It started with a single call.
Just to catch up.
They hadn’t seen or spoken to each other in years. In fact, there was really no reason for them to connect. Once the relationship ended, all that was left was sadness and gaping questions no one really wanted to answer.
But he called.
And she answered.
They were older, and wiser, and there was none of that biting sarcasm that came with youth. Only genuine interest in the well-being of others. His voice was not raspy, she noted when she talked with him. The sound of his tell-tale drinking and cigarettes gone.
He sounded clear.
He sounded awake.
She didn’t sound as frantic as she used to. As uncertain about her career prospects, or image, or place in the world. All of the bullshit she’d worried about in her twenties. And though there was some venom when she spoke of her sister and her happily family, it wasn’t quite like it used to be.
“Can we meet?” he asked and the seconds in between asking that question were longest, fucking seconds of his life.
She gave a sharp intake of breath. “Yes.”
And they both knew without asking where they would meet. It was same place would stumble out of in their twenties, into the bright morning sun, every night they were in New York. After a night of drinking and dancing and fighting and fucking. Only to part ways in the morning and go around the world playing songs to thousands of people in separate parts of the globe.
Until, ultimately, the space became too much.
The conversations dwindled to nothing.
And the sparks lay burnt on the floor, forgotten relics of what burned between them so brightly in their youth. When he got there, she was wearing the same, yellow dress he had seen her in that first time.
Sunshine in the form of a girl. Her golden hair curtaining her face as she scribbled in a notebook. He watched her for a moment before he approached her and nervously ran a hand through his hair.
“Hello.”
She looked up, and smiled at him. “Hello.”
The notebook tucked in his pocket with his pen fell out, and she laughed a little as she bent to pick it up. “I suppose some things never change.”
“I suppose not,” he said with a smile.
He sat down on the bar stool next to her and didn’t order a drink the entire time they were there except for a water. They wrote and talked as if there was no time left between them at all. And everything was right in The Alcott and the universe again.
I’ve had this dancing in my head since I heard the song. So.
