Need some advice!

I'm struggling with how to reunite two characters

My main character is a male who works for the CIA. After a job gone wrong in Russia, that cost the life of his father and had him held captive for 18 months, he escaped and went back to the states. He didn't contact his family or friends to tell them he was back (they aren't sure of he's dead or alive) because he wanted to lay low and didn't want to put his loved ones in danger.
So when he gets back, he reunites with his family and his friends. The reunion I'm stuck in is between him and the girl he loves.
When he left she told him she wouldn't wait for him, that she couldn't. But she still cares. So after he's gone for 6 years and she's moved on (has a new place and a new boyfriend) he comes back and is nervous about seeing her again.
This is where I'm stuck. I'm not sure how to reunite them, what they might say to eachother or how it might happen. I'm stuck because she doesn't know that he chose not to come home when he got back from Russia. When she sees him she's going to think he just got back. Do I start out with the whole truth? Or have him keep it from her? Or change it altogether and have him call but not come home when he returns?
Any and advice or ideas would be very much appreciated

Author's Note

Please please please give me some thoughts

Reviews

[JayG]

Without seeing part of the story, to see how you're presenting it, it'
s difficult to make a suggestion. The problem is, only you know the story and its flow. We're not following someone interesting with a camera, there is, and must be, a progression of scenes as tension steadily builds to a climax. So instead, some generalities:

Stories, at their heart, are about a protagonist, someone who has a problem enter their life that must be addressed, and resolved, or else—with disaster if it's not.

The structure of the average story, from the beginning of storytelling is:

• We meet the protagonist and develop an emotional connection. Then things go to hell and the protagonist is tested.
• The protagonist desperately tries to regain control of the situation, but fails.
• Again they try, but again fail. This continues, in scene after scene, failure after failure, with the danger increasing and the options narrowing, until it's all or nothing at the climax, where poetic justice demands that our steadfast hero snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
• In the denouement our hero learns what his reward is.

That structure is a constant be the goal a date for the prom or saving the world. The plot changes, but the structure is the hero's journey, the thing that gets us cheering for the protagonist.

You can see from that, that there is no place to stop and let our hero focus on romancing his old friend without losing all the momentum built to that time.

That doesn't say he can't meet her again, and have the result be what you hope for. It does mean, though, that the meeting be within the framework of the story's progression.

One thing you need to decide is what the story is about. By that I don't mean the plot. I'm talking about the thrust of the plot. It could be learning to trust, be careful what you wish for, coming of age, finding love, or a hundred others. But without that you're just meandering and the story will have no focus and the protagonist will neither change nor grow.

The reason I mention all this is that if you build your knowledge of the skills unique to fiction for the printed word and the strengths and weaknesses the medium imposes, the answers to your questions may suggest themselves. Or better yet your protagonist may tell you what to do. It is, after all, his story. So he damn well better have some say in how he handles his life.

It might help to read this article, on the basic structure of a story:
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/2011/06/27/the-grumpy-writing-coach-6/

Another resource worth looking at is Debra Dixon's, GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict, available from any online bookseller. It's a warm easy read, and a bargain att twice the price.

Hope this helps

Jay Greenstein
jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/