THE RETURN

Chapter 2

She stopped in her tracks and closed her eyes briefly. There was no way that voice was the voice she thought it was. "Olivia?" she heard again. She turned her and Noah's body slowly around. When her brown orbs made contact with his baby blues, she clutched onto Noah's shoulders a little tighter.

"Owww Mom." Noah explained as he wiggled his shoulders out of Olivia's grasp.

She tore her eyes from the blue ones in front of her and looked down at her son, "I'm sorry baby."

Noah nodded his head and looked at the man who had caught his mom's attention. "Hi, I'm Noah," he said as he reached his hand out and gave a smile.

The man let go of the door he was still holding to kneel down to Noah's eye level, "Hi Noah, I'm Elliot." He grabbed his hand and gave it a firm shake.

"Mom has a picture of you and her in one of her drawers."

Elliot couldn't help but smile, "Does she now?" He glanced up at the woman who he hadn't seen in a eight years. She was even more beautiful than he remembered. She was standing there in a perfect outfit for the upcoming summer weather in New York, in blue jeans that were rolled up at her ankles and a black t-shirt. Her feet were covered in a pair of white sneakers. Her brown locks had grown longer than he had ever seen and she had filled out in all the right places. His heart thumped louder as he took her in. He had missed her so much and obviously by the little boy in front of her, he had missed so much of her life. It had been way to long and the only person he had to blame was himself. When he realized that her eyes were on the ground, he looked back at Noah. "I have a few of your mom and I as well."

"You do? Can I see them?"

Elliot laughed, "Well I don't have them on me, they're at my apartment."

Noah turned around quickly to look at Olivia, "Mom, can we go see them? Please."

Elliot saw Olivia take a deep breath before she tore her eyes off the sidewalk to look up at Noah, "Noah, we don't just go inviting ourselves to people's places. We know that. Plus you have a game today, you have to get ready." As she spoke, Elliot slowly rose from his kneeling position to a standing one once more.

Noah, always the voice of the reason, spoke before Elliot could, "But mom, my game isn't until five. It's only like nine, that's plenty of enough time to go see the pictures and get home to get ready." Elliot let out a small chuckle at Noah's explanation, causing both mother and son to look at him. Well, Noah looked at him, Olivia more glared. "Can we go over to your place Elliot?"

"Noah." Olivia warned.

Elliot looked at her as she finally made eye contact with him. She took a minute, as he had, to look over him. He had the same blue eyes and muscular build he always had. Actually he looked more muscular now than he did before, how was that even possible? His hairline had receded a bit more and he was mostly grey haired. He had allowed a slight trimmed beard to grow on his face. The most obvious thing came into focus when he crossed his arms over his chest, his left ring finger was bare. As they continued to look in eachother's eyes, he could see the pain and betrayal in them. He never knew what he was going to say to her if he ever saw her again, which is the reason he stayed away for as long as he did. After he got his shit together, he tried numerous times to convince himself to go see her but each time he chickened out because he knew there weren't any words that could fix what he had broken between them. So instead of seeing her, he wrapped himself up in a new job that had kept him away. Hoping that they still shared the ability to communicate with their eyes, he tried to tell her how sorry he was and how much he had missed her. When he noticed her eyes began to fill with unshed tears, he tried to step towards her. In response, she took a step back and broke their eye contact to look at the floor once more. He sighed and looked back at Noah, "You should get ready for your game bud. Maybe you can come over some other time."