Is this really going to work?

As the limo zipped along the highway, I shook the thought away for the fifth time. This was going to work, it had to. I’d tried just about everything else to get in touch with Kristin at this point.

But showing up at her building unannounced, demanding that she come with me to our high school reunion—wasn’t it a bit much? Gazing out the window revealed the sky was an ominous-looking grey. I looked away. Maybe this all was a bit much, but I had to try.

The closer we got, however, the more the question returned, the more the anxiety closed up my throat. By the time we pulled up to the familiar off-white apartment building, I was practically hoarse and had almost crushed the corsage box in my hands. When I got to the building receptionist, I parried requests to call Kristin’s apartment with the old man’s stoic refusal to do anything that “wasn’t by regulations,” before finally paying him off with a fifty.

“Tell him there’s something here for her,” I told him as he rung her, and he did so.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, Kristin was walking into the lobby. Her gaze stopped on me, and her face fell. I was speechless. Kristin looked even more gorgeous than I remembered. Maybe it was just not seeing her for so long, or maybe it was the chiffon and jeweled mint glory of a dress draped around her body, but I was utterly frozen. Until she turned around to walk away from me.

“Wait,” I croaked, and she paused.

“Is that…is that the dress you were going to wear—”

“For prom, yes,” Kristin declared, whirling around to deliver me an icy glare.

I nodded dumbly and Kristin demanded “What are you doing here Clark?”

I looked at her sheepishly. Judging by her enraged reaction, I was beginning to wonder that myself.

“Well?” Kristin asked and the words poured out of me.

“I just wanted to see you. I thought that maybe, I don’t know, you were going to the reunion too. And if you were then maybe I could give you a ride.”

Kristin’s frown didn’t budge and showed no signs of doing so, so I continued.

“It’s just a ride. You can ditch me when we get there, if you want.”

Kristin’s glittering eyes surveyed me coolly, while I tried to give her an easy, reassuring smile. Apparently appeased by what she saw, she nodded and strode ahead of me outside. At the door of her building, however, she’d stopped.

Turning to me with a smile, she said, “Oh Clark, you didn’t!”

Clearly, she had spotted the limo waiting outside for us. I took her arm with a shrug. “It seemed appropriate.”

At the limo, I waved the driver aside and opened the back door myself so she could climb in. I climbed in right beside her and the driver pulled away from the curb. I glanced over to see that Kristin, for all her indifferent bravado, was clearly flustered at sitting so close to me.

“So…” she said, staring determinedly out the window, “Why would you bother going to the reunion?”

Edging a bit closer, so our knees were touching, I asked, “What do you mean?”

She turned to look at me, her gaze flicking down as soon as it met mine.

“Why bother?” she said to her sparkly nails. “When everyone knows your success already, what’s the point?”

I put my hand on her arm. Leaning towards her, in her ear I whispered, “I have some unfinished business there.”

While I waited there, so close to her, Kristin stayed immobile. Her hand was trembling, her body urging her to do what her mind was clearly so against.

But all she said was a quiet “Oh,” so I moved my hand away.

The rest of the ride was more enjoyable and Kristin opened up when I asked her about her company’s recent success, and we even shared a laugh about our cats.

“They’ve gotten crazy fat!” Kristin exclaimed and we burst out laughing.

“No way,” I said.

“What?”

“My cat, Nala. She got fat, too. I think the maid has been slipping her treats.”

Kristin laughed some more.

“Both Romeo and Juliet are chunky, now they cuddle in all their blobby glory. We should have a cat playdate sometime.”

At her artless suggestion, she fell silent, her gaze flicking back to the window.

“Yes,” I said softly, taking her hand, “Yes, we should.”

Kristin said nothing. Her hand was trembling, but she didn’t move it away. The limo rolled to a halt and the driver came over to the door and opened it. I waved him away once again.

“We’re going to need a minute.”

Kristin said nothing, and I took her other hand.

“Kristin, please. Just hear me out. Whatever happens tonight, whether you even want to talk to me after you step foot out of this limo, I just wanted to apologize. I want you to know how sorry I am for failing you like that. For disappointing you and proving that all of the horrible things you thought about me after prom were true. For embarrassing you and hurting you again, when you were the last person I ever wanted to hurt.

“After that night, after prom, I wanted to explain it to you, but even now, Kristin, my darling, I’m afraid there’s no explaining it. How utterly different I feel in your presence—how light, authentic…how free. How your laughter is contagious and your smile even more so. How, after we reunited this past year, as my thoughts turned to you more and more, an equally powerful current rose within me—that of fear.

“Yes, Kristin, I feared you and what you did to me. And that night, that stupid, horrible, mistake of a night, as I sat in my office, as I watched the clock tick from 5:50 to 6 pm, I was afraid. I was afraid of going to you and losing myself, of giving into the overwhelming affection that I could already hardly resist. And so, I sabotaged it. I sat there and, while everything in me urged me to go, fear urged me to stay. I thought of the weeks after the prom, the breathless, painful weeks that I only got through by using work as a drug to escape the pain, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to take that helpless feeling again. No, I couldn’t bear it; I wanted you out of my life; I wanted this horrible vulnerability gone for good.”

Kristin’s hand stopped trembling.

“And I almost got my way,” I continued, “You know, I almost pulled it off. As I sat there, and 6:20 became 6:25, I had almost convinced myself that I was doing the right thing; sparing you the disappointment of being with me. Still, I couldn’t stop myself from calling you and begging for your forgiveness; but I was even a bit grateful for your refusal to talk to me. I was actually relieved. As the days passed, I figured that was it; that I’d gotten away with it, that all I needed was a few more days, and you’d be out of my system.”

I lifted her hand to my lips and kissed it.

“But Kristin, I was so wrong. Because, you see, hours stretched into days, stretched into weeks, stretched into months. You want to know what changed with all this time, all this distance? Not a damn thing. If anything, I missed you all the more, I ached for you—a physical urge there was no escaping. I realized that I hadn’t gotten you out of my system at all, I had simply thrown away my last chance at happiness.”

And then the words were out and Kristin’s eyes were shining. I let go of her hands and helped her out of the limo. Taking the corsage out of the box, I tied it on her wrist.

Then, with my hand on her back, I said, “So come on, Kristin, let’s go inside so that you can have the time of your life. Ignore me if you must; never speak to me again if you think it’s right. But just know this: that a thousand words can never express how sorry I am, and that I will never stop loving you.”

Her blue eyes were bluer with tears, but I wasn’t going to make my move now that she was so vulnerable. No, she deserved better than that. For once, I was going to the right thing.

So, giving her a light kiss on the cheek, I strode away from her side and into the old high school without looking back.