a/n: oh hey, thanks for stopping by. here's a post in celebration of my gpa surviving the semester from hell. also in thanks for your reviews. where's zach, you ask? gee, i guess we'll see. (hey, please let me know what you think so i'll know where to go with this. also it's the holidays and reviews make life merry and bright.) much love, inez

"i like to see people reunited. i like to see people run to each other, i like the kissing and the crying, i like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can't tell fast enough, the ears that aren't big enough, the eyes that can't take in all of the change, i like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone.

"are you still mad at me?"

"no."

"are you sure?"

"i was never mad at you."

"what were you?"

"hurt.'"

jonathan safran foer

extremely loud and incredibly close

It was strange, waking up in the bed of her childhood. Cammie hadn't slept poorly, per say, but the featherbed was just a little softer than what she was used to. She woke up early, when the first light cut through the long windows and across her bed. She grumbled—she was a grumbler, not a morning person in the least, and tried to settle back into the velvet magenta duvet that she'd thought was a good idea when she was sixteen.

It hadn't been then, and it still wasn't.

She flopped back against the pillows, surprised that she'd gotten any sleep at all, considering the events of the previous day, the way her chest and throat still ached from pent up emotion. There was a soft pawing at the bedroom door, then it creaked open, and Cavan trotted in, snuffling around the edge of the bed before hoping up and making himself at home half-on-top of her.

"Well good morning to you, too," she chuckled, pushing herself up to a sitting position so that she could scratch behind his ears.

This was nice—sitting, relaxing, not worrying about if her slim salary was going to cut the bills this month, hoping that her upstairs neighbors wouldn't have another loud fight and even louder makeup sex. Not wondering what she was doing and why she was there.

Well, that much was still true.

But that could wait—she had a couple of months before the security blanket of the holidays dissolved. She could figure out something before then—any job would be better than before.

There, in her childhood bedroom, she had a better friend in her stepdad's year-old puppy than she had in anyone in New York.

Well, anyone but one person, but she wasn't thinking about that.

"Well, good morning to you too, Cav," she scratched at his belly, and he rolled, tongue and tail wagging in satisfaction. "You're bright eyed and bushy tailed this morning."

She got a whine in response, and a sneaky lick to the face.

"Alright, alright," she chuckled. "It's time to get out of bed. No more lazy bones."

It took her five minutes to figure out how to work the new shower dial in the hall bathroom, and another three to find where the towels were now stashed—everything in that bathroom had been changed except the large, original claw-foot tub, and she found herself resenting it for unknown reasons.

She'd never been big on change. She'd never known why.

The sun was out, full and bright, by the time someone else rolled into the kitchen. Cammie was sitting with a bagel and the morning crossword, nails already stained with newspaper ink that she'd once hoped would be from her own words, then given up on when she realized that Times internships came with Ivy League diplomas and important last names, not hard work and talent.

Will Shortz had outdone himself on this one, that was for sure.

"Is that coffee that I smell?"

Abby fluttered into the kitchen on a wave of confidence, as always, and didn't hesitate to grab a cup and fill it to the brim. Cammie grimaced as she took a sip of the straight black liquid, then nudged the cream pitcher over towards her aunt.

"No thanks, squirt. I'm on a diet."

"A diet? It's creamer, Abby, not a donut. And you're, like, a size two."

Abby smirked, then glanced down at Cammie's work.

"Muscat."

"I'm sorry?"

"Twenty-two across. 'Gulf of Oman port.' Muscat."

Cammie rolled her eyes. "That would make sense, because Oman. Too bad I hadn't gotten there yet."

Abby just winked and went to claim her own bagel, grabbing the carton of eggs out of the fridge and rustling around for a pan.

"I have a job for you this morning."

"A job already? I just quit my last one two days ago."

Abby shot her a look. "I need a favor. With the Thanksgiving parade and all, I'm busy organizing floats and the carolers and I still have to finalize the Black Friday shopping guide before it goes to press tomorrow morning."

"Abby, I don't know that I know enough about event plan—"

"And I have to hold rehearsals for the Thanksgiving Play at the school."

"Sixty-eight down. 'French for 'No way in hell, Abby.'"

"Oui, j'adore aider ma tante."

"Abby est une pomplemousse."

Abby spun, iron skillet in one hand, stick of butter in the other. "A grapefruit? That's really the best you've got?"

Cammie raised an eyebrow. "It's been a while sense high school French. Forgive me if I'm a bit rusty."

Abby melted two tablespoons of butter into the skillet while whisking the heavy cream from the pitcher into the eggs.

"You're only forgiven if you run this errand for me. I promise you, it's not a big thing. You just have to pick something up."

Abby lied. This was a big thing.

"Cammie. Jesus. Cammie."

He stood there, staring, while she shifted, self-conscious, pulling at her sleeves like a nine-year-old again.

God, did he have to get more handsome with age?

