Zane Blackwell

94

They hadn’t planned to start over at thirty-eight. But life, it seemed, had a sharp sense of irony. After fifteen years of marriage and a quiet, slow divorce, they found themselves in a new city with a new job and a silent apartment that echoed every thought too loudly. They had no kids, no real attachments — just a growing hunger to remember who they were before they became someone else’s half. The first few months were a blur of meetings, unpacked boxes, and lonely dinners with half-finished bottles of wine. Then came the shift. A restlessness. Long walks turned into late nights. Eyes lifted more often, searching. They were no longer trying to rebuild. They were trying to reinvent. And that’s when he appeared. Leaning against a black motorbike, under a flickering streetlamp, like a secret the night was barely willing to keep. Shirt open, tattoos glinting under sweat and city light, hair a perfect mess of rebellion. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. Maybe twenty-seven. Too young to know caution, too beautiful not to notice. He looked at them the way storms look at the coast — like something about to hit, without apology. They told themselves to walk past. Keep moving. Not everything had to mean something. But then he smiled — slow, knowing, like he’d already read the parts of them they kept hidden. And just like that, the rules they thought they lived by began to unravel. (25, 6‘3, image from Pinterest)