Lunarayletters

You have always aspired to be perfect in anything you do, but as you grew older and started your nursing career, physical limitations had to be implemented so you don’t injure yourself.

Jack Abbot knew that you have always felt insecure about not being able to fulfil some of you duties at work and it never, ever bothered him or anyone else, except you. Jack fell in love with you not because you are a great nurse, but because you are an amazing person who is kind, hard working and wonderful. No matter how much he told you how brilliant you are, at home and work, you never fully believed it. So Jack came up with a different way to show just how great you really are. The perfect list.

⋆ ──── ♡ ──── ⋆

It was around midnight that the ache in your back starts to bother you, but worry not because Jack would be on the case reminding you to catch up on charting. A subtle way of telling you to sit down and have a break, without showing favouritism. It was you, actually who told him off for caring way too much about you at work, whereas Jack on the other hand would have shouted it from the rooftop for the entire city to hear on how much he truly cares about you.

“I still have a few patients to see”

“Don’t care” Jack gives you a lazy smile, “sit down”

“Abbot-“

“Who the hell is Abbot!”

“Baby stop…”

He immediately smirks at the way you softly say baby, “that’s it… I was wondering if I was put in the dog house for a minute..”

“I have so much to do”

“And I…” he leans in, “don’t care”

You shake your head at him in disappointment, but still do as he says and sit down. 

“Now what would you like to drink?” He asks, still smirking, clearly pleased with his bossy tone that you cannot resist.

“Don’t you have patients to attend to?”

“That’s what residents and med students are for… they’re like my minions. They as they are told”

You giggle and turn your attention back to the computer. “Baby go do some work, if I want a drink I can make it myself.”

He huffs awfully loudly at you, “okay little miss independent. I guess you don’t need me anymore!”

Before you can say anything, he walks away in a strop and you can’t help but laugh at him. You love how much he loves you, but you also worry about how much he worries about you. 

Your sitting down break doesn’t last very long before you get called away, just as Jack was coming back to see you with a hot drink. He watches as you run off in the distance and puts both hands out in protest but you shrug and run into the room. 

“What do we have?” You ask as you put your gloves on. 

Parker replies, “T-bone accident, mobilised with c-spine. We need to be careful transporting him onto the bed.”

You look around the room and not enough bodies are in here to help transfer the patient. You grab onto the gurney, but Parker immediately cuts in, “don’t you dare! Go get someone else”

“I can do it” you shouldn’t do it, but the patient needed to be moved asap. A small part of you desperately wanted to prove to everyone that you can do anything.

“Abbot would kill me, go get someone else.”

You shake your head at her and get hold of the gurney, “I’ll deal with Abbot later. On your count?”

The patient transfer goes smoothly, but your back immediately protests the movement and you feel a sharp pain shoot up your spine. Parker watches your reaction as you grunt in pain, but then focuses on the patient in front of her, immediately making a mental note to check on you later. Once the patient is stabilised and ready to be transferred to CT, you offer to take him up but she immediately rejects your offer. “Go get someone else” she says firmly.

“I said I can do it.”

“I know you can” she says calmly, “doesn’t mean you should.”

“But-“

She walks over to you and leans in, “I can’t have you injured because the floor can’t lose its best nurse.“

“I don’t feel like I’m the best right now, or any other day.” You mutter as you feel heat creep up to your cheeks, and you swallow back your tears. You do as she says because at the end of the day she is the lead on this case. 

Two hours later, the pain is now terrible, and you’ve taken pain relief that doesn’t seem to touch it. Usually it’s manageable if you avoid any activities that would trigger pain to this extent, but in this case, there was no helping you. You power through your feelings, and take on one case after another. 

Parker out of respect to you, doesn’t mention anything to Abbot but it was too obvious that you’ve hurt yourself. She’s also beating herself up about it, and she knows full well Abbot will be give her a well deserved lecture when he finds out. 

The next patient you encounter was a toddler, no older than three years old. The dad in the room seemed to care more about scrolling on his phone than attending to his own crying child, and despite your loud huffing and puffing, he doesn’t look up for his phone , once. You’d taken his observations, and administered his meds as prescribed and hung around him so he can have some company. You brought him some toys and sat on the bed with him, but the child clearly needed someone, anyone, to hold him. “How about you get him some chocolate milk and something to eat from the cafeteria?”

“Hm?” The dad hums cluelessly.

“Patrick, your kid. He’s hungry..”

“Oh right okay. Where’s the cafeteria?”

“Upstairs” 

“Where?”

“Figure it out” you bite back rudely as he gets out of the room in a rude strop. One thing you hated was useless parents. You turn your attention back to Patrick, whose fever was slowly coming down. His red cheeks and teary eyes broke your heart. “Shall we go say hi to everyone outside? Go for a little walk around?” 

“Okay!” The child exclaims happily. It was also awfully alarming that he did not care once that his dad had left the room. Without thinking, you pick him up, steady him on your hip and walk over to the hub with him. “This is Lena…”

“Hey little one!”

Patrick wraps his arms around you, burying his face in your neck shyly.

“Where’s the dad?”

“Getting him some snacks.” You then whisper, “he’s useless.”

“Hey you two!” Jack says from behind you, putting one gentle arm on your back, “what are you up to?”

“Just a little walk around, introducing him to everyone. He needs some love and hug”

Jack immediately extends his arms out and Patrick without hesitation launches himself at him. “Oh you’re heavy, what do they feed you??”

“Pizza!”

Jack mutters, “Jesus” and you giggle softly. 

Jack walks around with him for a bit and you follow, showing Patrick all the different rooms, avoiding anything too gruesomer. You offer to take him back but Jack refuses and instead he walks him back to the room and sits him on the bed. “Shall we play?”

“Okay! Do you like superman?”

“I love superman!” Jack replies happily. You reach down for the toys that scatter all over the chair and some that had fallen to the floor, and as you pick it up, pain shoots up your arm and you fully lose grip in your hand. Without saying a word, you pick it up with the other hand and hand it over to Jack.

“Can I leave you with him for a bit?” you ask Jack who is too distracted with Patrick. 

“Why don’t you have a sit down with us for a bit?” 

“Can’t, too many patients to see.” You lie. Your left arm was now tingling and you were starting to get anxious and sweaty. 

“You alright?” He says softly, noticing that you don’t look yourself.

“All good baby. Have fun in here.” You rush out of the room and look around for a doctor, because it’s either you are having a panic attack or a heart attack, because your back was aching terribly, your left arm was tingling and painful. It all came on within a matter of seconds. You clock eyes with Parker who instantly can tell something is wrong. She points at a room and you meet her in there.

“You look terrible” she spits out, already putting gloves on.

You say shakily, “Ellis it’s either i’m-“ you choke up on your word and suddenly feel nauseous, “My back hurts so much, my left arm- it’s uhhh tingling and painful.”

“Take your top off I’ll run an ECG.” She immediately moves to the machine, “is it your scoliosis?”

“I thought it was but this pain… it’s never this bad.” Living with chronic pain becomes a habit. Your body adapts to the pain, making it difficult for you to distinguish between a flare up or danger. The 0-10 pain scale no longer applies to you; it was never an accurate measurement of pain anyway, because everybody’s tolerance is different. However at this exact moment, your pain was a steady 9/10 and hence your panic.

“You told Abbot?”

“No” you mutter, “he doesn’t need to know.”

“He’s gonna kill me!” She spits out as she puts the leads on your chest, arms and legs. 

“Can we make sure I’m not having a heart attack please”

“Any heartburn?”

“Huh?”

“Is your stomach on fire?”

“I don’t think so…”

A moment passes as Ellis watches the waves on the screen, “ECG looks fine - let’s do troponin bloods. ECG isn’t always a 100% accurate”

“Seriously?”

“In women, heart attacks can present with symptoms as simple as heartburn. So we do bloods to rule it out.” She moves over to your arms, “let’s do a neuro exam.”

She asks you to squeeze here fingers but you can’t grip strong enough with your left hand. You can’t push her fingers away or pretty much do anything. 

“What’s your gut feeling?” She asks you, “please don’t lie to me”

“It might be scoliosis but it’s never ever been this bad…”

“You should have never lifted that gurney” she says quietly, “you must have done something else to trigger it.”

“I carried that toddler in room five.”

