“I’m fine. Did you order?”

My words come out rushed and mangled, like I’ve forgotten how to string the letters together to make words.

“No, I’ll go now. Here, can you put this at the table?”

She hands me her jacket, an ease between us that has managed to stay despite her evident anger with me. Then she goes to the counter. Not-Freddy is there, chatting with some girl he’s clearly into.

I take her in some more, now noticing the things that are not the same.

Her hair, tied up in a tortoiseshell clip, is long like always, but she has curtain bangs. Of course with her hair texture and natural wave she probably didn’t even have to work for them to look that perfect. She’s still lean and strong-looking, but I can tell somehow that she’s had kids. There’s a sturdiness to her, a sure-footed gentleness in her posture and her steps that feels more like that of a woman than of a young girl. Her body looks like it’s endured time, lived through more. Like she may have nursed her kids, but also taken up running.

She returns after only a minute or two with a mug of black coffee and a packet of raw sugar.

“This is like my third cup today and I still feel exhausted,” she says. “The kids have been a nightmare, so I’ve been up at five a.m. every day. Hi, Maureen.”

She scratches the dog behind the ears.

“Does Theo help?” I ask.

“With the kids?”

I shrug, regretting the question. “Yeah.”

“He’s their father, Meg. It’s not help.”

“I didn’t mean it like that, not like they’re your responsibility and that he … you know, that’s not what I meant.” My whole body is hot. How is this where the conversation went? It feels like the kind of misstep you have on a date with someone you don’t know at an overpriced cocktail bar in Echo Park while the server cringes and drops off your Negroni riff and you want to go home.

She takes a sip of her coffee and I notice the smile lines by her lips and eyes. She’s always had those pretty, petite features. The kind that age well and keep you looking young unless you get up really close, and the age shows maybe a little earlier than on someone with fuller features but it doesn’t matter because you’re so damn pretty.

“So, what did you want to talk about?” she asks.

Nerves undulate in my core at this question. It’s time.

I have thought a million times about what I’d say to Aimee if she were alive, but I always imagine the middle-of-the-conversation parts, where we’re already fully in the swing of hashing things out. Never have I imagined the part where I have to get the ball rolling.