“You’re lucky Baz was late this morning,” Lane yawns, watching me take my apron off. “He was in such a bad mood today too,”

“Is this you finally admitting he hates me?” I deadpan.

“No. He just…” she sighs, as if she can’t be bothered to finish the sentence, and I laugh. She rolls her eyes. “Whatever. Look he hates everybody that works here,”

“Except his girlfriend,” I say, pointedly. Lane colours. After a moment I add, “Probably not his sister though.”

“Oh no,” Lane lowers her voice conspiratorially. “He complains about her the most.”

I glance at my wristwatch. I’m running late doing everything today.

“I’ll see you tomorrow kid,” Lane says, in reference to our shared love for Sex and the City.

I give her a wink Chris Noth would be proud of and go into the back to use the bathroom.

Must buy teething rings, I think, wiping my hands. That means I have to run to the drugstore across the street.

Baz almost walks into me in the hallway, but I find myself apologizing for it while he gives me a tired sigh.

“There’s someone in the shop looking for you,” he laments.

“Oh, okay.”

“I don’t appreciate you having personal callers at work.” He grumbles sternly, as though I hand out invitations for people to visit me at The Brew.

“Sorry about-”

But he’s already shuffling off.

I press my lips into a thin line, take a deep breath in and let it out. He will not ruin my week before it’s already properly begun. I want to tell Lane to give him a really good fuck but I’m worried that this is him after a good fuck. Lane’s told me she has a high libido, and all that energy must be going somewhere.

I push the door open. Lane has thrown her apron off, and is changing the music. The shop is empty, except for a handful of university professors in one corner.

“Lane,” I call, “Baz said there was someone out here looking for me?”

She looks around the shop and shrugs, shaking her head blankly.

“I dunno,” she replies.

Adam has class right now, so maybe it was Rhys stopping by to say hi? I haven’t seen him in a while.

“Okay, well, see you tomorrow,” I sigh. She smiles back at me.

I start towards the door, digging in my purse for my car keys. The bell over the door tinkles as someone pushes it open, and I side-step without looking up, still focused on my keys.

“Alyssa.”

A voice from another lifetime.

I lift my face, a smile halfway towards being in place. My eyes meet theirs and for a moment I’m wondering why they look familiar. They must see the confusion in my features, and the frozen smile fading…

It’s the most exquisite pain, and I’m suddenly drenched with something cold, running from the top of my head down my back and into my stomach.

Neil.

He reaches for my elbow, as if to steady me. I grimace before he’s even touched me, and he lets his fingers curl into a weak fist as his hands fall, hurt.

Neil.

My thoughts are moving slowly.

Nyla, I think. And then I start shaking. My fingers close around something cool and metallic in my bag. The keys.

“Hi,” He says, carefully.

“I h-have to go.” I stammer, taking a half-step back. If I leave now then - then I can protect her, I can -

He speaks calmly, kindly, and I know he knows everything.

“We need to talk first.”

I swallow, but my throat feels pinched and tight.

He starts to reach for my elbow again, and I look into those blue eyes again and physically draw in on myself.

Again, there is that hurt look.

I let my eyes fall, unable to keep my them focused on his. Can he still read me as easily as he reads the back of his hand?

I find myself shuffling over to the nearest table, as though I am in a dream. I sink onto the very edge of a chair. He sits opposite me.

“Alyssa?” Lane is by my side now, concerned.

“Could you get her some water please?” Neil answers, as though Lane is a waitress. “Black coffee for me.”

Lane ignores him. “Alyssa?”

I find my voice somewhere deep down, and push it out, laced with bubbly confidence and exclamation marks, smiling brightly. “I’m fine! A water and coffee Lane!”

“Okay.” She says slowly.

We wait for Lane to bring the water and coffee in silence. I haven’t got the strength to look at him properly yet, so I’m looking at the professors in the corner, my head turned rather determinedly to my right, even though I’m not really seeing them.

Lane brings the drinks to the table, and as he’s looking up at to thank her, I take the opportunity to look at him. I always remember Neil in flashes, I realize. The intensity of his cool blue eyes. The way his hair used to fall over his forehead. The dimple that formed in his cheek when he smiled.

Nyla inherited that last one.