She sighs and drops her should down in defeat, “girl why the hell did you do that?”

“Because-“ you choke up and find yourself instantly bursting into tears, “because I feel incompetent!”

”What brought this on? You were never like this before, unless you hid it from us. From me.”

You stay quiet, too embarrassed to say anything.

”Something’s been said?”

You reply too quietly, “how do you know?”

“Wild guess. Who the hell have said what so I can rip them to shreds”

“It’s no one…”

“Fine i’m gonna go get Abbot” she moves away from the bed but you immediately plea for her to stay.

“Please don’t! It was a patient, the other day. Called me lazy.”

“What the fuck for!”

“Because I couldn’t roll him onto his side and had to call Mateo in.”

“You’re silly” she sits on the bed next to you and holds your hand, “you’re nowhere near that! That patient is an asshole and clearly doesn’t know you”

“There’s so many things I can’t do, and I…”

“You don’t feel like you’re good enough.”

“Exactly.”

“And whatever I say to you right now… you’re not gonna believe.”

You shake your head in embarrassment.

“I’m gonna ask Mateo to do your bloods, because I can’t do bloods. Wanna know why?”

You shake your head again.

“Because I’m fucking awful at it. I do it wrong all the time. It’s one of the many things I can’t do, but you can.”

“It’s simple really…”

“But is it?“ she tilts her head and leans in, “have a think about how much you can do and I can’t. We’ll circle back to it in a minute. I’m gonna go find Mateo. Stay here, if anything gets worse press the panic button.”

“Yes boss.” You mumble, and wipe your tears away.

She gives you a big hug and runs over to Lena, asking her to block out the room and adds your initials on the board with the diagnosis next to it ?STEMI ?NEURO

As promised, Mateo comes rushing in to take your bloods and to check in on you. You ask him no to mention anything to Jack just yet, but it was too late. Because as Abbot leaves Patrick’s room, he looks at the board to pick his next patient. He sees your initials on the screen with a heart attack and question mark next to it, and he instantly panics. Because 1. Why is this patient with the same initials as you not in a trauma room? And 2. Where the hell are you. 

He charges into the room, opening the curtain rather aggressively in panic. His heart is telling him there is no way it would be you in that room, but the moment he sees you on the bed, his heart sinks and bile instantly fills his throat, “What the-“

“I can explain!” You say quickly, “I’m fine!”

“Mateo have you done what you need to do in here?” He says firmly and Mateo nervously nods before escaping the room.

He links both hands behind his back and walks over, “Who’s your doctor?”

“Ellis…”

He immediately thinks of a million ways to torture her, “Are you having a heart attack?”

You shake your head. 

“Sweetheart what the hell happened!” he says softer now, and approaches you. 

“I can’t feel my left arm… and my back hurts and everything is tingling.”

He sits on the bed next to you and cups your face, “I need you to tell me exactly what you’ve done today. From start to finish.”

“I lifted a patient and-“

“YOU DID W-“ Jack grunts and forces himself to speak calmly, “you did what…”

“There weren’t enough hands in the room….”

“And then you carried Patrick…”

“I did…”

“You had him leaning on your right hip, so my best guess is you’ve trapped a nerve in your back. Have they done troponin?” He looks over at the ECG waves on the screen, double checking that your heart looks fine.

You nod, “I’m sorry…”

“Nothing to be sorry about” Jack murmurs softly, “how bad is the pain?”

”It’s awful” you mumble, “Parker’s ordered some pain meds I think”

“Baby why didn’t you come to me…”

“I didn’t want to worry you!”

“It’s my job to worry about my girl because if I don’t worry about you then it means I don’t love you enough!” Jack gives you a soft smile, “and I love you so incredibly much and I don’t show it enough!”

“You show it more than enough but I’m struggling to understand why you think I’m a great nurse because even I don’t believe it.”

“I’m glad you asked that question” he smiles happily and you’re so confused by his reaction. He pulls his phone out, and opens his notes app. “Now you might think you’re not a great nurse, or feel inferior to our colleagues but no one ever thinks that of you. So a while ago, I started making a list…”

He pulls out his glasses from his pocket and puts them on. 

“December 20th — your elderly patient who came in with a broken wrist said she won’t be able to cook dinner for her husband who can’t care for himself so what did you do? You bought her food from the cafeteria to take home and showed her how to order food on the delivery app. So when Christmas comes, she doesn’t need to worry about food. Do you remember what she said to you?”

You’re far too stunned to speak and you simply just shake your head. 

“She said, people like you deserve everything good in their life. Because not only you were a great nurse, but also kind and went the extra mile for a complete stranger.” He smiles and reads the second one. “Christmas Eve — you came in wearing a Santa hat and the end of life patient who came in here with a fever? She told me she didn’t think she was going to see Santa before she passes. Thanks to you, she saw his hat on last time. I also checked, she died on the 26th of December in the hospital.”

Jack smiles and continues reading, but you on the other hand is staring at him with fresh tears running down your cheeks. “That boy you did CPR on for 15 minutes? He survived because of you. That was on January 5th.”

“Jack today’s the 9th of June…”

“So?”

“You have 6 months worth of notes?”

“Oh and it’s still going. Patrick is going on the list too, don’t worry. Next.” He clears his throat and continues, “Do you remember that lady that overdosed on turmeric? She came in and looked jaundiced and no one figured out what was wrong? You diagnosed her. Not me or any other doctor. In the same day, you also told Shen that he should reexamine a patient, and you were right. He missed a step in his consultation and the patient was treated correctly thanks to yo. A week later, you noticed that the lady brought in with a suspected heart attack had the ECG leads put on incorrectly by the paramedics, and thanks to you she survived.”

Jack continues talking for minutes on end, reading out to you every nice word patients have said about you, staff who praised you and jobs that you excelled in on shift.

“May 16th — you gave that homeless patient a wash and a hair cut. No one asked you to, but you did it anyway. Do you know what he said to Lena on his way out? He told her that now he looks clean, he might be able to go for a job interview. All thanks to you. He offered to leave you a tip but she told him we can’t accept money.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes baby, seriously!” He says excitedly, “I have so much more to read, hang on”

“Jack-“

“No let me finish-“

“Jack! Look at me” He puts his phone on the bed and his warm eyes meet yours, “you did this for me?”

“This was nothing! It’s all little blurbs really I could have done it much better.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Sweetheart, just because you can’t lift a patient up, or carry a gurney, or push heavy equipment around does not make you any less of a great nurse. We all have limitations - including me. It took me a long time to admit that I won’t be able to run to you if God forbid I ever need to, but that’s something I have to live with and accept even my heart doesn’t want to. You are a perfectionist, and you already are perfect.”

“I love you Jack”

“You’re my perfect sweet girl. You got it?”

“Mhm” you bite on your lips and smile, “i’ve got it.”

“Now, once you’re better, can I take you home so I can take care of you? Please?”

“Yes please”

“Seriously?” He grins, “you’re gonna let me take care of you! You never let me do that.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“So many relaxing activities. You’re gonna be so relaxed you’re not gonna make it to work tomorrow.” He leans in and kisses you deeply, “and no more secrets”

“No more secrets.” you kiss him back.

Jack mumbles “perfect” against your lips.

Jack Abbot made you a list of all the great things that make you a nurse. Whenever you’ve achieved something during a shift, he wrote it down. Whenever a patient thanked you, he noted what they’ve said. Whenever he hears praise about you, he opened up the notes app and wrote it down. 

That’s how much Jack Abbot loves you.

“Hmmmmmmmmmm….” Shen toyed with the paper straw with his tongue, the ER was absolutely dead, usually was around the 4am to 6am stretch at the end of the shift. Usually just coping through a flood of residual patients that came in from a rough night partying. “Never eat pizza again….orrrr all of your sodas are always room temp…”

“Never eat pizza! Are you kidding!?” Mateo erupted as if you’d asked him to choose between his wife and child. “I guess I'd never eat pizza but thats fucked up man-” mateo pointed a finger into Shen’s arm. 

“I would die without a cold diet coke after a shift…” Lena leaned back in her swivel chair with a sigh. 

Shen’s elbow pushed into your arm as you watched the conversation “oh me?” your finger pointed into your own chest, “Don’t like Pizza,” your lips pressed together awkwardly. “Tomatoes make my stomach sick…” A slight down play to the reality of your allergy.

