Litany Of Sins

4 In The Friction of Time

CHAPTER 4

In The Friction of Time

“How have you been?”

Yet, she snapped out of her thoughts on how she wanted to ask him that as soon as Everett’s gaze snapped upward, as a familiar silhouette—one etched into his memory—halted at the edge of his table. He had been so immersed in the slides for his upcoming presentation that he had not realized how long she had been standing there, watching him.

“Thank you, Lyle,” he murmured, his voice dropping into that low, intimate register she remembered all too well. He smiled at her, which made her see the baby wrinkles he was already having yet they were not too frighteningly visible, not that he cared about them anyway.

“You are welcome, Everett,” she replied, the old nickname slipping out with a smoothness that betrayed her internal panic. She set the tray down with a clinical precision, the clink of the glass against the wood sounding like a final gavel strike.

Everett did not look at the coffee. Instead, his gaze traveled up, locking onto hers with an intensity that made the quiet cafe feel suddenly claustrophobic. He leaned back, the tension in his shoulders finally giving way as he gestured to the empty chair across from him.

“There are not many customers, Lila,” he noted, his voice low and inviting. “Sit. Join me for five minutes?”

Lila’s hand tightened on the now-empty tray, using it as a physical shield between them. The invitation was a trap—a doorway to a thousand memories of messy dorm rooms and whispered promises she had spent a decade burying.

“I have things to prep in the back,” she lied, her voice tight. “Enjoy your coffee.”

“Lila, come on,” he insisted as if he sounded like he missed her, his tone softening, reaching out as if to brush her hand before catching himself. “It has been… What? Ten years since we last saw each other and spoke? We can not just pretend we are strangers over a cup of coffee.”

“We are not strangers.” She clarified before adding, “We are just people who do not know each other anymore,” she countered, her voice firming up. She took a step back, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. “I am not looking to relive the past.”

“I am not either.” He responded immediately.

She nodded her head and answered back, “Good, because I have worked very hard to move on from it.”

Everett stared at her for a long beat, searching her face for a crack in the armor. Finally, he let out a short, weary breath and nodded, closing his laptop halfway.

“Maybe now is not the right time,” he conceded quietly. He reached into his bag and pulled out a lanyard with a professional badge. “I am actually in the city for the National Physical Therapy Conference. I am presenting tomorrow.”

He paused, sliding a business card across the table toward her. “I am staying for three more days before I head back home. Why don’t we have dinner tomorrow night? No memories, no ‘Lila and Everett’—just two grown adults catching up.”

Lila looked down at the card, the gold-embossed lettering blurring under her gaze.

“I will think about it,” she whispered, though every instinct she had was screaming at her to run.

“I will be waiting for a text then,” he said, his smile weak but hopeful. “I have not forgotten your number, Lila. I hope you have not changed it.”

Why did you not ever call? Not once in ten years? The silent accusation screamed in the back of her mind, lingering just long enough to sting before she shoved it back into the dark.

“It has been a decade, Rett,” she said, her voice a masterpiece of casual indifference. She wanted to sound like a woman who had successfully buried her ghosts, a woman for whom ten years was an ocean of time.

“You never call me that,” Everett interrupted, his voice sharp with observation.

Lila blinked, her professional mask slipping. “What are you talking about?”

“Rett. You never used that name back then,” he pointed out, his eyes narrowing. “Everyone else did, but never you. You always had your own name for me.”

“I do not see why it matters now,” she scoffed, a defensive heat rising in her chest.

Everett studied her for a long beat, his exhale sounding like a surrender as he forced a faint smile. “Ten years,” he agreed, nodding slowly. “It is a strange feeling—looking at you and knowing everything about our past, yet realizing I do not know the woman standing in front of me at all.”

“People change, Everett,” she replied, her smile just as forced as his.

“I suppose I was holding onto the hope that the girl I used to have spent all my college years with was still in there somewhere,” he murmured with a weary, lopsided grin. “I guess we just got old.” He kept his gaze locked on hers as he suddenly reached out, extending his large hand toward her.

Lila stared at his outstretched hand, her heart skipping a beat. “What are you doing?” she asked, her curiosity laced with a sudden, sharp edge of wariness.

Everett pushed back his chair and stood. His six-foot-two frame seemed to fill the entire cafe, towering over her five-foot-eight stature and making the space feel impossibly small. He did not break eye contact as he reached for her. “My name is Everett Pierce,” he said, his voice dropping into a low, steady rumble. “But you… to you, you can call me Percy.” He flashed a smile that was devastatingly handsome—the kind of look that used to be her daily oxygen.

It was the exact expression she had spent years trying to erase from her memory, yet deep down, it was the only thing she had truly missed. A reluctant chuckle finally escaped her lips; she could not help but be amused. Despite the decade between them, his stubborn persistence remained entirely unchanged, and for the first time that very early in the morning, she let herself smile back.

Lila ducked her head, trying to shield her blooming smile from his view, but when she looked back up, his own grin had widened in triumph. “I forgot how annoyingly persistent you could be,” she murmured, the words tasting like a memory.

“Not annoyingly persistent, Lila. Just terrifyingly dedicated,” Everett corrected, his voice dropping into a low, playful rumble. He was quoting himself—using the very same defense he had used when they were eighteen. For a split second, the decade between them vanished, making the past feel both painfully close and impossibly far away.

They stood locked in each other’s gaze, caught in the strange friction of time. At thirty-two, they were seasoned by a decade of life, yet standing this close, the years seemed to dissolve until they were eighteen again, breathless and uncertain. It was as though they had slipped back into their younger selves, back when life felt light and the future was just a distant thought they did not care to have.

“Don’t feel like you have to decide this second,” Everett informed her, his smile softening with a genuine warmth. “Just think about the dinner. Send me a message when you're ready.”

Lila let out a quiet, internal sigh and gave a small nod. “Fine,” she whispered, her fingers curling tighter around the edge of his business card. She offered a tight, guarded smile. “I will let you know what I decide.”

She began to turn, ready to retreat to the safety of the kitchen, but his voice stopped her mid-step. “I missed you, Lila.”

The air caught in her throat, leaving her paralyzed.

“I am not saying that to pressure you about the dinner,” he added quickly, the words tumbling out in a rare moment of vulnerability. “I mean, I do want the dinner. But more than that... I just really did miss you.”

Lila stayed frozen for a heartbeat, her back still turned, before she slowly looked over her shoulder. The El persona was gone, leaving only the woman who had spent a decade wondering if he ever thought of her.

“I know,” she whispered, her voice barely audible over the hum of the cafe. She did not say she missed him back—she was not ready for that—but she gave him a small, sad nod that acknowledged the truth. “I will text you, Rett.”