What is he doing here? What are the odds?
Dylan sinks into the chair across from her, the fabric of his dark and stylish clothes tugging at his muscles. He’s really come into his own these past few years.
“It’s—” Neve goes to speak, but her voice is much smaller than she expected it to be.
“I know,” he exhales a shaky breath. “Long time.”
Act normal. Act normal. “How’ve you been?”
“Good,” Dylan nods. “Good, you?”
“Good, yeah.”
“Me too,” he says in a way that reminds Neve of the night he confessed his love to her. And she knew it was true, because his smile lingered in his eyes.
Like now.
When Dylan sneaks a glance towards the front of the café, their broken eye-contact alerts Neve of the silence between them. It is barely filled with the hiss of the espresso machine breathing warmth into milk.
“So, how have—” Neve clears her throat, realizing she has already asked this question. “What have you been up to?”
“Just got back into town,” Dylan says.
Silence.
Off Neve’s blank stare, “military school,” he adds.
“Oh…” she stammers. “Here?”
“West Point. It’s in New York.”
New York!? You just upped and took off to New York!? “Wow, that’s—” really unlike you. “Guess your dad finally talked you into it, huh,” she squeezes out a chuckle.
Dylan presses his lips together and forces a smile. “Yeah, well—” he drops his head and starts playing with his jacket’s zipper, “leave it to him to show love with discipline.”
Discipline, Neve wonders? What could Dylan have possibly done that would warrant being shipped off to military school? “Don’t they make you shave your head?” Neve asks, her eyes narrowing.
“Not if it’s long enough to tie back.”
She nods, unsure of how else to react.
“So, how about you?” Dylan asks.
And it hits Neve like a late-night hunger pang: the compulsion to embellish the non-happenings of her mundane life. But it’s Dylan… It’s them.
“Same soup, reheated,” Neve indicates Vancouver in its entirety. “But at least I’m graduating this term.”
“That’s great,” Dylan nods with raised brows.
“Yeah. I mean—I would’ve graduated already, but I ended up switching my major twice, so…”
“What are you planning on doing now?” he asks.
And suddenly, it feels cloudy outside.
“Med school, I guess.”
“You guess?” Dylan arches a brow.
“Yeah. I mean—yeah. That’s the plan.”
“That’s awesome,” he says, but it’s rather obvious he doesn’t really mean it.
“Thanks…” Neve looks down, feeling as though all topics of discussion have already been exhausted.
All but the one they’re both tiptoeing around.
“So what exactly—” Neve looks up to find Dylan’s attention misplaced.
“Hmm?” he quickly flings his gaze back onto her.
“Everything okay?”
“Mmm hmm. Be right back,” he rises and makes his way over to the front counter.
And without warning, a tormented frown weighs down on Neve’s brows. A murky concoction of hurt and disappointment is welling up inside. Did he just waltz back into her life like it’s nothing?
Like she meant nothing?
And she suddenly realizes that this is it: the long-awaited run-in that she, for three years, thought was just around the corner!
Feeling completely out of her element, Neve pulls out her phone and starts to text Elliot:
She sends the text and looks up just as Dylan rests two large mugs on the table.
“Here you go,” he gently slides the latte with the prettier leaf art towards Neve, and then retakes his seat across from her.
Though this gesture is probably meant to remind her of what the two of them once shared, Neve can’t help but think of it as an apology. An inconsequential apology for the nightmare he put her through.
Dylan licks his lips and lowers his head. “You’re still mad at me, aren’t you?”
Mad? Neve’s heartstrings tighten enough to snap.
“I’m sorry—” she slips her diary into her purse. “I have to go,”
“Neve, come on.”
“Look—Dylan, it was great seeing you and all. I mean, at least now I know you’re not dead. But this whole pretending like everything’s fine?” she shakes her head as she rises from her seat, and then heads straight for the front door.
Don’t cry. Don’t you dare be that girl.
Dylan springs out of his seat and falls on her trail. “You have every right to hate me…” he follows Neve out of the café. “Just give me a chance to explain.”
“No need,” Neve says in full stride away from him, “got your message loud and clear.”
“I’m so sorry if I hurt you.”
And Neve suddenly finds herself pinned in place.
“If?” she turns to him, her strangled voice barely escaping her aching throat. “If you hurt me?”
Dylan drops his head and slides his hands into his pockets.
“You just left! You could have been lying dead in a ditch somewhere, for all I knew,” she leans back onto the balls of her feet, and yet can’t seem to rip herself away. “God—I had to hear from your classmates that you’d moved away! Not moving away, moved away! They all just stared at me like I was some psycho ex, showing up at your class, looking for you!”
Dylan parts his lips to speak, but at the sight of something in the distance, his face goes slack.
Thrown off by his sudden shift in demeanor, Neve glances over her shoulder, but there’s nothing worth noticing as far as she can tell.
Just a dilute crowd of haggard students.
“I’m sorry,” Dylan says as he makes his way past her. “I have to go.”
“What—” Neve practically whispers, the shock of his departure shielding her from fully registering her reality—from accepting that he is in fact abandoning her for the second time.
