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Time flies by; what was once paralyzing stagnation now feels like a car moving too fast. The holiday goes by too quickly, though the speedometer on her trusty Honda only reads 35. Christine slows to a crawl through the center of town, past the dance center where she had spent all her free hours, once. The bakery is now a Thai place; she remembers the hot chocolates she used to get after dance and before her singing lessons. Two, please, she would ask. A peace offering to a strict tutor. She feels an odd pang of grief for a time that no longer exists. She keeps driving.
Everything is the same, and everything is wrong. Even her clothes: the jeans, the old worn husky mascot shirt from the box at Meg Giry's house. Everything is a little loose, all things considered. She hasn't brought a belt. It is nice of Meg to keep some of the old stuff from her dad's house. She had offered to throw it in the storage unit, but Meg insisted. "You deserve to have a place here, still. After everything."
Maybe that was why Meg had let her stay, even though she's doing a semester abroad and won't be home for Christmas. Blackout dates at the airline are murder, and she had to arrive too early in town, but Meg's texts are as bubbly as ever. "Thank God someone will be there to eat Mom's noodle casserole!" She texts Christine that morning with copious emoji usage. "I'll call you later," she promises.
It is nice to see her old dance teacher, Meg's mother. Just...not so much when Christine is tiptoeing through the kitchen at noon, under Madame Giry's constant judgmental gaze. She has long learned to see past her harsh expression, and she knows she has loved Christine as a daughter long before she held her at her father's funeral two years ago. Still, there is something unnerving about finding your second mother in nothing but a robe waiting outside the single bathroom.
So Christine leaves in search of caffeine. She passes the third coffee shop, the thrift store where she had gotten all her Halloween costumes. Once.
"I'm not wearing that," he had said, shaking his head.
"Please!" She holds up the bright orange bell bottoms. "You're a shoo-in for Shaggy, Erik, please. We need you for this costume to work!" She still has burn marks from the hot glue gun, wrapping felt around a headband to be makeshift dog ears the night before.
The other drama students disperse through the tiny thrift store and they are alone again like they are during singing lessons, and Erik visibly relaxes, his shoulders not so taut. He always seems uncomfortable in his own skin; if he could discard it, he would. There's something else, too.
Christine blushes and returns the pants to the rack, trying to ignore the intense way he looks at her when she says they needed him. His dark hair falls over the covered side of his face.
"You don't have to-" she begins, but he reaches for the hanger.
"You owe me, Daae," he sighs and pulls the pants from the rack.
She closes her eyes for a moment on the deserted road. She is glad the thrift store has survived after all these years. Heat blows on her already hot face in the car. She knows where she is going even before she parks her car between the school and the church, trying not to let the memories take over.
Yesterday's coffee still sits nearly frozen in the cupholder. She shivers despite the heat blasting in the car.
She hadn’t expected to see him so soon when she does. She wants to bring pastries to Madame as a thank you gift and pulls into Dominics before she has even gotten the smell of airport off her clothes. Ever the New Yorker now, she keeps her eyes low, walking fast down the sidewalk; walking so quickly she almost misses him if she doesn't notice the black, the coat - that damned coat - and he is walking nearly as fast as her.
She should have expected it. Should have expected the ice in his eyes, the same chill that rips through Main Street in December, the ache in her chest seeing him, here, just like it was finals week all over again when she had her colloquium. She wants to ask if he still remembers how she took her coffee, if he still has vanilla and nutmeg in his cabinet so she can make her own flavor. She wonders if he replaced the mug she broke in their last argument.
Do you remember how you watched me leave?
But he keeps walking, without a word, and so does she.
It's the day after Christmas, now, and she has to wait for the weekend to end for her Monday night flight so it can be covered by her points, and she just wants a damn cup of coffee that doesn't make her feel guilty that she is taking up her friend's mother's time. She wants to relax, maybe work on a new composition; her journal with the music staff lines sits empty, taunting her from her purse on the passenger seat. She turns the engine off, the windshield glass fogging with the cold.
She doesn't know why she turns the car off. Why she looks both ways like she isn't the only person on this side street. Why she passes the school and the church to the little two-story shop front, past the hairdresser where she got ready for prom, laughing with Meg over plastic corsage containers.
She doesn't know why she stops at the door between the illuminated bookstore and the instrument repair shop whose windows are dark. The only thing she knows like the back of her hand is the button that rings the doorbell. That, and that he's inside.
"You could come with me."
"Maybe."
She pulls at the tassels of her red scarf, flattens a flyaway in her hair. She knows it’s only been seconds, but her stomach is twisting every way and she needs to turn around, needs to go. Change her flight, go home tonight, leave this-
And the door opens.
He holds the door like it's the only thing supporting him. He looks nonplussed, but she knows him, knows to look at the veins of his forearms, the sweater pulled back to the elbows. He's clenching his fists. His tell. She wonders if he's more or less nervous than she is. She wonders if he's angry. She remembers the look on his face earlier, at the coffee shop. She should have brought something. What do you get the man you tore apart?
"Hey," she manages.
"Hi." He's cleaned up, filled out. Long gone are the late-night take-out runs that won't put an ounce on his lanky teen figure.
"You look good," she offers. An olive branch. He searches her face.
They're still standing in the doorway. She pushes the hair from her face.
"I'm in town," she offers. "Just for the weekend."
He continues to stare. Infuriating, his inscrutable face. A new mask, more seamless. His hair, still rebelling against his efforts to push it back, to keep it down.
"I-" She begins. What, miss you? Miss us? What is she doing? She leaves Monday. Back to her real life, with friends who don't know her coffee order. Friends who don't realize how tired she is when she smiles. More auditions for shows that will never get made with a no-name actress. "I was thinking about you, and-" she tries again.
He looks at her. He knows when she's lying, and she's lying now.
"Can we-" She clears her thought. "Can we call it even?" She doesn't know why her voice catches, but she has a hunch that it's because she knows exactly what's upstairs and that it's the closest she's been to home in years. The road not taken, laid out in front of her.
He closes his eyes a moment. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees his little truck. There are new tires on it, and for some reason that startles her, to imagine his life when she isn't there. That he has driven so many places that the mud from his tires is not the mud she knows from their endless drives, that someone else could have bought those new tires for him for Christmas. That there might be someone else. She doesn't ask.
She never asks him to wait for her.
And he never asks her to stay.
So when he finally lets go of the doorframe and wraps his arm around her waist, between her coat and her worn t-shirt, and pulls her into the warmth of the hallway and against his chest, she knows for certain that the only heart that will break is her own.