After the set, you totter down a narrow staircase in dangerously high heels.
A green room. A knock. An admittance. Eyes meet.
“Kris.” He says your name like it’s a note that never fits on any scale.
“Nick,” you say back, a million greetings, an impossible history, all fit into his name.
A whole lot of words pile on after this — ‘how are you’ and ‘I missed you’ and ‘how long has it been?’ and ‘ten years’ and ‘wow, really, ten years?’ — and it doesn’t matter who says which part.
What’s ten years and small talk platitudes between two people who used to share ‘I love yous’? An impassable chasm and also a single step forward into a familiar embrace.
He pens a phone number on your hand in blue ink like an extra set of veins rising to the surface.
“Where’ve you been?” Chip asks when you reappear in the balcony like an assistant in a magic trick.
“I wanted to talk to the band.” An answer that’s an equal part mystery. It’s been a long time since you’ve wanted to do anything.
But it’s 2am; the club is closing. Chip cellophanes an arm around your waist as if to test your sustainability, and leads you to the car, to the penthouse, to the bedroom, to sleep.
#
You awake some time north of noon and glide around undead for a few hours after. The phone number is a readable blur on your left palm after sleeping, washing hands, and forgetting. Was that written there last night? Two nights ago? Or just a few hours back?
You call. Hang up at three rings. Wait forty five seconds. Call again.
“Hello?” A curious voice. His. Probably pitched at a note he could identify.
“Hey.” A reply. A drone, but he knows you.
A plan is set: coffee, today, soon. You need a shower first.
Because you’re bad at time, because it slides past you like cement and also sometimes skips forward outside all rules of relativity, you arrive twenty-three minutes late. Regardless, Nick stands when he sees you, like this isn’t just a coffee shop with vinyl tables, vinyl chairs, and vinyl pastries. People stand for judges and queens. Not for perpetually 29 year old unemployable women who haven’t even picked up a paintbrush for six (seven? nine? thirteen?) months.