It was hard to know who felt more uncomfortable. Reese felt like a stranger in what used to be her own house. Justin felt like some nervous hotel manager about to be reviewed by a critic.

Trace remained unperturbed, but he had a home of his own to escape to and promptly did so.

There had at least been some baby steps. The flight was mostly silent, but as yet no harsh words had been exchanged. When they’d got there and realised the guest house wasn’t made up, Reese had calmly accepted it. She hadn’t accused Justin of orchestrating it to make her stay in the main building and she hadn’t insisted they get it made up. Without any further comment she had simply said she’d take the guest room. Justin on his part was also trying his best to behave. He had not said a single thing about the shabby looking house that Reese and Drake were currently renting. He had been polite to Drake. They had shaken hands. When the kiss goodbye had happened he had turned his head away subtly and not made any kind of a fuss. For once in his life he had refrained from voicing every thought in his head screaming how weird and unlike Reese the whole situation was.

Trace had departed some time ago but even so his peacekeeping abilities had not yet been necessary. Reese was sitting on the couch with one of their old photo albums; Justin was shuffling around sorting through his mail and listening to his messages. It was domestic and uneventful. If it hadn’t been for the continental rift between them it could have been any Sunday afternoon in their home.

That wasn’t actually true, Justin surmised. You couldn’t mistake this Sunday for any other he’d previously spent with her. Once upon a time it had been his favourite day of their week because of their various Sunday morning traditions. He had no idea if Reese was thinking about any of that as she sat there on the couch, taking up one small corner as if to use as little space as possible. He on the other hand was finding it hard not to think about because he’d missed it so. Sunday afternoon had been full of mundane chores – mowing the lawn, taking out the trash, running out for the random errands she dreamed up - but he’d never minded because it would have come after a lazy morning in bed. First a round of sleepy lazy sex, then the papers and breakfast, it was intimate and sweet and cosy. It had got to the point where he actually resented having guests stay over Saturday night because they’d interrupt that routine.

Today was definitely not like that. Both of them were stressed and both of them were sad. Reese had managed not to cry, but she seemed very small and hunched over as she flipped through the photos. She looked tired and like she’d lost a little colour in her cheeks.

“Hey, umm…” Justin stuttered out nervously.

She looked up with an expectant gaze, but it didn’t seem antagonistic. If there was some small upside to being bereaved it was that neither of them had the energy for their now customary sniping.

“It’s getting late, did you want something to eat? I got nothing in the house but I can order something.”

“Thanks, but I’m not hungry.”

“Okay. If you change your mind let me know.”

“Thanks.”

She looked down again, her chestnut hair falling out from behind her ear.

“What you looking at?”

Possibly he was risking her ire by trying to start a conversation, but he couldn’t take the lack of noise. The dogs would have been great for that, just the sound of pattering feet, but they had stayed with his mom. Every time it got too quiet in his brain he started thinking about Harmony and then poor Steve. It made his head hurt.

“You remember that party on a yacht thing she made us do for his birthday?”

He padded across the room to stand beside the couch and she tried to ignore the sudden smell of his cologne. “Damn, I’d forgotten about this. When we all got stuck inside because the weather was so bad?”

A tight, wistful smile played on her lips, and her fingers brushed over Harmony’s face in a picture of the two of them. They’d been caught mid laugh, arms wrapped tightly around each other in a hug. Reese was in safe old black but Harmony had been in a vivid turquoise. “Isn’t she beautiful? That colour was amazing on her.”

“You both are.”

“God she was so mad about that damn weather…” A choked laugh left her mouth. “Until we started feeding her doubles without telling her and then we were all just too drunk to give a shit.”

Justin reached across to turn another page. “Oh, there’s the hat.”

“God, the hat…” Her hazel eyes clouded over. “Guess I missed my round with that.”

He reflexively winced, waiting for a following barb that didn’t come. It was an in-joke tradition amongst the group that the birthday boy or girl had to spend an hour in a top hat. That hat had seen some things, been some places, and it was probably for the best that relatively little photographic evidence remained. Reese’s last birthday however had been spent in Tennessee with her new fiancé who probably didn’t have a hat.

She continued before he could respond. “I really should have come back to visit while I had the chance, huh?”

