The bell on the door jingles and my ears ring. I pull down my hood and unbutton my jacket, examining the raindrops as they hit my shoes, turning the navy suede black. Even though I’ve done this before, it always feels like the first time.

 

The hostess smiles at me warmly, recognizing my face. I try to smile back, but I’m not sure what my face is doing. I wonder what she makes of my visits here, of our organized annual lunches. Every time I see her, she is always the same. Her dark hair is pulled back into a low knot against her neck, and her clothes are always neat and pressed. I wonder if I have changed, in her eyes. I feel like a different person from the girl who walked in here for the first time three years ago, but I know that when I see him nothing will be different.

 

“He’s already here,” she says nodding to our usual table. I thank her and walk to a small table in the corner by the window.

 

Luke is seated, immersed in something on his phone. The light from the screen casts a shadow on his face and he looks exactly the way I remember. I know when I leave, his face will become a blur in my mind, and I won’t be able to piece together an honest image of him. But now I recognize every last part of him as if I wake up next to him every morning. He puts his phone down on the table and looks up at me.

 

“Hi,” he says.

 

We’re the only two people in the Korean restaurant, a seemingly unpopular lunch spot that has somehow stayed open over the years.

 

“Hi,” I say, draping my jacket over the chair. “You look well. New haircut?”

 

He rolls his eyes. “That’s the best you can do?”

 

I laugh and I know we’re back to where we were a year ago as if no time has passed at all.

 

—

 

Once when I was out with Nick and some of our friends, I broke our unspoken rule of communication and texted him. We were in a downstairs pub and had to yell at each other over the band that was playing. Nick was drunk, and I knew this because he kept grabbing my hand under the table and rubbing my leg in a way that I’m sure he thought was endearing. Nick squeezed my hand again and looked at me. I realized he was waiting for my response to something he had said. Our table went quiet as everyone stared at me. I forced a smile and got up.

“I need to use the bathroom.”

 

I walked past the bathroom to the stairs leading outside. People were standing around smoking and laughing. I leaned against a fence that surrounded the patio and took out my phone. It was just past one in the morning.

 

Isn’t it strange, I wrote, that we voluntarily go out into the public sphere, pay for drinks we don’t really want, just to make it easier to listen to the opinions of people we don’t really care about?

 

I didn’t even put a question mark and hit send. I slipped my phone into my back pocket and breathed out. My immediate thought was, you shouldn’t have done that. But it was already done. It was just over a month since the last time we met for lunch, so he wouldn’t be getting in touch for a while. But at that moment, I didn’t care. I needed to feel something other than suffocation, and in a way, that text message was a ticket to freedom.

 

My phone vibrated through my jeans and my heart began to race. He’s awake. I don’t know why I thought he wouldn’t respond, maybe because our days of casual correspondence via text ended a long time ago, but I was relieved.

 

Is everything ok? the message read. I smiled. “Everything is fan-fucking-tastic,” I said out loud and a couple smoking near me glanced my way.

 

Everything and nothing, I wrote and hit send. A minute later: A real dodgy answer. Ever consider a career in politics?

 

I stared at the words until they became blurry and put my phone away. I never replied and he never mentioned it the next time we met up.

 

—

 

He places a laminated menu in front of me.

 

“You know I don’t need that,” I say. “We always get the same thing.”

 

“I figured we could try something new today.” He directs his attention to the menu, studying it intently.

 

“What about the rice cakes? In hot sauce? You like spicy food.” He glances up at me.

 

“Whatever you want,” I say, putting my menu to the side. The hostess arrives, placing steaming cups of tea in front of us.

 

“The regular for you two?” she asks and he glances at me, smiling.

 

“Actually, we thought we’d try something new today.” She takes our order and Luke thanks her. I place my hands around the mug, trying to absorb the warmth.

 

“How’s your mom doing?” I ask.

 

“She’s okay,” he looks out the window. “The treatments are going well. We won’t know for sure where she stands until this first round of chemo is done, but she’s handling it decently.”

 

He looks back at me and a short silence passes between us.

 

“What about you?” He sips his tea. “How’s the shop?”

—

 

We met in a coffee shop when I was seventeen and he was twenty-one. He was in his third year of university at the time, working to pay for school. I had walked into the shop for my first shift and he was standing behind the register, looking at me with an expression I couldn’t place. The first time we met for lunch he told me I looked incredibly sad to him that day. I laughed, and said, “you remember that day?”

 

He stared at me for a minute before he replied, “I remember it all.”

 

I’m not sure when I fell in love with him, but I tried very hard not to feel it. He tried too. He had a girlfriend when we met. Alexandra. They began dating his first year of school. I was single but not for long. I met Nick just after my eighteenth birthday. It was a relief, in a way, having someone reciprocate my feelings of love. It never felt like it did with Luke, but it was close enough.

