DISCLAIMER: I am not the owner of these characters. Thank you.
"What Might Be, what could've been."
"It's been four years," he said.
Hesitantly, but also—in some strange way—firmly, she nodded. "I believe so." Her refusal to directly look at him betrayed her strong voice.
A brief silence ensued. The man continued to stare, while the woman continued to position her gaze on the glass in her hand.
"Have you been okay?" he finally asked.
She sipped her lemonade slowly. "Perhaps," she said. To be courteous, nothing more, she said, "And you?"
"Yes, I've been good."
"That's good to hear." It was said in such a dry voice, it couldn't be taken for truth, but it was not scathing enough to be taken for a lie, either.
He sighed, letting his eyes drop for the first time since they'd met. "You know, Raven—"
"I go by Rachel now, thank you," she cut in smoothly. She did not meet his eyes.
"Rachel?" He had a strange note, in the way he said it. "Rachel, huh." It had the taste of a person talking to himself, but also the flavor of regret and wonder.
Another still moment, less awkward but heavier by the tenfold, passed between them. The noise of the people around them was too quiet to fill up the space.
The sudden ring of a phone shattered the quiet atmosphere, and Rachel slipped out her phone from her back pocket. "Sorry, Mr. Logan, I'll be accepting this call." She walked a few steps away.
He chuckled to himself. "Mr. Logan. I'm a Mr. Logan now." His laughter and light tone did not match the look in his eyes. "Classic Raven," he muttered to himself, but it was unstable and unsure, as if a constant in his life had been disrupted.
He took one last, lingering glance at the woman—he had to remind himself that now, they were strangers, and they weren't high school kids anymore, and things had probably ended years before, and it was only him that didn't know it—and set down his glass next to where Raven—Rachel—had left hers. With a dark smile, he walked away. "It's been four years, hasn't it," he said, quietly, distantly, impulsively: almost as if it was an involuntary phrase.
He didn't look back.
...
"Yes, thank you," she said politely. She snapped her phone shut and looked back to find the place she had occupied empty, except for two cups of the lemonade everyone was here for in the first place.
She walked slowly back, in a careful, quiet manner, eyes scanning the horizon. Then, a second later, a frown set in, and her nose twitched in annoyance.
A woman intercepted her right then. "Oh, Ms. Raven, isn't it all wonderful?"
Immediately her frown was good as gone, and she smiled back slightly. "Yes, I love that the children's fundraiser is working. They deserve it: all that hard work!"
"I agree. Look, there's little Fresco, and you can see the happiness in his face! And there's Mary…" The woman, an enthusiastic parent, chattered on excitedly.
Although it was a terribly beatific talk, Raven couldn't focus. She found that her eyes kept wanting to look elsewhere, wherever it could. Her blithe smile remained, but that didn't mean it reached her eyes.
"Oh, I think my husband is calling me. A nice lovely talk with you, Ms. Raven." With a joyful pat on the shoulder, the lady—a Mrs. Mat—bounded away in the style she always did. Like always, Raven smiled her off, and then her scanning resumed.
Before it got on any longer, another person tapped her arm. She whirled around quickly, a small but pleasant smile at ready. "Hello, Mr. Pilkins. I didn't know you made it here today."
"I did. Barely made it, but I did, Ms. Rivers."
She winced good-naturedly. "You mean Raven?"
"Ah, that's right. I always forget." The man bellowed out hearty laughter, making her smile wider as well. The portly man had a talent of doing that; his larger-than-life attitude was always a cheerful one, and she was greatly thankful that he was her boss.
"You said all the money will go to their pen pals?"
She nodded. "Their pen pals are at an orphanage, so we wanted to help out. It was unanimous, they all wanted to do something for their friends. To think they never met!"
"That is indeed the true beauty of children, Ms. Cindy."
"And that will be why we love them so much, right?"
The conversation flowed easily and nicely, or so it did until he asked casually,
"By the way, who was that young man you were talking to earlier?"
He did not expect her to stiffen quite so. It had been just a curiosity on his part, and he hadn't meant any harm. "If it's a private affair, I won't be so nosy," he quickly added.
Raven relaxed in a second, though her smile was still decidedly frozen. "Oh no, it's really nothing. He was—he was a high school friend of mine. I was kind of surprised to see him here, much less in the town. We were pretty close, even though we were really different. You know me, Mr. Pilkins, I'm quite the rare case," she joked, trying to change the subject.
Though he sensed there was something deeper, he didn't pry. "Why am I not surprised?"
They laughed together, talked a bit more, and parted ways a short while later.
And as she sat in her spot by the table, looking over her precious students, and occasionally laughing silently at something they did, her ever-present grin couldn't help but slip into a more wistful, bitter, and barely detectable but somehow soft smile. As hard as she wanted to deny it, she had to admit that, at the end of the day, she was disappointed and maybe a tiny bit regretful.
After all, it had been four years.