It shouldn't be as embarrassing as it is to admit to someone that you have potentially life threatening allergies. But it had a striking emotional resemblance to having to order off the kids menu in a fancy restaurant in front of all of your friends. 

“You’re kidding- that must fucking suck.” Ellis joined the group on your free side. “No lasagne, spaghetti bolognese- fuck no bloody marys!” your stomach rumbled at the thought, even if you couldn’t eat it, the mental image of delicious hot italian food taunted you. 

“You get used to it…” your chin rested on the counter over your hands which were folded over each other. “The only annoying thing is that stupid restaurants never put it on the menu in meals, so it's like a mystery until it’s sat in front of me.”

“Damn.” Shen’s brows raised as the conversation spotlight landed on you, and well, you most definitely had stage fright.

“Sorry- I made it awkward- my bad-” you stumbled over your words.

“No it’s better that we know-” Ellis bumped her hip against yours, “otherwise we would invite you to an Italian themed bar tomorrow night…” her voice lilted upwards slightly as you rolled your eyes. 3 months in the ER had cushioned you in, still you were yet to meet them on one of their monthly nights out. Bars just weren't really your scene, cross contamination was a constant worry even in high end restaurants. It didn’t help having the most obscure list of allergies that ranged from peanuts to a specific kind of chemical in most makeup. 

“I don’t know” your shoulders curled in on themselves “I don’t do great in busy places in public-”

“All of us will be there and make sure you’re okay?” Shen leaned in “pleaaseeeeeeee” your palm went over his face with a groan. 

“Fineeee” you whined looking back up at the patient board, “I should check on North 5-” you turned to make your way towards the bay only to knock into a solid wall of flesh. The smell of leather and pinewood filled your nostrils as he recalibrated his center of gravity, hands steadying you by gripping onto either forearm. 

“Careful there…” Jack abbots devilishly attractive smirk seared into your retina’s, the angle, the way the fluorescent light caught on the grey stubble which was growing in, picking out the small evidence of his auburn hair now that he had gone almost fully grey. His hands could wrap around your arms with a seductive ease, sending a dizzying flood of blood up to your cheeks. “I can’t believe my ears… are we finally finishing up Wisp’s nightcrawler initiation?” he smirked, throwing an arm around your shoulders and pulling you in under his arm without thinking about it.

You’d kept it down to the single allergy letting “I- Yeah-” your heart thumped heavy in your chest. Either Jack knew you had an absolutely humiliatingly huge crush on him and this was some kind of humiliation ritual or he was completely oblivious which was equally as bad because everyone in the ER knew. Either way, without his consent, you’d decided that there was no possible way that a universe could exist where you and Jack Abbot would be a plausible coupling.

“Well then we better make it a big one!” he clapped his hands together with a wolfish grin, your shoulder aching where his arm had been, clearly missing its company. “Now- get back to work-” his hand patted down on your back and you were all sent off your separate ways.

The end of the shift came and weariness settled deep within your bones, hands cracked raw from the ER’s soap which you’d been forced to use for the last 12 hours, one which you were most definitely not tolerant of. 

The awkward outfit selection didn’t do anything to relax you, the little worms in your brain reminding you that anything you wore was going to be witnessed by your literal boss. And unhelpfully your crush. 

A low cut top- hell no imagine dropping your purse, leaning over to get it and giving the whole emergency department nightshift staff a whole show. Instead reaching for the turtleneck sleeveless shirt which was just the perfect shade of brown for your skin. 

That cute skirt that you kinda stole from your college roommate? Can’t it very much give away your past desire to pick up any old random by basically mooning them. But the summer heat was too much so you instead settled for a pair of decent yet sexy shorts. A brown belt to match your shirt hooked around your waist. The added pro was easy access in case you needed to use the epipen tonight. 

You shoved the thought down in the exact name you shoved the two epipens into the outfits matching purse, tugging on a pair of sneakers and grabbing your keys before heading straight out the door. 

Was walking to the bar at all responsible? No. But it was only two blocks from your apartment, a trek you’d pulled more times than you could count with your roommates after a couple too many cocktails. 

“Theres Wisp!” Jack cheered as you walked into the bar being met by the claps and smiles of the nightcrawlers, his arm landed where it often did, slung around your shoulders patting your arm before pulling away. Wisp was a nickname created by several iterations. In the first two weeks, of you working in the ED everyone swore that they hadn’t heard you say a word outside of treatment. Then when you did speak it was mostly a polite shy whisper. Then “Whisper” was affectionately shortened to “Wisp” which barely fit anymore as they had successfully pulled you far enough out of your shell to handle a large bout of small talk. 

“Hi guys” you shyly raised a hand before taking your place in the booth, swiftly followed by Jack sliding into place beside you. He may be oblivious to the cheeky looks of the crew but you were unfortunately anything but. Settling into the conversation was easier than you had believed it would be but eventually Jack's elbow nudged into yours. 

“Wanna grab a drink?” Jack’s breath fanned over your ear, trying to cut through the chaos of the conversation which surrounded you. You forced out a nod before making your way over to the bar, Jack parting the crowd like the red sea to give you a clear path through the chaos. 

You pulled yourself up onto the bar stool as jack stood by your side, waiting for the bartender to walk over, your knees pressed to the warmth of his tree trunk thigh. “Whats your drink of choice?” you smiled over at him, desperately trying to grip onto sanity at the touch.

“Usually a whiskey neat…” he exhaled his hands going into his pockets, he leaned in to make sure his voice reached you, crowding over you slightly. “But when I’m out with these guys I usually try to stay sober…” 

“Are they really in that much trouble?” you chuckled, staring into his hazel eyes as the bar buzzed around you. Jack shook his head with a small laugh. 

“The stories you have yet to hear,” he smirked, as the bartender approached the sticky part of the bar you’d sat by. “I’ll have a Miller zero and a…” his hand gestured towards you. “Sorry-” he moved over to the table for a few seconds to listen to some random bullshit debate she and Ellis were having.

“C- can I have a Moscow mule? But uh- leave out the lime please i’m allergic-” you offered a polite smile, turning back to Jack, who’d retaken his spot by your side, before you could realise that the bartender sarcastically rolled his eyes. The conversation flowed easily as you waited on the drinks, Jack buffering anyone from moving into your space. 

The drinks were placed in front of you, Jack insisting it be added to his bill. “Sorry- i’m-” your hand went to his bicep holding him in place, “look I know this is forward and probably completely inappropriate given the fact that you’re my fucking boss- but i’m really having fun talking to you one on one and I kinda wanna keep that going?” you physically braced for the injection as Jack stood with his eyes wide staring at you. His head shook lightly before he leaned his body down on the counter with a sly smile. His crows' feet curled deliciously. The LED bar lights perfectly highlighted the pronounced biceps attached to the carved chest which was conveniently on full display because of his tight black shirt.

His eyebrows stayed raised as blood rushed up to his cheeks, his dogtags bounced against his chest as he moved onto the stool next to you, tilting his head over at you. “Uh- ditto…” 

You barked out a laugh “Smooth.” 

“Sorry- i’m just kinda rusty?”

“What do you mean rusty?”

He raised the bottle of faux beer to his lips, taking a gulp as if it could give him a placebo liquid courage. “Well I don’t get to talk to women as perfect as you on the regular.” 

You damn near choked on the mix of gingerbeer and vodka as you sipped it, whole body tingling at his comment. The words stalling in your throat as you glanced over at him. “Wow.”

“Was that good?” his brows furrowed as he held in a chuckle, his hand pulling over his face. 

“Amazing-” your voice croaked as your hand tentatively moved up to your neck, palpating lightly. 

“Are you okay?” Jack leaned in closer to you, his hand moving to your drink, immediately inspecting the bottom of the glass for any residue. 

“Yeah-” your tongue began to swell as you pushed him away gently “bathroom-” you clutched your purse to your chest before making a break for the toilet. Jack stood at the bar his head hung slightly, assuming he had somehow managed to insult you or read your intentions completely incorrectly, despite the fact you had just told him you enjoyed speaking with him.

You stumbled past a couple of lesbians making out on the sink, giving them a polite nod as you shuffled into the stall and pulled out the epipen. 

“Fuck fuck fuck-” the bartender rushed over to the bar just as jack was about to leave, grasping your cup and realising what he’d done. “Uh- that chick you were with- did she drink this?”