"Hi."

It was really the best she could manage, and she wanted to die for so many reasons from that moment and from the twenty-six years that had led up to that moment.

She had a habit of these things, you understand. Deciding she had a story to tell right at the end of the big picture, really. But we'll catch up to that.

And she could have started over anywhere. Why had she come back here? To an obnoxious magenta duvet and a meddling aunt, and this—a six-four shadow lurking around every corner. There were too many haunted eyes in Roseville; she should have known that would be the case. She'd only caught this glimpse, and she already knew that his were the worst.

"Jesus."

"Your grandma would wash your mouth out with soap."

He didn't smile, though he knew she was right.

"I—" He stepped toward her, a hand reaching out. She dodged it, stepping back. "Shit, Cam, what are you doing here?"

"It's Thanksgiving."

"You drove. I can't believe that hunk of junk is even still on the road."

This was a safe topic. She took a deep breath.

"It's perfectly drivable."

"Cam. I zip-tied the bumper on ten years ago."

"Bumper viability doesn't affect drivability. And besides, it was your fault for… distracting me…while I was trying to back up."

"When's the last time you got your oil changed?"

He was pacing around her car now, kicking tires. Shaking his head.

"I don't know? A year ago, give or take six months?"

"Damn. Cammie."

"Are you waiting for an opportunity to say 'Fuck Cammie'? If you are, just get it over with. Fuck Cammie. There."

He gave her a look—the one he'd give her when they were younger, and she was annoying him when he was fighting off a migraine.

"Twenty-six and still as smart assed as at fifteen."

"It doesn't get any nicer than this. Are you done?"

He looked up from his inspection then, seeming to finally notice that she was actually there, and that this wasn't normal anymore.

"Excuse me?"

She couldn't do this anymore. She couldn't stand listening to him pretend like ten years hadn't passed, like he understood her at all, like she knew him at all, like she had any business at all accepting his concern.

"I just need that cider. Abby needs it to spice before the Thanksgiving parade."

He looked like he'd been slapped, or stabbed somewhere deep and throbbing with betrayal.

"That's why you came here?"

She shifted on her feet, knowing her aunt's game and that she'd played right into it.

"Abby said she'd called."

"I've been in the brewery all morning."

He reached up, ruffling his hair like he always had, and Cammie fought the ache that twisted her insides into a mass of something between nostalgia and absolute sorrow. She hated herself for noticing the pull of his flannel as his biceps flexed, the subtle outline of the strength of his shoulders as he dropped his hands, looking seventeen with his hair in disarray.

He cleared his throat. She was staring. She'd looked away a second too late.

"Jesus, Cammie, I—"

She didn't like the expression in his eyes.

"You said that already."

"Right," he shook his head as if to clear some unwanted memory. Cammie could only imagine which particular skeleton had come out to play. "Yeah, of course. Come with me. How much did she need?"

She followed him up the steps of the farmhouse, noticing that the white paint wasn't as cracked as the last time she'd seen it, that the wrong boards squeaked as they walked across the front porch, that there were now peonies in the flower beds instead of the tangled mass of wildflowers that had been there in her younger days.

This was the exact opposite of her house—there everything was the same. Here, everything, even the man who inhabited it, was a stranger to her.

"I can't believe those are still alive." She toed at the boards of the porch as he kicked off his boots on the front mat.

It declared a bright, loopy 'Welcome, Ya'll.' She didn't feel like it meant it at all.

"What?"

She could have been talking about the peonies, or the familiarish cats, or anything, really. So she settled.

"Those." She pointed at the square-toed boots tilting haphazardly on their worn heels. The leather was scuffed and stained, and the outer sides of both sat lower, indicative of Zach's habit of rolling his weight onto the sides of his feet when bored or stressed or feeling insecure or anytime, really.

"Those are still perfectly good boots," he shook his head, and she couldn't tell if he was trying not to laugh or not to curse in annoyance. She couldn't read him that easily even when she'd known him better than anyone; now, she was hopeless.

The screen door squeaked on its hinge, and he stepped into the house while she just stood there, feeling like a vampire on a doorstep, knowing that she was the exact wrong person to want so desperately to be inside his house—inside his world.

"Are you just going to stand out there in the cold?"

"This is cold?"

"Jesus. Yes. Get your ass in here."

She toed off her chelsea boots at the door, already regretting how chilly they'd be when the time came for her to put them back on, and followed him in.

It was open, the farmhouse. Not cluttered with knickknacks, like it had been when his grandparents lived in the old home.

The walls were stripped of their faded wallpaper, and the shiplap behind was painted white on some walls, left stained on others. The old hardwood floors were still creaky, but everything here was that of a nostalgic minimalist—Zach, if he'd been a woman, maybe.

Zach's woman other-half. And Cammie supposed that it probably was that woman who had done this decorating.

