Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
The warmth of his hand on mine lingers even after we’ve finished dinner and cleared the table. There’s a fragile hope blooming in my chest, but I’m afraid to nurture it too much. We’ve been here before, teetering on the edge of reconnection, only to fall back into our old patterns.
I lean against the kitchen counter, watching him as he loads the dishwasher.
“I was thinking,” I start, my voice sounding too loud in the quiet kitchen, “maybe we could do something this weekend?”
He pauses, a plate hovering halfway to the rack. “This weekend?” He frowns slightly, and I feel my heart sink. “I promised the guys I’d help with a project on Saturday, but Sunday could work.”
I nod, “Sunday sounds good. Any ideas on what you’d like to do?”
He shrugs, resuming his task. “We could go for a hike, maybe?”
The suggestion surprises me. We haven’t been hiking in years, not since before his new job, before everything changed. “That… that sounds really nice, actually.”
He gives me a small smile, and for a moment, I see a glimmer of the boy I fell in love with. “It’s a date, then.”
The phrase sends a flutter through my stomach. A date. When was the last time we actually went on a date?
As he finishes with the dishes, I find myself drifting to the living room. My gaze falls on the bookshelf, filled with photo albums I haven’t looked at in ages. On impulse, I pull out our wedding album.
I settle onto the couch, the weight of the album heavy in my lap. As I open it, the smell of old paper and memories wafts up. The first photo is of us, fresh-faced and grinning, cutting the cake. We look so young, so full of hope and promise.
“What’ve you got there?” Jeremy’s voice startles me. I look up to see him leaning against the doorframe, his expression curious.
“Our wedding album,” I say, patting the space next to me. “Want to take a trip down memory lane?”
He hesitates for a moment, but then he crosses the room and sits beside me, close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating from his body.
We flip through the pages together, laughing at the outdated hairstyles of our friends, reminiscing about the little details we’d almost forgotten. When we get to a photo of our first dance, I feel him tense beside me.
“God, I was so nervous,” he says.”I was sure I was going to step on your dress and rip it.”
I laugh softly. “I remember. You kept looking at your feet.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t want to mess up the most important dance of my life.”
The sincerity in his voice makes me look up at him. Our eyes meet, and for a moment, it’s like no time has passed at all. We’re those two kids again, madly in love and ready to take on the world together.
I lean in and kiss him. It’s soft, tentative, nothing like the passionate kisses we used to share. But it’s something. A spark in the darkness. I haven’t felt confident lately. Kissing him out of thin air or thinking about it felt like a crime. He’d just leave the room after a kiss and I eventually would give up trying.
When I pull back, his eyes are wide with surprise. “Lex…” he starts, but trails off, seemingly at a loss for words.
“I’m sorry,” I say quickly, embarrassment flooding through me. “I shouldn’t have?—”
But before I can finish, his hand is on my cheek, drawing me back in for another kiss. This one is deeper, filled with all the words we haven’t been able to say to each other.
When we finally break apart, we’re both breathless. Jeremy rests his forehead against mine, his eyes closed. “I’ve missed you,” he whispers. “So much.”
Tears prick at my eyes. “I’ve missed you too.”
“We should go out this Sunday, for dinner.”
“Really?” My heart flutters.
“Yes, really.”
We stay like that for a long moment, just breathing each other in. It feels like a turning point, like maybe we’ve finally found our way back to each other.
But as he pulls away, I see a flicker of something in his eyes. Guilt? Uncertainty? Before I can decipher it, it’s gone, replaced by a soft smile.
“It’s getting late,” he says, glancing at the clock. “We should probably turn in.”
I nod, trying to ignore the nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Yeah, you’re right.”
As we get ready for bed, moving around each other in a dance we’ve perfected over years, I can’t shake the feeling that something’s still off. He seems distracted, his movements almost mechanical.
We climb into bed, and he turns off the lamp on his nightstand. In the darkness, I reach for his hand. He takes it, giving it a gentle squeeze, but there’s a hesitancy to the gesture that wasn’t there earlier.
“Goodnight, Lex,” he murmurs.
“Goodnight,” I reply, staring up at the ceiling.
As his breathing evens out beside me, signaling he’s fallen asleep, I’m left wide awake. The evening replays in my mind, the dinner, the kisses, the moment of connection. It felt real. It felt like us again…kind of.
But now, in the night’s quiet, doubts creep in. Was it real? Or just a momentary reprieve from the distance that’s grown between us? And that look in his eyes. What was he not telling me?
I turn onto my side, watching the rise and fall of Jeremy’s chest in the dim light filtering through the curtains. I want so badly to believe that we’re on the right track and that we can find our way back to each other. But as sleep finally claims me, one thought echoes in my mind:
One step forward, two steps back.