Going Left Around the World: Chapter 70
Title: Going Left Around the World
Author: mrs-spamlad
Pairing: Jack/Ennis
Rating: R
Feedback: have at it!
Disclaimer: Brokeback Mountain and the original characters of Jack and Ennis were created by and belong to Annie Proulx. No money is being made from this- I’m just taking them out for a spin!
A/N: Apologies for the long pause. I keep telling myself I’m going to start a blog (if I knew the first thing about blogging) so maybe some of you would get an idea of what goes on in my life. I swear, most of the time it’s crazier than a fandom story. Anyway, onward we go.
I haven’t gotten much done in the way of writing this summer. I’m several chapters into the sequel to Featherweight Heart, but those stories, although written with J & E, don’t go up on LJ.
I’m at a standstill when it comes to editing this story for submission which grates on my nerves on a daily basis and is, I suspect, a large part of the reason for the slowdown in my writing. I need to get this story gone first and I’m just… stuck, so nothing is happening. Very frustrating.
Here is the next installment - I can at least do that! Something to keep in mind - I know we would all like to know the details of every conversation that Jack and Ennis had, rehashing what they’d gone through, both together and separately, but I don’t think it’s realistic at this point, and I’m not sure it’s relevant. First of all, this story is already a monster, barely making the cut-offs to split it into three novels. To add all that additional background would tip the word-count scales tremendously. Secondly, it’s important that they talk, yes. But at this point in the story, I think who they are now and whether or not they work together is what’s most important. We already know who they were, we know enough - some specifics, some general - about what went on when they were apart. I’m a strong believer in not spoon-feeding readers, and letting people make their own inferences or draw their own conclusions. I don’t need to fill in ever blank. That’s just my two cents. Anyway, thanks for the nudge, and happy reading.
jill
Chapter 70
I didn’t want to be a total pain in the ass, so I waited until after work on Monday to call Josh. I sat down on the oversized chair in my living room and dialed.
“Hey!” he said when he picked up the phone. “You waited longer than I thought you would.”
“What the hell?” I said.
He laughed. “Like I don’t know the reason you’re calling me the second I walk in the door.” I heard the rustling of fabric as he took his coat off.
“Okay, then. Spill.”
“Why don’t you ask him?” he said.
I heaved a frustrated sigh and ran my fingers through my hair. “I did! He wouldn’t tell me. He said it was up to you.”
“I guess that’s fair since the talk was my idea.”
“Jesus, what talk?”
“All right, fine. I just wanted a few minutes with him to see what was going on. That’s it.”
“Why didn’t you just ask me?”
“You’re not the one who stomped all over you and your heart and then showed up like magic a decade later.”
“We talked about that stuff. Some, anyway.”
“I know. He told me.”
“So, why the friend-tervention?”
Josh sighed. “I knew from what you told me that you guys got kind of close again, kind of fast.”
“It wasn’t fast!” I protested automatically. “Well, okay, it was a little fast. But what did you have to say to him?”
“I wanted to know what his intentions were,” Josh said.
I laughed. “Are you fucking kidding me? Did you discuss my dowry, too?”
“No, not like that. I just wanted to know where he’s going with this. Why he showed up, if he was trying to… rekindle things.”
“I think he hopes so,” I said, glad to finally contribute something to the discussion.
“He does. But he’s cautious, too. He knows how bad he screwed up before - at least I think he does - so he’s going slow. Which is good; he needs to know. It sounds cheesy, but I think he’s glad just to be around you again.”
“He knows how bad he messed up. We had a fight yesterday morning and I let a lot of shit fly.”
“Ah. He mentioned that you had ‘shared some of what you had been through’.”
I snorted. “Something like that. With a lot of yelling and swearing. I just didn’t want him to think it was easy, or that it’s easy now to just have him around again. I mean, yeah, in some ways it’s nice, but sometimes it just reminds me how much shit is between us. It still feels… unresolved.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t resolve it,” he said.
“Wait, are you actually on his side?”
“There aren’t sides. I do think you need to work through some things, but I also think it’s easy to get too hung up on the past. I feel better after talking with him. He seems different. He said he was glad I was there for you when he wasn’t. That’s pretty big for him.”
“Yeah, it is. Especially considering that morning he accused you of just trying to get in my pants.”
“I see. I’m guessing that’s when the fight started.”
I sighed. “Yep. I totally defended your honor.”
