They don't tell you when
you fall in love with your first,
that sometimes it is a test of how
you fare when you walk through the fire.

And they never tell you

that no one has ever come out of
those flames whole.

- Nikita Gill

Memories rush back with so much force that they threaten to destroy me. His lips brushing and then devouring mine, his hand on my arm begging me to stay, the last time I gazed in his eyes with tears clouding my vision. The first and last kiss, the first and last look, the first and last touch. Every moment imprinted in my mind in exquisite detail is brought to life by the ghost I see before me.

Josh.

He stands in front of me, four years older. There are no remnants of the boy I knew, only a man with the same eyes and the same smile. He's grown broader in the shoulders and chest into a barrel of a man, thick stubble across the face I once traced as a map to be explored. He throws his head back and laughs and the sound trickles through the crowd like a melody that brings me to life. Every other sound fades away. His laugh: water rushing over stones. His eyes: the crystalline winter sky. His smile: the joy of a thousand stars in the sky.

But with that instance of recognition--that awakening of every molecule within me that still cherishes him--pain overwhelms me. This is the man who pulled me so far underwater that I forgot to breathe. Then he disappeared and left me to flounder on the shore, no longer able to survive without he who gave me breath. A sob rushes up my throat as I stand paralyzed in the middle of the street.

"Josh," I whisper, my voice cracked. I don't know whether the utterance of his name is a call or a cry for help.

My knees grow weak and I hear Chloe speak to me. I know my face has paled and the life has been drawn out of me; even now, he steals my breath like he always has. Chloe touches my arm, keeping me from falling, but I can't move.

Desire conflicts within me. Part of me wants to run, to leave him behind, to flee the pain that he caused me, the four years of heartbreak from which I am still recovering. But the rest of me longs to run to him, to confess how I truly felt but never expressed, to scream at him for what he did to me, to beg him for an explanation. All of the unsaid words bubble within my chest. I love you. I miss you. How could you destroy me?

Chloe pulls on my arm, her voice unheard in my ear, but I don't heed her. I only stare at him--Josh Hunter. My first love, my only love, here, before me. My eyes consume his face and my lungs draw in breath; I recolor the picture of him in my heart, I mark the differences, the wrinkles, the scars. I want to know every story behind every new line and shadow in his eyes. His dark hair has grown longer, sweeping across his broad forehead and setting off his slightly crooked nose, and he's grown his beard out, but I can still the dimples in his cheeks as he smiles.

After all these years...how? How can he be here, of all places, after four years? The word I've reviled and denied for years returns to me: fate. Ever since Josh left me, I gave up on fate and destiny. I told myself that fate wouldn't leave me stranded and loveless, that fate wouldn't take away the only person to whom I ever surrendered my soul. But here, standing before me, is Josh. That we should meet after all these years, after everything that has happened, seems more than a coincidence.

My window of opportunity to leave the fair without Josh seeing me blinks out as he turns in my direction. He sees me, and our surroundings disappear upon the jolt of impact, his sapphire eyes connecting with mine. I realize how different I must look, my hair shorter, my body chubbier, my face lined with pain and time. But he knows me.

His face washes white as he pivots on his heel, staring at me through the crowd. His hands drop to his side and palms release. I am his apparition and he is mine. A moment freezes between us and I see the same dilemma in his face. Though it's been four years, I can read every expression. The indecision, the pain, the shock. To flee or chase, to fly or fall.

Before I can move, he comes towards me, pushing through people like they don't exist. Though people yell at him and protest his trek through the crowd, his eyes never waver from mine. As he approaches me, his walk becomes a jog. His eyes are on me alone and the crowd parts like the Red Sea to allow him to come to me, an island in the midst of the sea. My heart beats in my chest, a drum that ricochets through my whole body, and my knees go weak. A dizziness forms in my brain, allowing only one thought to emerge.

Josh. Josh is here, walking towards me. The last time I saw him, he walked away. The last time I saw him, he took my heart. The last time I saw him, he left me to pick up the pieces he shattered.

Thirty feet. Twenty. Ten.

"Rach?"

When my nickname slips from his lips, I am lost. This is the voice that comforted me when Gramps nearly died in the hospital, the man that stroked my hair and let me sleep on his lap in a hospital waiting room. He is the one who retrieved me from darkness again and again, who made me laugh while life disintegrated around me. I know his voice like a record played too many times.

He stands before me with his eyes drilling into mine, and I am speechless. "Josh?" I whisper, my lips dry and speech hoarse. What am I supposed to say? "Is it...is it really you?"

"I...you're here," he answers, as lost for words as I am.

What do I say to the only person I've ever loved?

My chest compresses in pain and white hot flashes block my sight, as I fight to keep from hyperventilating. I feel trapped in the midst of this crowd. Run. But I can't. I'm trapped in his eyes that radiate the lost home I haven't found in anyone else.

"Hey, Josh!" Chloe chirps from beside me. I forgot there was anyone else here besides us. "What are you doing here? Do you live here?"
Josh's eyes struggle to pull away from mine but finally turn to Chloe, releasing me. Without his gaze, my body sags and threatens to collapse. Josh. Josh is here.

"Uh, yeah. I've lived here for a few years." His voice, low, scratchy, familiar. I remember soft words whispered in my ear on cool spring evenings, and a shudder goes down my spine. "But...Rach, what are you doing here?"

