What's it been, almost a decade?
It still smarts like it was four minutes ago.
We only influenced each other totally,
We only bruised each other even more so .
Alanis Morissette

#.01

The word is dumbfounded.

I stood there, with my jaw hanging open, not caring who could be watching—things very suddenly got an impossible feeling; the world went and bent itself out of shape all at once. While the jerk of the proverbial rug from beneath my feet should have floored me, and it (figuratively) did, I watched as he got up and left the eatery, unable to believe what I had just seen, and was still witnessing.

I watched, paralyzed to my spot, as the man I had spent nearly a decade of my life thinking about constantly, imagining, looking for—I was watching him walk away from me. For nine years I had planned and imagined and daydreamed the day that I met him again (if I did), but now all I could do was let him walk away again, this time in the literal sense.

Someone bumped into me, and it broke whatever spell I was under.

It was a good thing I paid when I got my food, because I spared no time hurtling out of that street-side restaurant. I kept thinking, What if you're wrong? It can't be him! Or even worse, what if you're right? What if he just stares at you and says he doesn't know who you are? Impossible. You can't just erase eight years of your life like it never happened, right?

I hoped not.

Then it happened, we were out on the sidewalk and it was a muggy, gray day in New York. It happened, my hand on his arm, which I found surprisingly more muscled than from the nine years (or eight years and 11 months) since I saw him last. Blue eyes, the same shade as I remember, turned to me, questioning.

Oh my God. I did.

I found him.

When the recognition dawned in his eyes (a few seconds too late for my tastes, really) I could have sobbed. All these years, and I didn't know what to say, and the way his face changed—the guilt—I realized that he remembered.

"Dan?"

"Yeah, it's me Nicole."

People where shoving past us, but we didn't move.

What do you say?

What do you say to the boy who is now a man, who went off to college a few states away, visited once, and then broke off all contact? The boy who wasn't even registered as a student any more when you went to look for him, and somehow his parents had even left without a trace.

What do you say?

"We should talk."

"Should we?" I must have looked at him incredulously when I said it, because he had the decency to look ashamed of himself. People just kept on barreling past, a few with indignant comments about stopping in the middle of the sidewalk.

"You uh, you want to go out to eat tonight? Or just for drinks, whatever—I'll pay and all." And it looked like he honestly wanted to talk. This wasn't just to humor me or to help his guilt go down smoother.

"Yeah, sure."

"What's your number?" When I gave him a look that very, very clearly said that I didn't expect him to call (how the hell could I, really?) he became flustered, and dug through his jeans for a pen, staring at the ground. He found one, and when I told him he wrote it on his hand: like a high school kid or something. "And just so, just so you know I'm not lying about this, my number is—" He gave me the pen, and in turn I wrote down his number on my hand.

Like a high school kid.

The world shifted under my feet, but I guess I didn't feel it at the time.

- - -

Actually, I wasn't so surprised when he called. Dan had been sincere about getting together to talk, that was pretty obvious. When the phone rang, I had known it would be him—but this could also be by process of elimination: the other options were my mother or my sister (who was in college for a Master's in medicine, pharmaceuticals).

When I picked up, he sounded relieved (he also, alternatively, sounded well-rehearsed). Dan asked if he could pick me up and I declined, which may have deflated him a bit. There was something I liked about reserving my anonymity (my phone number was unlisted as well). I felt like it gave me a sort of leverage: if need be, I could do to him what he had done to me almost nine years ago.

Later I met him at some kind of restaurant that wasn't so fancy, but was well above local competitors. When I realized it was a Mexican restaurant, I could have laughed. It would have been a sad laugh though (Daniel seemed to have remembered my fondness of Mexican food) so I didn't. He was dressed in darker jeans than before, which were tight but not too tight, and a simple white collared shirt. It registered to me that this man was very good looking.

