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Reminiscing in your childhood hometown is like playing a game of Russian roulette, she decides. There’s always the possibility that you’ll end up getting shot, or in her case, seeing something—someone—that almost makes her feel as if she did get shot.
She was never one for long-winded words and explanations, that was more of Lucie’s world, but the word still felt entirely too small to describe him. Ex . Just two simple letters meant to encompass everything he had been to her for over a decade. Maybe The Ex was more accurate. If there was a permanent fixture in her life, it seemed to be him. Even after all these years, it was still him. It should feel pathetic to her, and it probably would’ve—if it was anyone else. Anyone but James.
The part that felt akin to getting shot wasn’t so much that in the last four years he had changed drastically beyond her imagination; rather it was the fact that he was still recognizable to her, but little things were different as if someone had come inside her house and shifted everything just an inch to the left. She couldn’t gather up all the parts that had been altered and hand them back and demand that they all change back, because she had no idea where to even start gathering up those pieces she once knew like the back of her hand.
Did they start up in his hair, the strands shorter than she used to like running her fingers through? Or the way he stood, just a little taller but with his head a little lower? Was it the way he smiled; which was once an automatic occurrence at the sight of her but now looked as if his face couldn’t decide whether or not the upturn of lips was worth the effort at all? As if it had spent years stuck on “off” and had trouble deciding how to turn back on at all.
In the end, all she could wonder was when exactly all these changes had taken place and whether it was all at once or slowly throughout the years.
Seeing him had felt like a jolt of electricity had been injected into her veins. She had gotten used to never hearing his name (it was almost eerie how efficient the entire ordeal was; asking her family and friends to never mention him, losing all his social media, and just avoiding coming home altogether) and never seeing his face. Having his sister as her best friend should’ve been catastrophic but Lucie had never shoved their previous relationship down her throat, not even after how it had ended. The topic of James, The Ex, was an unofficial taboo. She had, of course, cracked a couple of times and asked Lucie or her mom how he was doing and where he was at, but that was the extent of it. Nobody else had ever brought him up first and she hadn’t let herself think about him for extended periods of time.
Which means that when she saw him reaching for the same brand of cereal (one he used to avoid completely when found in their little apartment), she wasn’t even remotely prepared to react to his presence. They had just stared at each other for a moment before he took a step back.
After another eternity, with the only noise coming from the speakers blaring a song she had heard one too many times already on the drive over, she grabbed the box and said, “James. Hi.” It was decidedly not her most eloquent moment, but she was going to relish the fact that her voice stayed the same pitch for both the syllables.
“Hey.” He didn’t even smile. Well, his lips sort of moved, a little bit, but it wasn’t a smile. Had she even smiled? “I didn’t know you were back in town.”
She chewed her lip, a nervous habit she had long since stopped trying to break, before giving him a tentative smile. For sure this time. “Yeah. I didn’t know either, actually, till last night.” He nodded at her, and she stood there for another second wondering if he was going to reply. When he didn’t, she went on. “It’s sort of a surprise? Mainly for Lucie…”
At this, finally, he seemed to give a small smile. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell.”
She gave another nod. “Thanks.” Had they always been like this? Her filling in silences, and him letting her do so? Had it always been this lopsided, or did it just feel like that now? “Anyway, I have another couple things to get, so I guess… I’ll, uh, see you.” She gave him a tiny wave with her one free hand and started walking past him.
Just as she was about to turn the corner to go into the next aisle (maybe the next country, if possible, anything to avoid this type of encounter again) when she heard him speak up again, “Do you want to get dinner?”
The knowledge that she was the only one in the entire store and so he must be speaking to her made her almost crash the trolley into the aisle beside her. It was both jarring and comforting to be addressed by him. Everything goddamn thing about being near him felt like a contraction she wasn’t sure how to figure out.
When she had finally regained her balance and her mind she turned back to him, “What?”
“Dinner? If you’re free right now.” It was there, implicitly. Before we see everyone else before the real world sinks in. Right now, when it’s just us, the flickering lights, and shadows in the middle of this grocery store.
She didn’t even have to think about it, “Sure.”
“Have you thought about it?” She asked him, wiping down the plates that he had just placed in front of her. She wasn’t sure what possessed her to bring it up considering they hadn’t even begun to live together yet, but her tongue seemed to have a mind of its own tonight.
He blinked. “What?”
She cleared her throat, “Uh, never mind.”
