Healing Heart

I was never one to embody the clichés around dating, mostly because before Heart I could never understand them. How someone could read their partner's face like a book, and never get tired of it. How they could forgo the imagination of finding another partner, of another life, of eloping with a beautiful, dark-eyed foreigner on a shimmering vacation. I get it now.

She looks stunning, if a little tired. I stare a little too long at her lips, remembering the name of her lip shade: "Too close for comfort." She bought it on a whim during a weekend trip with one of our mutual friends, Sadie. Thought it would pair well with her dress for one of our dance club's ballroom nights. And, as I distinctly remember, it's the only shade that I haven't kissed her in.

Before I know what's happening, tears are rushing down her face.

"Cameron, you're not allowed to look at me like that."

Her voice is deceptively steady, but quiet, despairing. The latter notes I picked up hesitantly, because the onset of her velvet speech has stopped me in my tracks. We're not dating anymore. She picks up where she left off:

"I'm here because we never talked about what happened."