Again his gaze turns to me. He reaches towards me with one hand as if to embrace me or pull me towards him, but he retracts it. I stare down at it and watch as he draws his hand into a white-knuckled fist and then releases it. I can't. I can't let him touch me, or I'll be lost again.

"I...I just moved here, I moved in with Chloe," I answer, my voice breathy and low. "It's...I can't believe you're here. Are you...how are you?"

Josh laughs softly and a smile transforms his face. I'm caught up in the dimple on his left cheek, the deepened laugh lines around his eyes, a new scar that intersects his eyebrow.

"I'm...well, I'm a little surprised right now. But I'm good. I'm really good, Rach."

My nickname sounds foreign on his tongue--he doesn't call me Rachel like most of my friends, but Rach, as if we're still best friends drawn together by a chemistry beyond ourselves.

"Thank you for caring--for asking," he says, correcting himself.

How could I ever stop caring for you? Loving you? The concept of loving anyone besides Josh strikes me as ludicrous and impossible in the light of his eyes. A thousand questions bubble in my chest, the wonderings I've had for years. How is his sister, Ellie? Is his father still demanding? Did he finish college and pursue his dreams? Get married? I glance at his left hand and hate the hope that surge through me. No ring.

"Well, those cannolis are calling me," Chloe interrupts, latching her vice grip on my wrist and tugging me away. "Great seeing you, Josh."

Chloe pulls me away and I'm powerless to resist her. "Wait, Rach," Josh calls, stopping me by a hand that reaches for me but can't quite touch me. "Can we...I'd love to see you again. To talk."

I stare into his eyes, my own wide and helpless. Yes. No. The opportunity to say the unsaid, to ask everything I've ever wanted, lies before us. If I talk to him, I risk sinking back into the enigma that is Josh Hunter. If I don't, I will have another regret to add to a treasure chest overflowing with what-ifs. But after four years, my walls are not so easily surmounted.

I lick my dry lips and whisper, "I don't think that's a good idea, Josh. I...I'll see you around."

Chloe pulls me away before I'm lost to him, but I can feel his gaze searing into my back as we depart. My legs are jelly and I stumble on the cobblestone street, Chloe's grip on my arm the only thing keeping me upright. She finds a bench hidden beneath the shade of a maple tree and I collapse onto it.

I rest my head in my hands and suck in short, uneasy breaths, my fingernails digging into my forehead. Josh. I just saw Josh. My chest compresses and I struggle to slow my thrashing heartbeat. For a moment, I wonder whether I've lost my mind and this was all a horrible nightmare conjured in my mind, but I know better. Even in my wildest dreams, Josh has never been so clear.

"Rachel? I got you some water. Here, sit up. Take a breath."

Chloe's hand is hot on my back and I push myself into a sitting position. I turn to her, my body aching with raw pain. "Chlo, he's here. Josh is here."

Her response tells me that I didn't make this up. "I'm sorry, Rachel. I had no idea he lived here; I've never seen him around before. It's just...what are the chances? I'm so sorry."

What are the chances? A million to one. Both of us know the near impossibility of Josh and I running into each other four years after we broke up, but it happened. The impossible just happened.

I've imagined this scenario of running into Josh on the street countless times, never actually expecting that it would come true. The world is too big a place to stumble upon your college sweetheart at a summer street fair. I imagined that if we saw each other again, I would summon some invisible courage and scream at him for what he did to me, for using me, lying to me, but today, I had none of that courage. It was all I could do to survive the conversation, the concern in his eyes, the memories that welled between us like a vortex of the past, threatening to suck me in.

All of my resolutions about starting over and trying again vanished in his presence. Four years spent telling myself that I can recover, that I can move past him, are now utterly wasted, destroyed by a five minute conversation. I don't even know him anymore, not the man he is now, but I still crave his soul like it's mine, like ours were divided and split between us so I would be unable to breathe without him.

"Rachel, what are you thinking?" Chloe puts an arm around me.

"What are the chances?" I whisper, "that after all this time, all these years, that he's here? Now?"

"It's hard to believe."

"What am I supposed to do, Chlo? How am I supposed to ever move on now? It was hard enough to forget him when he was just a memory, but now he's here and he's real and I...I can't."

Hina asks, "Do you want a...another try with him? It seems like there's still a lot between you two."

This dream is nothing more than a taunting, impossible delusion. I know that Josh and I can never have a second chance, not after the last time. He doesn't deserve one, and I can't afford to give him one. If I wasn't enough for him four years ago when I was whole and strong and believed in love, then there's no way that this reassembled patchwork girl I've become in his wake will ever be enough. This isn't fate, this isn't a second chance. This is a cruel twist of luck designed to prevent me from overcoming my past.

Still, I am drawn to him. A part of me lingers behind in the center of the street where my eyes found his for the first time in four years. I want to return to that place where we saw each other for the second first time, to touch every curve of his skin, explore the changes in his soul, to try to go back to that bond between us, the constellation that kept my soul in orbit with his despite years and miles apart.

I'd love to see you again. An invitation, a tantalizing opportunity to discover the answer to the greatest What-If of my life. I thought that after all these years the unnamed Something between us would have dissolved, but it hasn't. It's still between us, unexplored, unfulfilled, unrealized, untouched.

I'd love to see you again.

~~~~~

Sorry for the delay in posting chapters, but hopefully this one makes up for it! What'd you think of Rachel's response to Josh? What would you have done in her shoes? Have you ever seen someone you cared about after a long time apart--what did you do?