Cordelia watched as he turned the tap off to turn towards her and raised his eyebrows. They weren’t much for keeping secrets from each other which came with the package of being friends since they were barely teenagers. It had been their motto for almost a decade now; friends first, before anything else.
“Thought about what?”
“Nothing, honestly.”
“Daisy—Oh,” he nodded, almost as if it was to himself, “Is it about what my parents said?” She gave him a little nod, looking away. This is James, she shouldn’t feel like this about James, about the situation, but something inside of her felt like splitting open. “Yeah, of course, I have.”
She didn’t know it, perhaps at that exact moment, but this was when the heart inside of her chest started to create the little fractures that would break completely apart in the weeks to come.
The start of it was the fact that he didn’t ask her if she had thought about it too — he had simply assumed that she had too. She couldn’t blame him; perhaps if she was in his position she would be the same too. If she had grown up with the parents he had and the love he was constantly surrounded by, she would be exactly where he was. Unquestioning. Unmovable. Completely unshakeable in his thoughts of them.
But she wasn’t him.
“You okay?” He nudged her a little, shaking her out of her thoughts.
She gave him a smile she hoped didn’t look too much like a grimace, and then turned the tap on. “Of course.”
“How was school? You finished, yeah?”
They had come to an old spot that she couldn’t help but feel nostalgia for. It was easy to pretend that she didn’t miss this place, and this food, and these people when she was far away but when her feet were planted firmly on its soil it was unavoidable.
James had changed, but this little diner near the coastline was the same. Same faded leather seats, same run-down tables, same crumbling wallpaper. Same everything.
“Unfortunately,” she gave him a sort of grimace. “I can’t believe I’m thinking of going back.”
“I’m surprised, actually.”
“Oh?”
“I mean, yeah, of course. I always thought you wanted to go out there and do.”
Shot number two, right to the lungs this time. How was she supposed to tell him that the person she was four years ago is nowhere near the person she was now? That one used to be sure about everything. This one was… She didn’t even know where her life was headed. She had come to terms with it herself, the inability to be sure of anything, but it was still different when it was in his presence. She was better now, than she was back then, but there was always the sense of lingering doubt.
Cordelia cleared her throat, “I think I want to get my doctorate, actually.”
He grinned at her, suddenly, “That’s...Wow, Daisy. That’s amazing.”
Shot number fucking three, right to the heart this time.
The combination of his grin and his nickname for her (one she had completely avoided in their time apart, letting no one else use) seemed to have completely stopped her heart. He didn’t even seem to notice the effect it had on her, and for the first time since she landed here, she let herself feel the regret she had carried with her. Usually, the only time that emotion was allowed to come out was when she was sitting in the grey office with an individual that was licensed to try and make her healthier.
“Thanks,” she finally croaked out, hoping to the cruel god above that they had been apart for too long for him to hear her shaky voice.
He was nervous. Incredibly so. She knew it and she was sure he was hoping that she didn’t.
The part of her that was present in this moment knew exactly what was going to happen, but the part of her that had been trying to take flight for the last few weeks was praying that the present part of her was just misunderstanding. That this was not going the way she knew it was.
He turned towards her, slowly, and seemed to take a deep breath. His ever-honeyed eyes had a different shine to them today and she could barely stand to look at them before he opened his mouth to speak, “Daisy,” he took her hands, tenderly, surely, “I… love you so much, I don’t think I could breathe without you. I don’t think I want to.”
Cordelia closed her eyes. She didn’t want him to see her eyes; she was a coward through and through. He was made to love—made to love her and yet. Yet, yet, yet. She was not made for this. She loved him more desperately than she had loved anything in her entire life and yet.
She had stopped listening and she knew he had kept talking, kept telling her all the things he had likely whispered to her in the dark and the day and every time in between, and this time she wasn’t hearing a word. She was no longer present in her own body.
He was on his knee when she opened her eyes, and he was looking up at her with so much adoration that she couldn’t breathe. This wasn’t how it was supposed to feel, this wasn’t how it was supposed to be, the answer was always supposed to be yes to him, for him, always him. The world was coming back into focus, and she could hear the giggles of her friends, and the sound of the camera and the whisper of her heart completely shattering.
“James…”
He could see it, then. He could finally see it.
They were in his car now, dinner finished, the conversation still low, the stars twinkling.
He was watching her, and she had long foregone trying not to stare back. She missed when she knew every minute expression that his face made, and the thought came to her unwillingly that she could, now , spend her whole life finding all the new ones again. Maybe rediscover the old ones, map out all the minuscule changes like a sky map.
