I remembered how his fingers trailed along my legs beneath the table at the pencil company, how I had ached for him after he left.

“Something like that.”

I left my shift depressed, Linda’s words ringing true as my own cut into me, wondering how I could alienate him in a world where I was already so alone. She and I left the restaurant together.

“Cheer up, now.” She jabbed me with her elbow. I was staring at my worn-out shoes, pitying the way I could almost feel the uneven floor beneath me and how I could not afford to replace them, when she jabbed me again. “Maybe he likes the cold type.”

Only then did I look up and spot him, leaning against the side of the restaurant, angling his book toward the neighboring restaurant’s light.

“Did you wait here for me?” I stammered. Linda gave my arm a squeeze before continuing on, leaving me alone with him.

“I was at a good part in the book.” In fact, he did not even look up from the page. I could just make out the title—The Mathematical Theory of Communication—and could not help smiling, remembering the awkward boy who once blurted out that he loved communication.

For a moment, I stood in front of him, smelling of garlic and oil, while he did nothing but read.

“Who did you marry?” I asked to get him to look up. A part of me feared his answer.

“No one.” He finally closed his book. “Though my parents are actively looking in Taiwan.”

“You don’t care who they find?”

“I asked them to find you.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said automatically. It was so much easier to believe there was nobody who cared if I disappeared. His words were incomprehensible.

“They told me you had gone to America, though nobody seemed to know where, or why. They told me your mother passed. I was sorry to hear that. She was so kind to me. I assumed you found someone and they brought you here.”

He was not wrong. But I was not ready to tell him the truth of how I had wormed my way across the ocean.

“I never understood why you took an interest in me.”

He shrugged. The shrug was so familiar, something I had not thought about for years, yet which brought him back forcefully, even more than seeing him again after so long.