Reuniting with Tia Leonetti is a blessing and a curse.
He's grateful to see her. Relieved, even. She's a reminder of when things were simpler, when his partner could be friends with his wife without any passive-aggressive accusations. Where he could hide his past transgressions and tuck away the life he left behind in New York. Keep Liv safely locked away in his heart. Pretend that his life wasn't filled with dichotomies and complications.
However, this reunion is anything but simple.
He hasn't been single again for long, but he knows Tia and recognizes the shift in their dynamic almost immediately. With Kathy gone, Tia is warmer, friendlier, edgier. Her touches and gestures reflect much more than her Italian upbringing and much more than she ever dared to initiate in the past.
Her final push, standing outside his apartment door in the darkness, practically demanding to be let in, piques his curiosity and confirms his fears: she wants more.
So he opens the door.
He'd be lying to himself if he didn't admit to wondering about Tia. He cherished her as a colleague and friend, the camaraderie and safety of a solid partnership, but whispers of her paralleled a time and place he could only revisit in the memories stained on his soul. It was unfair, and he knew it- to lust after someone else as a replacement for a love he couldn't requite- but if she was on the same page, was it all that bad?
He pulls out the bottle of grappa and puts on a relaxed, anticipatory grin.
Waking up on his sun-streaked couch, hungover and alone, is an unexpected relief. He's grateful that he doesn't have yet another regret to cast at Olivia's feet.
He stumbles to the kitchen, puts on coffee, and stretches out the creaks and pops that accompany blending his age with fragrant liquor and loaning out his luxury mattress. As he's making breakfast, she struts out, grumbling about being too old for this shit, and it's friendly and familiar. They trade barbs over toast and fruit as they recount the details of their drunken conversation.
When Tia forgets what her name is, the woman he loves, the lump catches in his throat. When she tells him that love shouldn't be complicated, it takes everything in him to exhale the stuttered breath lodged in his lungs.
Later, after they trade their goodbyes and he's driving aimlessly through the streets of Manhattan, his thumb hovers over the call button. He knows what he wants- to blatantly ask Olivia for a do-over, a new start, forgiveness- but he can't. Lately, he feels like he's lost her all over again, the mediocre progress they'd made during their last case evaporating over time and space. They were never good at distance, whether it was Oregon or Rome, and they've both crawled back to neutral corners.
Sometimes he thinks that neutrality is bullshit.
He misses her. Wants to ghost his fingertips over her hallowed skin, take inventory of every scar, and map her freckles. Kiss her senseless, inhale her, taste her, punish himself for leaving by reminding himself of what he was too cowardly to fight for. Wants to be the man she deserves, the man he couldn't be the last time they said that painful, passionate goodbye.
He puts the phone away before his reflexes get the best of him, the dull ache of the past settling into his bones, knowing he cannot and will not just call her on a whim to earn back her trust and love. Even if he loves her from afar for the rest of his life, he knows one thing to be certain.
He never wants to say goodbye to her again.