If you read Love Novice and want to know the rest of Ben and Amelie's story,  you can now add 'Love Graduate' to your library . I completed it in April 2021.

CHAPTER 1: Ben

She looks different enough that I might have passed by her on the street and not known it's her. The 'find ten differences' pictures in the 'Highlights' magazine I loved as a child help because I spot the first five things from that one glance. Her hair, makeup, shoes, clothes, and jewelry—the most superficial ways to change a person, but I see their power. If she'd opened her mouth and started to speak French right now, I would be less surprised than I am when she speaks in the old Amielie's voice.

"May I come in?"

The formality of the request triggers the assembly line of the required etiquette, and I stretch my lips in a smile, step aside, thus clearing the entry into my house, one of her feet is making a maiden voyage into. The foot is clad in a high heel shoe—one. He dress—two— grazes the knee and swishes around as if there's wind, while the day is still and balmy. Her whole body is inside the foyer now.

She lifts her head and long earrings—three—make a jangling noise as looks around, and I inspect her features: the bridge of her nose, the shape of her eyes, the sharpness of her cheekbones, the almost pointed chin are as symmetrical as when I've watched her laughing at the bar six years ago. I marvel at the impossibly perfect proportions of her face—an abnormality in the human race and yet what we base our definition of beauty on.

The makeup—four— gives her face the polish and grace she didn't use to have, and maybe it's not a bad change, but I would prefer to see her face naked, without it, every trace that is covering up my Amelie washed away.

Her hair is lighter, and it's the most jarring change of all—five. It's also artificially straight because I've seen Amelie drying her wavy hair many times before, ran my fingers through the slight curls, looked at them fanning around her pillow when she slept.

Her eyes. I stare into the chocolate brown, and she's staring back. The direct line between us can be measured by the distance between her irises and mine and it is too long. I take a step towards her.

"Are you going to close the door, or are we expecting someone else?" She says, and I drop my gaze, turn around, close the door and lean on it.

Her voice is the same, and it's comforting that she's in there somewhere, my old Amelie.

"There's so much space—it makes total sense why you offered it for the baby shower," she says, and I close my eyes, listening and seeing the Amelie I knew before, in jeans, t-shirt, ballet-flats, messy waves, and no-makeup or jewelry. It's that Amelie, my Amelie, that keeps talking."We can fit a lot of people into your great room. Is it OK if I go see the kitchen?"

Her heels click on the tile of the foyer, then the sound changes to a dull clop, and I know she's on the wood of the living room, it's muffled more—the carpet, crossing the sitting area—wood again and tile again. She's in the kitchen.

"It's magnificent and so open, and there's so much space."

"Ben. Ben? Are you coming?"

I should be joining her. I need to open my eyes.

Amelie inside my head is wearing ballet flats. Her shoes wouldn't be making the clicking noises on the tile, then wood, then carpet, then wood and then tile again, pausing back in the foyer.

"Ben? Are you OK?"

Click-clop. One step closer.

"Can you open your eyes for me, Ben?"

Amelie in my head would not smell of the perfume that's wafted back into the foyer and inside my nose. She would smell of her shampoo and the weird jasmine soap she insisted on using at her place.

Click-clop, click-clop. A hand on my shoulder. It feels like an average human hand, but then it doesn't as the tingling sensation I got addicted to when she first touched me all those years ago during our walk in the park returned. My Amelie disappears as I open my eyes and look at this Amelie in front of me with her makeup and different hair, and smell and a dress and her high heels and yet it's my Amelie underneath it all. The current inside her is the same, and my body reacts to it just as it did before. It needs her closer—I need her closer.

I push off the door and put both arms around her, in a hug that brings her chest flush with mine. I don't need to bury my nose in her hair like I used to do to smell her shampoo because the perfume is too overpowering for me to detect any other smells. He softness fits against me the same way it did before.

I stop breathing, close my eyes, and it's old Amelie again in my arms. I open my eyes, inhale, and it's the new one. I close and open, close and open them, and the two merge, and they are both my Amelie, different but the same. Now I'll be looking for the similarities too. I let go of her, take her hand, and without looking and this new-old Amelie combination, I tug her behind me in the same direction she's already been: over the tile, the wood, the carpet, the wood, and onto the tile of the kitchen.

"Mike helped me design it," I say. I point at the tripod and the additional clip-on lights. "These are for my YouTube channel and here," I drag her a couple more feet around the corner, "Is my studio for any stills of the food, the countertop is the same, you see, as in the kitchen, so it gives the illusion the photos are taken in the same space, but I can control the lighting better and I have this box here, that makes the shooting the food easy even for me."

I drag her behind me again, and we stand in the doors of my office. "This is my office, I decided to use this room on the first floor instead of the room upstairs, so I can hear if I have a timer going on the oven. I could've put another timer on the phone and come down from the second floor, but this makes more sense."

"Ben," Amelie's hand slips out of mine. "Can we maybe talk a bit, and then you give me the tour of the rest of your house?"

"Sure."

We sit on the plush cushions of the modern couches across an equally modern coffee table that Angie helped me pick. Angie's taste is different from anything I like, and the first dozen couches she wanted me to buy would've belonged in my parent's house more than mine. It took Angie a while, but she figured out I much prefer clean and modern lines. Like the ones of this couch and the one opposite me.