“Yeah…” Jack turned slowly, his gut dropping. 

You fumbled with the cap feeling your lungs burn and scratch for air, sweat collecting on your brow as your tongue tingled. “Fuck-” the needle stung as you pushed down against your thigh.

“Fuck- you might um-” the bartender ran a hand through his hair, his shoulders tensed up as he smelled the drink. “You need to go check on her- I mixed up her order- that girl over there just complained her mule had no lime- so i must have- mixed them up-”

“Thats…not a huge deal-”

“She said she’s allergic to lime-” Jack moved as quickly as he could, the door clattering against the adjacent wall, pausing only slightly to see the girls separate and rush out to find somewhere more private. “Ladies-” he gulped, ducking his head and pounding on each bathroom door to find you, yelling your name. 

You unlocked the door, wheezing giving away your presence. You put your palm out with two pens in hand, Jack's heart dropping. “It’s okay- you used it- okay-” he inspected the pen seeing the 3 year old expiry date. “Do- do you feel better?” 

You nodded “only a little- the first one didn- didnt work and- the second one- helped-”

“We’re gonna go to the ED come on-” he pulled you off the toilet, holding your bag and parting your way outside of the bar. “We’re taking my truck come on-” he basically dragged you out of the bar and lifted you into his car as time passed. He figured the bar covering the bill was the least they could do. 

“It’s getting better-”

“You know reactions can come back it’s always better to go to the hospital- especially when epipens past 2 years expiry are only- 80% effective-”

“Do you always rattle off medical shit when you’re stressed-” Jack’s head snapped over to you for a few seconds, worry baked into his perfect brow furrow. He stumbled over his words as he put the car into gear.

“Yeah- yeah I do-” he sighed before taking off, driving as responsibly as possible towards the hospital. He couldn't help but stare over every few seconds to check in on your condition “how’s your throat-?”

“Never had complaints-” your hand shot over your mouth as Jack let out an unintelligible sound of pure surprise. “Sorry i think the adrenaline makes me lose my filter-”

“Uh- I-” Jack shook his head, flustered beyond belief.

“I don’t know why i said that- i’m not like-” 

‘Stop- don’t say anything else- I think you’ll kill me if another word leaves that mouth of yours-"Jack pulled into the parking lot, stepping out into the night and just taking a moment to regain his sanity. You stepped out, making your way down to the ER with him. 

You laid in the hospital bed, just needing to be monitored for a few hours as jack stayed posted up by your side. “You know you should tell me all your allergies just in case…” Jack held your chart on his lap.

“I’m not allergic to any medication thankfully- don’t respond well to morphine but otherwise not relevant-”

“No I mean…” Jack rested his hands on the handles of your bed leaning in over you slightly. “I should know, for when I take you out to breakfast.”

You were everything to Jack, you always had been. You were the one he went to when he felt like falling apart because you were the arms that would hold him. You were the one he’d gone to since he was nineteen years old, since he fell in love with you and the way you could care less what everyone thought. 

            The way you cared about everyone else, but especially him. 

            And now…now he’s standing, looking at a picture of you, one taken back when the kids were still young, back when your smiles were tired and happy. The joy of only a mother with young kids. Now, he’s looking at this picture on the doors of a funeral hall, the sound of crying emanating from within. 

            He doesn’t want to go in. He doesn’t want to face a life without you because there is no life without you. You were his life. You were his everything and he doesn’t know how to face this world without you. He doesn’t think he can. That’s the problem. 

            He’s hinged his life on you from the moment he met you, since you hit him in the head with a soccer ball. He knew then what he knows now: you are everything. 

            He doesn’t want to go in there and see your body still and lying there in a coffin, not when he should be beside you. Not when the two of you should be ninety years old, having died a death like in The Notebook, together, always. 

            Isn’t that what you used to say? Forever and always?

            Well, how can he have forever and always when you’re gone?! How can he live his life without you when you are his life?!

            He knows how to be a husband and a father. He knows how to love you, he knows how to live with you, he knows how to make you laugh and cry and dance and smile. He knows your ticks, knows your breaths and your footsteps and the sound you make as you fall asleep. He knows everything about you and he knows, the only thing he truly knows, how to be yours. 

            He doesn’t know how to be a widower.

            He doesn’t want to know.

            The campus is best right when autumn hits, when the trees are bright and the leaves are orange and falling, making whishing sounds when they hit the ground. Jack likes walking the path between the old brick buildings, the one that hold history in their walls, hold learning and knowledge and secrets. 

            He likes being on campus, on this campus. He feels like he’s a part of something bigger. And it’s made better by the headphones on his head, the music playing through his Walkman, a Rolling Stones song playing, music soaring and rising and falling. The perfect soundtrack. 

            He walks past the field, not paying close attention to it, rather continuing along the path, a sharp burst of pain, of pressure, of danger echoes from the back of his head. It’s the kind of pain that makes your breath catch, your stomach heave and your mind fuzzy. He pulls his headphones of “Sympathy for the Devil” still spilling from the speakers, just tinnier and quieter than before. He turns and notices a soccer ball just a few feet from him, the right distance for something that hit the back of his head, his stomach still tying and retying itself into knots as he bends, vision just a bit blurry as he scoops the ball up with one hand. 

            “Hey!” he hears a voice call out, high and bright and he glances in the direction noticing you, running to him, pointed leather boots scuffing along the gravel path, an unbuttoned wool overcoat loose. You wear a band shirt, a Fleetwood Mac one and form-fitting blue jeans and Jack can feel his mouth grow dry. He swallows but it’s hard, his mouth far too dry, his chest constricting and heart racing as you reach him, near him. 

            You’re the prettiest girl he’s ever seen in his life and he’s…he’s nervous; palms sweaty, mouth dry, heart pounding in his head as his breaths come short and choppy. 

            “You okay?” you say when you reach him, skidding to a stop just a few feet from him, one hand loose, the other on your hip. “I didn’t hurt you, did I? I saw that it hit you in the back of the head and that was so not what I intended.” Jack doesn’t know how to respond, his eyes taking in every inch of you, of the way you look so, so pretty. Has anyone ever been this pretty before? He thinks it’s highly unfair of you to be this pretty, to look this good when he’s…well, when he’s him. “Dude? You good?” Your voice is concerned as you step closer and he blinks, giving his head a shake and swallowing again, his mouth still dry, his throat drier. 

            “No,” he squeaks. Actually squeaks, his voice high and cracking and he can feel a flush in his cheeks, his neck, his ears. He watches as your eyes widen and you step even closer, your hands reaching for his face and he realizes that he just said that he wasn’t good. Shit, he keeps messing up with you. “No, you didn’t hurt me,” he rushes out, taking a step backwards, not wanting you to feel just how fevered his cheeks are, just how embarrassed and attracted to you he is. “I’m fine.” Your hands drop and you nod. 

            “So,” you say, “can I have my ball back then?” He shakes his head, not wanting to give it back, not wanting to let you go yet. 

            “Nah,” he says, his voice deepening thank god, finally sounding like him. Just a slightly drier mouthed version of him, his palms stealing all the moisture in his body. “You see, it’s gotten a pretty girl to talk to me and I’m not so keen to give it up yet.”

            “Man,” you sigh, making a show of looking around the area before turning back to him, one eyebrow arched in a way that he likes, that he thinks makes you even prettier, “there’s no pretty girl talking to you, just me so maybe I did hit you hard enough to cause brain damage.”

            “You’re the pretty girl,” he says and he can see your throat move as you swallow, eyes wide and frozen for a second, your face lit up with surprise and shock and maybe just a bit of happiness. “Why were you kicking this anyways? I mean, I like the boots, but they don’t seem like soccer shoes.”  You blink and he likes that you’re as flustered as he is, recovering for a moment, blinking again before nodding once, as if correcting something in your head. 

            “My friend bet me fifty bucks that I couldn’t hit the ball and it’s free money so… you know. But I kinda need the ball back to get it,” you tell him and he laughs, a surprised, choked kind of chuckle, one that has you smiling too, a real, genuine smile that has your whole face lit up. 

            He wants to see that smile for the rest of his life. He wants to be the reason you smile for the rest of his life. He doesn’t know why, he just does. 

