Seeing Vivian again was… strange.

It’s impossible to describe the feelings that coursed through my veins when she stood in front of me, flesh and blood, really there. It was her all right, with those wide, pretty green eyes and that same hair. She’s grown up now though, filled out in all the right places, no longer that awkward teenager.

She’s chic and in charge, and I wanted to kiss her. I don’t know why or how that even occurred to me but I wanted it so badly I could barely stand. I wanted to press myself against her the way that I used to and smile and say “Hey, Vivvy girl,” the way I used to.

But of course I couldn’t. We’re strangers now. The look she gave me was a mixture of shock, disbelief, and anger. I probably deserve the anger, and I’m not surprised by the shock.

We spent the next week ignoring each other. We both worked out of the main Philly office, sitting in cubicles on opposite sides of the building. I tried talking to her once or twice, but each time she smiled, was painfully polite, and got the fuck out of the conversation as soon as humanly possible.

I didn’t expect her to just drop everything and act like we’re in love again or something insane, but I at least hoped she’d be happy to see me. Even if things didn’t end the best, it’s been years and we’ve lived a lot since then.

Instead, I can see the anger. And I can feel the discomfort.

But after that first week, she can’t ignore me anymore. We’re about to work together, and she can’t pretend like I don’t exist.

The whole crew meets at gate C17 in the Philly airport. It’s me, Billy the older camera guy, Trace the younger camera guy, Miller the sound guy, and Vivian. I’m supposedly the leader of the pack, and I know the three crew guys pretty well, but I have no clue how Viv is going to respond to any of this at all.

She’s sitting, staring at her phone when I roll up with Billy, Trace, and Miller in tow. She stands and shakes hands, introducing herself all around.

“Good to meet you,” Billy says. He’s in his mid-fifties, been doing this forever, basically. He’s thin, almost to the point of being gaunt, and the guy can drink, though he doesn’t touch a drop of alcohol while he’s on duty or on call.

Trace, meanwhile, is the opposite of him. Pudgy and young with a perpetual baby face, he tries to grow his beard out to compensate for how young he looks, but it never quite works out. “Pleasure,” he says to Viv, grinning.

Miller is the last to meet her. He’s broad and short, a little bulldog if I’ve ever seen one, but he knows what he’s doing. The man can hold a boom aloft for hours at a time without complaint. “Hi,” he says, not one for words.

We sit down together and I end up next to Vivian. I can feel the tension radiating from her, and I know I need to squash it as soon as possible. I can’t let this weirdness between us get in the way of the job.

Besides, I hate it. I personally don’t want her to despise me the way that she seems to.

“You ever been to Alabama before?” I ask her. Miller has his headphones on, Trace is nose-deep in a fantasy novel, and Billy is off drinking at a bar. We’re practically alone.

She glances at me. “No, never,” she says.

“It’s not so bad,” I say. “Gets a bad reputation, but it’s beautiful. Gorgeous mountains, landscapes, that sort of thing.”

She raise an eyebrow. “Why, have you been there before?”

“Work,” I say. “Did a thing about strip mining back in the day.”

“Sounds exciting.” She shifts toward me.

I shrug a little. “It was fine. Early in my career. I went to Afghanistan after that, and hell, that was exciting.”

She quirks an eyebrow at me. “You were in Afghanistan?”

I nod a little, pretending to be bashful, but truthfully I love to talk about it. “Reported on this group of women, living out in the mountains, totally without men. Sort of this weird feminist collective in a place that doesn’t value women.”

“What happened?” she asks.

“Taliban came in, took a few women away, killed a few others.” I shrug a little bit, trying to pretend like it doesn’t affect me, though I still dream about it sometimes. “We had to cut the report short, get out of there. That story won a prize.”

Her eyes go a little wide. “Wait a second. I read that one. Back in 2013, right?”

“Right,” I say. “It was good reporting. Made my job easy.”

“I didn’t know you were involved.”

“I was just the producer,” I say. “I don’t always get credited, which is fine by me.”

“Must be frustrating,” she says, leaning toward me. “Not getting that recognition.”

“You get used to it.” I shrug a little and lean toward her as well. We’re sitting so close together, and for a second all the awkwardness melts away. “Where have you been all these years, Viv?”

She looks at me for a second and moves away, collapsing back into herself. “I’ve been busy,” she says. “Went to Harvard. Lived in New York. Now we’re here.”

“Yeah, that sounds like you’ve been busy,” I say, leaning away again, disappointed. I shouldn’t have pushed, but I couldn’t help myself. “You been home recently?”

“No,” she admits. “I got out of there and never looked back.”

“Your folks okay?”

“They’re fine,” she says. “Dad’s still going to The Raven every other night and Mom’s still annoyed about it.”

I can’t help but laugh a little. The Raven’s this awful dive her father loves for whatever reason. My pops preferred drinking in the garage with his buddies while fixing cars.

“Good to hear,” I say.

“What about you?” she asks. “Your parents still good?”

“Mom skipped town a while back, around when we left for school,” I say. “Dad doesn’t seem to mind.”

She frowns. “Sorry to hear.”

“Don’t be. You know how she was.”

She nods a little. “Still, must be hard.”

“Thanks, Viv. Good riddance, though.”

She smiles a little bit. We both hated my mother. She was a drunk and an abusive bitch, and I don’t miss her one bit. Although, in retrospect, my mother is part of why I ended up meeting Vivian anyway.

“Remember that first day, down at the creek?” I ask her suddenly. “My mom screaming her head off. Remember what you said to me?”

She laughs and looks at the ground. “I don’t think about that much anymore.”

“You said, ‘Where you going, dummy? Your mom’s calling you.’ And then you stayed out with me until she stopped screaming and I could head back home.”

“Yeah, I remember that,” she says. “I thought you were weird. I didn’t understand.”

“We were kids,” I say. “I think we were what, ten? Eleven?”

“Ten,” she says.

“Yeah, well. Kids. We didn’t understand.”

“No, I guess not.” She looks at me again and I can see the recognition there, like she’s actually remembering who we used to be to each other.

She was my savior when I was a kid. When my mom drank too much, got too drunk, and decided she wanted to take it out on me, I always ran off to Viv’s house. Her parents aren’t bad people, neglectful and shitty in their own way, but not outright abusive. So we were safe there, at least for a little bit, until I had to go home. From that day onward, Viv was my safe harbor when I was a kid.

Eventually I grew up, got big enough that my mom couldn’t try and push me around anymore. She turned it all on my pops instead, giving him shit for always messing with his cars, but he didn’t care at all. Just went right on ignoring her and revving his engines, playing his music, drinking his Coors. He’s probably still in that garage right now, four deep, messing with the carburetor of some junker he got from a buddy.

I want to ask her more about home, what she’s been doing, but Billy comes back. He’s had a couple, but he’s not too drunk. “Almost time to board,” he grunts, sitting down next to me.

Viv turns back to her phone, and I can tell I lost her. But for a second, we were those kids standing by the creek, ignoring my mother as she screamed for me.

That gives me hope. She’s still in there, she just needs to be coaxed out. She just needs to remember what we were to each other. I think I can do that, a bit at a time, but I can get her there.