It was a clear, crisp winter day.  The clouds had cleared and the sun was shining down to warm the bodies crowded into the tight seats at the lunch counter of Marty’s Diner.

Paul sipped his coffee thoughtfully.  The cold weather always made him nostalgic.  How long had it been?  Ten years?  No, more than that, since that winter night when he had met Sean.  The man sighed and brushed silky brown curls away from his face.  Though his frame had become a bit too thin, Paul was still young and handsome despite his hardships.  His pleasant features were marred only by the troubled look in his pale blue eyes.

When would the memory stop haunting him, Paul wondered?  Time went by, but that fateful meeting never seemed to fade.  No matter how many times the brunette berated himself for lingering in the past, it never helped.  He’d been so young then, perhaps that was why meeting someone like Sean had affected him so much, and why he couldn’t seem to let it go.  Maybe he was still clinging to the vain dreams of youth.

Paul had thought the world had gone to pieces when the market crashed on Black Thursday, but it hadn’t affected his family the way it had the rest of America.  He’d just been a boy at the time.  He hadn’t been able to appreciate what was going on and he had acted rebellious and insolent to his family.  Meeting Sean had changed everything for him.  If only things had turned out differently.  So much had happened since then.  He’d grown up, learned to fend for himself, and then came the War.  Paul shut his eyes.  He wouldn’t think about that, the memory was too black and too fresh.

The door at the front of the small diner opened, ringing the bell that hung above the doorway.  Absentmindedly, Paul glanced at the newcomer.  His eyes narrowed, then the pale orbs flew open wide in recognition.

It couldn’t be.

Paul tore his eyes away from the sight of the tall, sandy-haired man who had just entered.  His heart was racing.  The rush of blood to his head made him dizzy and his face flushed red.

“Paul, honey, you ok?” asked the woman behind the counter.  Everyone there knew him; he came in regularly enough.

“I’m fine, Gladys ” the brunette replied.  Though he clearly wasn’t, the older woman let the matter be.

Slowly, Paul ventured another glance in the other man’s direction.  The man with the dark blonde hair was sitting down at a table not too far away.  Another man sat opposite him, smiling.  Paul ignored him and took a closer look at the newcomer.  He caught sight of the greenest pair of eyes he’d ever seen and his heart stopped momentarily.  There was no doubt.  It was Sean.

Oh, God…

In a flash, Paul was pushed back in time, stranded and stray on the road, passing a small campfire when the man sitting near it caught his eye.  In that one breath, he was living both moments at once.  The man’s presence wrapped around him, filling the hidden, wounded places in his soul.  He was that young boy again, unsure and lost; and he was the grown man, looking back on a part of his past he wanted to forget. Paul had never expected to see him again.  He’d convinced himself it was impossible.  Yet here he was, not a dozen feet from the man who’d altered his life.

Hanging his head, Paul watched the other man through the curls that draped over his vision.  He watched Sean’s movements as if they were in slow motion, noting every gesture, every expression with significance.

“What’s your name, kid?”

Sean’s voice echoed in his mind, and the recollection was so strong, Paul flinched, wondering if he’d been spoken to in the present.  But no, he hadn’t been seen.  His stomach dropped.

This was too cruel.  Why was he seeing Sean now, when it was obviously too late?  It pulled at heartstrings so tender and painful, to be in Sean’s presence and not have those startling green eyes watching him- assessing him the way they had that night.  In the light of the fire they had glittered and struck him, holding him in place and fixing his tongue to the roof of his mouth.  There was too much intensity there, and too much understanding.  He had not wanted it then- he’d wanted only absence, only silence, only solitude.  But the man had given Paul everything he never knew he needed, never knew he’d secretly wished and longed for.

Sean had made him smile when he’d thought there would never be anything to be happy about ever again.  Paul was such a child then, and he’d thought the other man so much older.  Now he realized Sean could not have been even thirty years old, the age Paul was now.  He looked more closely at the emerald eyes he knew so well.  There were little crinkles about Sean’s eyes, a more mature look to his features, but he was as handsome as ever.  The hint of age made him more dignified, and more attractive.

The dark blonde smiled at the man seated across from him and Paul’s heart constricted.  He hated the sight of him laughing with another man.  Paul ran a hand through his hair nervously, falling into the habits of youth.  At the mere sight of the honey-haired man, all of Paul’s old longing and desire burned with a sudden, keen fire.

Paul’s mind was in turmoil.  His emotions were too thick, too forceful.  They pressed in around him and held him down, just as Sean’s gaze had frozen him back then.  However, now the choice was his.  Paul could stay or go without the man ever knowing.  He could walk away and forget, finally closing the door on the memory and pretending he had never stepped up to the warmth of that campfire and those emerald eyes so many years ago.  Paul found he just could not do it.  He couldn’t leave.  He could not forget this man.  Hadn’t he been trying in vain to do just that for over a decade?

When Sean’s friend rose to make a call, Paul saw the blonde man’s face lose its facile, jovial countenance.  The dark blonde took on a thoughtful, melancholy expression.  Perhaps he was not so happy after all, Paul thought.  The idea spurred him on.  If the man had been truly happy, he might not have been able to face him.  It would have meant that Sean’s life was complete without him, that the emptiness Paul felt ever since they had parted did not haunt Sean in the same way.

Moved by an impulse that he could not control, Paul rushed to the man’s table and sat down before him…