She drove around for an hour after leaving Reed's house. She rolled down the windows, and the late summer air was invigorating. "I Will Survive" came on the oldies station. She turned it up full blast and sang blissfully along, oblivious to the stares from the car that had pulled up next to her at the stoplight.

And then reality began to seep in. Far from feeling liberated, she suddenly felt small and alone. She had always been fearless. Solitude was never something she dreaded. Quite the opposite.

Had Reed broken her spirit that much? No, it wasn't all his fault, she knew. She supposed a fear of being alone was what attracted her to him the first place. It was something else. She drove on, bewildered as to how she had become this person.

She made the turn onto her block and was aware of a figure hovering outside her building. She squinted her eyes. It was Woody, sitting on her front stoop. She pulled up into a parking space across the street and tried to ignore the flutter of joy she felt.

He stood when he saw her. He was nervous, she could tell, from the way he always thrust his fists into his pants pockets.

"Jordan! I was hoping you'd come home tonight. I was going to give it another fifteen minutes..." he started uneasily.

"Woody? What are you doing here?"

"I, uh..." He cleared his throat. "I just came to see how you were doing."

She smiled ruefully. "I'm fine. I'll be fine."

"Good. Good." He nodded vigorously and shuffled his feet nervously. She felt a sudden sense of dread.

"But that's not really why you came here," she said with foreboding.

There was a pause. "No. It's not." He shook his head slowly, and his eyes dropped to the sidewalk. "I wanted to tell you this in person and not just leave a message on your answering machine. I think I owe you at least that much."

"Tell me what, Woody?" she asked quietly, although she already feared the answer.

He stuttered for a moment, scanned the sky, anything to avoid speaking. "We can't see each other anymore, Jordan. We can't even talk. I know we just came back into each other's lives, and I can't tell you how much that has meant to me. But this has to be it."

"It's Kristi, isn't it? Do you want me to talk to her? She's got nothing to be jealous of," she said, even if she no longer believed it.

Woody put a hand up to stop her. "No. That's not going to help. This is just the way it has to be."

Neither spoke. They stood in stillness under the streetlight.

"Well. Goodbye, Jordan." He moved in towards her and bent his head down.

Their heads bobbed and dodged gracelessly until he planted an awkward kiss on her cheek.

He took a step back, and they stood for a long moment with eyes locked in sad understanding.

So this was to be it. She had ended things two years earlier. For the best, she had said, and she had been horribly wrong. It had taken this moment to realize it. She blinked back tears.

"Jordan, don't..." he said gently. He took a step in and lifted her face in his hands. "It's okay."

His mouth was on hers then. They kissed, long and slow, and it seemed to her that nothing else in the world existed but she and Woody and this place.

The kiss broke. They stood for a moment, his forehead pressed against hers.

And then he spoke in a whisper. "Goodbye, Jordan."

He took a step back from her and looked at her with regret.

"Wait a minute! You're going to kiss me like that and just walk away?"

"I'm sorry. That was wrong."

"It wasn't wrong, and you know it."

"Jordan, I have a fiancee. When I gave her that ring, I made a promise that I'd marry her and spend the rest of my life with her. Where I come from, that means something."

She turned and went up the stairs to the door of her building. She wouldn't let him see her cry. "Fine. Go."

She fumbled for her keys. She could sense that he was still standing mutely on the sidewalk behind her.

Suddenly he spoke again in an angry rush.

"You ended things two years ago, Jordan. Not me. You've got a hell of a lot of nerve holding it against me because I've tried to move on with my life."

"You call that trying? Kissing me like that?"

"It was a mistake. I thought there was still something there. There's not."

"You're a lousy liar, Woody."

He threw his arms up. It seemed as if two years of repressed anger had bubbled to his surface. "What do you want me to do, Jordan? You want me to end things with Kristi? Is that what you want me to do? You want me to profess my undying love to you? You want me to get down on bended knee and ask you to marry me? I tried that once. I had the ring in my pocket and you told me you wanted some time alone. And then you didn't even have the decency to tell me to my face that you were never coming back."

She stood looking down at him in astonished silence. His face was twisted with anger. She had no idea that he had felt this way, and the revelation was stunning.

"Woody, I...."

But it was too late. He had turned on his heel and headed down the block to his car. She was still staring down at the space he had occupied on the sidewalk long after he pulled away.

She staggered up to her apartment, the image of the last time she had been with Woody playing through her mind. She had curled up on his lap after she told him about their lost baby and had ended things. And now she knew that he had wanted to marry her.

There was nothing left in her. She couldn't even cry. She collapsed in a chair and stared at the dark television. In the morning, she would be there, still wearing the mud-splattered pink sundress.