What does an unexpected reunion at a party look like in a romance?
Example of an Unexpected Reunion at a Party
The unexpected reunion at a party strips away preparation. There's no time to rehearse what you'd say, no armor to put on. You're mid-sentence, drink in hand, and suddenly the person you never got over is standing across the room.
She was mid-laugh, head thrown back, champagne in hand, telling a story about a disastrous Airbnb in Greece — and then she saw him by the bookshelf. Everything stopped. The laugh, the story, the part of her brain that had spent two years constructing a personality that didn't include him. He was holding a whiskey and talking to the host like he belonged here, which meant he knew David, which meant she was going to kill David for not warning her. Their eyes met. His hand tightened on the glass. She watched him excuse himself, cross the living room, navigate around a coffee table and two conversations, never breaking eye contact. "You know David?" she said when he reached her. Her voice was impressively steady for someone whose internal organs were rearranging themselves. "College roommate." "He never mentioned you." "I asked him not to." "Why?" "Because I knew you'd stop coming to his parties." She took a long sip of champagne. Processing. The party hummed around them — someone had put on Fleetwood Mac, which felt pointed. His cologne was different. He used to wear something citrusy. This was warmer. Woodsmoke and something sweet she couldn't name. "You look incredible," he said. Not flirtatiously. Painfully. Like the observation cost him something. "You can't say things like that." "I know." "We agreed. When we ended it. We agreed to—" "I know what we agreed." He looked at his glass. "I agreed to a lot of things that year. Most of them were lies." Someone bumped into her from behind, party physics pushing her half a step closer. Close enough to see that his pupils were wide. Close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating off him. "I should go," she said. "Probably." "I'm going to go." "Okay." She didn't go. She stood there, one foot from him, Fleetwood Mac playing "Dreams" like the universe was writing fan fiction about her life, and she didn't go. "One drink," he said. "On the balcony. Just to prove we can be normal." "We were never normal." "One drink to prove we can pretend." She shouldn't have said yes. She said yes.
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