“I missed this place,” she said, instead of I missed you like she so desperately, selfishly, wanted to.
“Yeah, me too,” he said, after a long moment.
She gave him an incredulous look, “You live here.” A shrug.
She wanted to read his mind. She wanted to know him again. She wanted, she wanted, she wanted. Everything she could never have again. Everything she didn’t deserve to have again.
“It’s different now, you know? People keep going away, it changes things.” His hands were on his lap, his face now facing the front. She could see the outline of his face in the orange light of the car, the shape of his nose, and the curve of his lips, and the arch of his brows. He had always looked like a painting in motion.
The silence was deafening.
“I didn’t want to.” She whispered, finally, quietly.
He turned his head towards her sharply, “I didn’t mean it like that.”
She knows he didn’t. James was too kind for that. “It’s okay if you did,” she gave him a sad smile, “I would deserve it.”
“Don’t say that.
“It’s true.”
“You know I don’t blame you, right?” She almost believed him.
“How could you not?”
“It’s easy.” His hand was moving towards hers, and for a brief moment she thought he would come hold them, but instead, he just let it rest between the seats. “I don’t think I ever blamed you.”
“That’s because you’re you , James. I don’t think you’ve ever even held a grudge.” He snorted at this, and some of the tension eased away.
“And you’re you, Daisy, I don’t think I could ever hold a grudge against you.”
“Like I said, I would’ve deserved it either way.” He didn’t seem to have a response to this. “I wasn’t expecting to be back here, you know.”
“Today, or ever?”
“Both, I suppose. I thought if I tried hard enough, I could forget this place forever. But it’s impossible, I think, to forget a place like this.”
“It’s the people.”
“How are they?” The only person who didn’t blame her was Lucie, which consequently meant that she was the only person who still spoke to her. She didn’t blame them all exactly; she had broken their best friend's heart. The how’s and why’s and justifications didn’t matter in the end. She just wished that she had more than she had been left with even though the fault had been entirely hers.
In any case, they were his before they were hers, and so she had no claim to them anymore. Once upon a time he had been hers, and so they had been too, but losing him was losing them too.
“They’re all good, everyone’s kind of doing their own thing. We hang out every other week, but otherwise, everyone’s busy.”
“Matthew, too?”
“Nah, never him. Afraid we’re both still too codependent to be apart for too long.” She had known that, of course. They were a package deal, Matthew and James, and James and Matthew, and out of all their friends, Cordelia knew Matthew was the one who would never let her back in. He wouldn’t make the mistake of trusting her twice. And once again, she wouldn’t blame him. She couldn’t.
“I miss them all,” she’s able to say, close enough to the truth and still so far.
“You should come to Lucie’s party.”
It used to be their tradition, once upon a time; they would have the grandest of birthday parties for Lucie, and Lucie alone. Her stories would seep their way into all of their lives and the only way they could return the favour was to have one every year, each with an entirely too outlandish theme and concocted story to go along with it. Cordelia had missed it for the last four years, opting to just call her instead or celebrate when Lucie would fly out once in a while.
“You know I can’t do that. They would all… I don’t want to ruin the day.”
“You came back for her birthday, anyway, didn’t you?” She nodded, and although it was the only reason she found the courage to come back, she still meant to celebrate with Lucie alone. Not with the rest of their friends, and not with James there, in her proximity.
“Yeah, but you know I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
At least he was just as stubborn as she remembered. That was a small piece of comfort that lodged itself stubbornly in her chest.
“Maybe.”
He smiled, “Good.”
“You okay?”
How he had found it in himself to even ask her that question was unfathomable. She was, decidedly, not okay. But he had to be even less okay than her, yet he was holding her hand and walking her out of the room, the building, the front porch.
There were only a few tears that had managed to slip out, and she still didn’t have it in her to look him fully in the eyes. She didn’t know if he had cried too, but more likely was that he had likely shut off like he usually did when he was overwhelmed and not shown a single thing on his face.
God, she hated herself more than she ever had before at this moment.
She wanted the screams, the how-dare-you’s, and the get-out’s and the I-hate-you’s. She wanted him to prove to her the way she had convinced herself this would go one day, and he had, in typical James fashion, done the opposite of that.
“No.”
“I’m sorry—”
“God, James, please just don’t.” She couldn’t even speak the words she wanted to speak, that it wasn’t his fault she was like this, that she didn’t know what was wrong, or how to fix it, and she couldn’t handle it if he continued to be… himself. She already felt too much sadness and too much regret and too much anger and too much guilt that if he kept going the increasing pool of emotions inside of her would overflow and she would be left with nothing else to keep herself afloat.
