Then the rain came. It arrived at the end of a long workday and kept falling into the evening, turning the roads shiny and the streetlights into blurred rings of color. I went to the gym anyway because I had made the plan and didn't want to spend the night watching the weather through my window. Afterward, with my duffel bag over one shoulder and an umbrella in my hand, I walked the last few blocks toward the studio. I was thinking about whether I had enough bread for breakfast and what time I should leave for Saturday's hike.
I wasn't thinking about Chloe at all until I turned the corner and saw her standing beside my building. At first I thought the figure beneath the narrow awning belonged to someone waiting for a bus or sheltering from the rain. The coffee shop beside our building had closed an hour earlier, leaving its windows dark except for the reflected glow of a streetlight. Then she lifted her head, and even through the water streaming from her hair I recognized the shape of her face. Chloe was standing with her arms wrapped around herself, wearing a thin jacket that had surrendered completely to the weather. Her mascara had run beneath her eyes, and the woman who had once spent an hour perfecting her reflection looked as though she had stopped caring what a mirror might say.
For one suspended second I saw her as I had on the night we met, bright-eyed and laughing at a birthday dinner. Then the memory was replaced by the woman who had told me I was welcome to leave, and I knew I needed to keep the two images separate without pretending either was imaginary. She saw me at almost the same moment, and her expression changed so quickly I could not name it. She stepped away from the wall, hesitated, and came out from the awning into the rain. "Alex," she said, and it sounded less like a greeting than a question she feared had no answer.
I continued walking for a few steps before stopping at a distance that allowed us to speak without reaching for one another. My umbrella made a hollow sound under the rain, and a bus passed through a puddle near the intersection, sending water toward the curb. I was startled by the ordinary fact that my heart was beating harder, as though my body recognized an emergency my mind had already decided how to handle. I had spent weeks wondering what I might say if I saw her again. Now that she was there, most of those imagined speeches seemed unnecessary.
"How did you find me?" I asked. My voice came out calmer than I felt, almost conversational, and she seemed to hear it as rejection. She told me Lisa had heard my address from someone who knew someone at the old building and eventually reached Dave, or a person who knew Dave. The explanation was confused and indirect, and I didn't press for names I had no reason to chase. I made a mental note to remind the building manager that I didn't want information about my visitors shared with anyone.