He looked different, his hair longer and scruffier than he used to wear it when we were together—the way I still remembered it. I wouldn’t say he looked older exactly, but there was something about him that felt unfamiliar now.
“No way. Lucy Sparks.” Daniel’s face broke into a slow smile as I stared at him, unsure what to do next. My knees started shaking and I was grateful for the taxi’s open door, which I used to prop myself up. Daniel pointed to his two companions, then back to me. “Dave, Greg, this is Lucy.” He paused, still smiling. “An old friend.”
I barely glanced at the other two but managed to say it was nice to meet them. “Hey, guys, I’ll catch up with you inside,” Daniel said to his friends. Then we were alone and all was quiet, until the taxi driver asked me if I wanted him to wait.
“Yes,” I said through the open window, still trying to catch my breath. How long can a person hyperventilate before they pass out? “Please wait.” He started the meter and I turned my attention back to Daniel. It was dark, but we were near a streetlight, so I could now see better how his face had changed: crinkles at the corners of his eyes, a little extra weight had softened his jawline, a soul patch under his bottom lip. But the smile was the same, and it slayed me to see it.
“It’s been a long time,” Daniel said. He tucked his chin inside the collar of his coat, rubbed his hands together to warm them. I was in too much shock to even feel the cold.
“H-has it?” I stammered, then corrected myself. “It has. But it doesn’t feel like it, to be honest.” Keep it together, Lucy. “I can’t believe it’s you. Daniel London.”
“In the flesh,” he replied, grinning. Then he leaned in to hug me, and it caught me off guard. The embrace was awkward, as was the struggle to right ourselves after it. “It’s been, what...four or five years?”
“Something like that.”
“So how are you?” he asked, leaning against the taxi beside me. “You look great.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m good. Doing well. How about you?”
Why did we break up? What the hell happened to us, Daniel? I tried to quiet my mind, to give little credence to the strange luck that brought us together tonight. To ignore the screaming questions about why I wasn’t Mrs. Lucy London. But Daniel, standing so close to me now, was extremely distracting and I was struggling to concentrate. He was stockier than Matt, shorter, too, and because of that our eyes were nearly level when he turned toward me, which was disarming.
“I’m back at school, grad school actually,” Daniel said. “Turns out the law wasn’t my thing. Dad is less than thrilled, but hey, I’m used to disappointing that man.” He shrugged like it didn’t matter, but he looked upset. I remembered how hard Daniel’s father used to be on him. The assumption he would become a lawyer, join the family firm, follow confidently in his father’s well-heeled footsteps. It was a constant source of frustration for Daniel when we were dating, the expectations his highbrow parents had set out for him.
“That’s great,” I said. “For you. Less so for your dad, I guess.” I wondered if I should let the driver go, catch another cab later. I wanted to talk to Daniel all night.
“So how about you?” he asked, nudging my arm with his. A shock rang through me, which I mostly hid by shoving my hands into my coat pockets. “What have you been up to?”
There was an intense moment of disappointment that came with his question, because it confirmed what I knew to be true but had been struggling to believe—Daniel London had no idea what I’d been up to because Daniel London was not my husband. After a short pause to collect myself I filled him in on work, using only as many words as needed. I didn’t trust myself not to blurt out what was really going on. But if my discomfort and angst showed, Daniel didn’t seem to pick up on it.
“Jameson Porter is a great firm,” he said. “Have a buddy from high school who works there. That’s actually why I’m here tonight. It’s his birthday.”
“Jake Anderson?” I said. “That’s why we’re—I’m here. For Jake’s party.”
“Really? Small world, isn’t it?”
“It is,” I murmured. I fought to maintain my composure; all this small talk wasn’t helping. “I guess I should get going.”
“Ah, too bad you’re on your way out. It would have been great to have a drink.”
“Yeah, I know. But I have this...other thing to get to tonight,” I said. “It was great to see you, Daniel.” He had no idea how great. Or how confusing.
“You, too, Lucy.” He leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek and it was all I could do not to turn and kiss him back. His lips were cool and his facial hair felt strange on my skin, but everything else about him felt right. Familiar. I pulled back, though it took everything in me to do so, and smiled to hide the tornado of emotions. Daniel reached around me and opened the taxi’s door wider, and then he stepped to the side so I could get in.
“Thanks,” I said, glad to finally be sitting. My legs were like wet noodles.
He shut the door and rested his hands on the window well and it was then I saw it—his wedding band, glittering gold under the streetlight. My stomach lurched, tickling my gag reflex and bringing the drink I’d guzzled dangerously close to coming back up. God, please let me not throw up in this cab in front of Daniel.
“Listen, do you want to get a coffee sometime?” I asked. I had planned to say goodbye and not look back, but I wasn’t ready to have things end so abruptly. “So we can catch up?”
He paused for a beat, a curious look on his face. “Didn’t we already do that?”
My stomach dropped, and if I could have crawled under the taxi’s front seat, I would have. I wished I could reach into the space between us and grab my words and shove them back inside my mouth.
“Totally kidding,” he said, smiling that smile I knew so well. The one I’d fallen for all those years ago. “Coffee would be great.”
I plastered a wobbly smile on my face, my insides tingling at the prospect of spending more time with Daniel. Then Matt’s face popped into my mind and I considered how he would feel about this exchange. If roles were reversed—and knowing how I felt about Daniel—I definitely wouldn’t be happy about it. I silently berated myself for being so weak, for not doing what I knew was the right thing and staying away from Daniel London. It was a fluke we’d run into each other and I should never have turned it into something more.
Sadness settled over me, because Daniel was right here—somehow, right here—but he wasn’t mine to want, or to miss. Nor should I be planning a seemingly innocent catch-up coffee with him, because I knew it was much more than that. And Matt—the good man I’d run out on in the bar—was mine, but unfortunately he wasn’t the one I desperately wanted to be with right now.
I trembled as I imagined what might have happened if I hadn’t left the bar when I did. If Matt had been beside me when I ran into Daniel. I wasn’t sure I could have hidden what seeing Daniel had done to me, unraveling me like a sweater pull, leaving me vulnerable and exposed.
Daniel reached into his back pocket and pulled out his phone. “What’s your number?” he asked, and I gave it to him without hesitation. “Okay, well, I better get in there. And you need to go to your thing,” he said. “But it was great running into you, Lucy.”
“You, too, Daniel.” You have no idea how great. “Have fun tonight.”
He tapped on the edge of the window well with both hands and waved as the driver pulled away. I let out a long breath, put a hand over my mouth and focused on not vomiting all over the cab’s interior.
“You okay back there?” the driver asked, eyeing me suspiciously in the rearview mirror. “There’s an extra fee if you get sick, so tell me before you do so I can pull over.”
I took my hand away. “I’m fine,” I said, and he nodded, turning the music up.
While I hadn’t planned any of this, I knew it had been a mistake to give Daniel my number. It would be best for everyone if he deleted it later tonight, when he got home and into bed with Margot and realized reconnecting with your ex for a friendly coffee was never a smart idea. And yet...as the cold wind whipped through the taxi’s open window I whispered a small prayer Daniel wouldn’t delete my number but would call me for that coffee instead.