I freeze mid-step on the sidewalk without knowing why. Just in front of me, a woman in expensive yoga pants holds open the front door to Rendezvous as she calls out good-bye to someone inside.
She turns, startled, when her heel bumps my toes with her next step backward. "I'm sorry," she says, gesturing for me to go past her into the coffee shop.
The guitar music streaming through the doorway penetrates my consciousness, and it's then I understand. It's been years since I've heard him play, but there's no mistaking his soulful voice and dissonant grunge style. My feet propel me inside.
I pass Rendezvous twice each weekday on the walk between my office and the metro station. Nestled between a dingy Moroccan restaurant and fast food gyro place, it's a trendy hipster café in a gentrifying neighborhood. I've never gone inside before, though I often amuse myself reading the chalkboard easel next to the entrance where the aggressively quirky specials – think lavender lattes and espresso with tonic water – are scrawled.
The interior is surprisingly spacious and airy despite the crowds. Campy drive-in horror movie posters ("Mutant Vampires from Outer Space!") clutter the walls. Rustic wooden tables stand at various heights, some surrounded by tall stools and others by low, padded benches upholstered in an eclectic mix of indie-folk-boho patterned fabrics.
My eyes confirm what my ears already knew. On an upraised platform at the back of the café, Seth perches on a stool in front of a microphone, strumming the guitar in his lap and pouring out his heart in song. I move closer, slowly but inexorably, unable to do otherwise. His dark hair is long, the way I always liked it best, and it drapes over his face obscuring one side in shadow. My fingers twitch with the memory of raking it back, soft strands sliding between my fingers. (Is it only memory or also desire?) His eyes drift closed as his voice soars and his body sways gently with the rhythm. I want to find out if he still smells as clean as I remember, if he still tastes as fresh. I want to breathe him in.
I lean against the edge of the service counter and watch, transfixed. The last time I saw him perform was 18 years ago – half my lifetime ago. That was also in a coffee shop, a different one whose name I don't remember. He'd invited me the night before when we'd gone out together – if you could call fooling around in the back seat of my parents' minivan going out. He'd kissed me senseless and then he'd guided my hand to the front of his jeans and my fingers had skimmed the length of his hard bulge. He'd looked at me with hazy, heavy-lidded eyes and said, "I want you, Katie." And I'd felt something open inside me like a flower bursting into bloom, and I'd known I wouldn't deny him anything. Petals unfurled, tender center exposed. Raw, swollen, dripping, bleeding...
Watching him perform the next evening, I drank in every intoxicating detail of him, every tiny shift in position and facial expression. His fingers coaxed the strings to music, their movements deft and sure and graceful despite the barely perceptible tremor that betrayed his nerves. He'd played me like an instrument the night before with those strong, calloused hands, driving me to helpless surrender. His song filled me now as his body had filled me then, the penetration literal and figurative. He filled me to the core, seeping like molten liquid into flesh, muscle, veins, the very marrow of my bones, integrating and solidifying. I buzzed with the power of it.
After his set, he sat beside me at the counter. But I wasn't his only groupie that night. A pretty blond sylph of a girl immediately climbed into his lap, wrapped her arms around his neck, and flirted with him shamelessly. He introduced her as a friend. My face burned and my stomach rolled. When she slid down the neckline of her shirt and the waistband of her pants to show him her new lingerie, I couldn't stand to be there any longer.
He followed me to the parking lot when I fled. "We never said this was exclusive," he said. "I can't do the relationship thing right now."
I accepted it, drowning as I was in the bottomless well of my need to please him, to be whatever he wanted. And after all, he'd followed me outside. That had to mean something, didn't it?
There were always other girls – girls he called friends and girls he called girlfriends – and when they inevitably let him down, he called me because he knew I'd always make myself available to him. I always did, until I went to college and met the kind, uncomplicated man I eventually married. Seth didn't feel the buzz of that power between us, and so it was meaningless. I had to move on.
Had I broken his hold on me? All these years I'd thought so, but seeing him again now I wonder if time and distance have merely allowed the leash to stretch. Could he snap it back if he wanted to?
I snap back to myself when the music stops. My numb hands join the applause automatically. Seth chats with some nearby patrons while he packs up. He hasn't noticed me yet and I know I should leave before he does. I turn and will myself back the way I came, one step at a time, one foot in front of the other.
If this were a movie, something dramatic would prevent me from leaving unnoticed. Perhaps I'd bump into a server in my haste and be drenched in coffee and the obvious thing would be to go home with Seth (he'd live conveniently nearby, of course) and borrow a shirt to change into. Or I'd trip in an endearingly clumsy fashion and sprain an ankle and he'd offer his arm to help me limp back to his place for some ice. But this is real life. I make it most of the way to the entrance, so close that a humid breath of outside air dampens my cheeks, and all that happens is that I hear him say my name.
"Katie, is that you?"
I stifle a groan and turn. Seth stands only a few feet away, poised mid-step with feet set wide as though he's been hurrying to catch up to me. I raise my face to his. My breath catches at the shock of those blue eyes, deep enough to sink into and never resurface...
But I did resurface, I remind myself. I got over him and moved on, not necessarily in that order. Surely he has no hold on me anymore, not after half a lifetime. I'm simply flustered, caught off guard. I can hold my shit together.
"Seth," I croak. "Hi. I was just...I was walking to the metro and I heard you..."
"Wow, Katie, it's been years..." He glances with a slight frown toward the door I almost managed to reach. "Are you in a hurry?"
I take a deep breath. "No...I didn't want to bother you..."
"Stay a while. Let's have some coffee and catch up." He reaches out, fingers grazing my shoulder, and I can only nod assent.
We find a table and I order whatever the server recommends, something steamy topped with foam and rose petals. I hardly notice the taste as we talk, filling each other in on the details of our adult lives. Our boring office jobs, my husband, Seth's girlfriend. (Of course he has a girlfriend.) We learn that our apartments are only a few miles away from each other in the suburbs.
Gradually I relax. I can talk to Seth. Of course I can. He's not the idol of my romanticized memories. He was just a boy then, thoughtless and self-absorbed and hormone-fueled as teenagers are, and I was a dewy-eyed dreamer looking to be swept away. Now we're adults, fully-formed and living clear-headed, practical lives with no place for sentimental foolishness. The past has no power anymore, surely, and nothing compels either of us to repeat old mistakes.
The conversation hits a lull and I smile at him openly and genuinely for the first time this evening. Seth smiles back for a moment before his expression sobers. He leans forward and lowers his voice.
"Listen, Katie, I want to apologize for the way I treated you back then. I took you for granted and you deserved better. I was a selfish ass."
I shrug and take a sip of my drink, hoping the steam will serve as a convenient excuse for the warmth rising in my cheeks. "No need to apologize, Seth. It's in the past. Anyway, all teenagers are selfish asses."
"Still," he says, "I am sorry."
