“How’s your first week going?” Daniel asked.
We were walking, take-out coffees in hand, through the University of Toronto’s campus. Spring had finally arrived; the trees sprouted leafy green, and the crocuses, daffodils and tulips pushed impatiently through the garden beds flanking the stone buildings. It was after work and Jenny was going to be late getting home and so I had nowhere to be, no one waiting on me. When I got Daniel’s text asking if I wanted to join him for some fresh air, I considered ignoring it—I was still confused about how I felt toward him—but ultimately I had some questions I wanted answered. Mainly about what happened between us, and why I ended our engagement four years earlier. I was done speculating and it was time to know the truth only he could give.
“It’s going okay,” I replied, shrugging my shoulders and tucking my chin into my soft turtleneck sweater. The sun had lost some of its daytime steam and the temperature was still cool as evening approached. I was distracted by the questions swirling in my mind and nervous being with Daniel, even though there was no reason to be. Matt and I were...not together right now. My feelings on that relationship were even more confusing than the ones I had about Daniel.
My workweek had been good—I remembered my colleagues, I was on top of my workload thanks to Brooke’s help and everyone seemed genuinely happy to have me back. Sure, I wasn’t as fast or efficient as I used to be, taking longer with tasks like writing memos and PR blasts I used to be able to do in my sleep.
But then I’d delivered a wrong—and time-sensitive—press release this morning to one of the senior partners, Greg Harlow. I had no clue how it happened, as I had triple-checked the file before I emailed it. But when Brooke told me Greg had called her (I was writing an urgent memo for one of the consultants and Brooke said she’d take my calls for the hour), wondering why the release was about one of our previous oil and gas clients rather than the new one we’d acquired, I’d been shocked to realize my mistake. At least it went to Greg first, Brooke had said, and I tried to hide how badly the whole mess had shaken my confidence.
I didn’t think it had anything to do with my memory issues, but I knew both Brooke and I were worried. “Don’t stress. I’ve got your back,” Brooke had said, a big smile on her face as she quickly found the correct release—the one I remembered writing but somehow had mixed up with the old release before hitting Send. “But maybe you should take a break for the afternoon, Lucy. It’s a lot, coming back and boarding a train already going full speed. I’m happy to cover things.”
“Thanks, but I’m good. I shouldn’t have switched to decaf this morning.” I had laughed to cover my anxiety and Brooke had kindly laughed with me, later bringing me a double shot of espresso with a smile.
“Lucy?” Daniel’s voice broke through my thoughts.
“Yeah? Sorry, what did you say?”
“What’s up?” Daniel asked, putting a hand on my arm and slowing us down. “I’ve mostly been talking to myself for the past five minutes. You okay?”
“Am I okay?” I punctuated each word, then sighed. And a moment later, inexplicably, started to laugh. Daniel watched me, the smile growing on his face mingling with confusion as he tried to catch up to what was so funny. Soon I was laughing so hard tears poured from my eyes and I had to cross my legs so I wouldn’t pee.
“Here, let’s sit.” Daniel led me over to a bench while I tried to catch my breath. “You know, you always did have the best laugh.”
“I don’t know about that,” I replied. “I snort in an incredibly unflattering way when I get going. It’s not my best feature.”
“Nah, I love it.” Daniel nudged his shoulder into mine and smiled. “It’s adorable.”
I smiled in response, then looked down at my hands, cupped around the take-out coffee cup. I felt awkward, Daniel having invoked our past while I struggled—still—to accept it wasn’t also my present.
Now or never. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Anything,” Daniel said.
“Why did we break up?” I asked, glancing his way. I wanted to watch his expression as he took in my question.
“Just going to jump right in, huh?” His face darkened briefly, but then he smiled to cover it.
I nodded but didn’t say anything else.
He sighed, turned toward me on the bench. “You don’t remember?”
I shook my head. “It’s locked away somewhere, but I have no idea if I’m ever going to remember. And I need to know, Daniel. I think...it might help with everything if I know what happened with us.”
“Okay, Lucy,” he said, nodding. “You dumped me.”
It felt so abrupt, his disclosure of the truth, that my heartbeat accelerated to the point I was certain he’d be able to hear it pounding in my chest. I wanted to blame the late-day caffeine for my jackrabbit heart rate, but I knew that had little to do with it. “What? But why? All I remember is being happy.”
“We were happy.”
“So what went wrong?” I asked.
His jaw clenched. “We wanted different things.”
“What does that even mean?” I said quietly, more to myself than him. I dug deeply into my mind, trying to pull up anything resembling a memory of that time. Tried to recall what these “different things” might have been, but there was nothing there to hang on to.