He snickered. “Gee, thanks. It’s all right. I’m not surprised he thinks that.” Silence. “If I’m honest, he’s not completely wrong.”
“Shut the hell up! You were not,” I said.
“Not primarily, no. I was your friend first, but… c’mon, Jack. You have to know I was attracted to you from the beginning.”
“I know, but that wasn’t the point. He made it sound like it was sleazy, like you hired someone to off him just so you could move in. He was way off base and he needed to know it.”
“Does he know anything else?” he asked.
“Such as?”
“That you and I messed around when you guys were getting together in the beginning.”
I blew out a long breath. “No. I thought about it, but I couldn’t figure out what good it would do. You know that thing about how you shouldn’t confess something to make yourself feel better when it will only make the other person feel worse?”
“Yeah.”
“So, I went with that,” I said.
“Fair enough. I just wanted to be sure. So, what’s the plan from here?”
“He says he wants us to spend time together again. Asked if I’d come and visit him in Albany.”
“And you said?”
“Probably, yes. I don’t know. It was good being with him again this weekend, but I’m so fucking paranoid that I’ll get off track and just end up in bed with him.”
“There is a track that leads to bed. Haven’t you heard of make-up sex?” he said.
“I think we’re past make-up sex… or maybe not anywhere near it. I don’t know,” I said.
“Just think about it. You don’t have to decide anything right now.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m just afraid that I will.”
We said goodbye and I wandered into the kitchen to find something for dinner, jostling my phone in my hand, wondering if I should just turn it off for the night. But I didn’t know if it was to keep Ennis from calling me, or the other way around.
I didn’t have to worry about it for long. The next morning, I woke up to an email from Ennis. I rolled over onto my back in bed and clicked to open the email on my phone.
Hey Jack,
I hope your week’s going well, and I hope I waited long enough to get in touch so that I don’t seem like a total loser. I had a great time last weekend, and I’m glad that you told me the stuff that you did. It was hard to hear, but I also needed to know.
Score one for Josh.
Anyway, I don’t have a lot to say, and I’m even worse at writing email than I am at talking in person, so that doesn’t bode well. I thought about calling but I wasn’t sure. I’m the one who dropped in on you out of nowhere, so I want to give you space if you need it. Or an easy way to blow me off if that’s what you need to do. I hope that’s not what happens, but I don’t think that should be my call.
Take care,
Ennis
Well. I hated feeling suspicious, but this was so not the Ennis I had known for almost twenty years. It seemed to me, after spending time with him, that he had really grown up, or grown into himself. Something. It felt real; he felt real. There was still that part of my brain, though - the one that doesn’t let you forget shit - that screamed about how hard I’d gotten screwed over and how long it had taken for me to become any version of myself that I could live with. That part said I should tell him to take a flying fucking leap just on general principle. But, just to make things difficult, hearts don’t work on general principle.
I didn’t email him back - maybe because it just wasn’t necessary, but maybe to make him worry and wonder a little bit. I waited until about eight-thirty that night and called him.
“Hello?”
“Hey. It’s Jack,” I said as I settled back into the corner of the couch.
“Hey! I don’t have your number saved, so I didn’t recognize the caller ID. I’m glad you called.”
“Yeah. I thought about emailing back, but this seemed better.”
“It is,” he said. “It’s good to hear your voice.”
I smiled in spite of myself. “Yeah. It was good to see you, too.”
Silence hummed between us for a few long seconds while I tried to figure out what came next.
“This is weird,” he said before I came up with anything.
“What’s weird? Me calling?”
“That, too. All of it, I guess. I know I’m the one who tracked you down, but it’s so… weird.”
“So you said,” I replied, my stomach knotting more than I cared to admit. “Too weird? Like, should-never-have-done-this weird?”
He laughed. “Hell, no! It’s the best thing I’ve done in a while. I’m just not sure…. It’s not like we can pick up where we left off, and I don’t want to.”
“No. Not a good place.”
“We’re both different now. It’s like I know you, but I don’t.”
“Tell me about it, Mr. ‘I’m gay’.” He snickered. “I never asked, but are you totally out? You were kind of quiet about it when you said it to me that first night at homecoming.”
He sighed. “I’m as out as I’m going to be.”
“Meaning?”
“I don’t lie about it if people ask, or if women… are interested. If I’m with someone, I’m really with them. You know, not terrified of PDAs, though I’ll probably never be totally comfortable with it. But I think that’s just who I am, not about who I’m with.”
