Russo’s was a quaint café restaurant that almost everyone Emma knew just cooed over. It was a nice place. It always seemed fresh and in bloom no matter what the season was. It had indoor seating, big windows that let in a lot of light, and AC that hardly functioned properly. Maybe that had changed; after all, she had only ever been there one time. She did drive past it a lot, but she just couldn’t quite make the time for it. She had only ever been there with Thomas.

Coming back was Thomas’ idea. He asked her the other night if she’d like to go out, and it just so happened that their free times overlapped this Tuesday evening. She couldn’t remember the last time they had been out together.

They sat across from each other at a table in the courtyard like they had that first time. The air was much, much cooler tonight than she remembered it last, but that was fine. Her dress had sleeves.

“How was your day?” Thomas asked.

“It was fine. Busy. How was yours?” She replied.

“Not bad. Not as much to do as yesterday.”

“Is Steven still on vacation?”

“Yeah, he should be back Friday though.”

“That’ll be good.”

“Yeah. Are you cold?”

“No, no I’m fine. Are you?”

“No, I’m fine.”

One of those old songs came on but instead of feeling happy or nostalgic she felt a little confused, if anything. Something had changed. The last time they had danced. He had smiled at her and took her hand and they danced, laughing wildly the whole time. Other couples had already been dancing, sure, but they really did. He pulled her and spun her, kept his hands always at her waist, always keeping her close. Her hand had been pressed into the stiff fabric of his shirt and their faces were so close, so close to tipping over and spilling and touching.

“Do you remember when we danced to this song? All those years ago?” She asked. Thomas turned his head away and looked at the courtyard.

“No one dances here anymore.”

The realization hit Emma very suddenly. It became apparent to her that this whole time she had been living static in a single moment. The moment in a photo when the flash went off, when everything was bright and white and solid. It seemed to her that now the bulb had burnt out. They were no longer in that golden courtyard that reeked of springtime; it was now winter. She sat there, dazed and confused and entirely aware that she was alone, and had been for some time.

The man across from her seemed a stranger, like a face met in passing. She was unsure if they had ever really known each other, or if they had just lived life together, the whole time travelling side by side off to their own destinations. The past four years dissolved before her like sugar in water but felt as stale and as cold as the coffee before her. It seemed just as bitter. It left the pit of her stomach fluttering and nauseous. Emma set her fork down and wiped her mouth with her napkin.

“What are we doing, Thomas?”

“What do you mean?”

“Since when did we run out of things to talk about?”

“I don’t know, I don’t think it’s a big deal. We’re just tired from work.”

“This is the first time we’ve even been able to spend time with each other in weeks though. What are we doing?” She asked again. Thomas didn’t have an answer and neither did Emma, and both wanted to say something, anything, to fill that silence but it now felt forced and desperate. There had been a time where he had left her feeling like jazz. She longed for that feeling now, she wished she could pull it out from inside her and allow it to break the surface once more. The music around them swept and swung.

“Excuse me for a moment.” Emma said, and smoothed her dress before walking to the restroom.

Emma washed her hands a few times and looked in the mirror. She looked the same as she did yesterday, as the day before, and perhaps the day before that. She didn’t know when she started to look older, when those laugh lines and crow’s feet found their way on her face. Maybe it was just that they had gotten older. That times had changed because they had to, because they weren’t kids anymore and at some point, they had to grow up. They just hadn’t realized it. Yes, surely that was it. It wasn’t that they didn’t love each other. It couldn’t be, not after all this time. Maybe it was that she had imagined her life as easier than it was, that she had believed a romantic lie that a relationship was always movie perfect. It was instead something to work for. Emma took a breath and headed back to her table. Thomas looked up at her when she returned.

“Emma, can we talk?”

“I think we have to.”

“Do you want to go home?”

“No. We’re here now. We might as well.”

Emma watched Thomas from across the table. He too looked older than she remembered him being. His laugh lines had deepened and the creases between his brows had become more prominent. He looked familiar and distant at the same time, as if she had seen him first in a dream and was meeting him in person for the first time today. There was a tenderness that gripped her. He was hers, he had been. It was a feeling she didn’t want to let go of.

“Do you remember the last time we were here?” Emma asked. Thomas nodded.

“We had just started dating. This place had just opened. It was nice.”

“What made you want to come back?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I guess I just thought that we liked it that one time. We had fun. Maybe it would be like that this time, too.”

“Maybe. But we can’t just do nothing, Thomas.”

“I know. We need to work harder, or at least I do. I need to make more time, time away from work, time for us, for you. I don’t think I’ve been very fair.”

“I don’t think I’ve been fair either. And I don’t want to think of this as homework, like an assignment, like we have to pull out a calendar and a schedule for each other.”

“We aren’t homework, but we should work more for each other.”

“Of course. There are things we’re going to have to do. Things that will take effort.”

“We have to try for something, we can’t just keep going and going. We have to have some sort of direction. I think we got caught up in the golden years, you know, like rose colored glasses. I always thought things were fine because nothing bad was happening, but we shouldn’t settle for fine, we should shoot for great and see what happens. We aren’t kids anymore.”

“No, we aren’t kids anymore.”

“But we’ve been together for years and I want to stay together for years, Em.”

“Me too.”

“I think we just took each other for granted.”

“We just took each other for granted,” Emma agreed. She had nothing more to say, not then. Something had been recognized, and that would be their beginning. A front had fallen down, a wall collapsed that they weren’t aware they had been hiding behind all this time. It seemed as though those previous years fell away through the hourglass, that time hadn’t been on the side of the young, and they fell out of the bracket before the couple they now were. They were not the same people, it would be more hurtful than anything to assume that they were. They had changed and adapted, but they had grown together for so long that surely, surely, they still knew each other well. Surely time counted for something in the end, it had to, it must. There was nowhere else to go besides honesty, pure and unwavering, or else all would slip through their fingers, through the cracks with nothing but dust to remain.