She'd told herself she wasn't going to go to that bar.
She went.
It was the same in the way that places preserve themselves: same low lighting, same crack in the leather of the third stool from the end, same bartender who had the grace not to remember her. She sat somewhere new. A different version of herself, or so she'd decided on the train.
He walked in at ten past nine. She watched him check his phone in the doorway — the way he always did, braced for something — and then watched the moment he didn't see her become the moment he did.
He crossed the room without hurrying.
"You came back," he said. "For work," she said. He sat without being asked, and neither of them said anything about that.
The bartender set a glass in front of him without asking what he wanted.
They talked about nothing important: a mutual friend's new apartment, a restaurant that had finally closed, the long stupid summer. He was the same in the ways that had always undone her, and she noticed that she was noticing.
His knee didn't touch hers but she was aware of its distance the way you are aware of a change in pressure — not with your eyes, not quite with your skin.
At some point the bar emptied around them without either of them doing anything to make it happen.
"I should go," she said.
He reached across and touched the back of her hand. Not held it — just touched it, in the place where her pulse was.
"Okay," he said. She stayed.