Sitting here in front of him after more than a year, it strikes me how pale those memories were, compared to the real person sitting in front of me. The sum of all those parts, and then some.

It’s just his eyes. His eyes are all wrong. They’re still blue, but there’s something else there, as vivid as a scar.

He’s dressed simply. Stone-washed jeans and a knitted grey pullover sweater. Our eyes meet, and I drag mine away, sip my water, and put on a brave face.

“You - um,” Neil clears his throat discreetly. I chance a glance at him. “You look… Good.” It sounds like he had a hard time settling on an adjective, and yet when I let my eyes meet his he seems earnest.

Blue eyes I gazed into for hours, falling so deep I never thought I’d see the sky again…

I close my eyes and turn my face towards the university professors in the corner, waiting for my stomach to settle… There is that exquisite pain again… I spent a year burying it so deep I thought it had wasted away; that I wouldn’t know the taste of it again. I force it away, but the fear of losing Nyla immediately jumps to the front of my mind. I want to reach for the sweating glass of water in front of me again, but I know that if I unclench my fists, Neil will see how badly my fingers are shaking. I keep my arms folded…

…Like I’m holding myself together…

- STOP -

I smooth my face into a mask and look at him. He’s got this sad smile on his face, and it fills my stomach with the same cold, unbearable sadness as it did with the sad smile Adam gave me in the dream I had.

“Thanks,” I say finally.

I think about the last time I saw him, about how I sobbed into his mouth as he kissed me, and my cheeks warm. His eyes sink to the pendant, and the blush spreads over my face. Discreetly, I bring my braids forward, avoiding meeting his eyes when they rise.

“I hired a private detective,” he says.

Wasn’t I just thinking about how absurd that was the other day?

I’m unable to mask my surprise; I feel my eyebrows rise a little.

“I’m joking,” He says, weakly. I know he’s trying to lighten the mood, but neither of us smiles. “I knew I had to find you though, Alyssa. I Would’ve hired one if it had come to that.”

I don’t say anything to this. His lips part in small movements; unsure of how to proceed. It makes me think of Nyla, and something in me smarts with pain.

“I was on the phone with Vanessa,” he explains. “She called me out of the blue and we were just catching up. I wanted to ask how you were so I asked if you still sat for Dax.”

I blink.

Dax. I had thought of him less and less, and he had faded to the back of my mind until I rarely thought of him at all. Forgetting him felt like another betrayal. I had stolen Neil from him and now I wasn’t even bothered to remember him afterwards.

“She said you didn’t. That you moved away. And then, almost as an afterthought, she said you might have been pregnant. She saw you at the hospital.”

I’m looking at the table now; at the veins that run through the wood under my fingers.

“The baby,” he asks. “Is she mine?”

Everything I built around myself - this “new life” - suddenly seems feeble and insignificant; something made out of matchsticks and Elmer’s glue. It should have been strong enough to withstand this.

“Yes.” I say.

“Can I meet her?” he asks.

It breaks my heart that he has to ask this, as if I have any sort of… control over things. And then I realize that this whole time, that’s exactly how I’ve been acting.

I controlled Neil’s relationship with Nyla from the beginning. And now she is almost eight months old and she doesn’t even know who her father is. I used to cry for my dad. I still do.

My throat tightens. I have to push my voice out again, and it comes out hoarsely.

“Yes.”

All along, Neil was painted as the big bad guy. But the truth was, I was the villain in Nyla’s story.

I hadn’t been protecting her. I’d been protecting myself.

*

I don’t know how I manage to get home in one piece. When Mrs. Stuyvesant opens her door and I rouse a sleeping Nyla from her bassinet, I whisper furiously into her ear, begging her not to ruin this.

Nyla looks at me with grumpy sleepiness, squirming in my arms.

“She’s been fussy all day,” Mrs. Stuyvesant chuckles, watching Nyla rub a pudgy fist over an eye. “Haven’t you Nyla?”

I give an unconvincingly nonchalant laugh and begin to gather Nyla’s things.

“Are you alright Alyssa-Jane?” Mrs. Stuyvesant asks. “You look a little ill.”

“I’m just… I’m fine.” I respond.

Mrs. Stuyvesant is not one to push. “Okay,” she says, straightening her cardigan.

“Thank you.” I say, stiffly, starting for the door.