Which posed the question: was he seeing someone now? What love of his life stole him away from me? It would be absurd for him to be single. Then again, why should it matter? After all, you don't start a relationship with someone who turned their back and walked out on you in the most demeaning way possible—breaking all contact without so much as a good-bye, much less an explanation after being together for a large part of your lives at the time.

I was also wearing jeans, because even for a March day it was pretty cold. I also had on a collared shirt, a slate blue color, and my jacket—a leather coat that fell to my knees. Our food came, and we managed somewhat strained pointless chatter until then— and trust me, pointless chatter is at once extremely difficult and yet the only thing you're capable of with someone who left you (on a very sour note) a decade earlier.

The food diminished, and our drinks were replenished. I had learned that Daniel now did statistics for some company or another, and was paid handsomely for it. Turned out, show biz and filming didn't work out for him. I wouldn't say that I was happy about it, but I wasn't particularly surprised. Then again, I'm not surprised very much anymore, by anything. The one great shock of my life had pretty much overshadowed everything else.

Almost as an unspoken rule, we acted as if our meeting had not been so improbable, nor did we acknowledge that it should be much more awkward than we wanted to play it off as. When we weren't acting like not-so-close long term friends, we were pretending to be complete strangers—in a way we were—just going through the standard first-date motions.

"So, are you seeing anyone?" It was a bold question that could have been interpreted a little heavier than I may have liked. With two margaritas in me, I didn't much care.

"No, are you?" He wasn't? Odd.

"No. Not for a long time." I crossed very close to the line of 'uncomfortable things to say'. I guess the way I looked at him didn't help much either: of course not, and you should know.

"Oh. I don't see why, you're beautiful." Daniel smiled and I had the feeling he'd have liked to reach across the table and brush my cheek with the back of his fingers. He even leaned forward, and I could see it in the way his shoulders moved—but then he caught himself early enough to pass it off as just shifting in his chair. This only made it more obvious though: I noted that about him, he wasn't a fidgety guy now. All the excess energy I remember him as having before was refined, controlled.

"So, you're not gay now or anything?"

"What?" He did sounded appalled, some of that old energy bubbling up.

"Well, you said you aren't seeing anyone, which I suppose doesn't mean you are gay or anything, but—well, you look good. Not to lean on your own previous comment, but you look really good." It was more than I had said at one time the whole night.

Daniel laughed. "No, I'm not gay. I'm not much of anything lately."

"How long is lately?" There I went, bold again.

"About nine years." Daniel was suddenly very serious, and he leaned across the table, closer to me. "Really Nicole, I… there was a reason." I could see that. It wasn't a pretty one either, not one I'd like (as if I'd like any of them). How much had he drank? He didn't want to tell me this.

He'd regret it if he did.

Not that I cared much at the moment. I was very, very angry.

I'm angry pretty often, really.

So I decided just to stare at him, without so much as arching an eyebrow.

"I would never have, I should never have, there's no excuse I know. I can't imagine what it was like for you."

"No, I'm sure you can't."

The truth is I wasn't even so curious about the reason. I guess I wouldn't have stopped him from telling me, but I didn't need to know what in the world was more important that I ever was.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought you out here like this, this was stupid, I'm sorry-" Daniel was now screwing up his words, every so often one syllable would be the tiniest bit slurred—he leaned back, and now I could see how anxious he really was. He started to stand, realized that the check wasn't on the table yet, and looked around frantically for our waitress.

"Sit down." He did. Now, despite all the years, and despite whatever could pull him away from me, I saw the boy I knew. His eyes were wide like they used to get, and he was nervous.

"Look. I don't know what could be so earth shattering that you dropped me like a bag of bricks, and I don't want to know. You don't have to explain, and even if you do, it's not going to change the fact that you grew up with me and then walked out."

"Okay." Admitting defeat. Daniel caught the waitress's eye, and called her over. In a few minutes (of silence) the check was brought.

