Ch. 20: Where We Begin

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

She remembered the first time, and the last, and all the ordinary days in between that had somehow mattered more. "I'm not asking you to forgive me," Sophia said. "I'm asking you to listen." "You shouldn't have come," he said, and the words landed softer than they were meant to.

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.

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

She remembered the first time, and the last, and all the ordinary days in between that had somehow mattered more. "I'm not asking you to forgive me," Sophia said. "I'm asking you to listen."

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

There are moments that divide a life into before and after. This was becoming one of them.