Page 66 of Mr. Hook-up

“I think I need a minute.” He pushed his back against the chair, his posture more erect, staring as though I were a mile away and he was straining to keep sight of me.

And while I looked at him, I saw everything that was happening through his eyes.

The rewinding.

Recapping.

Replaying.

“It’s you.” His voice was barely audible. “I thought”—he shook his head, holding his forehead as he gazed at me—“I thought I was finally meeting her.”

“You are.”

His hand fell to the table, his fingers clenching into a fist. “I’ve constantly compared you two and I felt every similarity ...” His voice had turned so soft and faded. “But it’s you. It’s been you this whole time. This doesn’t make sense ... I don’t think ... I don’t know.” His lips closed but immediately parted again. “Did you know? Is that why you came to work at Hooked? Did you hack in and figure out it was me—”

“No.” I reached forward, clasping my hand over his. “Since the interview, something has been nagging at me. Your hands, your scent, your eyes. Your voice. I recognized them, but almost like they were from another life, another time.”

“They were.”

I spread my gloss across both lips even though it was already evened out, and I nodded. “It wasn’t until I saw the tattoo on your arm and we kissed that I figured it out. Those lips”—I inhaled slowly—“oncethey were on me, I knew. Your kiss is something I’ve never forgotten, Easton.” I let that admission settle. “When I left you that night, I rushed up to my apartment and looked into the database, and what I already knew was confirmed.”

“Do you know how badly I wanted to look you up in that database? For years that thought plagued me ... I just wanted to find out who you are. And I couldn’t, because you didn’t exist in our system.”

“I know.” I pulled my hand back, my heart throbbing in my chest. “As nuts as this sounds, even though I wanted to tell you the next morning, I thought you needed to hear it from Love, not me. That’s why I set this up. That’s why we’re here now.”

Before either of us could say another word, the same waitress from earlier came to our table and asked me, “Would you like another Manhattan?”

“Yes, please,” I told her.

“What can I get you?” she asked Easton.

“You don’t drink liquor,” he said to me.

I gripped my empty glass. “I do tonight.”

“I don’t know what I want,” he replied to the waitress.

I handed her the tumbler and said, “He’ll take one of these too. Thank you.” I waited until she was gone before I said another word. “After five-plus years, I came back to Boston and accepted a job with Hooked—the same place, in a sense, where I met you—and then it turns out you were the guy I fell for back then, and in two weeks we reconnected just as strongly as we had before.” I rubbed my thumb over the grooves in the table. “It’s hard to believe that two people who are so different matched at one hundred percent and hit it off not once, but twice.” I analyzed his stare, first his left eye and then his right. “What are the chances.”

He took a deep breath. “I don’t deny that—or any of this. But I can’t stop thinking about then, the way you just disappeared, changedyour number, and gave me no way to ever reach out to you again. Why?” He added, “I didn’t deserve that.”

“No”—I shook my head—“you didn’t.”

“Make me understand.”

When I filled my lungs, I held the air inside.

“And another thing,” he continued, “you moved to California—a location I now know about but didn’t then—without so much as a heads-up. One day, you were asking me if I was married to Boston, and it felt like the next day you just up and left, saying something like if you ever made your way back, we’ll meet up for drinks. But you never asked me how I felt about trying things out long-distance.”

While he broke eye contact to look at his hands, I whispered, “Easton, you never asked me how I felt about long-distance either.”

He glanced up at me again. “You’re right. I just assumed it wasn’t what you wanted.”

“And maybe I assumed the same.”

He was quiet for a moment. “The truth is, if it was up to me, I would have called you every night. I would have flown out to see you. I started to feel like things were getting very one-sided and if I didn’t keep reaching out, things would have been silent between us. And then you changed your number, ending everything before we had a chance to even be something.” He crossed his arms over the table. “You could have seen me before you left Boston, maybe that would have changed things. You also could have given me your new number. You just chose not to.”

There was a knot wedged so tightly in the back of my throat, I wasn’t sure if I could speak.

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