“I’d need several years to tell you,” he says. “And it wouldn’t matter anyway. I don’t understand it myself.”

We both turn, then, hearing someone call his name. It’s one of the girls who had been flirting with him at the pub, standing with her friends.

He gives them a tight smile and lifts his hand.

“You’re like Gaston with your gaggle of milkmaids,” I say.

“Ah, the Bimbettes.” When he sees my look of impressed surprise, he says, “We googled them once. That’s how they’re credited.”

They call for him again.

“You should go,” I say, and then spot Aimee. “It’s fine.”

“I don’t need to go,” he says. “They’re silly girls. I’d much rather talk to you, even if you don’t remember me.”

There’s a micro-expression that comes with his words. Somehow, I believe I understand it, fleeting as it is. I think the look is about the grief of what’s died between us, and the strange hope that maybe there’s a way to begin again, even if it is something akin to magic.

It’s a lot to translate from one little look, but I know deeply that I’m right. Either because I know him, somehow, or because I make my living conveying complex inner stories with something as minute as a flicker of an eyelid.

He looks and sees Aimee, sees that’s where my gaze has gone, then stands. “Glad you two are making up.”

I stand then too, smoothing the wrinkles in my dress. He fiddles with the now-empty cup in his hands.

“It looks good on you,” he says, his eyes dropping for a moment to the dress. “I always knew it would.”

Then he walks off, and I feel desperate to reach my hand out, grab his, and pull him back to me. What I’d do then, I have no idea.

Well, that’s not true; I have several ideas.

Aimee has vanished by the time I get through the crowd, so I rejoin Kiera, who’s now in a conversation with a lanky, red-haired guy with an intense amount of freckles. He’s cute, with that boyish-charm-slash-fatal-flaw that makes it seem like he can probably never take a situation seriously.

“Oh, stop it!” she’s saying, patting him on the chest. “Meg, there you are. Thought you two might not come back.”

“Hiya, Hollywood,” says the redhead.

I take a wild guess. “Nial?”

“Ah, see, she hasn’t forgotten everything,” he says, pointing at me.

“Is it starting to come back to you, then?” asks Kiera.

“No, I just had a feeling this was Nial.” Over his shoulder, I spot her. “Excuse me one sec.”

I set my drink down on a nearby table and then make a beeline for her. She’s with her children.