I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. “Yeah, I can see that.”
“I’ll probably never be Grand Marshall of a Pride parade, but I’m good with where I’m at.”
“That’s the important thing.”
“Yep. As for why I was quiet about it when I told you….”
“Yes?”
“Truth? I just wanted a reason to get closer to you, even for a few seconds. I wasn’t sure if there would be any more than that.”
“Oh.” The word whooshed out on a breath. He was right; this was weird. Ennis angling for a few seconds of contact with me? Uncharted territory. “Well, maybe we should start over. Not over, really - way too much history for that.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I think you had the right idea. Maybe we start from where we are now. Who we are now, you know?”
“I do. And I’d like that very much.”
“Me, too.”
“So, what did you do at work today?” he asked, catching me off guard with the topic change.
“Huh?”
“I don’t know how you spend your days, so I’m finding out,” he said.
I grinned and shook my head. I didn’t have the first clue how to deal with this new Ennis, but I was loving every minute of it.
So, that’s how we went for the next month or so: emails, texts, phone calls. We didn’t talk every day, but I noticed that three days seemed to be about the limit before one of us would call. It was odd how easily he slipped back into my life. And as much as I tried to figure out the why of it, or to convince myself I still needed to be pissed off, or that he was just going to hurt me again, I couldn’t hold onto it. It’s like we just were, like a fact, like Monday comes after Sunday. I decided to go with it, wherever we were going, and to try not to overthink things.
We talked about everyday stuff, and things that had happened over the years we’d been out of touch, and, every so often, we’d get around to some serious shit. He wanted to know more about what it had been like for me after he left; I wanted to know what the fuck was going on in his head pretty much the entire time we were together. I didn’t ask it like that - I parceled it out in bits over time. I’d never been closeted, so I had no idea what that was like, what the world looked like from that viewpoint. While I still can’t say that I get it, he did his best to let me in, explain, and the best conclusion that I could come to was that, right or wrong, he didn’t see any other way back then.
I’d gotten comfortable with our routine, but a little over a month in, he threw me a curveball and made an official invitation for me to come visit. It was a Tuesday afternoon near the end of October, a good three days after he’d asked me, and I still had no fucking idea what my answer was. I wandered out of my office and out to the front desk - Chloe’s domain - and propped myself against her desk.
“What do you need?” she asked without looking away from her monitor, her fingers flying over the keyboard.
“Nothing,” I said, and sat silent for a few seconds. “Well, maybe something.”
She sighed, swiveled her chair to face me, and clasped her hands on her desk. “What is it? And don’t say ‘nothing’ again, because you walked around here like a zombie yesterday and I’d venture a guess that not much work is getting done today, either. So spit it out.”
Some days, I loved her bluntness. Not that day.
“It’s nothing,” I said, and started the retreat back to my office. I heard her footsteps behind me and as I slid back into my chair, she closed my office door and took up her usual post in one of the chairs across from my desk. I sat, still not speaking, and she looked dramatically at her watch. “Fine,” I said with a sigh. “Is there anything you absolutely need me for on Friday?”
She thought for a minute. “No,” she said, and then eyed me with a narrowed gaze. “Are you actually going to use some vacation time?”
I wrinkled my nose at her sarcasm. “Yes. No. Maybe.” I rubbed a hand over my face. “I don’t know.”
“All right, well I’m glad we got that cleared up.”
“Shut up. I’m having a personal crisis here,” I said.
She leaned forward. “Do tell.” I gave her the rundown on my invite, my lack of response, and subsequent agonizing. She listened attentively until I finished, and then she stood up, said, “Yes,” and headed for the door.
“Wait a minute! ‘Yes’ what?”
“You said you needed an answer for him. I’m telling you: it’s yes.”
“But what if -”
She held up a hand to cut me off. “‘What if’ a thousand things. So what? He’s hot, you’re both available, you were madly in love with him before, you might be again - of course you go! Worst case you don’t go back.”
I stared at her for a few long seconds, momentarily stunned by the clarity. I smiled. “Right. I won’t be here on Friday. If you could note that on the main schedule, I’d appreciate it.”
She smiled back. “Yes, sir.”
