She finds him one winter evening at a gallery in the middle of the empty city. It is so out of context his head reels. She stands in front of him in a taffeta ball gown and the highest heels he has ever seen on a woman outside of the pages of a magazine. Her hair is twisted up into a fiddly knot, and it takes him a moment of blinking silence to realise who is standing in front of him. He hasn’t seen her in eight years.

She looks down with a shy smile, “I saw your name in the paper, and I needed to come, just to see if it really was you.” Her tone is apologetic, but the blue of her eyes shines. He is so used to seeing her in some sort of tiny bikini, her skin tanned and glimmering, her hair a tangled mess of knots around her shoulders. He remembers the summer they were sixteen, her lips under his, misty beer breath mingling in one common space, her fingers gritty with sand as they rubbed unconsciously across his bare chest. He remembers, mostly, the way her skin glowed luminously in the moonlight. It is all in direct contrast to what she is know, this person he does not even know, who is standing in front of him nervously. He is aware of the fact that he has not said a word, is more than aware of the fact that his tongue is sticking gummily to the roof of his mouth as his salivary glands give up their job. He clears his throat and attempts to smile instead.

“Liv,” he attempts to curl her name around his tongue, rubbing the short hair at the back of his neck while looking down at the beat-up canvas of his shoes, “I – uh – what are you doing here? I mean, wow. It’s great you’re here, but why are you here?” His infliction seems to refer more to her dress than anything.

“I needed to make sure you’re still real. That I didn’t dream you up.” The words that you still love me hang ethereal around them, binding them in the sweet caress of two people who know each other intimately. She touches his soul with her big blue eyes.

He takes her by the hand. Her skin is pale as though she spends most of her time out of the sun; he can see the brilliant cobalt blood running through the parchment of her skin. Her thin fingers are cold in his as he leads her to the back wall. Her dress gushes against his legs as they walk through the sparse crowd to the painting he has hidden right at the back of the room. He has used watercolours on a giant canvas to paint a picture of a young girl with blonde hair that flies in invisible wind peaking out behind her hands at the viewer. The sea is behind her, a white and frothy wave frozen in perpetual motion. He has painted a snapshot from his memory, and she recognises herself in the face of the girl. It is all she needs to know.

© Rachael Young 2009