"Isn't it funny," she says, holding her arms tighter to herself to ward off the frigid November morning, "how life never works out how you thought it would?"

He looks at her. Really looks. She remembers she didn't properly brush her hair this morning, just hastily clipped it back because Roy turned off her alarm and decided it romantic to not wake her until five minutes before they needed to leave.

"It still can," he assures, his breath visibly puffing out of his mouth, and even that is earnest and good. She wants to bottle it. Bottle him. Eau de Jim's innate optimism. She'd put it on every morning. She'd bathe in it.

She can't look at him, because she'll see his judgment, know that she'll never measure up. She's settled, settled for a life he doesn't approve of. Sometimes his scorn makes her indignant, makes her balk at the need to defend herself and her choices to him. How dare he presume to know her, what she wants, what she needs, who she loves, what she deserves.

Today, though, well, today she just kind of wants to be that girl. Be the person who tries, who speaks up, goes after what she wants, the one who loves who she wants, not just who is there.

If she were that girl, she would untwist her arms from her coat and ghost them over his slight frame. He'd be warm, and still, but he'd soften, welcome her in. She'd wrap herself around him, slowly, and his heat would seep into her as their bodies collided. Her cheek would rest against his chest, and the whole world would settle, just for her, just for a moment.

"I'm cold," she tells him instead, allowing herself to brush her sleeve against his as she passes by on her way back into that drab, gray, building.

***

"Isn't it funny," he tells her, during an inadvertent encounter in the parking lot, both eyeing each other unsurely, "how we still take breaks at the same time?"
She looks up at him, so much hope in her eyes that he has to look away. Her earnestness burns, then hardens him, part of a metamorphic process that began on a warm evening this past spring.

"Well," she starts, and he dreads the joke he knows is about to fall from her lips, "this is the time of day that Michael's morning sugar and caffeine buzzes reach their joint peaks, so I think it makes sense in a twisted sort of way."

How dare she ignore his pain. How dare she try to be his friend now, smile at him, expect one in return. He grunts instead, the barest of acknowledgments that she's spoken at all. He glances down at her face again, this time hoping he's hurt her. Her lips are pursed in a way he used to see all the time when Roy would turn his back to her, so he knows he's succeeded.

She looks back up at him, then. Right at him. Like a guilty boyfriend, he scratches at his neck to hide the hickey Karen left last night in his apartment. Their first time. A new beginning he's embarking on, a ship without her name or likeness. He stares at her curls, so soft and long these days, and he admits to himself that, while she has no place in his new life, her shadow shall follow him wherever he goes.

"I'm cold," he declares, clenching the fist that wants nothing more than to stroke through her hair, as he half-jogs back toward the office to go flirt with Karen.

“Isn’t it funny,” he asks conversationally, leaning up against the building as she walks out to greet the late-spring sunshine, “that we somehow keep finding ourselves in this situation?” He’s disheveled, more so than when she saw him five minutes ago, fancy new haircut now severely disfigured. She takes in his lean, appealing, figure, so forbidden to her for so long. Maybe things do change, after all. Maybe she has.

A year spent trying to make contact with him, to reach that person she used to know. He, of grand gesture and courageous convictions, she of sputtering digressions and false starts, trapped in her own cowardice. What a pair they make.

God, does she want them to be a pair.

“I’m not sure how much coincidence has to do with it this time,” she tells him knowingly. She has a permanent smile carved into her head, cheeks aching, face flushed. He lifts his hand to run it through his hair, a tried and true kill shot to his stylist’s hard work, and she fixates on his fingers. She longs to reach out and touch them, feel their softness, their calloused tips (the result of a youth spent playing guitar, she knows), and to intertwine them with her own.

And, for once in her life, she does.

She goes for it as he’s bringing his hand back down. She thinks he might be startled, but he curves his fingers inward in acknowledgment, in welcome. He is warm, and she exhales properly for the first time in over a year, maybe for the first time, period. Looking up from their hands to his face, she finds his eyes closed tight, fighting some hidden emotion. She squeezes his hand to bring him back to her.

“You hurt me,” he tells her, voice raw with the truth of the statement.

“I know.” A pause. The world around them keeps moving, but theirs has halted. “You hurt me, too.”

She can’t meet his eyes, so she stares at his throat, watches as he swallows hard. “I know.”

She turns her head and rests her cheek on his chest. She is here, with him, and needs him to understand this, to accept this. Only a moment’s hesitation and he responds in kind, reaching for her other hand and weaving their fingers together. They stand like this for several moments, and their breathing evens. Eventually she lifts her head, and they’re face to face once again.

“Your hands are cold,” he tells her, almost surprised by the observation.

She looks at him. Really looks. Really feels. Really wants. Really hopes. “Maybe you can help me warm them up.”

And so he does.