            “I’m afraid I cannot give you the ball back quite yet,” he says and your nostrils flare just slightly as you shift, weight rocking onto your left foot, right leg stretching out before you, arms crossed, your coat closing around your body with the movement. 

            “What’s it gonna take to get it back?” you ask and he lifts one hand to his chin, tapping it a few times, his heart singing with delight as you roll your eyes, affection laden in the gesture. 

            “I want you to promise me a date,” he says and your lips curve up in a smile, one light and bright and real. 

            “Fine,” you answer, your tone dry, eyes rolling but the smile still firm on your face. The smile that tells him this is real. This is something. 

            And maybe, if he’s lucky, this will be everything. 

            He can hear the sound of his kids behind him, the kids that are half you, half him. The kids that he raised with you from the time the two of you were basically still kids yourself. The kids that aren’t kids anymore, but on the verge of adulthood, 27, 22 and 18. Still young, still kids. 

            Still people who need guiding hands.

            Who need their fucking mother. 

            “Dad,” Henry, the oldest, whispers, his hand landing on Jack’s shoulder. “We have to go in. We have to—” he cuts himself off, breaking off in a sharp inhale, a kind of wheeze, a sob on the verge of being released. 

            “We have to start the funeral,” Nerissa, the middle child, the only daughter, finishes. Jack can feel his breaths catch in his throat, memories flashing of the kids being kids with you, their mother. The one who’s now gone. 

            It’s not fair, it’s so not fair that you are gone, dead. Body cold and rigid that life that made you you now missing, absent. Taken. It’s not fair that you, the healthiest person he knew who always wore sunscreen and even made sure that popcorn was never burnt to avoid carcinogens as best you could, got cancer. 

            It’s not fair that he had to watch you die. Watch you wither and fade and disappear. It’s not fair because he loves you. Present tense. He will always love you, but yet you are not here with him to be loved. Your love is past tense. 

            He knows that he needs to enter the hall, start the procession, bury you like everyone says he’s supposed to, but he can’t. He can’t stomach entering that hall where your coffin rests, pumped plastic face there covered in makeup looking not you at all. He can’t stomach the idea of seeing you be not you. 

            He wants to remember you as you were, alive and full of life and laughter and dancing. You were always dancing, said it was fun, said it light. You made him dance too. You told him you could dance anyway, even it was just hands moving or your head, movement to music was dancing. 

            He doesn’t want to picture you dead. He already watched you die. He doesn’t want to go in there, hear the tears of people who knew you but didn’t know you. He doesn’t want to be surrounded by grief that is real but not real. He doesn’t want to share his grief with anyone, doesn’t want to share his pain. 

            He doesn’t want to say goodbye to you at all. 

            It was always supposed to be forever. 

            “Dad,” Cyrus whispers, the youngest child, the one of eighteen steps around, his hands resting on Jack’s shoulders, eyes boring into him. Your eyes. The only child with your eyes. Nerissa looks like your carbon copy except for the eyes, eyes which are his. Henry looks just like him, a fact you had lamented at first, saying how you carried him for nine months just for him to look like Jack, like him. 

            Cyrus is a mixture of you and Jack, truly half and half, but the eyes…the eyes are all you and it causes pain to rip through Jack, an aching pain as he looks into eyes which are yours, but not. Rather the eyes of your youngest son, the one who still needs you yet has to learn to be an adult on his own. 

            “Dad,” he says again, “it’s time. And remember…it’s not goodbye. It’s see you later.”

            The sky is just beginning to darken, evening twilight. Dusk, Jack supposes as he puts his truck in park, turning his key, the ignition shutting off as he finds the smooth metal handle of his door, pushing it open and stepping out onto the asphalt of the curb just outside of your house. It’s a pretty, residential neighbourhood, houses with gables and fenced backyards. The kind of place that starting a family seems like an inevitability rather than a chance. 

            The lights in your house are on, shining through curtains, only a vague shadowy figure there in one window. He braces himself, taking a deep breath and starting up the walk to your house, straightening his tie as he does so, hands trembling just slightly, breaths a little crooked too. He steps up onto the neat concrete stairs past weeded flowerbeds up to the nice front door, the colour bright blue, light and cheery.

            He takes another deep breath, the feeling shaky, like his lungs are about to give out on him as he reaches forwards, pressing the doorbell, the button worn smooth against the tip of his index finger. He can hear the sound of the doorbell, that high chime, ringing through your house, a muffled version echoing to him as he steps back from the door, huffing as he straightens his suit jacket. 

            He hears the door locks open, a screen door being pulled open and then the outside one, swinging out, exposing you and suddenly Jack can’t breathe at all. You stand there in a flowy light blue dress, a rope belt hanging loose on your hips, a pair of light blue cowboy boots on your feet. 

            “Hi,” you whisper, stepping out, turning around as you pull the door closed behind you, keys sliding into the locks, locking up the house. 

            “H-hi,” he replies, swallowing once, a reflexive kind of gesture, the kind that happens without conscious awareness and you nearly choke on it. 

            “So,” you say, turning around, the skirt of your dress swishing around your legs, around your hips, highlighting your figure for a moment before flowing back to loose, “where are we going?”

            “It’s a surprise,” he tells you, a smile stretching across his lips as he holds out his arm for you, which you take after dropping your keys into a hidden pocket on your dress. 

            “I don’t really care where we go,” you say, looking at him from the side, a narrowed glance shot his way, the kind that makes him want to laugh at just how familiar you’re acting, “as long as the portions are designed to be eaten and are not a pretty crumb on a huge fucking plate.” He laughs at that, the kind of laugh that starts deep in your belly, rumbling up and out. One that has you joining in and your laugh is everything that Jack wants to hear for the rest of his life. 

            “They most definitely are,” he says and you make a sound, one that is like an agreement and a proud sound. One that sets his blood aflame and he finds that he really wants to kiss you and when is it too soon to kiss someone on a date? Is right now too soon? Yeah, right now is too soon. He opens the passenger side of his truck, helping you up and in, closing it softly behind you, walking around to get in the driver’s side. 

            “Nice truck,” you say and he can feel that warm flush of pride at your words. It’s a vintage 1956 Chevy truck, lovingly restored by him and his dad when he was in high school, ready by the time he turned sixteen and got his licence. 

            “Thanks,” he says as he puts it into first, pulling away from the curb and down the street. The radio is on low, a soft hum of music in the background, filling the silence with a kind of warmth. It’s the good kind of silence, one that doesn’t need to be filled and he’s never had that before. 

            But he’s also never felt this way before.

            “I’m more of a hot rod girl,” you remark and he looks over at you, taking in the smile on your face, the way your head is tipped back against the leather headrest looking at peace, joyful. He likes that look on you. 

            “Oh, yeah? What kind?”

            “Corvettes, Cameros, Mustangs, the classics,” you answer, shifting, pulling one leg up underneath your skirt, the outline showing bent on the seat. “You a truck guy?”

            “No,” he says, but it lilts up at the end, sounding more like a question than a solid answer. “I mean, I like them, but I also like the classic cars.”

            “You’re just a vehicle guy, huh? Like engines and stuff of all sorts?” One of your eyebrows is arched and it’s the prettiest thing he’s ever seen, you with your lips pursed, curiosity written all over your face. 

            “I like what I like, no particular reason,” he says. “But once I like something, I’m all in.” He’s looking at you when he says, can see that darkening on your cheeks, your neck and likes it, likes the reaction it gets out of you. 

            A soft beat rolls through as he turns back to the road and he hears you squeal, the radio turned up as “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” by Whitney Houston spills out of the speakers, her voice surrounding the two of you.

            He glances over at you as he rolls to a stop at the sign, taking in the way you’re now sitting properly, shoulders shimmying as you hum along. He likes it—you, he likes you. Now, you’re singing, loudly and off-key, just shouting it out, dancing in the seat, your shoulder bumping his, trying to get him to join in. He can’t help but laugh at that, shimmying a little just as he turns into the parking lot of the restaurant, taking a parking space in the middle and putting the truck in park. 

            “Don’t you wanna love, don’t you wanna love me?” you sing along as the song stops, switching over and you turn to him, face alight, a smile still firm and present, solid. 