“Sorry.”
They had reached the car. Neither had thought this through as they were making their hasty exit in front of their bewildered family and friends. The fact that it was mid-November, and she was only in a dress and heels had been the last thing on either of their minds, but now she could barely think straight through the chills that were running through her body.
He noticed her shivering and immediately went to take off his sweater to offer it up to her. There wasn’t even a single moment of hesitation on his part; like he was running on autopilot when he did these little things. For her. For anyone, but especially for her.
“James…” What was she even supposed to follow that up with? I’m sorry? A long-winded explanation she couldn’t even come up with?
He gave her a broken sort of smile, his hands in his pants pockets and his breath coming out in little puffs of white. “You don’t need to say anything.”
“No, I… I really just don’t know what to say. You—I—”
“Daisy, why don’t we just… I’ll go inside and tell everyone that you’re not feeling well, and we can talk tomorrow?”
In her heart, she knew that if he went inside right now, that they would never really talk the way they needed to again. Maybe he really thought that tomorrow, when things had been given time to be thought over, they could talk about it or maybe he knew it too that they never would again.
Or maybe this was just the only way he knew how to handle things. He would go back inside and take care of things, alone. He was a fixer; that was part of the problem. He fixed or tried to fix everything that he could. And a part of her loved him for it, but so much of her couldn’t keep being another thing he put together. Would he know how to love her when she was whole? Had she ever learned how to be whole? Did he deserve to be with something who couldn’t be whole?
In the end, she was right. They never did speak again, not like they needed to.
She had to get out of this place, and he deserved to be near everyone who could love his broken heart back together, and they were perhaps never destined to really belong to each other.
Maybe you have always belonged here , a voice whispered in her head, almost as if it had finally been unchained from the vault that it was locked in for the sake of her own sanity. Maybe you have always been his.
They were past the bridge then, heading towards a cliffside upon her suggestion. He suggested dinner, she suggested the cliff. There was a metaphor for them somewhere in there that she would have to reflect on later as she realized what a large can of unruly worms she had opened up. But he was… James was magnetic. It was difficult to get away one time, and although she had decided that she wouldn’t see him this trip, now that she had seen him, she couldn’t find it in herself to leave for the second time. Selfish seemed to be her theme of the night.
It was quiet when they reached the cliffside. There were no cars parked alongside theirs, indicating to her just how late it had gotten. She didn’t want to take out her phone to check the time in case it broke the bubble they had surrounded themselves in. The temporary bubble that included just them and the forgot the rest of the world and allowed the movement of time itself to feel stilted.
They had both, unspoken, decided to go towards the bench they used to sit at when they used to come here regularly. He was walking close enough for her to brush her hand against his whenever it swung forward. Cordelia wondered if she should move away. She didn’t.
Neither did he.
She wasn’t sure which one was more surprising.
The cliffside bench was a piece of nostalgia that Cordelia wasn’t sure she would feel when she saw it, but it crashed on her like a tidal wave. As she sat down she could almost feel all the little moments of their relationship etched on its surface. The conversations they’d had, and the plans they’d made, and the books they’d read all felt as if they had been ingrained into the splintering wood. It would’ve made the all-too-broken version of herself feel trapped, but that wasn’t what she felt right now.
At that moment she felt… Unlike anything before. There was a word James had taught her when they came to this bench and for hours tried to learn each other’s languages—she used to teach him Persian, and he used to teach her Welsh— hiraeth . It was a type of homesickness, a nostalgia for somewhere, a home, you can’t go back to. This moment in time, sitting beside James, felt nearly as close to that as it could be. She wanted to come back to him, to her home, and this time she didn’t think she could leave if she tried. But she didn't know if she was allowed to ever come back, either.
“Are you cold?”
“Are you?”
“I asked first.”
“Nah,” she said, relenting. She would never win this one, she never had before. Another piece of comfort found its place in her chest. “It’s nice out here, actually.”
“Yeah,” he said, leaning back on the bench and tipping his head towards the sky, “It is.”
Though it was dark, and the only real light was coming from the sky she couldn’t help but think that he was beautiful. It was an innate quality, almost, that he was so difficult to look away from.
Cordelia wasn’t sure how long she sat there, switching between staring at the sky past his face and staring directly at it. Earlier in the night, she had felt like she didn’t know this James, the one with shorter hair and the hesitant smile, but sitting by the cliffside all she could think was that even this unknowable version of James was a James she couldn’t, wouldn’t stop wanting to be near.
