Ch. 8: An Unexpected Guest

If someone had told her a year ago that she would be standing here, she would have laughed.

The conversation turned, the way conversations do, from the easy things to the ones that mattered. There was a history between them that neither would name, written in the things they did not do. The conversation turned, the way conversations do, from the easy things to the ones that mattered.

The conversation turned, the way conversations do, from the easy things to the ones that mattered. For a heartbeat the careful distance between them thinned to nothing at all. She remembered the first time, and the last, and all the ordinary days in between that had somehow mattered more.

The conversation turned, the way conversations do, from the easy things to the ones that mattered. For a heartbeat the careful distance between them thinned to nothing at all.

Sophia crossed the room slowly, aware of every step, of the way he was watching without seeming to. The conversation turned, the way conversations do, from the easy things to the ones that mattered.

For a heartbeat the careful distance between them thinned to nothing at all. For a heartbeat the careful distance between them thinned to nothing at all.

She thought of all the versions of herself she might have been, and wondered which one he saw.