Chapter Twenty-Four: Sixteen Years, Seven Months
This was Julie?
Her hair was different. Her ear seemed… wrong, somehow. He could only see part of her face because she was looking in the other direction, but the shape of her cheekbone was… it reminded him of…
She turned to face him.
Michelle.
He had to keep himself from running the rest of the way to the glass window.
"Michelle?" he asked, grabbing the phone before he even sat down.
She had been crying, Tony saw now, and he suddenly felt his heart gripped with panic.
"Is it Zoe?" he asked frantically. "Is she alright?"
Michelle nodded slowly, looking at him as if stunned. "She's fine," she said hoarsely. "She called me a coupla hours ago to say she'd gotten to Paris safely."
"Then why...?"
Fresh tears spilled down Michelle's cheeks. "I couldn't do it, Tony... I couldn't marry someone who wasn't you."
Tony stared at her, completely astounded. "You...?"
"I was standing at the back of the church, and all I could think about was our wedding... getting changed five minutes before and pulling my sleeve down to hide the bandage and how happy I was despite all that... and I realized that I could never be quite that happy with Oliver and it was so stupid of me to think I could be... I'm so sorry, Tony, I'm sorry I thought I had to leave you behind..." She broke off, sobbing.
"Hey... don't cry... please don't cry, Michelle, you have nothing to be sorry for... You were right to try and move on, you know you were."
Michelle shook her head. "No... I was sitting on Zoe's bed all last night looking at our wedding pictures... I miss you so much, Tony, I kept having flashbacks of just... moments of you being perfect."
Tony laughed, starting to get used to the fact that she was really here, that this was really real... "Perfect? Me?"
She smiled. "Yes, of course you. It's just little things, like the way you would look at me when you woke up in the morning, or how you would call my station when things were quiet just to say you loved me... Oliver never did anything like that."
"Then why were you going to marry him?"
"Because I thought that then maybe I could finally get over you properly, for good, and not keep having these moments every once in a while where I think about you and miss you and wonder if I shouldn't have waited for you, and if I really do love Oliver at all..." She let out a short laugh. "Didn't work, obviously."
"Well, I've gotta say... I'm kinda glad."
"Yeah." She contemplated him thoughtfully and then smiled that shy smile she always wore in his dreams. "Me too."