I texted Ennis later that night that I’d cleared my schedule and I’d be getting to Albany around mid-afternoon. Ten minutes later I had an email with directions to his condo.
today
yesterday
Author: mrs-spamlad
Pairing: Jack/Ennis
Rating: R
Feedback: have at it!
Disclaimer: Brokeback Mountain and the original characters of Jack and Ennis were created by and belong to Annie Proulx. No money is being made from this- I’m just taking them out for a spin!
A/N: Apologies for the long pause. I keep telling myself I’m going to start a blog (if I knew the first thing about blogging) so maybe some of you would get an idea of what goes on in my life. I swear, most of the time it’s crazier than a fandom story. Anyway, onward we go.
I haven’t gotten much done in the way of writing this summer. I’m several chapters into the sequel to Featherweight Heart, but those stories, although written with J & E, don’t go up on LJ.
I’m at a standstill when it comes to editing this story for submission which grates on my nerves on a daily basis and is, I suspect, a large part of the reason for the slowdown in my writing. I need to get this story gone first and I’m just… stuck, so nothing is happening. Very frustrating.
Here is the next installment - I can at least do that! Something to keep in mind - I know we would all like to know the details of every conversation that Jack and Ennis had, rehashing what they’d gone through, both together and separately, but I don’t think it’s realistic at this point, and I’m not sure it’s relevant. First of all, this story is already a monster, barely making the cut-offs to split it into three novels. To add all that additional background would tip the word-count scales tremendously. Secondly, it’s important that they talk, yes. But at this point in the story, I think who they are now and whether or not they work together is what’s most important. We already know who they were, we know enough - some specifics, some general - about what went on when they were apart. I’m a strong believer in not spoon-feeding readers, and letting people make their own inferences or draw their own conclusions. I don’t need to fill in ever blank. That’s just my two cents. Anyway, thanks for the nudge, and happy reading.
jill
Chapter 70
I didn’t want to be a total pain in the ass, so I waited until after work on Monday to call Josh. I sat down on the oversized chair in my living room and dialed.
“Hey!” he said when he picked up the phone. “You waited longer than I thought you would.”
“What the hell?” I said.
He laughed. “Like I don’t know the reason you’re calling me the second I walk in the door.” I heard the rustling of fabric as he took his coat off.
“Okay, then. Spill.”
“Why don’t you ask him?” he said.
I heaved a frustrated sigh and ran my fingers through my hair. “I did! He wouldn’t tell me. He said it was up to you.”
“I guess that’s fair since the talk was my idea.”
“Jesus, what talk?”
“All right, fine. I just wanted a few minutes with him to see what was going on. That’s it.”
“Why didn’t you just ask me?”
“You’re not the one who stomped all over you and your heart and then showed up like magic a decade later.”
“We talked about that stuff. Some, anyway.”
“I know. He told me.”
“So, why the friend-tervention?”
Josh sighed. “I knew from what you told me that you guys got kind of close again, kind of fast.”
“It wasn’t fast!” I protested automatically. “Well, okay, it was a little fast. But what did you have to say to him?”
“I wanted to know what his intentions were,” Josh said.
I laughed. “Are you fucking kidding me? Did you discuss my dowry, too?”
“No, not like that. I just wanted to know where he’s going with this. Why he showed up, if he was trying to… rekindle things.”
“I think he hopes so,” I said, glad to finally contribute something to the discussion.
“He does. But he’s cautious, too. He knows how bad he screwed up before - at least I think he does - so he’s going slow. Which is good; he needs to know. It sounds cheesy, but I think he’s glad just to be around you again.”
“He knows how bad he messed up. We had a fight yesterday morning and I let a lot of shit fly.”
“Ah. He mentioned that you had ‘shared some of what you had been through’.”
I snorted. “Something like that. With a lot of yelling and swearing. I just didn’t want him to think it was easy, or that it’s easy now to just have him around again. I mean, yeah, in some ways it’s nice, but sometimes it just reminds me how much shit is between us. It still feels… unresolved.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t resolve it,” he said.
“Wait, are you actually on his side?”
“There aren’t sides. I do think you need to work through some things, but I also think it’s easy to get too hung up on the past. I feel better after talking with him. He seems different. He said he was glad I was there for you when he wasn’t. That’s pretty big for him.”
“Yeah, it is. Especially considering that morning he accused you of just trying to get in my pants.”
“I see. I’m guessing that’s when the fight started.”
I sighed. “Yep. I totally defended your honor.”
