While I Was Away(67)

“Intuited?”

“Yes.”

“Adele – you begged a nurse to tell you where my hang out spot was, then you went there and got a waitress to tell you I'd left on vacation,” he called her out. She rolled her eyes.

“Well, yeah, but then I intuited your whereabouts. Very impressive, if I do say so myself.”

He snorted at her and they both laughed, then they got down to the business of peeling the crusts off their sandwiches. A wayward butterfly flitted between them, then disappeared back into the trees.

“How did your sister die?” she asked. He glanced at her again, then struggled to swallow a mouthful of peanut butter.

“You mean you don't already know?” he asked back.

“You only mentioned her once, I didn't press it.”

He looked back down at his sandwich and nodded.

“I only told one story about her, I don't think I mentioned her death. Appendicitis – ridiculous, right? But it burst, and the sepsis set in, and it happened so fast, there wasn't anything they could do. She was here one day, gone the next.”

“Jesus, I'm sorry, Jones.”

“Me, too. But she wasn't scared, not even in the end. She was glad she got to say goodbye to everyone.”

“She was in L.A.?”

“Yeah. I got there just in time, maybe four hours before she passed away, then stayed through the funeral. I think that's part of what made me think of L.A. when I decided to move. Despite how shitty everything was, I liked the city. It felt right being there,” he said, then paused as he was about to take another bite of his sandwich. “It's weird, isn't it? So many different, random things that wound up bringing us together. If I'd moved any earlier or later, there wouldn't have been that job opening at your hospital. If you'd had your accident any earlier or later, I might not have been assigned to you.”

“I think about things like that a lot,” she said.

He finished off his sandwich, then cracked open a beer. She glanced at the bottle, then did a double take. Stella Artois. The same brand they'd had in her dreams. She smiled and watched while he necked down half the bottle. It wasn't exactly hot out, but they were sitting in direct sunlight with no shade to filter it.

“It freaked me out at first, when you would talk about stuff like that,” Jones confessed. “I didn't believe it, and so I thought there was something wrong with you. Like genuinely, maybe some lingering damage from the coma. I was mad at you for getting me in trouble, but I also though you really needed help.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“But now ... it feels right, doesn't it?” he asked, looking at her in earnest. All the plants around them set off his eyes, making the green almost come alive and blaze. “Months of talking to you in the hospital, I should've realized it would feel natural talking to you in the real world.”

“I might not be quite as good a listener now,” she chuckled.

“And you knowing me – god, you know me so well. The way you talk to me, it's like you've been talking to me forever. I hated that at first, too. But now ...” his voice trailed off as he searched for words.

“Now it's not so bad?” she hoped.

“No. It's nice. It makes talking to you so easy. It makes me feel like I know you, too; like we already knew each other. So everything just feels ... natural. We've only really known each other for what, like twenty-four hours? We shouldn't be this comfortable together,” he laughed, gesturing at the secluded field around them. “For all you know, I'm some secret rapist serial killer.”

“Ah, but you're forgetting – I do know you, which means I know you're not a rapist serial killer,” she teased. “So I will happily follow you off the beaten path.”

He didn't laugh.

“I don't know if that's such a good idea, Adele,” he said. “The thing is, we don't actually know each other. I have to keep reminding myself that.”

“But why?” she argued, wanting to add that he was wrong but biting back the words.

“When we go home, I'm going to go back to my job – I work eight-to-ten hour days, sometimes longer. I barely have a social life as it is. You live on the other side of town, and you'll be getting a job of your own. I just ... I don't want you to get hurt.”

Adele frowned at him.

“I don't want that, either. Are you saying we can't be friends after this?” she asked.

“Of course we can be friends. I think the universe has made it very clear that we were meant to be in each others lives,” Jones tried to joke. “But I can't promise you anything beyond that. It feels magical right now because we're here, because we're alone together. When we go home, it'll fade away. You'll see. I just don't want you to be disappointed.”

She didn't see. She didn't see that at all. It hadn't faded away in all the time she'd been awake, and she didn't think it ever would. Besides that, she didn't want it to – she wanted to feel this way about him forever.

She also didn't believe him one bit. She stared at him while he picked at his half eaten orange. He was just talking. Still refusing to believe. This thing between them was all around them, in the air, in their blood, and yet he still refused to acknowledge it. He was clinging to what was safe and known, what was reasonable and logical, refusing to take that jump into the unknown with her.