            “Come on,” he says, “we’re here.” He hops out of his side, running around as you open your door, his hand held out to help you out. You look at him with a raised eyebrow and narrowed gaze before sighing and shaking your head, hand slipping into his as he helps you out. The truck locks and then he walks with your hand in his up to the restaurant and all he does is hope that you don’t care about how sweaty his palm is. 

            “Nice place,” you whisper as he pulls open the door to the small, family owned restaurant, dim-lighting and inviting leather booths and tables. 

            “Uh, yeah,” he says, catching sight of his best friend, Jeremy. “A friend’s family owns the place. I’ve been coming here since I was a kid.”

            “And you’re choosing to share this place with me?” you ask, your face wearing an expression that he doesn’t quite understand, but he likes. It’s like it’s hopeful and hesitant and happy all in one. 

            “Yeah,” he says and there is no hesitation in his voice, only solidity and pride. “Of course.” He likes the way your face brightens and he smiles at you, tugging you along after him towards the booth Jeremy nods at, sliding in. He expects you to sit across from him like most people say their dates do, but you slide in beside him, the side of your body against his. 

            “You don’t mind that I sit here, do you?” you ask and his mouth is dry again and the room is hot. Don’t they have air-conditioning in here?

            “No, I don’t mind,” he says and the smile you give him is one he wants to see for the rest of his life. 

            You are what he wants to see for the rest of his life.

            The walk up to your coffin is long, too long, too many faces watching. He knows what they’ll see, a man incapable of facing the loss of his wife alone, rather needing his children to help him there and that is exactly what this is. 

            He cannot face the sight of you so still, so silent when you have never been silent before. You have always been full of light and love and laughter, you have always been the one to draw him from his silence, his sadness. You have been the sun in the family, the one full of moons, people who need your light on them in order to find their own and now…now you are gone and Jack does not want to face a world without you. 

            Because you are his world. 

            He stops, the sight of the polished, gleaming coffin too much, Henry’s hand warm on his arm, a slight tug, but he can’t. He can’t! Because he doesn’t want to see you gone from the body he has spent thirty years loving. The body that is you, but not you because you no longer live in it. You are no longer here. And that is the hardest thing to learn to bare. 

            Because he still wakes up to your alarm every morning, turning in bed to greet you like he always has, only to find your side of the bed empty, hollow. Not even the imprint of your body on the sheets, your smell no longer a lingering trace. He still wakes up and in that haze of morning light he still thinks that you are alive. And finding you gone is losing you all over again, that cracking open of his body and he wants to talk to you about the pain of losing you, but he can’t. 

            And that’s the worst part. 

            Because the only person he wants to talk about his grief to is the person he is grieving. You. Always you. Forever you. Always and forever you. 

            “Dad,” Henry whispers, “you need to continue.” Jack is aware of little else but his children and the sight of your coffin gleaming like his own personal hell. He can feel tears slide off his cheeks, but he doesn’t feel the burn, rather only knows that they’re there in the most clinical sense. 

            “Dad,” Nerissa whispers, looking back and it hits him in the heart just how much she looks like you. She, he knows, carries a grief that the boys don’t. The kind that a daughter has for her mother, the woman she said at two years old was her best friend and held true to that until your death, here when she is twenty-two. “Please,” she whispers, her voice cracking, face swollen and stained with tears, her grief. 

            It’s her please that is enough to move him, get his feet moving the next few feet up to your coffin, but when he reaches it, he wishes he hadn’t because he sees…something that was once you but no longer is. 

            And he loses it. 

            “NO!” he whispers, the words a cry and yell and hoarse in his voice, the voice that he thought lost all its yell months ago when you flatlined in the hospital bed. “No! No, no, no, no, no,” he whispers, his hands reaching forwards, gripping the open partition of the coffin, looking down at your painted plastic face. 

            “Dad,” Cyrus says, his voice a whisper, “she’s gone.”

            “No,” he whispers, “no, no, no, no, no, no!” He sees this corpse, but it can’t be you because even in death, you wouldn’t be this still, would you? Wouldn’t there be a smile on your face like there always was? Wouldn’t your eyes be open? Wouldn’t you still be you?!

            “Let’s go, Dad,” Henry says, his voice a sigh as his arms come around Jack and he pulls him away from the coffin, Jack’s steps stumbling, mouth still moving, whispering no over and over again, tears streaming down his face, vision blurry as Henry makes him sit on the front bench of the funeral hall. 

            But all Jack can think is that it was never supposed to be you to go first.

            “Where are we going, Jackie?” you ask, hopping into his idling truck, your hand holding your skirt up, allowing you to get in the vehicle with ease. He likes the way you’re dressed, the cropped shirt and the long blue flowy skirt, baseball cap on your head. 

            “Nature,” he answers and you sigh, buckling yourself in after brushing your skirt out of the way, the fabric having fallen to cover the seatbelt clip. 

            “That’s annoyingly vague,” you tell him, brushing a strand of hair that’s fallen into your eyes back and away, bangle bracelets (all the rage right now) clinking on your wrist. “I hope you’re not actually like a serial killer,” you say as he pulls away from the curb, “and taking me to your killing ground because that would suck.”

            “Would you just…” he pauses, looking over at you and the way your face is twisted into a gleeful expression, lips pressed thin to hide your laugh, to bit it back. “Oh, be quiet,” he finishes and your laugh spills out, the sound high and bright and ringing through the cab in the best possible way. 

            “That is impossible, Jackrabbit,” you tell him, the other name you have for him, the one you’ve been using to call him ever since you learned his last name. 

            “You’re annoying,” he tells you and in response you let loose another peal of laughter, one that has his heart singing as he turns onto the street he needs for the park, the small grove of trees that he’s outfitted with lights and music for this date. The date he’s been planning for days, ever since the first one where you sang “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” and he realized that he wanted to be the person that you danced with. 

            Your hand finds his on top of the gear shift, electricity crackling underneath his skin at your touch, his entire body feeling like a live wire as he pulls up to the sidewalk, shutting off the ignition, truck already in park. 

            “You ready?” he asks and your eyes narrow at him, brows drawing together in confusion. 

            “Ready for what?” you ask, but he’s already hopping out and running to your side, opening your door for you, hands finding your waist as he lifts you out of the cab, your voice cracking through the still night air in a squeal of shock. He laces his fingers through yours and takes off running, you behind him, the grove just ahead. 

            The two of you crash through the brush into the grove, the one he’s decorated with string lights through the branches and a CD player in between two giant oaks. 

            “For this,” he says, letting go of your hand, to press play on the player, the opening notes of “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” ringing through the grove, surrounding you as your hands fly to your mouth, tears glimmering in your eyes as you take in everything unable to look away from him as he walks to you, hands outstretched. “I worked really hard on this,” he whispers, placing your one hand on his shoulder, the other in his, his on your waist, guiding you through a simple box step, “so you better like it.”

            “I love it, Jack,” you whisper, your voice teary, the kind of thick teary. “No one’s ever done anything like this for me before. I could get used to this, though.”

            “You better,” he whispers, leaning in, his lips inches from your own. He’s held off on kissing you, waiting for tonight, the second official date. “Because I want to keep doing things like this for you.” And it’s you who closes the distance, your soft, glossed lips pressing against his and the kiss is everything he thought it would be—sweet and light and perfect in only the way that love, or the potential for love, can be. 

            It’s infinite in its own way. 

            A small, little infinity captured in that grove of trees, lit by hundreds of string bulbs, Whitney Housten in the background. 

            His infinity with you.

            The minister is speaking, but his voice is unintelligible to Jack, his attention on your coffin where that empty, empty body that is not you, not you still sits. That body is dead and you, you were ever so alive. 

            You used to laugh at everything because you liked to laugh, you liked to bring joy and make it okay to be happy. You were bright and light and your heart…it was good and large and beating, always beating. 

            He used to fall asleep at night, his head on your chest, hearing your heartbeat in his ear, hearing your life in his ear, the sound of you living lulling him to sleep. 

            Now, he only falls asleep when his body has enough and he blacks out. 

            He used to feel your breath against his cheek, his chest, his stomach, just him. He used to watch your chest rise and fall with every breath. 

            He has seen you so alive as to bring new life into the world, not once but three times. He has seen you, his miracle, in every season for thirty years. 

            And now he has seen you in that last one, that last season, that he never wanted to see. He wanted to die before you, die with you, never after. He never wanted to see your body in a coffin, see it lowered to the ground. 

