I arrive first. The server seats me by the window but I know you like to be tucked into the fold of the café, so I ask for a high table in the back. I glimpse your tan skin at the door. Your green eyes find mine. We smile. You pull me into a hug and I hope to linger in your arms, but you keep it brief and take your seat across from mine.

You’re glad to hear I’m working again; I know the year I took off to write a memoir made you nervous. You ask why I felt compelled to tell our story. I wonder if you’ll ever stop trying to erase us.

Our coffees arrive. I grip the saucer to steady my hand as you take a slow sip of your latte.

I ask about your dad, and your smile wavers as you reveal he’s barely hanging on in that nursing home up the coast. You ask about my mother, and I share how a recent DNA test has proven her life-long suspicion that her father isn’t a paternal match.

It’s been two months since I last saw you on April Fools’ Day. I told you I was dating someone and that it would be inappropriate to keep meeting. You said you understood even though the love you felt for me hadn’t gone away, and your name drifted to the bottom of my contacts list. But that new someone is now no one and a week ago I crumbled and asked you for a coffee and my best friend hates that I’m seeing you today and it’s no coincidence I had a session with my therapist this morning.

You say I look well; I say you do too, though our eyes are tired.

And because it seems I’m still not done throwing punches, I ask, “Isn’t your twentieth wedding anniversary coming up?”

You startle. Your eyes widen.

“I don’t know. Let me think.”

You’re usually quick with numbers, but you take your time counting it out. I wonder if you really don’t know or if you’re stalling. I suspect it’s the latter.

It’s been three years since you took me to lunch at that downtown bistro for my birthday. We’d spent weeks flirting in the office, but it wasn’t until we were sitting at that table, a plate of bruschetta between us, that you confessed to being married. I escaped to the restroom to reckon with myself, the third glass of rosé numbing my skin as I clutched the bathroom sink. I’d suspected you had a wife, though you never wore a ring. I could have asked, but never did – it was the first of many questions I wouldn’t want the answer to. When I returned to the table you stood and wrapped your arm around my waist, and amidst the roaring midday rush, you kissed me for the first time, then took me home as the afternoon sun branded us in scarlet.

We cannonballed into six months of Is this real?, then drifted into five more of Not enough. By then I’d gotten so good at keeping your secrets, I was a phantom in my own life. And you’d become an expert at saying everything except what I needed to hear, because according to you, lying by omission wasn’t lying. When I told you it was the last time, you held me to your chest and swore you’d find a way for us to be together. I cried, fighting to breathe through convulsions, and the bed sheets were drenched with losing you.

“Yes, you’re right. It’s twenty years next month,” you say. “How did you remember?”

“How could I not?”

With our coffees done and the check paid, we linger outside the café, chatting about the coworkers that drive you mad and my weekend plans. As you reach out and remove one of my blonde hairs from the sleeve of my coat, you suggest we get a drink next time, and even though it’s a terrible idea, I say OK because even small things are still so big between us. I should go. You should go too. But we’re stuck to the sidewalk and you pause to watch a Maserati drive up the street, and when I do eventually turn to leave I’m hit with the scent of your aftershave on my collar, and I wonder if you’ll spend the rest of your life watching things you want pass you by.

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Becs Tetley is a nonfiction writer and editor in Wellington, New Zealand. Her personal essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Reckon Review, Turbine | Kapohau, Headland, among others. She is a member of the New Zealand Society of Authors and holds an MA in Creative Writing from Auckland University of Technology. She can be found on X: @BecsTetley.