"Angie's baby shower," says Amelie. "How many people do you think we can fit in here? Twenty?"

"I've never had more than"—Mom, Dad, Tall, Angie, Mike, Jaimie, Cole, Alex, Master Chang—"ten people at the same time here, one of them was a child, Alex, do you remember him?"

"Alex, yeah, the baby."

"He's five, and he's in kindergarten, and they live in the neighborhood too, moved right after Jaimie found out she's pregnant again."

"Jaimie's pregranat too?'

"Yes, another boy, but she's four months behind Angie. Her due date is on Christmas."

"Wow, so many babies," Angie says, as she stretches the hem of her dress over her knees, and moves closer to the edge of the couch. "The ten people party, did it feel crowded?"

"Not at all. We mostly hung out outside on the patio."

"Oh." She turns around to glance at the large floor to ceiling sliding doors behind her. "We could do that too. Let's see that in a moment. I'm thinking we should leave the guest list decision to Angie, won't you agree? I don't even know who she's hanging out with these days, and I want this to be as big of a party as possible, not just friends and family. Would you be OK with that?"

"I know all her friends. I can make a list."

"All her friends, you know them all?"

"Well, she probably has some people at the studio I haven't met, but I can send you a spreadsheet with the names, where she knows them from, and whatever contact information I have, and then you can run them by Angie."

"That works too. The less she has to do—the better. I still can't believe it took me visiting Chicago to persuade her that having a baby shower before the baby is born is a perfectly normal thing to do. I'm staying in the baby's room, you know?"

This conversation is tedious, and although I hear every word she says, I don't care if she invites five people or twenty-five. I don't understand the baby shower tradition, and that's why I've never offered Angie to throw her one.

"We can order some catering and—"

"No, that's unnecessary. I'll cook."

"For thirty people?"

Last time it was twenty to twenty-five. She has not seen the list of Angie's guests yet. How has she arrived at thirty already?

"I can do thirty."

"Have you cooked food for thirty people before?"

"No."

"Catering may be best then, and you can do appetizers and desserts?"

"No, Amelie. Listen to me. I'm capable of making food for thirty people. I do not think there's going to be thirty people at Angie's party, but even if there would, I can take care of the food. You can leave it to me." I need to pace or to stim, and I grab a pen off the coffee table and twirl it between my fingers. She's not going to think that' weird.

"OK, but can we at least discuss what the food would be?"

"Yes, we can. I will email you a list of options together with the potential guest list. What's your email address?"

She rattles hers off, and it's the same as she had before.

"What's yours?" she asks.

"I haven't changed mine either. I have a new one for my video channel business, but you should use my personal one. Do you still have it?"

"Mmm, I'm not sure. Best if you give it to me again."

I do, even though I have hers memorized, as well as the phone number she used to have five years ago.

"What's your phone number?" I ask. That one couldn't have stayed the same.

"Oh, I just got this cheap pay as you go phone, I don't have it memorized. Give me your number, and I'll text you from my phone, so you'll have it."

"My number is the same. I haven't changed it either," I say.

"OK, can you give it to me, please?"

"You don't remember it?"

"No, Ben, I don't remember your phone number after five years away in France."

The way she phrases it and how she leans back onto the couch, her proper pose forgotten, gives me an indication she might be upset.

"Did I upset you?" I ask.

"No," she says, and then she gets off her couch, walks around the coffee table, and sits down right next to me on my couch. Not right next to me—there are ten inches of space between us. She sighs. She opens the handbag she's been carrying on her shoulder and takes out a phone, fumbles with it, and then stretches it out my way.

"Can you please put your number and your email address into my phone so that I have it?"

"OK," I say and record my information, save it and give it back to her.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome," I say. I'm following the protocol of a polite first meeting between people, but we are not those people.

And I want to run my fingers against the naked expanse of her skin, from the top of the shoulder, where the sleeve of her dress begins, down over the elbow and across the forearm, over the small wrist and a metal chain with various charms, and over the top of her hand, intertwining our fingers, like we used to do.

"I'd like to see the patio now. Is that OK? And the rest of the house, if you are up for a tour."

She stands up.

"OK," I say and stand up. I reach for Amelie's hand to lead her behind me as I did before. She doesn't grab it, so I look at her, trying to figure out what I should or shouldn't be doing now. What's the etiquette for two people who were lovers but haven't seen each other in five years. It's clear we are not starting back where we left off, but what's wrong with us holding hands.

"You don't want to hold my hand?" I ask.

"Ben. I can just follow you, you know. You don't need to lead me by hand."

She doesn' want to hold my hand then. OK. Not OK, because the lack of her hand is painful, not the rejection of her words, but the absence of her touch. I blink, and the layer of old Amelie disappears off this new one. I can't force it to stay: the old Amelie is gone. I look at my hand, shove it into my pocket as if having it out of sight would lessen the almost physical feeling of emptiness.

"The patio then, this way." And I hear the click-clop of new Amelie's heels behind me on the carpet, on the wood, and on the patio stones outside. 

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