Break In

Ariadne stirred the ketchup around on her plate with a French fry. Tommy downed the last of his Coke and crossed his arms over his chest. She looked up at him and sighed.

"Are we going to talk?" she asked.

"Um, sure," Tommy said. "How have you been? How's your family?"

"I've been in and out of jobs to support a guy I'm not really in love with," Ariadne said. "He doesn't even know my name, really. Thinks I'm Daphne, sometimes Ariel. But he needed me. He would have died if I hadn't stayed for so long. He would have drank himself into the hospital, maybe a coma. But I stayed because I suppose that's my nature with people I feel like I'm supposed to care for.

"Last I heard from mom, she was living in the projects with some guy she'd met," she continued. "Calliope dropped out of college and moved to NYC with her latest squeeze; she's turned out to be quite the gold digger. And Demeter..."

She paused, collecting herself. She ran a hand nervously through her hair and sighed again.

"Demeter got pregnant," she started. "The guy left her, the baby died of SIDS when he was about six months old, and about a week ago, she disappeared. She sent me a letter implying she had...k-killed herself."

"Oh my god," Tommy said. "Ari, I'm so sorry. I wish I'd known sooner, I would have -"

"What?" Ariadne scoffed. "Saved her? No one could have. Maybe...maybe I could have, but...it's too late now."

Tommy held out his hand and said, "I'm so, so sorry."

"Enough about me," said Ariadne, ignoring Tommy's hand. "I haven't seen you in ten years. What have you-"

"Fifteen."

"What?"

"It's been fifteen years since I moved."

"No. No, it hasn't. It..has it?"

Tommy nodded and pulled his hand back. "Believe me, I know. I've counted, I guess."

"Wow..." Ariadne shook her head. "Tommy, I'm so sorry. I guess it didn't feel that long to me. How have you been?"

"Well, mom died," Tommy said, "and I joined the Marines shortly after. Came back and got into fighting."

"Fighting?"

"I was, uh, in Sparta last year," said Tommy.

"I knew it was you," chuckled Ariadne. "You looked so...different. Yeah, but I knew it was you."

"Ari, I'm a different person now. And I can't promise I'll be the same Tommy you knew fifteen years ago."

"What do you mean?" asked Ariadne.

"A lot of things happened to me, and it's changed me. Not for the better sometimes. After you left me, I-"

"Wait," Ariadne snorted sarcastically. "I left you?"

"I needed you, and you weren't there," Tommy said. "So yeah. You left."

"You left me!" said Ariadne. "You and your mother left town, and I didn't hear a damn word from you after that-"

"You were supposed to come with."

"I was thirteen years old, Tommy. What did you want me to do?"

"You were young, so you couldn't come with me? I needed you there with me. You and my brother both left me, and I had no one. I needed you-"

"Don't gimme that bullshit, Tommy. You asked me to give up my family and my friends and my home to just get up and leave without another word at thirteen. You wouldn't even speak to me. I called your house every night-"

"For a year. Pops already told me. Doesn't change anything. You didn't try to find me."

"You left a teenage girl heartbroken and lonely for five years before I got out of this hellhole. I gave up trying to find you because you made yourself invisible. And then you show up at Sparta last year and everything came rushing back. I was in Atlantic City. I bought tickets to see you fight. I did everything I could to maybe see you...but in the end, I got scared, and I went back to New York. I had convinced myself you didn't want to see me. You had distanced yourself to get away from me."

Ariadne felt a tear run down her cheek, and she harshly pushed it off.

"So don't tell me I didn't try," she said, "because that's all I ever did."