can only assume to be warm, with both hands, and she bounces her knees a bit to keep the blood flowing. She’s still avoiding looking at me, and I can tell that her mind’s not really here.
“I saw. They’re a lot better this year.” The decorations in our townarekind of a big deal. They’re something of a tourist attraction – not a big one, but big enough that people come from neighboring states just to see them. For the last two years they haven’t been putting them up until what seems like the last minute, which isn’t a big deal to me, or apparently to Stella, either, but I guess it’s a big enough deal to make meaningless conversation. I’m just pretending that we’re totally not dancing around some unspoken subject.
“It’s too cold out here for me to keep you,” I say, shaking my head at her attempts to warm herself.
“No, you’re fine. I’m glad we ran into each other.” She raises her shoulders so her scarf reaches the bottoms of her exposed ears. “It is freezing, though.”
I nod. “It is. I’ll let you go.” Really though,can I?The things that happened between us in the span of a few short days were enough to fill an entire relationship. I know Stella knows this, and before she’d left I’d thought she felt the same way. “Look, Stella…” When I breathe deeply, the icy air chills my lungs.
She swallows and I think I see her eyes start to mist, but it could just be the cold finally getting to them.
“I’ll make this quick. I don’t know what happened after you left, and it’s none of my business. Can we just...”
Stella wipes quickly at the corner of her eye.
“Can we just start over?”
She hesitates at first, her gaze darting once more from her feet to the backs of people passing by, and I’m sure she’s going to say no. There was a reason she hasn’t gotten in touch with me in all this time, although I have yet to know what that reason is. She looks at the cars driving in the street, then down at her coffee, at the people who whip past us... anywhere but at me. “I don’t know. That’s an awfully lot to ask.”
I drop my hand. I guess I was wrong.
She smiles weakly at my reaction until she breaks out a small laugh. “Cohen, I’m kidding. Of course we can start over.”
There’s more she’s not saying – I can see it in her attempts at avoidance. But, I think as I pull out my phone, there’s more that I’m not saying, too.
“Are you free for lunch?” I ask. I check my schedule on my phone’s calendar. Nothing’s changed. It’s still packed, but I should be able to move some things around to free up my lunch hour.
“Yeah, I think I am.”
“Why don’t you come by my office at one thirty? I can meet you outside and we can get a bite to eat.”
“Okay. It’s a date.”
I write my office’s address for her on a random piece of paper I found in my wallet, using her shoulder for support of the pen. I glance at her while I’m writing and catch her smirking. I guess it is a cute thing to do.
“Here you go,” I say, handing it over to her.
She takes it and checks it briefly, then sticks it in her pocket. “I think I know where that is,” she says.
“Then I’ll see you in a few hours. Stay warm.”
“You too, Cohen.”