He snickered. “Gee, thanks. It’s all right. I’m not surprised he thinks that.” Silence. “If I’m honest, he’s not completely wrong.”
“Shut the hell up! You were not,” I said.
“Not primarily, no. I was your friend first, but… c’mon, Jack. You have to know I was attracted to you from the beginning.”
“I know, but that wasn’t the point. He made it sound like it was sleazy, like you hired someone to off him just so you could move in. He was way off base and he needed to know it.”
“Does he know anything else?” he asked.
“Such as?”
“That you and I messed around when you guys were getting together in the beginning.”
I blew out a long breath. “No. I thought about it, but I couldn’t figure out what good it would do. You know that thing about how you shouldn’t confess something to make yourself feel better when it will only make the other person feel worse?”
“Yeah.”
“So, I went with that,” I said.
“Fair enough. I just wanted to be sure. So, what’s the plan from here?”
“He says he wants us to spend time together again. Asked if I’d come and visit him in Albany.”
“And you said?”
“Probably, yes. I don’t know. It was good being with him again this weekend, but I’m so fucking paranoid that I’ll get off track and just end up in bed with him.”
“There is a track that leads to bed. Haven’t you heard of make-up sex?” he said.
“I think we’re past make-up sex… or maybe not anywhere near it. I don’t know,” I said.
“Just think about it. You don’t have to decide anything right now.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m just afraid that I will.”
We said goodbye and I wandered into the kitchen to find something for dinner, jostling my phone in my hand, wondering if I should just turn it off for the night. But I didn’t know if it was to keep Ennis from calling me, or the other way around.
I didn’t have to worry about it for long. The next morning, I woke up to an email from Ennis. I rolled over onto my back in bed and clicked to open the email on my phone.
Hey Jack,
I hope your week’s going well, and I hope I waited long enough to get in touch so that I don’t seem like a total loser. I had a great time last weekend, and I’m glad that you told me the stuff that you did. It was hard to hear, but I also needed to know.
Score one for Josh.
Anyway, I don’t have a lot to say, and I’m even worse at writing email than I am at talking in person, so that doesn’t bode well. I thought about calling but I wasn’t sure. I’m the one who dropped in on you out of nowhere, so I want to give you space if you need it. Or an easy way to blow me off if that’s what you need to do. I hope that’s not what happens, but I don’t think that should be my call.
Take care,
Ennis
Well. I hated feeling suspicious, but this was so not the Ennis I had known for almost twenty years. It seemed to me, after spending time with him, that he had really grown up, or grown into himself. Something. It felt real; he felt real. There was still that part of my brain, though - the one that doesn’t let you forget shit - that screamed about how hard I’d gotten screwed over and how long it had taken for me to become any version of myself that I could live with. That part said I should tell him to take a flying fucking leap just on general principle. But, just to make things difficult, hearts don’t work on general principle.
I didn’t email him back - maybe because it just wasn’t necessary, but maybe to make him worry and wonder a little bit. I waited until about eight-thirty that night and called him.
“Hello?”
“Hey. It’s Jack,” I said as I settled back into the corner of the couch.
“Hey! I don’t have your number saved, so I didn’t recognize the caller ID. I’m glad you called.”
“Yeah. I thought about emailing back, but this seemed better.”
“It is,” he said. “It’s good to hear your voice.”
I smiled in spite of myself. “Yeah. It was good to see you, too.”
Silence hummed between us for a few long seconds while I tried to figure out what came next.
“This is weird,” he said before I came up with anything.
“What’s weird? Me calling?”
“That, too. All of it, I guess. I know I’m the one who tracked you down, but it’s so… weird.”
“So you said,” I replied, my stomach knotting more than I cared to admit. “Too weird? Like, should-never-have-done-this weird?”
He laughed. “Hell, no! It’s the best thing I’ve done in a while. I’m just not sure…. It’s not like we can pick up where we left off, and I don’t want to.”
“No. Not a good place.”
“We’re both different now. It’s like I know you, but I don’t.”
“Tell me about it, Mr. ‘I’m gay’.” He snickered. “I never asked, but are you totally out? You were kind of quiet about it when you said it to me that first night at homecoming.”
He sighed. “I’m as out as I’m going to be.”
“Meaning?”
“I don’t lie about it if people ask, or if women… are interested. If I’m with someone, I’m really with them. You know, not terrified of PDAs, though I’ll probably never be totally comfortable with it. But I think that’s just who I am, not about who I’m with.”
