Thankfully, I mostly avoided traffic and made it home in a record twenty minutes. When I jog up the walkway and open the front door, I don’t find Lena inside the house. The black French door leading to our patio is wide open, allowing the warm summer breeze to flow inside our house. Lena sits at the table in one of the black metal chairs with one leg stretched out, resting her heel on the edge of the chair across from her. Her laptop is propped open, halfway resting on the edge of the table. I can tell she’s working because her fingers slide back and forth across the screen, adjusting whatever image she’s working on. Her body is a complete contradiction to the intense concentration on her face. The corner of her mouth is curled up as she scrutinizes her design. Her usual pouty pink lips are twisted in thought and it’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen her do.
I watch Lena in silence as she lifts her glass of iced tea to her lips and tilts her head back. Beside her, laid out on the table, are two plates filled with grilled sandwiches and salad, untouched.
Finally, I step out onto the porch to join her. I nervously run my fingers through my shortened hair, wishing I had grown it back out. Lena had fallen in love with me at a time when my hair rested past my shoulders and it was tied up in a bun more than when it was down. I considered growing it out over the past year, but fear of reverting back to the life we once had far outweighed my desire to let it grow. Sometimes I wonder if Lena misses it as much as I do.
The midday sun beams down on Lena, highlighting the golden strands of her hair. Her skin is sun-kissed a light bronze and as she adjusts herself in her seat, I think about how my mouth has touched every inch. She hears me as I step onto the patio, glancing over her shoulder to find me standing in front of her. It’s then I realize how in the past year she really hasn’t changed. Neither has my love for her.
Our marriage may have fallen into some sort of vortex, the shadows of our past threatening to pull us in different directions, but looking at Lena the way she is now makes me think our love is stronger than those threatening to destroy us.
When her pale brown eyes stare back at mine, I hold my breath, hoping we can find our way back to one another before both of us become consumed by our pasts.
Four
Lena
“You’re home.” I try to keep my voice calm. For the past two hours I’ve struggled to balance my feelings between anger and worry. Worry that something bad might have happened to Logan. Anger that he didn’t keep our promise of texting throughout the day. We always sent a text. No matter what. But today was different. Hours hung between my text to Logan about the shed and the one where he said he was running late for our lunch. At first, I was afraid he would be upset with me for tearing down the shed and that would explain his delayed response. But when another hour passed and I hadn’t heard from him, I began to worry. Anger simmered beneath the fear and I tried to tell myself there could be any number of explanations as to why he had broken our rule of always texting back.
As soon as the words leave my mouth, I realize my emotions err more on the side of worry. I love Logan and the thought of anything bad happening to him causes my stomach to twist and my chest to ache.
“I’m sorry.” Logan tentatively steps toward me. His eyebrows dip with regret and his sculpted face softens. I study him, thinking back on how much has changed in the past year. His hair is shorter, and his beard isn’t as thick as it once was. When I first met Logan, his hair was tied into a high bun and once we crossed the line from friendship to relationship, I found myself constantly running my fingers through the thick beard that lined his sculpted jaw. He was the most gorgeous man I’d ever met and the complete opposite of Julian. In every way.
For a while, Logan refused to let it grow back. I often wondered whether it was because Logan wanted to keep us safe, convinced it protected us from Julian finding us, or if it was because he didn’t want to be the same person he was before.
But it wasn’t until about two months ago, I started to notice how he had let it grow past his eyebrows. He still keeps his face nearly shaved, a constant five o’clock shadow peppering his jaw instead of the full-grown beard he had when we met. But now, as his hair continues to grow, almost returning to the way it was when we met, I realize he’s maybe no longer living in a deep state of fear since we hadn’t heard from Julian. For a while after leaving Providence I would search for Julian all over the internet but always came up empty. It was as if he fell off the radar, erasing his name from ever being found. Part of that scared me, part of it was a relief.
With Julian disappearing from all social media and internet, Logan and I could slowly begin to live a life of normalcy. In a way, I guess Logan growing his