So she stands there as Dylan becomes smaller and smaller, until she can no longer tell him apart from the crowd. And despite the pain brewing inside, she stands her ground and fights gravity’s resolve to bring her to her knees.
Chapter 3
The Harbinger
One tormented step at a time, the space between Dylan and Neve stretches. And although he can practically feel her pain he can’t rip his gaze from his target up ahead—from a gentleman in a gray suit and charcoal fedora, carrying a dark, vintage briefcase.
It’s him… Dylan’s pace accelerates. Has to be. And then he finds himself running with little regard to his surroundings. The students he zooms past blur into swatches of color, but his focus never wavers. At full speed, he segues off the sidewalk and cuts through traffic with an absurd level of confidence, ignoring the upheaval of loud honks and angry shouts from drivers.
With his eyes glued to his target, Dylan dashes up the green landscape towards UBC’s pharmaceutical building: a modern monstrosity composed of darkly-tinted glass cubes.
But his chase comes to a staggering stop when he notices a security guard manning the entrance.
The man in gray swipes his key-card, exchanges a terse nod with the guard, and makes his way into the building.
Dylan retracts a bit, clenching his jaw. Even if his student ID hadn’t expired, it’s still highly unlikely it would grant him access into this particular building.
With his window of opportunity fast coming to a close, he retrieves his phone from his back pocket and pulls up his Contact List.
And he finds himself hesitating. It has been three years of nearly zero communication between them.
But what if this is a sign? What better excuse than a spontaneous run-in for Dylan to r
each out?
Just do it, he banishes his doubts and dials ‘Alex’.
He slaps the phone to his ear and flings his focus back onto the man in gray.
Through tinted windows, Dylan watches him stop, pass his briefcase to his left hand, and pull out his phone from his jacket’s pocket.
A wave of optimism brightens Dylan’s expression. But his smile melts off his lips when Alex puts his phone back into his pocket and resumes his walk.
One… two… three… Alex’s steps down the stairs synchronize with Dylan’s heartbeat until he vanishes from sight entirely.
σ
Dylan enters his apartment like a soldier returning home from battle. He applies the door’s bolt-locks, takes a step back, and then slams his palm against the cold, hard steel. The door quivers in its frame, its wavering groan awakening the stale air.
Chasing after Alex was stupid. Today wasn’t about him. It was about making things right with Neve, and now he might never get another opportunity.
Feeling lightheaded from his jetlag, he walks wide of his luggage crowding the entry and makes his way into the living space. Standing there, he finds himself taking in the subtleties he was forced to entrust to memory. Like the oaky smell of his furniture. Or the muffled noise of street traffic from down below. And especially, how shadows dance along the hardwood as the night chases the sun across the sky.
With a somber smile, he extends his hand into a golden sheet of sunlight, soaking up the remnants of the day.
Warmth: the most comforting of all comforts. And all too soon, it’s gone.
Dylan withdraws from the living space and heads towards his bedroom. And although the last thing he wants to do is sleep, he’s nearly passing out.
He takes off his jacket and throws it onto his bed, but its weight drags it down onto the floor.
Swooping down to pick it up, he detects a subtle pattern at the foot of the bed. He crouches down for a better look and realizes he’s looking at shoeprints stamped onto an otherwise undisturbed film of dust.
And they seem fresh.
Dylan’s eyes dart about his room. Nothing seems tossed or missing, at least as far as he can tell. Could these prints belong to his father? That would make sense. Someone would have had to check up on the place in Dylan’s absence.
So why can’t he shake the eerie vibe crawling up his back?
And his heart drops the instant he realizes what’s wrong with this picture: the prints are in an isolated cluster. No trail leads to, or stems from them.
Thoroughly alarmed at this point, Dylan pulls his switchblade from his ankle sheath, and rises.
It’s going to be fine. He has trained for this sort of thing. All he has to do is keep his fear at bay—make sure it doesn’t compromise his judgment.
Wielding his blade, he makes his way through the apartment, inspecting it for disturbances that could lead him to the intruder.
His search quickly yields more shoeprints in the ensuite bathroom, pantry, laundry, and the kitchen. In fact, there is a cluster of prints in practically every isolated section of his home.
By the time Dylan returns to the living space, he’s more or less confident the intruder has already left.
After scanning his vicinity once more, he drops down onto his white couch, sending a flurry of dust motes into a stray shaft of light.
And then all he can think about is her, and how she’d be diving for her camera to capture this golden ribbon draping across the room.
With the thought of Neve, his place is set ablaze with vivid color. And then she is everywhere, like a tuxedo kitten curled up in every corner of his heart. Leaning against the windowsill, snapping a photo of a raspberry sunset. Down on all fours with her hair up in a messy bun, wiping the red wine she spilled tripping over nothing. Lying on the couch across him with tears in her eyes, begging him to stop making her laugh so she can get a few minutes of shuteye.
And a deep ache in his chest rips through the rosy veil, and he is back in the gray prison of his doubts.
