You got two donut. I got the donut for later. This is a completely separate hunger." She bit into a peach without paying for at first, which he decided not to mention, and made a small sound of approval that he felt somewhere he wasn't supposed to be feeling things at 11:00 in the morning on a public sidewalk. You used to be more fun than this. You know, I was never fun.
You were fun exactly one summer that I remember. She said it lighter than the words deserved. Eyes on the next stall instead of on him. And he felt the old porch rise up behind his ribs before he could stop it. That whole humid August folding itself back into the space between one heartbeat and the next.
You don't remember that summer? I remember it. Yeah. Now she looked at him and there wasn't anything careless left in it. What do you remember?
A truck horn somewhere behind them cut through the market noise. And a vendor called out a price too loud for the moment they were having. And by the time the noise cleared, she'd already turned back toward the tomatoes. Like she'd decided the answer wasn't worth waiting for after all. Or like she already knew what he'd say and didn't want to hear it out loud on a sidewalk between a produce stand and a coffee cart.
He didn't answer. He told himself there'd be a better time, some quieter room, some version of this conversation that didn't happen standing up in public with a bag of peaches between them. He didn't know yet how little time he actually had left to find it. By 10 that night, he'd retreated to the studio the way he always did when his own head got too loud. Headphones on.
Some stranger's audiobook narration spread across three tracks in front of him. Waveforms he could lose himself in without having to think about anything. Standing on two legs. It usually worked. It didn't work long.
She knocked once on the door frame already halfway in before he'd waved her through. Curiosity doing most of the walking. This is a lot of equipment for editing people saying words. Words are more complicated than people think. Can I see?
She was already leaning over his shoulder before he answered. Close enough that he lost the threat of whatever he'd been about to say about compression settings. Her eyes moved past the screen to the shelf above it to the row of labeled hard drives he hadn't touched in years. Stacked the way he'd left them when he stopped being able to look at them. What's all this old stuff?
Backups. Client work mostly. This one's not labeled like a client. She'd already pulled it half off the shelf before he could get a hand up, turning it toward the light, and he watched her read the strip of masking tape on the side, the handwriting on it, younger and messier than his was now. Her name, a date 8 years old, Ethan.
It's nothing. It has my name on it. It's old. It's probably corrupted, which was a lie and not even a good one. And she knew it the second it left his mouth.
Her thumb already finding the little drives connector like her hands had made the decision before the rest of her caught up. Can I hear it? Lily, you kept a recording of me for 8 years and you're going to tell me it's nothing. She wasn't teasing anymore. Not the market kind of teasing.
Something steadier underneath it now. Something that looked a lot like she already suspected exactly what she was about to find. She held the drive between them like a question neither of them had been brave enough to ask out loud yet. What's on this, Ethan? He reached for it and she didn't pull away.
Didn't hand it over either. Just stood there in the low studio light with eight years of his own carefulness sitting an inch from her fingers and the cable already halfway to the port. And for the first time since she'd walked through his front door, he had absolutely no idea what he was about to do next. The port clicked into place before he could stop her. She didn't press play right away.
She just stood there with the headphones half raised, giving him one more second to take it back if he wanted to. And when he didn't, she put them on and hit the space bar herself. He watched her face instead of listening. He didn't need to listen. He'd had the whole thing memorized for 8 years.
Every second of it, the kind of memorize that happens when you replay something so many times it stops being a memory and starts being a wound you keep checking to see if it's healed yet. Her eyebrows went up first at the party noise, glasses clinking, someone's bad playlist two rooms away. Then her whole face went still. He knew the exact moment it hit the recording, cutting from crowd noise to porch quiet. To her own 18-year-old laugh close to the microphone, to his own voice, younger and rougher, saying her name like it cost him something, she pulled the headphones off halfway through.
Her hand wasn't quite steady doing it. That's the porch, she said. That's Ethan. That's the night of Noah's graduation party. Yeah, you recorded it.
I recorded everything back then. Habit. I forgot to turn it off. Which was true and also the smallest most cowardly part of the truth. And he knew it the second it left his mouth.
You forgot to turn it off. She repeated flat for 8 years. Lily, I asked you at the market today what you remembered. You said you remembered it. Her voice had gone very careful.
The kind of careful that comes right before it stops being careful at all. I thought you meant the party. I thought you meant like generally some barbecue 8 years ago. Not she gestured at the drive still in her hand like it might finish the sentence for her. Not what?
Not that you kept a recording of the exact second I almost kissed you. She said it fast, like ripping something off. And then the studio was very quiet. Quiet enough that he could hear the building settling the way he had two nights ago lying next to her in the dark. I spent a year after that thinking I made the whole thing up, that I was some dumb 18-year-old who read a 5-second silence as something it wasn't.
Noah told me I was being ridiculous when I brought it up. You never brought it up ever. Not once in 8 years. Because it wasn't nothing, he said. And the words came out rougher than he meant.
Like they'd been sitting behind his teeth for a long time waiting for the door to open. It wasn't a 5-second silence you imagine. I remember exactly how close you were standing. I remember exactly what I almost did. And I remember exactly what happened right after, which is Noah's voice from the kitchen calling your name and me stepping back so fast I nearly went off the porch steps.