Chapter Text
Nick
His first feel as he closed his rented car door and started walking toward the Roxy wasn't insanity. Although it probably should have been. It was guilt. This was a huge night for his parents. An important night. And the truth was, he wasn't here for it. Not really. He was here because for more than twenty years he'd been staring at his vacant, salty palm and seeing a ghost date. That date, unchaffed despite the thousands of ropes and lines that had slipped through his grip, had been there since she'd written it. It had remained even after the ink had been soaped away. Had melted the frost off every beer he'd ever wrapped his hand around. Had blazed when he'd entwined his fingers with Claire's for the first time.
What surprised him when his mom told him the date of the theater's closing night party was that he wasn't surprised at all. He wasn't the science guy Elliot was, but he had a pretty good connection with the universe, knew what he felt and paid attention. And this was one of those feelings. There was some kind of answer here, in Port Haven, where he grew up and fell in love for the first time - the only time maybe - on this date a 16 year old girl had inscribed on his hand over two decades ago. Yesterday.
He looked down at his palm out of habit as he turned the corner onto Main St., watched the lights from the Roxy steal across his skin and dropped his hand, his eyes climbing to the marquee. His moms had posted a farewell in those stark, black letters, but what he saw, for a moment, was Now Showing...Your Desperation, Your Lunacy, Your Creepy Obsession...
He walked on.
His gaze fell to the crowd assembled on the wet pavement in front of the doors. It had stopped raining, and he surmised that his moms were in that throng somewhere, probably getting ready to speak. He knew most of the faces. Guilt welled up in him again. They had all come to support his parents, to see them off into their retirement with love and well wishes. To be there for them on one of the most bittersweet nights of the life they shared. And his eyes were searching not for blonde hair, but dark, not for a content, grateful couple looking to the future, but for an expectant, solitary woman still gazing into the past. He stopped before he crossed the alley between him and the theater. What was wrong with him? Did he actually think she would be here? That she would even remember?
Alice
She felt like her bones were made of electricity. Weightless, vibrating, trying to lift her off the ground as she walked. His mom had said he probably wouldn't make it, may not get back to port in time to catch his flight, but she felt sure he'd be here. The way he had stared at the date she'd written on his hand...he had to remember...didn't he? She scanned the crowd as she stopped near her mom and Elliot, then took a hesitant step away so she'd be easily spotted. Did she want him to spot her? No. She wanted to see him first, have a second to process that he had come, and then...and then what? She was sixteen. He would be what? Forty? How would she explain that? And even if he came, it would be to celebrate with his moms. Stupid to think he'd remember a date a girl wrote on his hand over twenty years ago, dash across the world to make his moms' special night about her. But she wasn't just a girl. The way he looked at her when they were together, the things he said...she wasn't just a girl. Couldn't be. But...
Her eyes snapped to his like magnets, the rest of him just an aura of dust. Nick's eyes, looking right back into hers like a horde of people weren't crowded between them. Like they'd been looking for her for a lifetime.
Nick
Alice. It was her. Alice. She was here. Had actually come here, on this day, for him. She was standing there with Kat and Elliot just like it had always been, scanning the crowd, searching, for him, her face tense and sad and hopeful and he wanted to go to her and take all that away, take away all that doubt and agony and waiting and make her understand -
- and then those dark bright eyes found his. Belonged to his and why couldn't he take a step? Why couldn't he take a step when everything he'd never been able to grasp was surfacing in those shadowy pools, waiting to give him the answers...
Something was wrong. She was perfect...but something...
No. This...this was Alice. But it couldn't be. This girl was...she was...he glanced around to see if anyone else hovered nearby, some teenage boy behind him she could have been eyeing. But he was alone on the sidewalk. He looked down at himself. Usually when he had dreams like this, he was a kid, the teenage version of himself, but aside from the leather, these were his adult clothes, clothes he remembered buying with his adult bank card in an overpriced port town in Nova Scotia. And when he looked back up at her, those dark bright eyes - eyes he'd looked into so many times, eyes he knew - were waiting for his.
Alice
It was the anchor on the back of his jacket that got her moving.
She saw the confusion dawn on his face. Saw his struggle. Saw him choose to deny what was right in front of him, give his head a shake and pivot, bolting back up the sidewalk. And she might have stayed frozen there, rejected, devastated, but that anchor, faded and shrinking in her vision was straining the connection between them, and suddenly she knew if she let him get too far it would snap.
"I see a friend, be right back," she whispered to her mom and Elliot. She didn't look back as she hurried away, heard her mom chirp a festive assent.
She knew he'd heard her approach when he sped up and rounded the corner. She broke into a trot, turned up the narrow street to follow him, but he had already crossed to the shady side, where a silver car was parked. The headlights flickered and she realized he'd remotely unlocked it.
"Wait!" She called, quickening her pace.
He didn't turn around, opened the door and slid behind the wheel. A moment later he whizzed by her, his gaze firmly ahead, her dress fluttering in his wake.
Nick
It was stupid to come here. He knew he shouldn't have, had already given his moms a plausible excuse. So why had he done it? His hands tightened on the wheel, his knuckles flushing white. Before he'd gotten out of this car, he'd been a sane man. A little unsettled maybe, a little nostalgic, but sane. And now he was quantifiably crazy. Now he had hallucinated his girlfriend from twenty something years ago in front of that theater. Exactly - he might as well admit it - where he had wanted so desperately to see her. Where he had waited, if mostly subconsciously, over two decades to see her.
But his brain had forgotten to age her. Of course it did, he had only ever seen her as a teenager, and his scrambled mind had pulled her from his memories. Which meant she hadn’t really been there. Or if she had, he hadn’t had a chance to spot her before he'd snapped. But she probably hadn’t been. Probably not. He supposed he could ask Ell or Kat…
Stop it, dude, he told himself. Just stop it before you lose what little sense you have left. She's moved on with her life, isn't even on social media, obviously has more important things to do. Go home to Claire and let this go or you're going to lose her too. They had already argued about the length of the engagement, how it got longer every time he was offered an interesting job. Any job. She probably had one foot out the door already.
So he drove back to the airport, his foot jammed on the gas, the tug of Port Haven like a mooring line from which he fought to untangle himself. Finally he gave up, slowed his roll as he dropped off the car and headed for his departure gate, settled for whatever slack he could get.