“It was a long time ago, Lucy.” I couldn’t read the expression on his face. “And look, here we are. Having coffee and reminiscing about your snort-laugh. So why does it even matter now?”
“I guess it doesn’t.” I felt dejected. If Daniel couldn’t give me the magic bullet answer, who could? But his words kept running through my mind. We wanted different things...
What had I wanted that was different from Daniel?
“You know, it’s been nice. Spending time with you again,” Daniel said. He went to say something else but then shook his head.
“What? What is it?” I asked.
“I’ve missed you.” He gave me a smile and a surge of warmth moved through me. “I miss you.”
“I miss you, too,” I replied, the confession sitting heavy between us. But as soon as I said it I wanted to pull back because it wasn’t right for us to be talking like this. He was married; I had a boyfriend. This wasn’t a fair game to be playing.
“I can’t believe it’s still light outside,” I said when I could no longer handle the silence. “Must be spring, after all.” But Daniel wasn’t interested in my attempt to turn the conversation in a less charged direction.
“I haven’t said anything to Margot, about us hanging out,” he said. I tried to cover how discomfiting it was to hear her name. Not loving that now I had to consider her, admit my guilt her husband told me he missed me—present tense. “You know, we were always better suited, I think. You and me.”
At first I wasn’t sure what he meant. And then once the words settled over me, along with the meaning, I wasn’t sure what to do with them. Better suited than him and Margot? But if that was true, Daniel, why aren’t we together anymore?
“Don’t get me wrong,” he added quickly. “I love her. I do. And we have a great life together.” I nodded as if this wasn’t being disputed, feeling sick to my stomach. Why was I subjecting myself to this? “But, well, I miss you.”
Sometimes the things that used to make sense don’t make sense anymore.
I was more confused than ever. I didn’t know what to do with his admission, or how much importance to assign it. “Thanks,” I replied, knowing it wasn’t the right response but unable to think of anything more fitting.
“Thanks?” he said, chuckling. “That’s all you’ve got for me?”
I started laughing, too, and soon was snorting away. “Sorry,” I finally managed. “I didn’t know what else to say.”
“It’s cool. I get it,” Daniel said. “I probably shouldn’t have said anything. Not fair to you.”
“It’s okay. I’m glad you did.”
“You are?” He turned to me, closer this time, and for a moment I thought he might kiss me. He was so close now...it would have been easy. But he didn’t, then shifted to lean back against the bench, which moved his body farther from mine. I was both glad and disappointed.
“I’m having a hard time getting the truth out of people these days,” I said, stretching back, as well. My muscles in my shoulders and lower back screamed, unaccustomed to spending so much time in a chair hunched over a desk. “So it’s refreshing when someone offers it without me having to ask.”
“Happy to be of service,” he said.
“But, Daniel,” I added, “you can’t ‘miss’ me. We can’t keep doing this, talking about all this stuff. I know it’s on me today because I asked the question, but still. We need to...stop.”
“Why?” he asked, his mouth turning down into a frown. He hunched forward so his forearms rested on his knees, and furrowed his brow. “We’re friends, right?”
Friends. My stomach recoiled and I stood to toss my nearly empty cup into a nearby trash can. I had definitely had too much coffee. “Of course we are.” I tried to keep my tone nonchalant but knew I had failed by the look on his face.
He watched me for a beat longer, then stood, as well. “I never wanted to make you uncomfortable, Lucy. I shouldn’t have said anything. Forget about it, okay?”
I nodded and gave him the best “don’t worry about it” smile I could. Then he walked me to the subway as we chatted about things we had no emotional connection to—his classes, and Jenny’s most recent film project. Weekend plans, and a great book he’d recently read. But while I forced myself to stay engaged, my mind was split. Half of it with my newly resurrected “friend” Daniel, who had told me he missed me, and the other half with the Daniel I used to know, who I still felt connected to in a deeply meaningful, yet dangerous, way.
I had to stop seeing him. Had to shut down whatever this was because it wasn’t good for me, and by what he’d admitted tonight it wasn’t helping him, either. I might have been overthinking it, assigning meaning to his words that wasn’t there: missing me, his snort-laughing friend, and missing me, the woman he once proposed to, were not necessarily the same things, and I wasn’t sure which version he had been referring to.
Yet, no matter how convinced I was I had to let Daniel go, tonight he had given me a much-needed hit of a powerful drug—hope. You have the right to change your present if it doesn’t fit with the future you envision, Dr. Kay had told me. But did I also have the right to change someone else’s future, too?