There was a time when Ryan didn't know if he would ever sit across from Cara again, when he believed that the distance that had divided them–both physically and emotionally–would leave her as the ghost of love that would chase him for the rest of his life, the one he would not be able to recover from. But there she was, the beauty that had haunted his dreams, that he had reached for across an empty bed every morning for the past eighteen months. There she was, her emerald eyes glowing beneath the crack in her stringy brown hair that fell down when he stared too closely at the gentle slope of her cheek, the straps on her flowerprint brown dress. Though she was thinner now, he still remembered every curve of her body, the way her flesh felt flowing beneath his fingertips. He stilled yearned to feel her breath gasping against his neck again, to whisper his love to her as her legs curled around his back. He had had sex with a number of women before, but she was the only one he had ever made love to, and the memory of that experience haunted his waking moments. But the memory of how much it hurt when she left him, saying she was scared of him finding another woman when he moved from Kansas City to Chicago, left him even more terrified of being abandoned yet again.
So when Cara told him that she wanted to give their relationship another try two months ago, he told her that she would have to earn it, that this time he was the one scared of growing too close to her, scared of being hurt. The first time they dated, they slept together within the first week, but, this time, he did not even kiss her until a month had passed, a month of long conversations, her explaining why she left the first time, him telling her how he passed the months without her trying to build a wall between his heart and hers...all to no avail.
Cara knew what was on his mind, as she watched him swallow the last bite of the alfredo primavera he had prepared for dinner, for the first night of the first weekend she was to spend in his new apartment. She saw the distant look in his blue eyes, the way he ran his hand through the slick blond hair that he hadn't cut in four months. It looked to her like he had gone back to lifting weights since she'd be gone, but there was a quality to his face, to his hair, that made him appear to have aged five years instead of one. Sometimes, she worried that she was to blame for that aging.
Ryan smiled at her as he cleared the plates from the table. Cara noticed a slight twinkle in his eyes, as if he was shaking the fears away and moving on with some plan she knew little about. She often wondered how much he wasn't telling her, how much of the hurt that he had experienced he was refusing to let her see, trying to hide his pain so as not to increase her guilt. She had been twenty-one at the time, a few years younger than him, and insecure, worried about the new world that a Kansas boy would find in the Second City, worried that she wasn't good enough, despite how often he told her that he loved her. She never told him that it broke her heart too, that the guy she dated shortly after him was merely a distraction, that she sometimes woke thinking it was Ryan sleeping beside her. But that relationship passed along ago, and she was there, beside him yet again.
"Could you grab the candelabra," Ryan asked, as he pulled two plates of tiramisu from the refrigerator and carried them, along with his glass of Chardonnay, over to the couch. Cara lifted the cinnamon apple scented candles and carried them to the coffee table and took the plate from Ryan, remembering the first time he had cooked for her, all the hope and possibility that she carried in that moment two years ago, when he fixed the exact same meal that he had prepared on that night in Chicago.
They ate the tiramisu in silence, occasionally trading glances. Cara tasted a hint of mint in the tiramisu, something she did not remember from most of Ryan's cooking, but that she knew was an attempt to balance the garlic that he had used in the pasta. Ryan had always been able to guess what she had eaten for dinner by the flavor of her kiss. Of course, in the mornings, he often left her with the combination of toothpaste and orange juice, so he was smart to never complain.
When they finished, they placed the plates on the coffee table, and Ryan reached over to tuck the stray strands of hair back behind her ear. "I miss this," he choked out, almost inaudibly, "Being near you, peaceably, loving you even in the silence."
Cara knew he was remembering the days when they would lay reading on the same couch, but she merely pulled her eyes up from the blue line she had been studying on the couch's fabric to meet Ryan's eyes as his fingers slowly ran along the side of her face, gently, as if he was scared of breaking her. "I'm so sorry," she whispered.
Ryan took her expression in before speaking, his own face twisted with empathy. "If that's what it took to bring you home to me, so be it."
