Chapter Six – The Things the Body Remembers
They stood facing one another beneath the trees for what might have been seconds or minutes.
The forest made time difficult to measure.
Light moved gradually across the leaves, but inside the enclosed green space everything felt suspended.
The young man lowered his injured arm.
She saw him wince.
“Sit down.”
“I’m fine.”
She gave him a look.
He obeyed.
“There,” she said. “Evidence you can learn.”
“I was always trainable.”
“That is not how I remember it.”
He sat against the stone again.
She crouched beside him.
The bandage had remained secure.
The blood had stopped spreading.
She pressed gently near the edge.
He inhaled sharply.
“That hurts.”
He looked surprised.
She almost smiled.
“I’m proud of you.”
“For feeling pain?”
“For admitting it.”
He watched her.
The humour faded from both faces.
Her fingers were still resting against his forearm.
Neither moved.
There are moments when the body remembers before the mind allows it.
She remembered his skin.
Not in a dramatic rush of desire, but in details.
The warmth of his wrist.
The shape of the small scar near his thumb.
How his hands became cold when he was anxious.
He remembered the way she concentrated when caring for someone, how her brow drew slightly together and her lips parted as if she were speaking silently to herself.
The intimacy was unbearable because it was innocent.
Nothing inappropriate was happening.
She was tending a wound.
He was letting her.
Yet both understood that the gesture carried years inside it.
“Do you remember Marseille?” he asked suddenly.
She looked up.
“That’s random.”
“It isn’t.”
“Why?”
“You did this there.”
“Treated your arm?”
“My hand.”
She remembered.
A broken glass in a rented kitchen.
His palm bleeding into the sink while she complained that he had ruined the only clean towel.
He had kissed her halfway through the argument.
She looked away.
“That was different.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“We were happy.”
The sentence came softly.
She felt something tighten behind her ribs.
“We were young.”
“We were both.”
“Those aren’t the same thing.”
“No.”
He studied her.
“Are you happy now?”
She withdrew her hand.
“That’s a dangerous question.”
“Why?”
“Because people rarely ask it unless they hope for a specific answer.”
He considered this.
“I don’t know which answer I want.”
“That makes it worse.”
She sat beside him again.
Their shoulders nearly touched.
The quiet returned.
She had built a life after him.
A respectable one.
Work that mattered.
Friends who stopped asking his name.
An apartment with high windows and a kitchen table she had chosen herself.
There had been other men.
One kind.
One brilliant.
One almost right.
None had been disasters.
That somehow made their endings more difficult to explain.
She did not compare them consciously.
But there were certain forms of recognition she had never found again.
Not passion.
Recognition.
The sense that another person could identify her fear before she named it.
The sense that silence was shared rather than empty.
She hated that he still possessed that ability.
“And you?” she asked.
“What?”
“Are you happy?”
He looked down.
“No.”
She expected hesitation.
There was none.
The honesty unsettled her.
“Because of what happened?”
“Partly.”
“Because of your mother?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
He gave a faint, humourless smile.
“You know the answer.”
She did.
She wished she did not.
“You had three years.”
“So did you.”
“That doesn’t answer anything.”
“No.”
He turned slightly toward her.
“I tried to forget you.”
Her throat tightened.
“You’re very talented at leaving.”
“Not at forgetting.”
She stood abruptly.
The movement startled him.
She walked several steps away.
Not because she was angry.
Because she was not.
That was worse.
She pressed her palms against the front of her coat.
The surrounding air had cooled.
She heard him rise behind her.
He did not approach.
He understood the distance she needed.
That restraint nearly undid her.
“You can’t say things like that now,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because now costs something.”
“So did silence.”
She closed her eyes.
He continued.
“I’m not asking you for anything.”
“That doesn’t make it harmless.”
“I know.”
She turned.
He stood several feet away.
Warm light behind him.
Dark clothes.
Bandaged arm.
A face she had trained herself to stop imagining.
“Then why say it?”
He looked at her with the exhaustion of someone who had finally become incapable of lying.
“Because I have already lost you once by pretending I felt less than I did.”
