“God, April, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” he says, like he’s reading a script. His sunglasses are still on, so I can’t see how sore his eyes really are. He hangs his jacket over the back of the empty chair and meets me at the side of the table.

“Matthew,” I say, showing my acceptance of his new self. I reach up to hug him and hope I don’t smell too sweaty. I hope I don’t smell like burning rubber.

He wraps his arms around me and they bulge against my ribs. He used to be all skin and bones; now his chest is tight and hard, like hugging a mannequin. A belt buckle digs into my stomach. His thin black sweater is soft and smells new. It’s perfectly pressed, without a speck of lint.

“You look great,” I say. It sounds pathetic. Too adoring. Needy. Obvious. People are staring at us. Him. People are staring at him. Not me. Now I know why the host sat me in the window. Matty made the reservation.

“You!” Matthew holds me by the arms and looks me over. His jeans are perfectly pressed too. “Wow.”

In the reflection of his sunglasses, my hair is more frizzy than curly. I wonder if his wow is like saying someone looks like a picture but leaving out what kind of picture they look like. I wanted to feel safe when I saw him. I wanted seeing him to feel like home, in the way normal people feel about home. The safe place you’re supposed to be from. But it just makes me nervous, how different he is.

We sit. His chair is in the sun, and I worry he might not ever take his sunglasses off. Then he does, and he’s Matty again, eyes so pale they’re almost yellow. And looking at him starts to quiet my nerves.

After school, when we’d draw pictures of each other with his little sister’s crayons, the one I used to color his eyes was called raw sienna.

My bag is on the table. I go to move it, but before I can, he grabs the CD that’s poking out.

“Wow, this isn’t…” He flips it over and touches the picture of my face. “Ape! That’s fantastic.” He opens the jewel case and stares at the disc. “Can I have it?”

“Of course,” I say softly. I look at the table and scratch my fingernail on the placemat, leaving a rippled scar on the wet paper. Three of the songs are about leaving him and I know it won’t take him long to figure that out.

He looks at my wrist. I see him notice the finger marks that are starting to bruise. I wait for him to say something, my hand frozen mid-scratch, wet paper stuck under my fingernail.