Upstairs, I let myself into the apartment and close the door softly behind us. Nyla’s got a wet diaper, so I gently place her on the changing station above my dresser and set her bag down on the floor.

Oddly subdued, Nyla doesn’t fuss as I change her, except to make a half-hearted murmur of protest as I snap a fresh diaper into place, before she stuffs her knuckles into her mouth. I pick her up and smooth her rose-pink booted-trousers.

“Are you ready to meet your dad?” I coo, trying to sound cheerful.

She meets my eyes with nonchalance, continuing to chew on her knuckles.

“Nyla?” I press. The doorbell goes. My heart falls to my stomach, and I wait, as if Nyla will take her fist out of her mouth and throw on a big reassuring smile and tell me everything is going to be okay.

I pull her hand away from her face.

“Ah!” she protests, as I wipe her hand with a wet wipe.

Please, I beg.

I walk to the front door quickly and with purpose, before I can stop myself from remembering my fear.

Neil looks up as the door swings open and away from him.

He looks and looks and looks.

His eyes take her in, every inch of her small round face as she presses herself closer to me and away from the stranger in front of her. I see his pupils dilate he takes her in, his features softening, and his mouth falling open a little, just enough for me to see how full his heart is at this very moment.

I look away, feeling like an intruder.

If it wasn’t for me, I think, Neil would know his daughter.

“Can I hold her please?” Neil asks quietly.

I press her into his arms before Nyla knows what’s happening; as if this one act will atone for my sins.

It breaks my heart that he has to ask.

He steps into the apartment and blinking away tears, I busy myself with closing the door.

Turning, I find them studying each other’s faces. Neil is holding her just right - lengthways and not sideways, just as he should be.

Nyla is pushing on his chest. She throws her face in my direction, distressed. I shake my head, silently pleading with her not to ruin this for Neil just yet.

“Ah!” She gasps, pushing her body away from Neil’s and towards mine.

Please, I plead. Just one more minute…

Her features crumple, and she begins to wail.

I have spirited her away and scooped her into my arms before the wail dissolves into full blown tears.

“I’m sorry,” I say quickly, “She has separation anxiety and doesn’t like strangers-”

Neil and I both grimace at the word.

“New people,” I substitute, lamely. “She’s been fussy today, she’s just tired and hungry, and she’s teething…”

Nyla has calmed down, and I move to hand her back to Neil but she emits a loud squawk of protest, grabbing at my shirt. Over her head, I give Neil an apologetic look. She has turned pointedly away from Neil, clinging to my collar as though if she even so much as glances in his direction, she’ll find herself deposited in his arms again, when he is in fact a memory she’d rather forget as quickly as possible.

Neil holds his hand out to me, and in it is a beautiful cream-caramel colored teddy bear with a pink bow over an ear and eyes like glassy pools of honey. I lift my eyes from the bear to witness the kindness pouring from his own.

I take the bear carefully, determined not to cry.

We sit on the couch, and I offer Nyla the bear. She keeps her hands on my collar, not trusting me enough to let go, until her curiosity is overtaken by her fear and one hand stretches out clumsily to clench at the soft plush fur. Curiosity satisfied; she buries her face in my chest again. I sigh.

“What’s her name?” Neil asks, turning to me.

“Nyla.”

He tests the word on his tongue.

“Nyla-Wren.” I say. Quietly I finish, “Fischer.”

“You gave her my last name?”

I confirm this with a silence, playing with one of Nyla’s hands.

“She looks just like you,” Neil comments. He’s leaning towards us ever-so-slightly. I know he wants to hold her again. He looks in pain just sitting there and watching us. His eyes keep returning to her, as if to make sure she’s still there, still real.

“I thought she looked just like you,” I admit. His eyes meet mine, surprised. “She makes the same faces you do sometimes,” I explain. He smiles, and it’s as though I have given him a gift.

“How old is she?” Neil asks.

“Almost eight months. Just a week or so to go.”

His lips move silently, mouthing the words back to himself.

I wait for the questions. Why I never told him. Why I lied. Why I ran.

Nyla turns to observe her father with a pointed tug on my collar, as if to remind me that just because she is looking at him does not give me permission to hand her away.

“She’s so beautiful Alyssa,” Neil breathes.

My throat tightens, but I will not cry. Not here; in this moment that is so precious to him.