"I'll pay for my drinks," I offered, but I received a completely hurt look – at least let me do this, it said. I didn't offer again. When Daniel was done with the bill, he took out a checkbook. I was confused for a moment, and it only got worse when he handed me the check he had been writing.

It was for three thousand dollars.

"What's this supposed to be?"

"Your family did so much for me, fed me all the time and everything-"

"No."

"C'mon! You know it's true!" He was almost pleading with me.

"No."

"C'mon… take it, please?" Definitely pleading now.

"No, I am not taking it, and if I do take it, I'll never cash it." Of course this made him miserable.

No, I won't let you buy your freedom from guilt, I thought. Maybe I saw it as the only way I could really bind him to me: to keep him in debt to me. A bitch tactic, maybe. It would have been kinder to just take his money.

It's a habit that dies hard I suppose.

(Not accepting people's money, but more just being a bitch.)

We were out of the restaurant, standing together, fishing for goodbyes.

"Let me pay for your cab?" Daniel looked down at me, the person I knew.

"I'm going to walk, actually."

"You live near here?" He sounded hopeful, or maybe startled? He didn't like hearing the news, maybe, but at the same time I had a feeling he did.

"No, but it's all right out. Weather is okay, at least."

"Can I walk you then? I mean, this is-" And for some reason, the word got caught up inside him, as if he wasn't sure if it was safe to say around me. Strange. "Gotham. This is Gotham."

"Can I ask you something?"

"Go ahead."

"What is it about this place?" I knew I'd have to elaborate. How could I possibly expect Daniel to know what I meant? But the more I thought about it, the more elusive the concept became. I couldn't put my finger on it, exactly.

"Uh, Gotham?" He was uncomfortable, jittery.

"Well, yeah. It's like…"

"Yeah, I know. You don't have to explain. Things seem surreal here, don't they?" His eyes wandered up at the skyscrapers and then back down to me. "It's like, everything is too dramatic or too real to be real. The exaggeration of everything, the violence and the city itself, it's shoved into your face, too close to see the big picture in things."

I was a little taken aback. So he had spent some time thinking about it then. It sounded accurate enough too—the sensation of total surrealism trapeze-ing around, pretending to be reality, that's what this was.

"How long have you been here?" Or, in other words, is this the place that you ran to when you left me? Is this the place that kept you when I couldn't?

"Close to nine years."

"The whole time then?"

"Yeah. Mostly." Daniel ran his hand through his hair, looking guilty. It didn't make me feel better (that he was feeling guilt) but it sure as hell didn't make me feel worse.

"So, is that it? This place. This place, the way everything is too gaudy and too flashy, but at the same time too real. This is what was a better home than, than, than somewhere with me?" I was becoming emotional, melodramatic, which I'm pretty sure was the alcohol talking (not that what I was saying was something I didn't feel every day of my life).

Daniel stepped close to me, as if he could console me by holding me, or something. Immediately I shut down. I pulled away, looked at the sidewalk.

"Nicole, you don't know-"

"You're right. And I told you that I don't want you to tell me. I'm just going to go, okay?" I made sure not to look at him. He hesitated for a moment, as if debating whether or not to offer his hand in a good-bye shake. After a second or too of fumbling around, he settled has hands in his pockets.

"I don't want you to walk alone, please let me call you a cab?" I didn't want to worry him, and being a total Ice Queen wouldn't make the situation any better.

"Well, okay. Thank you." Daniel was visibly allayed, and rushed to hail a cab. It wasn't very long before the yellow car pulled up, and he paid the driver. I got in, and he hovered over the door he held open for me.

"I'll call you?" Clearly he was expecting rejection.

"That'd be nice, actually." I forced out a smile that I had to hope didn't look forced. Either way, Daniel reminded me of a puppy again, overjoyed.

"Really? Yeah, okay, I will, soon, I promise."

"Goodnight Daniel."

"Oh, night Nicole."

The door closed, and I directed the cab driver.