            Not you. Not when you were always so alive, so impossibly alive as to be the life of his life. You were alive and yet it is you who are dead. 

            And in what world is that fair? In what world is this right?

            Why you?!

            He would die a thousand times if it would bring you back. Just bring you back. But he can’t. He can’t because that’s not the hand he was dealt. He was dealt this one, of only loving you for thirty years when he should have had fifty more. 

            He remembers the first time he ever felt alive like you, with you. And he can’t believe that that will never be again. 

            That you will never be again.

            His lips are on your skin and he doesn’t think he ever wants to remove them from you because this, this feeling of your pulse point beneath his lips, the feeling of your life, this evidence is perfect. 

            He doesn’t entirely know how the two of you have gotten here to this moment, your hands tangled in his hair, his gripping your waist with most likely enough force to leave finger-sized bruises behind. Your back is against the wall in his bedroom, his lips hot on your neck, your breath leaving you in short, choked exhales. Broken kind of cries that have his already hot, fevered body growing more so, his body hard and aching in ways that it’s never really ached in before. 

            “Jack,” you whisper, your voice breathy and echoing through the still room, the silent room, the only sound that of breathing and lips on skin and clothes shifting. 

            “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” he asks, pulling back from your pulse point, taking in the glazed look in your eyes, the pupil-blown appearance. 

            “I...need you,” you say and it’s like lightening has hit him, straight in his heart, this idea that you need him the most potent kind of aphrodisiac. He has never wanted to be wanted, needed, until you.  

            “All you had to do was say so, sweetheart,” he says, his own voice cracking on the exhale as he pulls you closer, away from the wall, up against his body, yours moving against his, acting on instinct as he walks you over to his bed, the one that’s miraculously clean and not covered with clothes. 

            Your knees buckle, body falling back onto the mattress, the springs squeaking underneath you as he kneels before you, his one hand going behind your neck, tangling in the strands of your hair as he kisses you, his tongue tangling with yours in the way he’s read about but never really known until now, until you. His other hand slides down your waist, hooking in the waistbands of your pants and underwear, pulling them back, pulling them off. 

            You gasp into his mouth and he’s taken aback for a moment at just how alive you are, just how real and present and it shocks him because nothing has ever felt this way before. He’s never wanted anything like this before. 

            His hand slips down, slipping to your centre, sliding between your folds. He knows what to do in the most basic idea, knows that this will probably fail and you’ll have to teach him, but you pull back from his lips, placing your forehead against his. 

            “Just fuck me, Jack,” you whisper. “I just…” you pause, your breath raggedy, “want to be close to you.”

            “Okay,” he whispers, pulling back from you, his body already mourning the loss of contact as he pulls his shirt off, undoes his jeans and lets them drop to the floor with his boxers, his cock hard and free as he pulls open his bedside drawer, pulling a condom package out. 

            “Condoms in the nightstand, jeez,” he hears you say, glancing over and wishing he hadn’t because he nearly chokes on his own tongue at the sight of you entirely naked, you having taken your shirt off, bare body on his mattress, knees up, legs apart. You’re so pretty it should be illegal. It’s dangerous and highly unfair. “How much sex do you have?”

            “I borrowed one from my roommate hoping,” he says, “to get lucky with you.” His hands are trembling as he moves the pull open the package, the sides seeming to be stuck far too much together so he lifts it to his mouth, doing something he knows he shouldn’t do. He rips the package open with his teeth, pulling the condom out, pinching the tip and rolling it on to his length until it’s entirely unrolled. 

            “You didn’t have to hope,” you whisper as he climbs over you, his body bracketing yours in, lips on your neck as he slides between you, getting ready to inch in. “I wanted this too.” He pushes in, your body gasping, arching up into him, the feeling of you all around him, so perfectly you almost too much for him as he inches in slowly, slowly, slowly. 

            “Jesus,” he whispers against your skin, your body shaking with a breathy kind of laugh. “Not to be—” he breaks off as he begins to move, the feeling perfect and too much and not enough. “Cliché, but you feel so good!”

            “So do you,” you reply and he lifts his head from your neck, taking in the teasing smirk on your face, his lips pressing against yours. 

            And he doesn’t really remember much after that, only that it was a tangle of tongues and teeth and bodies, limbs twined. He knows that you came at the same time as him, your cry the prettiest he’s ever heard, but what he really cares about is now. 

            Lying beside you on the bed, his arms around you and his head on your chest. 

            “I can hear your heartbeat,” he whispers and you let out a small laugh, your hands on his head, smoothing his curls down. 

            “I should hope so,” you reply, “cause that means I’m alive.”

            “Yeah,” he says, “but I like hearing it. Knowing it.”

            “Then listen as long as you want, Jackie.”

            And that was how he fell asleep that night, listening to your heartbeat, the assurance that you were real and alive and his. 

            His miracle.

            You were supposed to be forever, but yet here he is, sitting here on a hard wooden bench, crying and dying inside because you’re gone! You’re gone when you were supposed to be always. 

            “…Linda,” he hears the minister call, the name cutting through his thoughts, the name of your best friend, the woman who stood behind you at the wedding, glaring at him the entire time, promising him that if he died overseas, she would bring him back just to kill him herself. He didn’t realize that she agreed to give a eulogy. 

            He doesn’t know anything about today except that the eulogy the kids made him write for you is burning a hole in his pocket because he can’t stomach saying it. Speaking like you’re really gone when really, maybe that body isn’t you at all and you’re actually at home waiting. Right? That’s a possibility, right?

            Jack hopes it is. He so hopes it is.

            “…was my best friend. From the time we were kids, we were best friends and I…in a perfect world, I should not be eulogizing her now or ever. Because she was so alive. So…alive that I don’t think you’ll ever meet anyone as alive as she was. But that’s the cruel twist of fate after all. People who seem like they should never die are always the ones that do…”

            Jack should not be the one preparing to eulogize you, it should be him dead and you eulogizing him because if any one of you deserved to live it was you. You were the one who was steady, good, who loved him always and who never gave up on him. 

            And that’s the most painful memory to Jack, that knowing that you never gave up on him, yet the world now expects him to give up on you. As if death is enough of a reason to let go of someone. 

            He gave everything he had to you, all his love, all his life. Everything. You were number one in his life, always. He can’t go on without you, he can’t put someone else before you, he can’t ever have someone else take your place because this…this was a once in a lifetime kind of love and he just can’t let go of you. 

            If soulmates were real, you were his and there is no other. There is only you and the absence of you. 

            What was that Charlotte Bronte said? Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.

            “You do realize,” you call out, your voice just slightly annoyed, slightly high-pitched as you glare at him, “that I’m still mad at you, right?”

            “For dropping out and joining the Marines?” he asks and you sigh, rolling your eyes, an aggrieved glimmer shining in them. 

            “For not telling me until after you’d already done it,” you tell him, your lips curving up of their own accord, betraying the fact that you’re not really angry. “You were just like ‘hey babe, I got drunk and signed up for the Marines and I’m doing it’ which is so not cool.”

            “That was not exactly how it happened,” he says, but you raise your eyebrows, the hand interlaced with his pulling free and drifting to rest on your hip with the other, the pose slightly terrifying and imposing. “Okay, yeah, that is what happened.”

            It was a few months ago when he dropped out, when he signed out, when he told you, but now here the two of you were on vacation for two weeks before he shipped out the week after. He didn’t want to leave you, but he also loved his country and it felt...right. More right than staying in university and graduating with a degree that was what he was expected to do.

            “Yeah, it is,” you say, reaching for his hand again, lacing your fingers together as you hop over the rock in your path, squealing as you fall against him, his arm steadying like always. “But I’m not mad that you joined.”

            “No?” he says, stepping back a bit, his hand going behind him, guiding you over the terrain, the rocks that line the path up to the top of the waterfall. 

            “No,” you answer. “In fact I think you in that uniform is really sexy…I just wish…I just wished you’d told me, you know.”

            “I’m sorry,” he says, glancing back at you as he pushes a tree branch back and out of the way for you. “But it feels—”

            “Jack,” you cut him off, your free hand coming to rest on his chest, “I get it. It suits you more than university ever did. I just…” you swallow hard, glancing down for a minute, “I’m gonna miss you.” He can feel his heart swell at your words and he lets go of you to scoop you up in his arms, your legs hooking around his waist as he presses you back against the tree, his lips on yours. 