Neil looks up at me, and I watch his features as the concern creeps into his awed to expression. Our eyes meet, and I can’t help but think there’s something there that wasn’t before. “Alyssa?”

“I’m fine.” I say softly. He was always able to read me. It’s been a year and here we still are.

“I’m sorry for barging into your life like this,” he starts. “-For coming into your work-” he breaks off as I shake my head.

“Don’t.” I say, and we lapse into a silence.

I cannot let him apologize when I hid his daughter from him.

After a moment I sit up, trying to slip a convincing smile on to my face. “Are you in town long?” I ask. It takes him a moment to answer.

“Yeah, I guess so,” he pauses, hesitating. “I want to be involved - with her. I want to see her. -If that’s okay with you.”

Suppressing guilt-laced grimace, I simply press my lips together and nod, my eyes following the spiral of a honey-colored lock springing from our daughter’s scalp.

“Maybe you should meet my sister,” I suggest, after a pained minute of silence.

“Okay.”

Out of the corner of my eye I think I catch the apprehension in his face but when I look at him his eyes meet mine and he’s got this expression on his face – it’s almost a reassuring smile, but is impeded by worry, as if he expects me to fall apart at any moment.

“Will you stay?” I ask, putting more strength in my voice. “Will you wait for her to come home or do you want to come back later?”

“Sure – yeah. I’ll…” he gives me a long look. “Maybe I should come back in a couple of hours. I need to sort out my accommodation, and my thoughts.”

I nod once when he’s finished, as if we both don’t need the time to collect our thoughts. “Okay.”

“-I’ll text you.” he adds, quickly.

“Yeah.”

*

I watch the second-hand glide around the clock face noiselessly, wishing my sister had gotten a mantle clock that ticked so I wouldn’t be sitting here with Neil in this dead silence. Nyla too is quietened by Neil’s presence.

The door swings open, and I turn to watch her come in. she’s not looking up yet; her face is half buried in her purse. I stand carefully, Neil rising beside me.

“Lyss?” she calls, into the depths of her bag. “I’m home! What was your text about? – I mean, it was pretty vague.”

She stops for a moment to dig around in her bag and Neil and I watch her. I wish I could keep her in this moment, before I ruin the night. Defeated, she huffs with frustration and closes the door.

“Hi!” She says, and then, noticing Neil, “Oh, hello. Sorry I didn’t know we had a guest or whatever,” she laughs a little self-consciously.

Neil gives an apprehensive attempt at a smile. And Anya struggles with her stilettos, dropping them by the door and stepping into the waiting pair slippers she left there in the morning.

She comes forward toward my end of the couch, kissing Nyla’s pudgy cheek.

There is a pause where her eyes move from my grim, nervous face to Neil’s mirrored version. She smiles uncertainly.

I want to find some way to begin, but it’s like my throat is swollen shut. I swallow, but nothing comes.

My eyes drop and I say, “This is my sister.”

“Anya,” Anya provides. There is a beat. I draw every ounce of strength I have before I continue.

“This is Neil.” I say.

Anya’s smile wavers slightly, as if somewhere deep in the recesses of her subconscious it registers that the name is a bad omen, even if she doesn’t actually know why. Her eyes move from me to Neil and over his features, then back to me and Nyla, and I see the frown creeping in that she’s studying Nyla and I know she sees Nyla’s nose, how like Neil’s it is…

“This is Neil Fischer,” I clarify.

Her eyes move to Neil, sharp and cold, but ablaze with hatred and fury.

Neil starts to open his mouth to say something.

“You need to leave.”

“Anya,” I start, shakily.

“You need to fucking leave my apartment right now before I call the police.”

“Anya.”

“He needs to leave do you fucking understand that?” she spits, turning to me. “I don’t want this man here, and I don’t want him around Nyla.”

Normally a shouter, the quiet tone of Anya’s voice is what scares me most. I can’t bring myself to even look at Neil, and yet Anya does.

“You need to leave. Get out. Right now.”

“Maybe I should-” Neil starts.

“No-” I say, cutting him off.

“I don’t know what the fuck kind of fairytale love story you told yourselves about what happened Alyssa,” my sister says, her voice rising slightly, “But this man ruined your life and he ruined Vanessa’s life.”