This time a tear did spill from her eye, though she hastily rubbed it away with the flat of her hand. Every bone in Justin’s hand itched to reach out and do something – rub her arm, stroke her hair, comfort her somehow. He knew better however.

“Maybe, but they could have come to see you in Shelby too. Everyone was just busy, it’s nobody’s fault. None of us knew this was going to happen.”

She shook her head. “I broke up with you not them. I should have… never mind. Umm, did you get Tiffany’s e-mail about the colours?”

He had noticed that both of them did that – her and Trace. Every time the conversation started touching on something a little too close to home, a little to close to the death, they started talking funeral details instead. Practicalities were easier to focus on. They at least had definitive answers, dos and don’ts.

“Yeah. Not sure what do to, actually, all my dressy clothes are black and white and all my colours are t-shirts and shit.”

Steve had decreed via Tiffany that nobody was allowed to turn up to Harmony’s funeral in black. She’d hate it, he’d said, find it depressing. Similarly, instead of going to a wake they’d all been instructed that the gang were coming out for a boozy send off dinner. Their little circle of friends needed to see her off right, Steve said. What Tiffany had said to Justin but not to Reese was that she didn’t care if she had to sit them at opposite ends of the table, they were both going to attend and ‘put your drama on ice for the evening or I will personally beat you both down.’ He was trying not to read into the fact that she’d felt the need to specify this solely to him.

“That blue shirt I gave you for Christmas with your grey Boss suit,” she replied, not looking up from the page as she turned it over. “It’s smart but still light enough that it’ll work.”

Justin blinked for a moment before nodding. “Thank you, that’s a good idea. You picked your colour yet?”

“Everything I brought with me was black, so guess I’m going shopping tomorrow.”

“Umm… you know there’s still a bunch of your clothes and stuff upstairs?”

Reese finally turned around in her seat to look at Justin, surprise written all over her face. She had purposely left a lot of her things here. Gifts he’d given her, jewellery and bags that were very LA but would have been out of place in a little country town, her car. She had assumed he’d sell it or dispose of it. She hadn’t wanted it any more, hadn’t wanted to take any part of him and their life away with her.

“I guess it was like the money, y’know? Kept meaning to talk to you about what you wanted to do with it but every time we… well. It’s all still in the closet, anyway, so feel free to just go on in whenever.”

“Thanks. Umm… you mind if I do it now?” She softly shut the photo album, smoothing a hand over the leather cover.

“Be my guest. Umm, I need to go out anyway, so take your time.”

That was a lie. There was no need to go anywhere. He desperately wanted to be out of the house away from all these awkward memories, so he was disappearing to Trace’s in search of a drink.

**

It was like walking into a time warp.

Sure, a bunch of the racks were empty. She had still taken at least some of her stuff. There were a couple of new boxes, presumably full of stuff he’d cleared from other parts of the house. Apart from that however everything was exactly as she’d left it. He hadn’t redecorated to get rid of her style, the cream and stone coloured neutrals she’d picked were still there. The plush cream carpet was still the same even though he’d insisted it was impractical and would get filthy. Justin hadn’t tossed out any of her things. Her corner of the closet was still her corner of the closet, with all the shoe racks and jewellery storage he’d had built in for her. There was her vanity and her dressing table, all still waiting for her as if she’d just gone way for a weekend.

Flicking through the racks, her fingers lingered over the material. She had forgotten what expensive clothes felt like. It really didn’t matter whether it cost fifty or five hundred so long as it looked good but she couldn’t deny that she missed the feel of those heavier fabrics. The buttons that weren’t made of cheap plastic felt like a reawakening to her fingertips.

Even in all the familiarity it still somehow felt as if it all belonged to somebody else. The racks were full of skirts and dresses and blazers, it was all very smart casual chic. Though as a PA you could work in almost any industry she had been primarily in advertising, and everybody in advertising had been into fashion. They’d got her hooked too and Justin had always indulged her in it. These days you could only tell the clothes currently in her own wardrobe apart from Drake’s because they were smaller and had less oil stains; she lived in her jeans. For work it was just blouses and black pants. Once upon a time the look had been fashionable young professional, now it was country home girl.

