The moment her fingers touched his face a shiver raced through John's entire body and without thinking he closed his eyes and leaned in to the touch, pressing his cheek back lightly against her hand. It was real. The tips of her fingers were warm against his face, warm and solid, and she was still there. She was still there. She wasn't a hallucination or an image that too much alcohol had brought to torture him, this was real.
"I dreamed about you all the time," he said, opening his eyes and with more confidence than before he reached up and covered her hand, the one that was on his cheek, and laced their fingers together. His dreams of her were always a mixed bag of things; sometimes bad, sometimes good, sometimes she'd vanish, sometimes she'd scold him or laugh bitterly and more recently, she'd come to him with yellow eyes. Those were the worst ones, to hug your long-dead wife and pull back only to find yellow eyes looking back at you.
Her eyes were still blue. And she wasn't laughing at him or taunting him with cruel words.
He wanted to fold her in his arms, bury his face in what he knew was soft hair and breathe her in, for just a moment, and he stepped closer to her, hoping that he wasn't rebuffed when he tried.