He stares at me for a beat or two.
And when it looks like I’m still not going to act like a normal human being, he repeats, “Open the fucking window, Echo.”
Echo.
That’s my name, yes.
But that’s not what he said that night. That’s not what he called me.
He called me by his own name.
He hasn’t called me that ever since he came back, and I was happy about it. Glad and thrilled and ecstatic. But in this moment, I wonder.
If he’ll ever call me that again.
I shake the thought off though and reach for the window. I throw the latch and let him in.
He’s just as graceful and athletic as he was two years ago as he climbs in. His leg lunging over, his arms flexing as they grip the windowsill and he pulls himself inside.
It takes him about two seconds to accomplish this but to me, it feels like two years or so.
When I get to watch it in slow motion.
Every dance, every twitch, each play and flex of his muscles.
God, he’s a soccer player through and through.
All sleek muscles and artistic grace.
And I was wrong before when I said that he’s just as graceful as he was two years ago.
He’s not.
He’smoregraceful than before.
Larger too, dwarfing every single thing in my childhood bedroom.
Dwarfing me.
“You came,” I say, as if I called.
I did.
Only not in so many words and not outwardly.
But he still heard me.
And I can’t stop staring at him. At his face.
His bruises look less angry than they did two nights ago. They’re still there and still as vicious but they don’t look as alive as they did before. As throbbing and painful.
Thank God.
He runs his eyes over my face as well. “You were getting a little out of control.”
“I wasn’t.”
Isowas.