Sean starts his car, starts driving, neither of us says anything for a while. I watch his hands as he turns the steering wheel. I cannot recall ever having any sort of opinion about a guy’s hands before, but his are beautiful.
“So…I have to confess something.” Sean reaches up with one of his beautiful hands and pushes his hair out of his face. “I didn’t really come here to tell you the rules of hide-and-seek.” He pauses. “The truth is, Ellie, it’s really not that hard of a game. And besides, you could just look it up online.”
“The Internet is good like that,” I say. My heart is starting to race. “Then why are you here?”
“The truth? I looked for you after the party and when I didn’t see you I got worried. I thought maybe the fire ate you up. The fire department said everyone got out okay, but you just never know, I guess.” He glances at me and then looks back at the road. “I remembered you said you worked at the coffee place, so I figured I’d just come by and make sure you were alright. I hope that doesn’t seem stalkery or weird seeing as we only talked for like thirty seconds…”
“No, it’s nice of you,” I say. “I’m okay, thanks for checking.”
“You don’t look that okay actually…When I came in to Mon Coeur, you looked really sad. And at the party, too.” Sean pauses. I don’t say anything. “So did you ever find him?”
“Who?” I feel myself blushing.
“Whoever you were looking for at the party. Was it that guy with the bad tattoos?”
“Oh,” I say. “Yeah. Sort of. I mean I thought so, only it turned out no.”
“He isn’t like your boyfriend or something, is he?”
“Ha!” I say. “Definitely not.”
“Okay, good. I didn’t think so. I mean, he didn’t look like the kind of dude I’d imagine you usually date. He looked kind of like a loser.”
And I’m oddly flattered by this comment, as it implies that I have actually ever dated anyone before. Which, of course, I haven’t.
“So, tattoo dude didn’t deliver?”
“He delivered his hand to my ass,” I say. “So I delivered my knee to his balls. And that was it.”
“Good for you,” Sean says. “But why were you looking for him?”
I take a deep breath. And as I breathe in, I realize something, that I’m going to have to tell him the truth. It’s not that I’ve somehow decided this is a good idea or anything, it’s just what I’m going to do.
“I was looking for my sister,” I say. “I haven’t seen her in over two years.” There’s no going back now. We’re stopped at a stoplight. I glance at Sean again. He turns toward me, nodding ever so slightly. I hope telling him isn’t a mistake. “I didn’t think she’d be there at the party exactly, I just thought…” I get the story over with as quickly as I can, just spit it out so it’s out and I don’t have to have the words in my mouth anymore. “So I showed her picture to tons of people but no one knew her but I thought if I found the guy who brought in the box, he might know something about where she was, or that someone at the party might.” I look over at Sean but he’s watching the road again. “But I was wrong.” I feel my eyes filling with tears, but I blink them back. “So I guess that’s why I looked sad.”
“That’s a pretty understandable reason,” he says.
“My best friend Amanda thinks I need to get on with my life now. Stop focusing on my sister so much and just act, I don’t know, like she never existed or something. It’s been two years since she disappeared and nothing has changed.” I inhale and exhale slowly. “I don’t know, Amanda might be right, it might be time to give up now.” I look down at my hands. “But I just don’t know how to.”
Sean is silent. And we both stare straight ahead at the rain pounding down.
“I think I know why I met you now,” Sean says finally. And then I feel Sean place his hand gently over mine on the seat between us. “There are some things a person just never gets over, that the phrase ‘get over’ doesn’t really apply to,” he says. “And when one of those things happens in your life, it doesn’t matter how much time has passed, or if you’re sitting alone in your room or at a party surrounded by a hundred people, and it doesn’t even matter if you’re actually thinking about it or not because no matter where you are or what you’re doing, it’s still there. It’s not just something that happened. It’s become a part of you.”
And then he shuts his mouth and keeps driving. This is it so exactly. And no one else I’ve ever talked to has ever really gotten it before.
He turns toward me, our eyes meet, and I’m just sitting there blinking. He grins, shrugs his shoulders, and tips his head to the side, all casual now. “Or, y’know, whatever.” And I burst out laughing and it’s a real hiccuping, doubled-over laugh, the kind of laugh I haven’t had in a long time. And he laughs with me. Things are the funniest when they are a mix of sad and absurd and true.
“So you know what I’m talking about, then,” I say.
“Something like that,” Sean says.