The town was bustling, and I took my time as I walked back to the store, running through what I’d say to Maya. I couldn’t decide if I should use shock and surprise as a method of getting what I needed, or show her a recent photograph of Jack and demand she tell me everything, minus the bull. Maybe I should take a gentler approach, explain my situation in more detail and hope for empathy, or perhaps I’d have to gauge her reaction and take it from there.
I was about forty feet from the store, and still undecided, when the front door opened. I recognized Maya from her Facebook profile immediately. Her dark hair was cut in a shorter, choppy chin-length bob, and it made her eyes seem even bigger. She was tall, had a good couple of inches on me, and the heels of her black leather lace-up boots were a direct contrast to my canvas flats, making her tower over me even more. She was beautiful, edgy, the kind of person who didn’t take any crap from anyone, someone my parents would’ve glanced at and labeled trouble. I was about to call out her name, but my heart almost stopped when another person walked out behind her. A man.
Jack.
They turned in the opposite direction, and I wanted to go after them, but my legs buckled and I stumbled, losing my balance, landing on my hands and knees, the asphalt piercing my skin. Was it really him? Were my mind and the lack of sleep playing tricks on me? My vision seemed to blur and when a passerby stopped to ask if I was okay, I told them I was fine and pushed myself up. “Jack!” I cried, but my voice came out so strained, I barely made a sound. “Jack!”
I couldn’t take my eyes off him, but he didn’t turn around, didn’t notice or hear me as he continued down the street alongside Maya. I watched, hopeless and pathetic, as he kept walking away. Away from me. I went after them, ignored the stinging in my palms and knees as I ran across the road, narrowly avoiding two cars before finally catching up to them. I reached for his arm. “Jack.”
In the time it took him to turn around I wondered if I’d gone insane, somehow become delusional. I imagined the embarrassment of being mistaken, grabbing hold of Maya’s boyfriend or husband. Perhaps my desperation had projected what I’d wanted to see, what I’d needed to see, but the split second passed, and he turned around.
It was him.
Jack. My Jack.
A combination of emotions I hadn’t known possible, or could be this intense, flooded my body, swelling up from my heart and spreading across every square inch of me, growing, ballooning, expanding to the point where I thought I’d burst. Fear followed by relief, and then anger, which turned into elation, but that transformed itself into hatred before, finally, settling on love. Jumbled waves of conflicting feelings washed over me, all of them coupled with the knowledge, the absolute certainty Jack was alive. He was alive. He hadn’t drowned. He wasn’t dead. I’d found him.
My joy shifted back to terror as I panicked. This was all a dream. I’d wake up in my bed in Brookmount, the space next to me empty and cold. If this was a dream, if I was imagining any of this, I never, ever wanted to wake up.
I reached out to touch Jack’s face, searching for confirmation he was real, but when I stared into his eyes, the smile that had taken over my face faded, and I lowered my arm. He was different somehow. It was him, no question, but something had changed. With the small frown on his face, I almost expected him to reprimand me for being here.
“Jack,” I said again, a whisper this time. “It’s you. It’s really you.”
I couldn’t wait any longer, and flung my arms around him, pulled him close, burying my head in his chest. His clothes smelled of a different kind of laundry detergent, but the scent of his skin, the warmth of his neck, were exactly as I remembered. We’d been apart a little over a week but standing in the middle of the sidewalk on Newdale’s Main Street, I realized how my memories had begun to fade no matter how hard I’d tried to cling to them. I wanted to hold him forever, felt his hands on my arms, expected him to pull me closer and whisper my name, but instead he gently pushed me away and took a step back, creating a chasm between us.
“Why didn’t you come home?” I said, and before he was able to say a word, another surge of anger rose from within. Unable to tame or get it back under control, I yelled at him. “How could you do this? How could you disappear? Why did you say your name was Jack? Who are you? What are you doing here?”
“Hey,” Maya said, putting a hand on my arm.
I shook her off, my chest heaving. “Why did you leave? Do you have any idea what you put me through?”
He stared at me. “I don’t know—”
“What the hell do you mean, you don’t know?”
“Enough,” Maya said. “You need to back the hell off, lady. Now.”
“And you,” I snapped, finally turning my attention to her. “You lied. You told me his name was Gordon, and—”
“Wait...are you the woman who called the other day?” She looked at me, eyebrows raised.
“Maya,” Jack said, sounding uncertain. “What the hell is going on?”
“Listen, I don’t know what you think you saw,” Maya said to me. “I already told you—”
“I know what I saw. It was
