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“Mary?”
The world stops, a frozen scene like one of Mary’s paintings. As she turns away from the shelf, she half expects the voice to have been a figment of her imagination, and certainly not…
But it is Lily, undoubtedly, though she looks a little different now. Her hair is longer for one, and Mary wonders when she'd gone from hating having it past the tips of her ears to being, apparently, perfectly comfortable with it flowing in long, thick waves down her back. It suits her, Mary thinks, though she recognises that she is a bad judge of this. She thinks everything suits Lily— always has. Even the marriage, the life, that Lily had left her for had suited Lily.
Lily smiles, and it is, as far as Mary can tell, a genuine smile.
She doesn’t know what to do with that.
“I didn’t know you were back in the country,” Lily says pleasantly.
Mary blinks. That Lily knows she'd left England at all is a surprise. She'd assumed, all these years, that Lily’s only knowledge of her existence was as she’d known Mary during their university days— living in a shabby apartment with dreams everyone said were far bigger than she was, and pining after a girl who didn't —perhaps couldn’t— ever love her the way she'd hoped.
“Were the Americans not paying you enough?” Lily asks teasingly. Her eyes are shining, and Mary is reminded of all the times she’d struggled and, inevitably, failed to capture the precise shade of them on canvas.
Lily reaches up absently to tuck a strand of red hair behind her ear. She is still smiling.
And there is her wedding ring, big and bright on her finger.
The sight of it sends a stabbing pain through Mary’s chest, but she is grateful for it nevertheless. It wakes her up from the stupor she’d fallen into the moment Lily called her name.
“I’m sorry,” she says. She blinks again, and repeats, “I’m sorry. I have a showing in an hour, I really need to…”
She doesn’t say go , because some small part of her —the part that will perhaps always love Lily— notices the way Lily’s smile drops, the light in her eyes disappearing like a flame someone has blown out, and she cannot bring herself to deliver that final blow, the reiteration of what she’d said on their graduation night. There will be no discussion. There is nothing for us to discuss. If you make this choice, that’s fine, but I won’t stick around to witness it. I have to go.
To be near Lily is to love her. Mary has always known that. And though fifteen years have passed since their last meeting, she still knows it.
“Alright,” Lily says, her voice thin and fragile. “It was nice seeing you, Mar.”
The old nickname is a cruelty, but Mary does not give it the reaction Lily is clearly hoping for. She nods once, stiffly, and walks out of the store.