“It’s a little girl. Her name is Jessica. And my niece has William totally wrapped around her little finger.” She opened the security door. “Come on.”
Andrew followed her inside and up to her second-floor apartment. As she unlocked the front door, she realized she’d rushed out the door without picking up the wedding invitations she’d been addressing.
“Sorry about the mess.” She flung her purse onto the couch before kneeling down and straightening up the papers on the coffee table.
“This isn’t a mess. Although you always were a bit of a neat freak. Some things don’t change.”
“And other things do change.” When he sent her a puzzled look, she added, “For the better.” She noticed he stood awkwardly, leaning on his good leg. “Have a seat. Can I get you anything to drink?”
He shook his head. “I’m good.”
With the invitations gathered into a tidy stack, she moved them to the kitchen counter. “I’ll grab the photo album. I’ll be right back.”
She had the photo album stashed in one of her under-bed boxes. With leasing a small apartment, she had to make the most of every bit of space available. She considered changing out of her skirt. She glanced at her pink terry cloth shorts and comfy T-shirt neatly folded at the end of her bed. Would it really be so bad? After all, it was only Andrew. He’d seen her in a lot worse. She gave into her impulse.
Dressed more comfortably, she moved silently across the floor in bare feet. “Here it is.”
She settled next to him on the couch. She swallowed hard, trying to ignore the way her heart beat faster with his nearness. She flipped open the album, forgetting that the front pages were full of photos of her and Andrew back when they’d been happy together—back when she’d envisioned them having a future together. She rushed past the photos, trying to get to the ones of her brother’s wedding.
Andrew placed a hand over hers. “Slow down. I didn’t get to see those.”
“We’ll, um, we’ll come back to those.”Where are those wedding photos?Her hands moved faster, skipping some pages. “Here they are.”
Andrew leaned over, taking in the photos. Photo by photo, they told the story of her brother’s wedding. Andrew paused when they came to photos of her. Up until this point, she’d quickly skirted over her own images. She always felt so self-conscious looking at them.
But as she studied them, she realized she looked, well quite honestly, sad. She’d tried so hard that day not to think of Andrew, but it was hard—sometimes impossible. But until now, she’d had no idea her thoughts had been visible in the wedding photos.Oh, how awful.
She quickly turned the page. She took in the smiling image of her mother. She was struck by a deep sense of longing to talk to her mother and look into her eyes. If only her mother was willing to stand up to her father, maybe he would listen to his own wife, because he certainly never heard a word Clara said, unless what she said aligned with what he wanted to hear.
“The baby looks like you.” Andrew turned to look at her.
“She does?” Clara studied a photo of the baby in her sister-in-law’s arms. She didn’t see the resemblance.
She turned to Andrew to question his observation and found him much closer than she’d anticipated. Their lips were just a breath apart. Her heart rapidly pitter-pattered. If she were to lean forward ever so slightly, her lips would press to his. Her pulse raced. Her gaze dipped to his mouth.
Don’t do it.
The tiny voice in her head caused her to glance away. She could still feel his gaze on her. She licked her suddenly dry lips, wondering if he’d had similar thoughts. At one time, she might have known, but not anymore.
Andrew cleared his throat. “Can you go back to the beginning?”
She flipped to the beginning of the wedding photos.
“No, I mean the beginning of the album.”
He wanted to look at photos of them? He was probably wondering why she still had them. The truth was, at one point right after they’d broken up, she’d considered throwing them out. But when it came down to it, she couldn’t.
She stared down at the snapshots of smiling faces as though they were strangers. The images were snippets of their lives before they let their careers take over. How had they lost track of each other? Why had they let go of something so special?
“We were so happy back then,” Andrew said, as though reading her thoughts. He pointed at a photo of them on a picnic. “Remember this one? It was such a hot day, but you insisted we needed to go on a picnic.”
She let her mind go back in time. She mentally swiped aside the cobwebs from those memories that for so long she’d refused to wallow in. “I had to do something to get you away from your computer. And as I recall, you didn’t complain about the fried chicken or homemade potato salad.”
“You always were an amazing cook.” He glanced toward her galley kitchen. “Do you still cook?”
She shook her head. “I don’t have the time. And even if I did, it’s no fun cooking for one.”
“Why aren’t you dating someone?”