Page 228 of Sweetbitter Song

For a moment, they can only stare at each other, too afraid to move, in fear that this moment may shatter.

And then, all at once, they are running.

Their bodies are not as fast as they once were; time has taken that gift from them. Yet still, they run with the wild abandon of youth, as if they were children once again, sand spraying behind them like laughter.

Then they halt, just inches away, both struck by a sudden shyness in the face of all that is between them.

The red-haired woman reaches out; she cannot help herself. She needsto know this is real, that it isn’t just another torturous dream the morning will soon snatch from her. With trembling hands, she traces the lines on the other woman’s face—some of them familiar, some new, but every detail just as beautiful as on the last night she beheld her.

Her touch is filled with a desperate kind of reverence, fingers trailing over lovely, salt-stung cheeks, down that sharp nose, winding their way to those devastatingly soft lips.

The gray-eyed woman smiles and whispers against her fingertips, “Melantho.”

“Penelope,” she whispers back.

And they know they are finally home.