She realized, suddenly from the combination of the sparkling stars and his quiet words, and his self-assured demeanour, that she would like to stay here. Stay with him. She had done all the ‘growing’ she needed to do to feel a version of herself that was perhaps not whole, but not-so-broken. She wanted to plant her feet firmly in the soil of this place. She wanted James. She knew she would never want anything or anyone else ever again. She hadn’t even when she had left, but it was more pressing, more urgent, more all-encompassing than it had ever been.
“It was your mom’s ring, wasn’t it?”
He exhaled, loudly. “Sort of. Does it matter?”
“Does any of this?” She gestured around. He shrugged. “Why’d you call me to dinner, James?”
“Why’d you say yes, Daisy?”
“Because it’s been four years, and you still call me that.”
“I don’t think I can stop.”
She wanted it, she wanted it more than she had wanted to breathe. He used to make her nervous—in the butterflies and giggles way—but now, the combination of things she knew about him trying to reconcile themselves with the things that had come together in the last four years, made her feel like she was just a single lit matchstick away from an explosion. It all felt juvenile in comparison to the feeling the words he had just spoken gave her. She felt like her very insides were on fire.
“I don’t think I want you to.” She hadn’t even realized she had spoken the words until they had come out of her mouth, but she couldn’t make herself take them back. The only thought in her mind was finally.
He turned his head to her, face inches away from hers. She could see the inky curls on his head and the amber hues of his eyes in startling clarity. They were almost angelic.
“Why’d you run, Cordelia?” Her insides went from fire to molten lava, and it all felt like burning, burning, burning, burning.
“It was the only thing I knew how to do.” Her eyes were unwaveringly stuck to his face, but she wasn’t going to be the one to back down first. Not now. Never again if she could help it.
“And now?” Every breath between them felt taut as if it could be plucked at like a string on an instrument.
“I think I’m going to stay.” She wasn’t even sure when she had come to this conclusion, but she knew it was true, she didn’t even have to contemplate it any longer. “You never asked me, you know?”
He raised his eyebrows, leaning away. It was a safer distance than before, but it was definitely not what she wanted. “Never asked you what?”
“You were never curious about why I said no?”
He let out a little laugh at this. “I had questions but I just… I was so in love with you, Daisy, that you could’ve physically handed me back my heart on a silver platter and I still wouldn’t have questioned it. I just wanted to talk to you, but you never gave me that chance.” It was the longest thing he had said all night and she didn’t even want to breathe in case he went back to his previous, shorter replies. “I wasn’t blind, even then, I knew you were hurting, going through your own thing, I just thought you would’ve told me eventually, or that maybe if I could show you how much I love you, you might feel better,” Cordelia could see his jaw grinding together before he opened his mouth again, this time to speak just a hair above a whisper, “And it was probably the worst mistake of my life.”
Cordelia felt the words running out of her mouth, rushing to get out there as fast as they could just to make sure that he knew , he had to know, “It was never your fault, you know that, right?” It left her reeling. That he had spent four years thinking that this was solely his fault, that he had deserved the hell she had given, and that he still wasn’t resentful or angry at her.
“And it was never yours either. I just… I wanted you to be happy. So no, I was never curious about why you said no, I just wish you hadn’t run.” Another sigh came out of his mouth, “I wish that even if you did run, you would’ve come back.”
And then they came out, finally, the words that had been on the tip of Cordelia’s tongue since the beginning of the night, the words she had thought about for years without ever having the chance to utter them. “I missed you so much. ”
He grinned—a full, teeth showing, eyes crinkling—type of grin that left her near speechless to follow it up with anything else. She knows, for a fact, that she could’ve lived in this moment for the rest of her life. “Daisy, that can’t be a surprise, really.”
She just rolled her eyes, feeling a type of fondness that had only ever existed for him. He was, always will be, the love of her life, but for a second she felt thirteen again, meeting him and reading to him and hoping to make a friend. He had welcomed her into his life, all pale skin and wobbly knees and cheeky grins, and then he had let her stay in it for the rest of her life, and maybe one day who they were to each other would change but that belonging never would. He would always be hers, in some way, shape, or form, and for now, that would have to be all.
This was the reason that perhaps calling him The Ex had never felt sufficient; there was not a world in which he would ever be just that.
“When should I come?” She asked, “To the party, I mean.”
“Whenever you want, Daisy, I’ll be waiting.”