I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. “Yeah, I can see that.”
“I’ll probably never be Grand Marshall of a Pride parade, but I’m good with where I’m at.”
“That’s the important thing.”
“Yep. As for why I was quiet about it when I told you….”
“Yes?”
“Truth? I just wanted a reason to get closer to you, even for a few seconds. I wasn’t sure if there would be any more than that.”
“Oh.” The word whooshed out on a breath. He was right; this was weird. Ennis angling for a few seconds of contact with me? Uncharted territory. “Well, maybe we should start over. Not over, really - way too much history for that.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I think you had the right idea. Maybe we start from where we are now. Who we are now, you know?”
“I do. And I’d like that very much.”
“Me, too.”
“So, what did you do at work today?” he asked, catching me off guard with the topic change.
“Huh?”
“I don’t know how you spend your days, so I’m finding out,” he said.
I grinned and shook my head. I didn’t have the first clue how to deal with this new Ennis, but I was loving every minute of it.
So, that’s how we went for the next month or so: emails, texts, phone calls. We didn’t talk every day, but I noticed that three days seemed to be about the limit before one of us would call. It was odd how easily he slipped back into my life. And as much as I tried to figure out the why of it, or to convince myself I still needed to be pissed off, or that he was just going to hurt me again, I couldn’t hold onto it. It’s like we just were, like a fact, like Monday comes after Sunday. I decided to go with it, wherever we were going, and to try not to overthink things.
We talked about everyday stuff, and things that had happened over the years we’d been out of touch, and, every so often, we’d get around to some serious shit. He wanted to know more about what it had been like for me after he left; I wanted to know what the fuck was going on in his head pretty much the entire time we were together. I didn’t ask it like that - I parceled it out in bits over time. I’d never been closeted, so I had no idea what that was like, what the world looked like from that viewpoint. While I still can’t say that I get it, he did his best to let me in, explain, and the best conclusion that I could come to was that, right or wrong, he didn’t see any other way back then.
I’d gotten comfortable with our routine, but a little over a month in, he threw me a curveball and made an official invitation for me to come visit. It was a Tuesday afternoon near the end of October, a good three days after he’d asked me, and I still had no fucking idea what my answer was. I wandered out of my office and out to the front desk - Chloe’s domain - and propped myself against her desk.
“What do you need?” she asked without looking away from her monitor, her fingers flying over the keyboard.
“Nothing,” I said, and sat silent for a few seconds. “Well, maybe something.”
She sighed, swiveled her chair to face me, and clasped her hands on her desk. “What is it? And don’t say ‘nothing’ again, because you walked around here like a zombie yesterday and I’d venture a guess that not much work is getting done today, either. So spit it out.”
Some days, I loved her bluntness. Not that day.
“It’s nothing,” I said, and started the retreat back to my office. I heard her footsteps behind me and as I slid back into my chair, she closed my office door and took up her usual post in one of the chairs across from my desk. I sat, still not speaking, and she looked dramatically at her watch. “Fine,” I said with a sigh. “Is there anything you absolutely need me for on Friday?”
She thought for a minute. “No,” she said, and then eyed me with a narrowed gaze. “Are you actually going to use some vacation time?”
I wrinkled my nose at her sarcasm. “Yes. No. Maybe.” I rubbed a hand over my face. “I don’t know.”
“All right, well I’m glad we got that cleared up.”
“Shut up. I’m having a personal crisis here,” I said.
She leaned forward. “Do tell.” I gave her the rundown on my invite, my lack of response, and subsequent agonizing. She listened attentively until I finished, and then she stood up, said, “Yes,” and headed for the door.
“Wait a minute! ‘Yes’ what?”
“You said you needed an answer for him. I’m telling you: it’s yes.”
“But what if -”
She held up a hand to cut me off. “‘What if’ a thousand things. So what? He’s hot, you’re both available, you were madly in love with him before, you might be again - of course you go! Worst case you don’t go back.”
I stared at her for a few long seconds, momentarily stunned by the clarity. I smiled. “Right. I won’t be here on Friday. If you could note that on the main schedule, I’d appreciate it.”
She smiled back. “Yes, sir.”
I texted Ennis later that night that I’d cleared my schedule and I’d be getting to Albany around mid-afternoon. Ten minutes later I had an email with directions to his condo.
today
yesterday