A Small-Town Reunion by Terry McLaughlin

what might have been a tentative caress before he released her.
    Had it been a caress?
    “We don’t need to go through the motions with the small talk,” he said. “Do we?”
    She forced herself to relax. She didn’t want him to see that his opinion mattered. Or that the way he’d sought out her company meant so much. Far, far too much. She’d wasted years waiting for these things, years craving his attention—his touch. She’d spent years resenting him—and berating herself—for it all.
    He was right—the two of them were years beyondthe small-talk phase. “No,” she told him, settling back into her narrow seat. “We don’t.”
    “Good.” He tipped his head to rest against the wall and shut his eyes. “I ran out of social conversation about an hour ago.”
    She stared at the black lashes fanning over his tanned cheeks. Such ridiculously long, nearly feminine lashes, an amusing contrast to a stern, masculine landscape.
    “About those apologies,” he said. “They’re not about being polite. Not really.” He opened his eyes and rolled his head against the wall to face her. “Are they?”
    “Why are you bothering to ask me?” She flapped a hand at him. “It’s your theory.”
    “And topic number one bites the dust.”
    Her lips twitched as she suppressed a smile.
    “Okay,” Dev said. “Topic number two. Let’s try things we have in common—plenty of those. A memory. Remember Bud Soames?”
    “Your partner in crime.”
    “A few.” He flicked a glance at her from beneath those dark lashes. “There weren’t as many crimes as people seem to think.”
    “Memory is a tricky thing.”
    “Yeah.” He frowned. “Makes me think I used to like living here.”
    “Didn’t you?” Addie leaned forward. “Ever?”
    She told herself it was only her imagination that his features softened as he stared at her. And that she could see the hint of a wistful smile in his eyes. Because whatever she thought she’d found, it disappeared a few seconds later.
    He looked away, toward the massive entry doors. “I didn’t have a choice, did I?”
    “Kids don’t. That’s one of the things that makes them kids.”
    “Do adults have any more choices, I wonder?”
    “Is that what you were doing, sitting in here all by yourself?” She traced a pattern on the carpet. “Contemplating your choices in life?”
    “I don’t need to go off somewhere by myself to do that.” He studied her again with that odd intensity, as if trying to look deep beneath her skin to her very core. “Where do you go to do your thinking?” he asked.
    Her finger moved around the edge of a fanciful curling vine. “I don’t spend a lot of time doing that kind of thinking. I’m too busy working, most of the time.”
    “Ah, yes. Your shop.”
    She searched for a trace of sarcasm in his tone before she caught herself falling into the old, defensive patterns. Dev wasn’t judging or teasing. And he had seemed genuinely interested in her business last week when he’d stopped by.
    “I don’t mind working so hard,” she said. “I love making pictures with glass. When I took my first stained-glass class, something fell into place for me. Like the way glass pieces click into place when they’ve been ground to fit.”
    She wrapped her arms around her knees. “Someone once told me that if you can find a way to make a living doing the thing that makes you happy, you’ll have a happy life.”
    His brows drew together. “Now there’s something to think about.”
    “What about your writing?” she asked.
    “What about it?”
    “Does it make you happy?”
    “Sometimes. But I wouldn’t count on it making me a living.”
    “I remember the story you wrote about the old lighthouse on the point,” she said. “The one that won that award—what was that? The award from The Cove Press . I loved that story,” she added when he didn’t respond. “Would you show me another of your stories someday?”
    “Yes,” he said after a long