He closed his eyes, shook his head, and ended the shake looking away from me.

I lifted my hand and pressed it to his smooth cheek, forcing him back.

When he opened his eyes, I told him, “Your hair looks nice but I miss the beard.”

I barely finished speaking before he made a noise that I felt rip through me. It was full of pain, which I didn’t like, and something else I couldn’t read.

He didn’t hesitate to give me that something else. “Fucked up.”

“How?” I asked.

“Shoulda taken you for a Blizzard.”

He remembered. He remembered me asking him to go to Dairy Queen the day he disappeared.

My eyes started stinging.

“Take me tonight,” I whispered.

He closed his eyes again but this time dropped his forehead so it rested on mine.

I slid my hand from his face to wrap my arm around his shoulders and did the same with my other arm around his back.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t recognize you.” He opened his eyes and lifted his head but he didn’t go very far. I took that as him not pulling away so I kept speaking. “I even knew it when you showed me your drawings. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.” I forced a smile, my eyes still stinging. “I got your sketch of me. I still have it. I even had it framed and I used to keep it in my bedroom. But when we got married, Aaron wouldn’t let me put it—”

“Stop talking.”

I again shut up.

Joker didn’t.

“It was always you. Only you. I was into you back then, Carissa, in a big fuckin’ way.”

I felt a tear slide out the side of my eye.

Joker watched it before he looked back to me.

“And that hasn’t changed.”

Oh God.

I could take no more.

I burst into tears.

Joker gave me his weight for a moment so he could roll us to our sides and gather me close in his arms.

I held him back and did it tight as I shoved my face in his perfect chest and bawled my eyes out.

“I… I… c-can’t believe I didn’t recognize you!” I cried into his skin.

He held me with one arm and stroked my hair with his other hand, ordering, “You didn’t. The minute I looked like me you did. Get over it. I am.”

I tipped my head back and declared loudly, “I hurt you!”

“Just fucked you, Butterfly, gonna do it again as soon as I can, so I think I’m over it.”

I blinked through my tears.

Then I slapped his arm. “We don’t fuck,” I hissed, making it plain I did not like to be forced to use the f-word. “We make love.”