It frightens him to think that the memories he has of her, may be all he ever will…
σ
The darkness is all-encompassing, and Dylan has no idea where he is. If the breeze tugging at his clothes and the mild scent of pine trees are any indication, however, he is somewhere outside, facing the northern mountains.
From far below, he can hear the splashing of waves onto rocks. And just then, he becomes aware of the rough, metallic texture beneath his bare feet.
A weak source of light beckons his attention from behind. He looks over his shoulder to find the glimmering towers of downtown wedged between the dark soil and the mulberry sky.
In light of his vantage point, he realizes there is only one place he could be standing: up on the southern apex of Lions Gate Bridge.
With this revelation, the teal titan reveals itself beneath him.
But something feels off.
The bridge seems weathered. And the white lights that make it resemble a wide ‘M’ from far in the distance are snuffed.
With no cars driving on the bridge deck, it feels like looking down at a desolate future.
A swatch of black grabs Dylan’s attention, and he looks up to find a young man mirroring him on the northern apex of the bridge.
He is ghostly-pale, and cloaked in a black trench-coat. His dark, shoulder-length hair is swaying in the wind, and although his mouth is concealed beneath the flap of his collar, his tiger-wild eyes are fashioning a sinister smile.
Despite his calm exterior, his presence feels menacing.
Lethal.
Dylan’s heart starts to pound madly inside his ribcage, like a wild animal trying to break free. He can feel the drumming in his temple, fingertips, even the balls of his feet.
Because he knows this man.
And he knows exactly what comes next.
“HELP!” Dylan shouts, but little more than a gasp escapes him. He tries to move, but fear has pinned him in place.
A roaring rumble beckons his gaze up to the clouds. There is a distant crackling sound, and then he’s being showered with glistening chunks of hail.
The soft patter becomes progressively more aggressive until it starts to puncture his flesh. And there is nothing he can do but to stand still and tolerate the pain.
And so he does, until riddled with icy bullets and drenched in blood, his legs give way, and he plummets down towards an endless abyss.
Dylan kicks awake on his couch, shaking from the bone-splitting pain that followed him back to reality.
Though his flesh isn’t ruptured, he can’t seem to rid himself of the sense-memory of bullets lodged in his skin. So he recoils in utter misery, waiting for the pain to subside… to knock him out… to kill him.
He’d settle for anything at this point.
‘All pain is a state of mind.’
With his switchblade firmly gripped, he struggles to his feet, straightens his back, and tries to will the pain into submission.
But all too soon, a distant crackling sound sets his teeth on edge, and he turns towards the window and stares with contempt as hail showers from the coral sky.
The icy specks sparkle in the sun’s golden gleam, taunting him with their timely arrival.
Through the arrhythmic melody of the downpour, Dylan detects a creaking sound. And not a moment later he has spun around, his arm extended along the trajectory of his aim.
Across him, on the opposite end of the apartment, his blade is lodged between the eyes of the portrait Neve painted of him over three years ago.
He approaches with caution, and directly beneath the painting, discovers a small cluster of shoeprints identical to the ones he found earlier—exactly where his portrait’s feet would be, if it had a body.
And Dylan doesn’t know whether he missed these prints the first time around, or whether the intruder he’d thought was long gone is still in the apartment.
Skeptical of his own shadow, he slowly reaches up and yanks
his blade from his portrait.
He turns his back to the wall.
And waits…
Chapter 4
Happenstance
It’s been roughly an hour since Dylan left her behind. An hour consisting of an absentminded drive, followed by sitting in her parked car and reliving the encounter in her head. Though she feels like she’s got every right to be furious, she can’t seem to quite get there.
It has been years, and Dylan may very well have changed. But the boy she used to know did not have a single strand of selfishness in him.
So why would he take off like that? Did he just not want to deal with her? Did she push him away?
Neve exhales a frustrated sigh and gets out of her car. Still weighed down by melancholy, she feeds the meter, and then walks to the intersection.
Beyond the threshold lies Gastown: Vancouver’s historic district, and one of Neve’s favorite places to pass the time. Quirky cafés, avant-garde galleries, and souvenir shops enliven rows of brick and mortar buildings, and the sinewy trees that run along the cobblestone road are adorned in champagne lights, year-round.
Gastown’s magic stems from authenticity. History. And not once has it failed to ground Neve in an ever-changing world dominated by steel and glass.
As the pedestrian light is illuminated, Neve steps off the pavement and ventures into the heart of the district.
The coral sky is slowly yielding to cooler hues, so she waits with great anticipation for the moment the street’s Victorian lamps ignite.
Instead, something tiny bounces off her shoulder.
She tries to see what it was and where it landed, but her curiosity is quenched as hail starts to shower from the sky.
Awe and laughter saturate the air as people seek refuge under awnings. Grinning Patio-dwellers cover their meals with whatever’s within reach, and little children cup their paws as the tiny chunks of ice patter kisses on their chubby cheeks.
And then, as though orchestrated by magic itself, the rows of street lamps are kindled, making it seem like glistening diamonds are pouring from the sky.
The world somehow feels much bigger than it did a minute ago.