The Kiss

This story happened in spring. To be precise, dear reader, in May.

Fresh green had already appeared, but summer hadn't come yet. The evenings were cool. It had been raining since morning, and by evening the rain hadn't stopped.

She arrived at his place in her new car.

He had invited her himself — to meet, to talk, to have some wine. Before getting out of the car, she looked at the rain on the windshield.

There's no such thing as bad weather, she thought.

And smiled.

He was twenty-six, she was twenty-eight.

He lived alone. The apartment was quiet. Two windows looked out onto the courtyard from the room, raindrops running down the wet glass. On the table stood a bottle of wine and two glasses.

Not wine glasses. Ordinary glasses.

"I couldn't find the proper ones," he said.

She looked at the glasses and smiled.

"Doesn't matter."

He opened the wine. Poured hers first, then his own. She sat on the couch, he settled across from her, but soon moved to the floor, closer to her. That's how they kept talking.

At first they talked about the usual things people talk about when they've just met: who worked where, where they were from, why they'd ended up here. Then the conversation drifted somewhere on its own. Stories from childhood surfaced, people they both happened to know, funny incidents slightly embarrassing to recall, and things that, for some reason, felt worth telling to this particular person.

The rain kept falling.

At some point she glanced at her watch.

"We should probably get some sleep."

"Probably."

He didn't get up, and she stayed sitting too. The wine ran out; he opened another bottle. It had long grown dark outside, then the streetlights in the courtyard went off, but neither of them noticed. Both had work in the morning, only a few hours left before the alarm, and yet there was still so much to say.

She got up only when the sky outside began to lighten.

"I really have to go."

He handed her her jacket. At the door she turned:

"Thank you for the evening."

"Thank you."

She left, and he stood in the doorway. The stairwell still smelled of rain.

Then he closed the door, went back into the room, and sat down on the floor where she had been sitting. Outside, dawn was breaking.

A few days later she came to see him again, in the evening. They opened a bottle of wine. This time they hardly talked at all. She stayed until morning, then got dressed and left for work.

A few days after that, she was driving the same car she had first arrived in. There was an accident. The car was wrecked. Her phone was wrecked along with it.

He knew nothing about it.

After their second meeting, he called her every other day. First in the evenings, then in the mornings. The line rang, but no one picked up. The number still existed.

A few days later, instead of ringing, there was a short tone and a woman's recorded voice: "The subscriber is temporarily unavailable."

He tried the number a few more times — a day apart, then two. Every time, the same voice.

Then the number was disconnected.

That was all he ever knew.

They had no mutual friends. No one who could tell him where she was, what had happened to her, why the phone had gone silent. The only thread between them had been that one number.

And that number was gone.

Twenty years passed.

One day she was searching online for a quote to include in a friend's birthday message. She opened a search engine, typed a few words. Among the results was an article. At the top — a photograph.

At first she didn't understand why her eyes had stopped on it, but she looked again — and only then recognized him. He had changed a great deal: gray now streaked his hair, his face had grown different, he wore a formal coat. And yet the smile was the same — slightly crooked, almost boyish.

She closed the tab, but almost immediately opened it again and spent several minutes simply looking at the photograph. Then she opened another page and found where he worked. Another — his position. And an email address.

She didn't message him on social media, didn't search for a personal phone number, didn't try to reach him through mutual acquaintances. She simply opened a new email and wrote:

"I found you by accident. It's strange, writing to someone after all these years. But for some reason there was only one thing I needed to know: are you there?"

She held her finger over the send button for a few more seconds, even though the letter was already finished. Then she pressed it.

An ordinary notification appeared on the screen: message sent.

She closed the laptop.

There was no reply.

In the first days she checked her email in the morning, before coffee, then again at work, and again in the evening before bed. After a month she began checking less often; after six months she could go weeks without thinking of the letter at all, but she never quite managed to forget it entirely.

She never deleted it.

Sometimes she thought he must have a whole different life by now, one where her letter had no place. Sometimes it seemed to her he simply didn't know what to say. And sometimes she was afraid of the simplest explanation of all: that he had nothing to say to her.

She was certain the letter had reached him.

She was photographed for magazines, invited to interviews, her name began to appear on posters and in newspaper headlines.

The years folded into one another, addresses changed, people changed, cities changed. That May evening kept receding further and further. Sometimes it felt to her as if she had sent the letter only recently, and sometimes as if it had happened to another woman entirely — one she used to be.

And the letter stayed there, still, among her sent messages.

One morning — it was the last day of summer — she opened her email and saw his name.

The subject line was blank.

She didn't click on it right away. She sat there, looking at the screen. Outside, a warm rain was beginning, almost autumnal, and the room was quiet.

She thought she could just close the laptop. Set it aside. Pretend she hadn't seen it.

Then she clicked anyway.

"I got your letter the same day."

She read the line again.

Outside, it was raining.

It was the last day of summer.