 

At the coffee shop, everything was clear. Our relationship developed over the countless hours we spent together, frothing milk and sweeping up after close. Somehow, we reached an understanding of what we felt for each other. We never had to say it out loud. It was an unspoken language we were both fluent in. For some time after he left, it was hard to be in a place so consumed by him, especially when he was gone. Sometimes I stood in the freezer in the backroom and imagined him coming in after me, whispering over my shoulder, his warm breath leaving goosebumps on my body. I tried to dispose of those memories the same way I disposed of the coffee grinds, but he was a stain on my life that would never come out.

 

After Luke graduated, he got a job with a start-up tech company in the next city over. We never saw each other, but he was adamant that we kept in touch. We texted each other updates for two years after he left the shop and stayed up late talking on the phone when what we wanted to say was bigger than a single text message.

 

On my twentieth birthday, he texted me the address of a Korean restaurant downtown and told me he was tired of hearing about my life updates through a screen. I remember feeling nervous before I went to meet him, to the point where I wasn’t sure if I was going to be sick or not. I didn’t know what this was anymore.

 

Sometimes I wondered if this would have gone on for as long as it had if he didn’t have Alexandra and I didn’t have Nick. We would finally be able to admit everything we both knew we felt. But then what? That would be too easy. At least this way, there was a distance between what we knew and what we felt, and it was safe. We were safe because he was with Alexandra, I was with Nick, and what we had existed in a liminal space somewhere in between those two certainties.

—

 

“I gave my notice,” I say. “I’ve decided to pursue grad school after all.”

 

“Hey, that’s great,” he says. “When do you start?”

 

“September. I figured I’d take the summer, do some travelling. Find myself. You know, all that bullshit.”

 

He smiles. “For what it’s worth, I think you’ve got a hold on who you are.”

 

Our food arrives and Luke pulls apart his chopsticks, holding them like a weapon.

 

“Feeling brave enough to tackle the fine art of chop-sticking today?” he asks.

 

“Might as well take a shot,” I say. I snap my chopsticks apart and reach for a rice cake. It remains lodged between my chopsticks, but as I bring it to my mouth, it falls down to the table.

 

Luke laughs. “Some things never change, I guess.”

 

I nod and spear a rice cake with my left chopstick.

 

“So, are you engaged yet?” He grabs from the plate of kimchi and I slowly chew my rice cake before I answer.

“You’re funny,” I laugh. “You know Nick is terrified of the ‘m’ word. I haven’t even told him about grad school yet. Being in two different cities will make him feel obligated to solidify our relationship in some way, and I’m not sure I can handle that quite yet.”

 

“I don’t know what he’s waiting for.”

 

“Don’t worry, you’ll be the first to know if that unfortunate day rolls around.” I spear another rice cake and look up at Luke. He takes a sip of tea and looks at me, like he’s trying to communicate something without speaking.

 

“I am.”

 

I’m aware that he’s waiting for my reaction, but I can’t bring myself to look at him. I stab another rice cake, but I don’t bring it to my mouth. Suddenly I feel unsettled, the way I feel when I see roadkill on the side of the highway; the animal’s guts spewing out of its lifeless body in an intimate way that makes me want to avert my eyes so as to not witness something so personal.

 

“Congratulations,” I finally say. I gently place my chopsticks beside our shared plate and look at him. He looks pained. I wait for him to say something, but he doesn’t.

 

“Shouldn’t you be more excited,” I say. “You’re getting married, after all.” He shakes his head.

 

“Medina, I…” His voice trails off and I can’t look at him. Outside the window a woman is pushing a toddler in a stroller. She stops to grab a bottle from the basket and the little boy looks at me. His eyes are wide, and he has a goofy smile, like he’s witnessing the funniest event of his young life.

 

“You don’t have to say anything,” I glance at him. “I understand. It was bound to happen, right?”

 

He shakes his head again and I can hear how heavy my voice sounds. “It was bound to happen,” I repeat.

 

Slowly I push my chair back and stand up. “I’ll get the bill,” I say. “Consider it an early wedding gift.”

 

He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something but instead, he breathes out and nods his head. “Thank you.”

 

I pay the bill and the hostess smiles warmly at me. “See you next time,” she says. I don’t have the energy to correct her.

 

I know this is the last time I’m going to see him. He doesn’t say it, but whatever we had has come undone. I slowly fasten the buttons on my jacket, taking extra care with each one. He patiently waits until I’m done, then places his hand on my lower back and we leave.

Outside, the rain has stopped. It smells like earthworms and damp tarmac.

 

“Was it worth it?” I ask him. He looks at me for a long time before he answers. He run his index finger down my cheek, from my ear to my chin. Suddenly I’m seventeen again in the coffee shop and we’re just beginning.

 

“This isn’t the end, you know.”

 

I raise my eyebrow. “Oh, I didn’t realize we were going to run to city hall and get hitched.”

 

He laughs, loud, and I try to memorize the way the skin around his eyes crinkles into perfect creases.

 

“Maybe this wasn’t our time, but just know that I’ll be waiting for you in the next life.”

 

It’s my turn to roll my eyes at him. “You may have to wait a while,” I say, “seeing as I’m going to outlive you by a landslide.”

 

He smiles. “I’ll save you a seat by the window. Try not to be too late.”