I can feel the words hit Neil as if they were a physical force, and something in me rises up before I can control myself.

“Do not, for one minute ever fool yourself into believing you know anything about what I have been through,” I mince. “And do not talk to me as if I am a child.”

“I don’t want him in my apartment!”

“Then I will move out!” I shout. I feel Nyla’s little body grimace in my arms, her face screwing up as she begins to cry. “You have no right to tell me who can and cannot be in Nyla’s life! You are not Nyla’s mother.”

Under Nyla’s wail, there is a stunned silence.

“Alyssa,” Neil interjects quietly, “I’ll leave. It’s okay.”

Something in his resignation tells me I have gone too far. I start to rock Nyla gently, unsure of what to do.

Anya presses her lips together for a moment, nodding.

“You know,” she says gently; forcing Neil to turn back to her, although she’s addressing me “I don’t know where you get the audacity to tell me not to talk about what you’ve been through. You have no idea - none – about what I went through. I raised you. And now I have been here raising Nyla with you too-”

“That does not give you the right to dictate whether her father can be in her life.” I cut in.

Anya shakes her head. “This man, Alyssa, he took you away-”

“No, I chose to go-”

“That’s right, you chose to go.” She says. “You chose him then and you continue to choose him now. God, I knew you were missing this ‘father figure’ in your life after dad died but what did this man do to you?” her eyes bore into mine, filling with tears. “What did he do to you?” she repeats, and her voice cracks as it rises again. “You left the only family you have for him. I raised you and you left me for him.”

“-For Nyla. I left for Nyla. I didn’t want her to grow up without a father the way I did.”

“No.” she says. “You couldn’t even tell him about her.”

“It was for Nyla.” I stress, but I don’t know, I don’t know anymore, because she’s been growing up without a father anyway.

Anya looks at Neil again, and then shakes her head sadly, turning to go.

“I really hope he’s worth it.”

“Then why are you allowed to look for mom when she doesn’t even want you?”

Anya gives me a long sad look, the tears finally spilling from her eyes. She catches them with her fingers, quickly brushing them away as she shakes her head. “It’s not the same.” She says.

“She left, An.”

“It’s not the same. And you know that.”

I close my eyes against the words and turn away, hearing her bedroom door slam after a few seconds.

“I’m sorry.” Neil says, finally.

He turns to go, and I follow him to the door, consoling Nyla. He simply gives me a concerned glace before he goes, but I can see the hurt in his features too. And yet I recognize something else in his eyes, a knowing look that I cannot ignore because it confronts me with the effects of everything we did, every decision we made together and apart and how it led us to here.

Shakily, I try and kill time with Nyla before I can put her down for the night, trying not to cry just yet. But the physical strain of holding the tears in is making me shake. My thoughts race around and around my brain, unable to slow.

My phone keeps buzzing with text messages, but I ignore them. Finally, after a couple of hours, it starts ringing.

I pick it up off my nightstand. It’s Adam calling.

I need to hear his voice. Ground myself in the life I created after Neil. If I could just slow my thoughts down then everything will be okay.

“Hello?” something in me is afraid that when he answers, he won’t sound the same. But he does. His voice comes out as calm and soothing as ever. I can hear the smile in his voice when he talks; warm, like sunshine in the spring.

“Hey,” he says. “I’ve been texting you all day.”

I just want to keep him talking. If he keeps talking the thoughts will stop racing and I’ll remember that I made the right decisions; that just because Neil is back doesn’t mean I’m the same scared girl that I was last summer.

“-Alyssa?”

“I’m here,” I say, after a beat. I’m pushing my voice to sound as normal as possible.

“You okay?”

I swallow. “Yeah - I had a long day.”

“Did something happen at work?” He asks. I falter, unsure of what to say.

“I’m okay,” I say, finally, but I’m wiping away tears and my voice comes out stuffy.

“Something’s wrong isn’t it?”

“It’s okay. Everything will be okay.”

“But it’s not okay right now… Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,”

“Do you want me to come over?”

“No, just… No. You have to study,”

“I’m coming over, okay?”

“No. Adam, I had a silly fight with my sister, okay? It… it was silly and I’m fine and I just want to sleep right now. Don’t worry.”

“Okay.” He says. “We can talk about things when I see you Friday,”

“Sure.”