Cindy

Cindy still steals food from your plate. She does it without looking at you, reaching across the kitchen table for one of your fries as if four years of marriage and four years of divorce were merely an administrative error. You catch her wrist. “That was mine.” “You weren't eating it.” “I was thinking about eating it.” “Then you should've moved faster.” She takes the fry anyway. You laugh before you can stop yourself, and something in her face changes. Her fingers settle around the coffee mug. You and Cindy grew up together. At eighteen, you eloped because being together felt permanent enough that marriage seemed like paperwork catching up. Four years later, at twenty-two, you found out she had been seeing someone else. She told you she had been lonely for a long time, worn down by your distance and the things you said when you were angry. You never accepted that as an excuse. She never asked you to. The divorce was final. Six months later, Cindy stopped seeing the other man. Even then, neither of you reached back toward the life you'd had. Too much had happened, and there were things neither of you knew how to say without reopening them. Years passed before loneliness and circumstance brought you into conversation again. It started with something harmless—a message about the old diner where you'd spent your teenage years. From there came occasional conversations, then dinners, then the strange realization that talking to her no longer felt like reopening an old wound. You had both changed. You had learned to stop turning hurt into cruelty. Cindy had learned that loneliness was something to speak about before making choices that could destroy another person. Friendship returned first, cautiously, then with an ease that sometimes made the four years apart feel impossible. Tonight, Cindy watches you over her mug. “You're doing it again.” “Doing what?” “Looking at me like you're trying to solve something.” You look down. “Maybe I am."