It was as if he never left. Seeing the apartment, almost unchanged, the smell, the old familiar trudge up the squeaky stairs-it all made him miss the years the two of them spent in the borderline hovel. The fact that she was practically glowing and even prettier than the day they met made him nervous.
She stood in the doorway to the tiny kitchen, waiting for him to speak. He inhaled a few times, scratched his head and gasped for air.
“It looks like the day we moved in-except without any boxes. I can’t believe you still-, “ he attempted.
And she lunged for him, grabbing him, as if he was a ladder and the building were on fire.
As her lips slammed into his, they both body choked one another, trying to make one person.
“I missed you,” she muffled out of the liplock.
“Me too, I , I never should,” and she cut him off with her tongue.
Finally, she extracted herself from his arms and they continued to stare at one another.
“How have we not seen each other?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I mean, I wanted to come back, I just felt like I couldn’t,” he ejected, tears lightly forming in the corner of his eyes.
“It’s okay, I dialed your number a thousand times except for the five at the end,” she divulged.
He laughed as they moved to the green couch at once in one fluid movement, sitting as if choreographed.
Time passed as they laughed, cried and made amends. He promised to call her. She promised to do the same and even respond to his long emails.
He looked at his watch and realized it was time to catch his flight home.
Getting up to leave, smiling and nearly ill with a longing for their previous life together, he told her he still loved her. Beneath his grip, under his chin, she let out that she indeed felt the same. They kissed, briefly and slowly. They hugged, hard and long.
He nearly missed his flight.
The embrace/hug lasted for almost two minutes. Years later on his porch, on the day his heart would stop beating, he would watch the neighborhood kids play in the street, and remember her soft lips and her hair.
