The Definition of Fate

Chapter 12

They don't tell you when
you fall in love with your first,
that sometimes it is a test of how
you fare when you walk through the fire.

And they never tell you

that no one has ever come out of
those flames whole.

- Nikita Gill

Memories rush back with so much force that they threaten to destroy me. His lips brushing and then devouring mine, his hand on my arm begging me to stay, the last time I gazed in his eyes with tears clouding my vision. The first and last kiss, the first and last look, the first and last touch. Every moment imprinted in my mind in exquisite detail is brought to life by the ghost I see before me.

Josh.

He stands in front of me, four years older. There are no remnants of the boy I knew, only a man with the same eyes and the same smile. He's grown broader in the shoulders and chest into a barrel of a man, thick stubble across the face I once traced as a map to be explored. He throws his head back and laughs and the sound trickles through the crowd like a melody that brings me to life. Every other sound fades away. His laugh: water rushing over stones. His eyes: the crystalline winter sky. His smile: the joy of a thousand stars in the sky.

But with that instance of recognition--that awakening of every molecule within me that still cherishes him--pain overwhelms me. This is the man who pulled me so far underwater that I forgot to breathe. Then he disappeared and left me to flounder on the shore, no longer able to survive without he who gave me breath. A sob rushes up my throat as I stand paralyzed in the middle of the street.

"Josh," I whisper, my voice cracked. I don't know whether the utterance of his name is a call or a cry for help.

My knees grow weak and I hear Chloe speak to me. I know my face has paled and the life has been drawn out of me; even now, he steals my breath like he always has. Chloe touches my arm, keeping me from falling, but I can't move.

Desire conflicts within me. Part of me wants to run, to leave him behind, to flee the pain that he caused me, the four years of heartbreak from which I am still recovering. But the rest of me longs to run to him, to confess how I truly felt but never expressed, to scream at him for what he did to me, to beg him for an explanation. All of the unsaid words bubble within my chest. I love you. I miss you. How could you destroy me?

Chloe pulls on my arm, her voice unheard in my ear, but I don't heed her. I only stare at him--Josh Hunter. My first love, my only love, here, before me. My eyes consume his face and my lungs draw in breath; I recolor the picture of him in my heart, I mark the differences, the wrinkles, the scars. I want to know every story behind every new line and shadow in his eyes. His dark hair has grown longer, sweeping across his broad forehead and setting off his slightly crooked nose, and he's grown his beard out, but I can still the dimples in his cheeks as he smiles.

After all these years...how? How can he be here, of all places, after four years? The word I've reviled and denied for years returns to me: fate. Ever since Josh left me, I gave up on fate and destiny. I told myself that fate wouldn't leave me stranded and loveless, that fate wouldn't take away the only person to whom I ever surrendered my soul. But here, standing before me, is Josh. That we should meet after all these years, after everything that has happened, seems more than a coincidence.

My window of opportunity to leave the fair without Josh seeing me blinks out as he turns in my direction. He sees me, and our surroundings disappear upon the jolt of impact, his sapphire eyes connecting with mine. I realize how different I must look, my hair shorter, my body chubbier, my face lined with pain and time. But he knows me.