It was warm. Simple and inviting. Cammie hated herself for loving it immediately.

"Come, sit." He gestured at the oversized furniture in the family room, melting into the nearest chair like he needed its support to not fall apart, himself.

She sat, and the silence echoed.

He asked if he could get her coffee, and she said no, and then he asked if she even liked coffee, as if he wouldn't know that about her anymore. As if that was something that changed, once the taste was initially acquired.

There were things, she realized as she was tucking her legs up under herself on his well-loved leather couch, trying to feign ease, that she wished could have changed so that she was at least a little different from the girl he'd known. The girl he'd loved.

The silence was ringing, and she thought that this must be it—what growing up really was. Not moving away from home, not getting a job and paying her own bills. At twenty-six years old, she'd done all of those things, but she'd never bothered to think that a mundane moment should be written into her life story.

Silence.

Yet, here it was.

Silence.

In reality, her life had been one long course of rising action, with nothing to rise to. Unless her grand climax had been at age seventeen, looking into a pair of green eyes and saying "my god, you're going to marry me if I can't find a way to get out of this godforsaken town, aren't you?"

Today, sitting on the couch, she looked across to the owner of that piercing emerald gaze, who was looking everywhere but at her, shifting uncomfortably in an armchair clearly not designed for those over six foot, much less four inches over.

He looked like his twelve-year-old self again, trying to cram himself onto the play-kitchen stools of her nine-year-old childhood, discontent without having any other playmates.

It almost made her chuckle, and then, when she recalled it again, how he still had the exact same furrow in his brow, she did.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing." She bit her lip to suppress her smile, and self-consciously tucked a chunk of hair behind her ear that was already tucked.

He was watching her unabashedly now; it was as if she'd given him excuse, and now that the opportunity was extended, he wouldn't reign his curiosity in.

She tried not to blush under his gaze, but she couldn't help it. He was probably the most intense person she knew—even more so than Joe. Anyone would wither under such scrutiny from Zach. And her hair was in a messy knot on the top of her head. And she was wearing her most well-loved yoga pants.

"So how's New York treating you these days? I don't think we've caught up in a while." His smile was forced.

"Never. We've never caught up," she bit her lip, trying to reign in her biting comments before they tumbled out and into something she'd regret.

A lock of his deep brown hair fell over his forehead, and she bit her lip harder for wanting to trace it back into place with her own touch.

He was not hers to want. Not anymore, and maybe he never had been.

"Really? Eight years really flies, I guess."

"Yeah, when you're off having fun."

Her nonchalance was as fake as his answering smirk.

"I don't know how much was had here," he leaned back into the chair as far as he could, which wasn't far enough to mask his obvious discomfort. He looked like a loaded spring. "Tell me about New York."

"What about it? It's big, it's loud. Yes, Times Square really is that bright." Cammie's tone was as droll as both of their expressions, and god, she wished that they could just cut through the bullsh—

He folded his hands over his knees to keep them from tapping, and Cammie wished that he would just get up and get the damn cider and let her get on with her day, which would no doubt include hours of planning just on how to avoid him in the future.

Her gaze caught where it probably shouldn't have, and she knew that she was staring, but she didn't care. His hands were broad—huge, even, rough with an honest living's work. And also bare.

"Last I heard about you, you were engaged," he drawled casually, forcing her eyes up to meet his again. She doubted she'd ever heard Zachary Goode drawl. They were from Virginia, sure, but he wasn't and never had been in the least bit Southern.

"Last I heard, you were married."

She raised an eyebrow, leveling a pointed gaze at his empty left hand. He returned the eyebrow raise, then clapped his hands against his knees and pushed himself up.

"I was. Was that cider Abby was needing?"

She sat, blinking hard for a moment.

"Yeah. Um. Yeah, it was the cider."

Now? Now, he'd choose to stick to business. Of course. Some things—some things about some people—never changed.

"Right. Okay. I'm sure you need to get going, so I'll grab it for you."

He disappeared through another doorway, into what Cammie knew was the kitchen. He didn't extend an offer for her to follow, so she stood and paced around the living room, burning off nervous energy by inspecting the fluffy afghans thrown over chairs and the pictures hanging on the walls, some familiar, some new.

Most were of a little girl that Cammie didn't recognize. She paused to inspect one more closely, then heard a crash and a curse from the kitchen.

"You alright?"

She backed away from her snooping and peeked through the doorway into the kitchen.

"Yeah. I was just grabbing Rachel a few jars of apple butter, too. She loves the stuff."

That was a lie, and they both new it. Rachel couldn't stand 'the stuff.' Cammie loved apple butter on her waffles. It was her favorite breakfast.

She bit her lip to keep from thinking too far into this small act of kindness.

"Thanks. I'm sure she'll… Just thanks."

Zach ducked his head, pushing two Mason jars into her hands and tromping back through the living room.

"Come on. Cider's in the barn storage."