Picking an outfit was easier than she’d thought it would be. She’d rediscovered an aqua coloured jacket that Harmony had borrowed heavily, and she could throw it on over one of her white dresses. Harmony had always liked spring colours, said it was a re-emergence after the sludgy darks of winter. It would feel weird to put it back on, but playing dress up for the day was the least she could do for the friend she’d neglected. The other thing Harmony had always been big on was chunky jewellery, so she supposed that was the next stop. Her friend had always scoffed at the idea of saving anything for special occasions, said that if she paid for it she wanted to get as much use out of it as possible. Something big and splashy was in order.

Pulling open the jewellery drawer was probably the weirdest part of the entire experience. Somehow it was even stranger than walking back into the house or having to speak to her ex. Reese supposed that was because as a symbol of how much her new life had diverged from the old it was probably the starkest contrast. She still knew people with big houses. She still knew Justin, as much as sometimes she wished she could just will his memory away. Trace still had his big car and his Hollywood life. As distant as they had become, she still had friends in LA. What she definitely no longer had was incredibly expensive jewellery, and yet everything she was staring at was still technically hers. Big diamond studs, a Cartier watch, telltale blue boxes hiding bangles and earrings… its collective worth far outstripped her personal assets. Even before they were a couple Justin had bought her some expensive jewellery for birthdays and such, but as soon as they had become an item he’d started doing it just because. It had mounted up.

For a moment she faltered, wondering if wearing any of it would give him ideas. The thought was dismissed as quickly as it came – it was only metal. She was being silly. Besides, she didn’t have to wear any of the pieces that he’d had specially made or bought to mark some significant occasion. Heck, she was sure if she looked long enough she’d even manage to find some cheap mass market thing she’d bought herself and that he couldn’t possibly read into. Why was she even worrying about it anyway? Who cared what he chose to think of her choices these days?

She picked out a number of boxes at random, strewing them across the vanity. One by one she started pulling them open, having to remind herself what was in them. Sure enough, before long she came across a long gold chain with a white enamel disc on it. It would go perfectly with the dress and she’d bought it herself. What had she been so bothered for? It wouldn’t matter at all. None of it mattered until she started tossing the boxes back in their drawers. She picked up a red one in her hand and for the first time noticed that it was the big one.

It wasn’t literally a big box. Ring boxes were small, of course.

Emotionally it was the biggest box she’d received in her entire life and she was completely ill quipped to have come across it. It was short sighted on her part, but she’d never considered it would be here. That seemed dumb now. It should have been obvious, when clearly everything else had been kept. Still no part of her brain had ever thought that he would hold onto the ring she’d yanked off and tossed at the dresser in that hotel room.

It was probably masochism that made her crack open the box and set eyes on it for the first time in over a year. It twinkled in the light just as she remembered, so perfect it was otherworldly. The blue diamond sat flanked by its white sisters on either side. It was her fantasy ring and it was painful beyond belief looking at it. The ring had been beautiful, everything had been beautiful, and what was it now? Some memory hidden away in a box where she couldn’t stand to see it. A black taint hung around it all like a bad aura.

Reese glanced down at her left hand, at the small little diamond sitting on top of its yellow band. There was a tight squeezing sensation in her chest; it made her ache for Drake’s presence. She wanted to be held, reassured that this was all behind her. If he had been there then she wouldn’t be in this house, wouldn’t be looking at this ring, she’d be looking at her future instead of her past. Her future was a much less painful place to contemplate; it was a heck a lot simpler. Still, somebody had to work some hours this week to pay for the wedding to begin that future. She had to be here so it had to be Drake.

“Reese? You in here?”

Nobody’s limbs could ever have worked with such speed as hers did then. Her hands were grabbing boxes and tossing them back in the drawers like her life depended on it. She had just got the last one away and shut the drawers when she heard the footsteps reach the closet.

“Yes, Justin.”

He appeared nervously in the doorframe, hands in his pockets. He’d got half way to Trace’s before deciding that he didn’t really want the company after all. “You find something?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“Sorry, I didn’t want to disturb you but I’m tired and…”

“No, no, I’ll get out of here and let you hit the sack. Goodnight.”

She ducked her head, a red flush hitting her cheeks as she scurried out past him.

“Night,” he replied to her retreating back.