Elle stood at the window, watching as people streamed into Bolton’s. The sign on the front of the building had been changed for the occasion.

She looked around the store, strangely empty for a Saturday, and tried to tell herself it wasn’t because of the opening across the street. Some Saturdays business was great. Others were quiet. There wasn’t always rhyme or reason to it.

She turned away from the window and took a few slow breaths to calm herself. It didn’t work, and she crossed the store to the desk and lit the candle next to Buddha.

There was no religious ceremony in it — contrary to what many people believed, Buddhism in its more common form was more of a philosophy than a religion — but the glow of the wick followed by the faint scent of hot wax elicited a Pavlovian response in her body. She felt her shoulders relax just a little.

It was a ritual she’d repeated countless times over the years, and her psyche had learned to recognize it as a cue for letting things go in the same way her body released tension when she sat on her meditation cushion. The goal was to get to that place of centeredness without the ritual, to carry it with her.

She was still working on that part.

For now the rituals helped. They were a kind of training and she reached for the small wooden mallet and rubbed it inside the little brass bowl she kept next to the Buddha, letting the gentle ringing further calm her.

It was only after she took another slow breath that she felt capable of turning her attention to the flowers sitting on the counter.

The pale pink peonies were so lush she had to resist the urge to reach out, rub the satiny petals between her fingers. The shop was full of their scent.

Full of Locke.

She picked up the card that had accompanied the arrangement when it had been delivered that morning.

She’d laughed in spite of herself when she’d opened the card. It was something he’d said to her in college.

Food makes everything better…

Anytime she’d scored poorly on a test or gotten into a fight with her roommate, Locke had taken her out for pizza or ice cream. She’d complained about the dangers of eating your feelings, but he'd waved away her concern, citing her already-perfect body as proof that the theory was deeply flawed.

His adoration of her physical self mirrored the love he had for the rest of her. It bordered on worship, and she’d never stopped trying to figure out what he saw when he looked at her, why he’d chosen her when he could have had any girl on campus.

It’s not like she had low self-esteem. She was moderately pretty. She was honest enough to admit that she’d been luckier than most when it came to the genetic lottery.

But there wasn’t anything different or special about her, and she’d spent the first six months with Locke convinced that he was going to wake up and really see her, decide she wasn’t so special after all.

Something else had happened instead; she started to see herself the way he did. Had felt empowered when he’d told her an argument she made was compelling and insightful. Had felt beautiful when he’d run his hands along her curves, connecting the spattering of freckles on her nose with his index finger, transfixed by what he saw in her face. Had felt the truth of her inner peace when he’d told her how she calmed him.

Of all the things he’d given her, belief in herself was the greatest. Maybe she would have come to it on her own eventually, but she’d come upon it sooner because of him, and she’d spent every moment since convinced she could accomplish anything, conquer her demons, save enough money to start the bookstore, stay focused on the goal of restoring the business that had been her parent’s passion. She’d seen the truth of herself in his eyes, and she’d never had a moment’s doubt since then that she was worthy. That she was special, not because of how she looked, but because of who she was inside.

Of course, none of it had been enough to save them. Not after her father’s death.

She remembered their last fight, the sobs that had swollen inside her until she was choking, heaving while she tried to talk to him, already grieving the loss. She’d carried the look in his eyes with her all these years, could still see the pain and shame in them. She’d wanted to go to him even then. To tell him it wasn’t his fault.

But she’d been too wrecked by his betrayal. By her own loss.

She’d walked away without a backward glance, had cried so hard in the car on the way home that she’d had to pull over by the side of the road. She’d told herself it would get better. That she just had to get through her father’s funeral. That her feelings for Locke would fade.

It had been a lie, one she’d believed right up until the moment she’d looked into his eyes outside Bolton’s the week before.

She’d stuffed down her feelings for him. Had focused on her goal of opening the store, sometimes working multiple jobs to save enough money. It had kept her busy, and she’d often fallen into bed at her mother’s house so exhausted she didn’t bother eating the plates of food her mom left wrapped in the fridge. Occasionally there had been men, though they’d been few and far between, her encounters with them far from memorable.

Then she’d opened the store, finally gotten her own apartment. It had been a different kind of busy, a happier one, but one that had still allowed her to pretend she didn't think of Locke every day. That she didn’t remember his hands on her body, wake from dreams where he stared into her eyes while he thrust inside her.

She knew now that he’d been there all along.

But that didn’t mean they could go back and start over. Did it?

She thought of Zach’s advice, spoken to her over lunch.

You don’t have to have all the answers right now.

It was a dangerous idea. What if she saw him again and it didn’t work? What if she couldn’t let go of everything that had happened? What if the chemistry that had been between them didn’t hold up under scrutiny?

She already knew that last concern was a foolish one. Everything she’d felt for him in college had still been there when she’d sat across from him at the Bean, when she’d stood next to him outside the store. She’d felt the same need he’d awakened in her when she was eighteen, the same urge to mold herself to his body, slide her hands under his shirt.

Except this time it had been accompanied by something more frenzied and desperate. Something coupled with the thrill of the unknown. The strange melding of the boy who had been intimately familiar to her and the person who had experienced eight years without her, who had grown into a man in every sense of the word since she’d last seen him.

She picked up the card from the flowers.

Dinner tonight at seven?

Turning the card over, she let her eyes linger on the unfamiliar phone number. Then she pulled out her phone before she could change her mind.