They followed her down the hall.
She was standing in the kitchen, hands balled into fists, watching the door.
Miriam and Noelle came up from behind and flanked her. Noelle looked exasperated, and Miriam amused. The knob on the door turned, and Hannah took a deep breath. They all waited for the man who always came through the kitchen door, like “the help” he believed himself to be.
Although Miriam had spoken to Levi regularly, in her mind, he was the same kid she’d left: burning both ends of the night to work his way through culinary school, scruffy, overcaffeinated, a feral cat who kept walking into bad choices to see what would happen. He wore the same Black Flag shirt more days than not, he moved just a bit too fast all the time, and he was never quite settled in his own skin.
Noelle remembered an entitled, volatile man who never thought what he had was good enough, and left everyone who tried to love him scorched because he never bothered to stop himself from bursting into flame.
Hannah had thought about Levi every moment since she could remember, and she had every version of him tattooed into her consciousness. When she’d seen him last, he’d been angry, restless, and reckless, barreling out of her life and into the unknown.
The man who walked through the door was not the Levi any of them remembered.
He was bearded, still, but instead of looking like he’d forgotten to shave, it was full, well-tended, and thick black now. His hair was too long, his curls swooping up over his high brow with a life of their own. His face had thinned and hardened, and his eyebrows spread out over gray eyes the color of a cloudy sky, ringed in smudged kohl. That, at least, hadn’t changed. He wore a gigantic scarf, beat-up boots, and a leather jacket that Hannah would know anywhere.
He was standing completely still, something Miriam wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him do in her life. He looked at home in his own skin, which Hannah knew without a doubt he had never felt before.
He looked like an Adult. A traffic-stopping, smoking hot one.
He also didn’t know Miriam or Noelle were in the room. He’d brushed his hair out of his eyes and looked up, scanning for his mom and finding Hannah instead. Now he was staring at her with such naked longing on his face that Miriam wished she could sink through the floor.
She watched as, in a blink, a mask of indifference shuttered his face. He dropped the bag he’d been carrying in one hand and crossed his arms, leaning his long body against the door frame.
“Hi.” He half smiled, his eyes searching.
“It’s about fucking time,” Hannah said before turning on her heel and walking away.