Hearts

eight

"You work here," I said to Jani as I walked up to her. She was sitting on a bench outside of the restaurant where Romeo and I had eaten dinner on our first evening in Aerbruscht. She had given me the address and told me to meet her here.

Jani stood up. "Yeah, employee discount. Also, my shift starts in two hours. Questions or complaints?"

I shook my head.

"Cool. Come on, let's go get a table."

She opened the door for me, and she guided me through the restaurant before picking a booth in the corner. We sat down across from each other, and I finally got a good look at her for the first time in a year.

We never really talked about our relationship. It had started and ended abruptly, and we had just gone along with it, figuring everything out as it happened. For a brief period of time, we were the most important thing to each other, but no one was heartbroken when we went our separate ways. Of course I had liked her, or I wouldn't have dated her, but I had to question my feelings when I wasn't sad at all that our relationship had to end. It had been a strange summer.

"So what's been up with you?" I asked Jani, who had taken to messing with the rings on her fingers.

"Honestly? Not enough. Let's see, what have I done this year?" She smiled. "I got into college. Not a good one, but I did it. Feels like years of struggling through high school paid off."

I grinned at her. "That's amazing."

"Yeah. It's gonna suck when it actually starts, but for now, I'm just proud that I got here."

"You're doing better than me," I said. "I didn't even try to apply. I was going to start working right after I graduated, but then the whole spontaneous road trip happened." 

Jani tucked her hair behind her ears. "Okay, walk me through that again. So this boy decided that he wanted to move away from home, but you didn't want him to leave before you got closure for some history you had, and then you ended up leaving with him?"

"It made sense at the time," I defended. "You just make it sound crazy."

"You're probably as insane as he is," Jani told me.

"Just, you know, more low-key."

I shrugged. "Depends on the situation."

"That's fair."

"Like the time I almost jumped off of a roof while intoxicated," I continued. "Good times."

"You did what?"

That was the night that we had met for the first time, the night that had taken me two years to recall. If Romeo hadn't remembered it too, I'd be thoroughly convinced that it was a fever dream.

"Don't worry about it," I said. "On a sort of related note, I remember meeting you at that party."

"And you..." Jani stared at me. "I thought you'd be fine. I should've followed you and taken you home."

"I was fine," I assured her. "I mean, I'm fine now.

Perpetually unstable, sure, but fine."  Jani looked skeptical.

"How's sobriety?" I asked to change the subject away from me. "Did you end up breaking that, or...?"

Jani nodded. "Occasionally. And I do mean very rarely. I'm doing well."

"I'm proud of you," I told her. "I know we didn't keep in touch, and I wasn't involved in your life at all after we broke up, but I'm so glad you're doing better."