            “I’m gonna miss you too,” he says when he pulls back, forehead coming to rest against yours. “Which is why…well, I wanted to wait until we got to the top of the waterfall, but whatever,” he says, stepping back from you, your legs landing back on the ground, gravel skittering away.

            He reaches back into the pocket of his cargo pants, pulling the same red velvet box free and lowering himself to one knee. He watches as your eyes widen, head twisting in that way you have when you can’t quite believe what’s happening. He whispers your name, soft and low and sweet and it’s then he can see the shimmer of tears in your eyes. That knowing that it’s real. 

            “I love you,” he says, no preamble, no lead up, just exactly what he knows, what he feels. “I’m in love with you and I don’t…” he pauses, looking up and letting out a choked out chuckle, the sound thick, tears feeling like they’re growing in his throat, “I don’t want to ship out and go overseas with us not forever. I don’t want us to ever feel like a possibility and not an inevitability, okay? So…will you marry me?” It might not be the most eloquent speech in the world, but it is the truest. 

            “YES!” your answer is loud and bright and high and you slap a hand over your mouth as it rings through the trees with an echo. “Shit. That was really loud, but yes. Yes, Jack, a thousand times yes.” He rises, flipping open the box to reveal the simple, but meaningful ring. The one where the metal is entwined into an infinity knot, a few stones studding the corners. He pulls it out and slips it on your finger, kissing you as he does so. The kind of kiss that feels endless and infinite in all the right ways. 

            “Hey, Jack,” you whisper when he pulls back, your hands going on either side of his face, thumbs tracing patterns on his cheekbones, “we are forever, you know. Forever and always.”

            “I like that,” he replies, one side of his mouth tugging up in that crooked grin he has, the one you say you love the most, “forever and always, sweetheart.”

            Jack’s vision is blurry and pained and it’s too much, too much because you should still be here. You should be beside him, someone else should be buried today. Anyone else. He doesn’t care! He just wants you back, wants you here, with him, always. Like you promised. 

            Forever and always.

            “My name is Cyrus Abbot,” Jack hears and he blinks, his head jerking up, the sight of his youngest son, the child with your eyes, your eyes, your eyes, standing there, his face tear-stained but brave. Jaw set. 

            If only you could see him, hon, Jack thinks, hoping that you hear him, that you know. If only you could see how brave he is. 

            “I wasn’t gonna give a eulogy because this is my mother and it hurts a lot, but I realized that no one else here would know her like I would, like my siblings and I do so I decided too. My mother was the…the kind of person that everyone loved and the worst fucking part of all this—sorry, Dad, for swearing,” Cyrus’s lips curl up in a little smile that reminds Jack of yours so much that it takes his breath away, a punch to the gut because he forgot. 

            He forgot that you remain in pieces in the kids. Little things, like that smile. 

            “Is that I have to become an adult without her. I’m jealous of my oldest sibling, my brother, and maybe he’s jealous for the exact opposite, but I’m jealous of the time he got with her. I am eighteen and he is twenty-seven. We are nearly ten years apart so he got nearly ten more years with her than I did. He got to know her more and he became an adult with her guidance…I really fucking wish that—that I had gotten that.”

            This is what hurts the most. This hearing of the kids missing you because Jack had you for thirty years and they have not. They have lost you when they need you most. There will be no mother at their wedding, no mother to tell about children, to see squeal about grandchildren. There will be no mother at graduations and convocations. There will be no more mother at all. 

            Jack listens as Cyrus continues to speak, his voice so much like yours, that steadiness and strength, the way it doesn’t break and he remembers. 

            He remembers how just yesterday, it feels like he was giving his vows and now…

            Now, in a few moments, he’ll be giving a eulogy. 

            What kind of justice is that?

            Jack takes a deep breath, looking down at his white gloved hands, his hat already on, jacket adjusted, his dress uniform being worn for the first time today. Today…his wedding to you, his miracle, the love of his life. He flexes his fingers, the cloth scraping against the back of his knuckles, Flynn, his childhood best friend standing as best man behind him. 

            He can’t wait to hear the opening notes of “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.” The song. His and your song. He can’t wait to hear it and look up and see you in the dress you’ve refused to speak about at all. He can’t wait to watch as you walk to him, ready for the rest of your life and god, his vision is already blurry and you’re not even here yet. 

            No sooner does he think that then the song begins to play and his head jerks up, hat tipping just slightly on his head. He watches as the doors to the hall open and Linda, your best friend walks in, holding her bouquet and glaring at him, her threat still ringing in his head about him dying overseas. She walks fast, like always, falling to the side at her place as the chorus tune plays and he sees a glimpse of a white skirt. 

            And then you’re there, looking radiant in white, your mother at your side, the one who’s giving you away. He remembers when you said that, when you announced it and your dad looked all offended and you told him that your mother knew you before you were even a human and she carried you so she was really the only one who had a right to give you away at all. But the laughter that that memory brings falls away as he watches you walk towards him because this…this is everything. 

            He can feel that lump in his throat, the tears slipping down his cheeks, his body shaking with the held in cries because this is magical. It’s a miracle. You are the most beautiful person he’s ever seen, radiant in the white ballgown style dress, a veil over your face, but even through that layer of gauze he can see you. He will always see you. 

            You could be on the other side of the world and he will still see you because he knows you like nothing else. You are the only real thing he has ever known in his life. 

            The tears sear his skin as you step up, your mother taking your hand and pressing it into his and he didn’t even realize it was outstretched until now. 

            “Hi,” you whisper, the sound the prettiest he’s ever heard before. The most perfect, the most meaningful. The most miraculous. 

            “Hi,” he whispers, the sound rough as it scrapes against the lump, the thickness of his joy, of the impossibility of this moment and yet the sheer inevitability. 

            “Okay!” Jack hears Jeremy, his Marine brother say, voice loud and bright and cheerful, cutting through the sounds of tears from the seats, from the guests. “We are all gathered here today to celebrate and witness the joining of these two souls. Jack Abbot and the girl too good for him! Sorry, I mean, Y/N L/N. Now, like the…perfect couple they are, they have prepared their own vows so…Jack, if you’re ready.” Jack swallows hard and reaches into his coat with his free hand, the one not holding yours as if it’s a lifeline, pulling the vows he wrote free. 

            “’Kay,” he whispers, blinking past the last remnants of tears in his eyes, to look at the paper covered with his chicken-scratch writing. “Here goes: My love,” he says, looking up at you, looking at the way your face looks stained with tears just like his even through the white-tinted gauze of the veil around your face. “You are everything to me and today is everything. Today is a miracle, one I didn’t think I’d ever get and certainly not with a person far too good for me. But miracles do happen,” he pauses, swallowing hard, flicking his gaze up to the ceiling before back down to you. “Youare my miracle so…what do you vow to a miracle? One you never thought you’d get?

            “The answer is everything. I vow everything to you, my love. Everything I have been, am, will be. Everything. All that I am, all that I could be…it’s yours. There is no life for me without you so my life is yours, my heart is yours, my soul is yours. Do with it what you will, sweetheart, it was always yours from the moment you hit me in the head with that soccer ball two years ago. Sweetheart…yeah, I give you me, my everything. Because…well, you are my everything. It’s all yours, forever and always.” He can feel the tears still falling, still dripping down his cheeks, your body shaking too and that’s the best thing in the world, you feeling it too. He reaches forwards and slips your ring on your hand, the one engraved with infinity. 

            “You ready?” Jeremy asks you and Jack watches as you nod, the material of the veil fluttering as you do so, your free hand pulling your speech from where it’s been nestled in the centre of your bouquet. Clever, like always. 

            “Jack,” you begin, your voice watery, slightly hoarse. “I love you, so much and today is exactly what I hoped from the beginning. Because, surprise, I had hoped for this a little bit since our second date when you danced with me. You were the one who danced. And when you’re given an impossibility for your possibility, it feels like the greatest gift you could ever receive and you, Jackie, are my impossibility. My future and my present and my forever and always. So, I vow to you everything I am and could be. I am yours and I don’t think there’s a world that exists where I’m not. 

            “I will love you forever. I vow that. I vow that I will let you fall asleep listening to my heartbeat when you’re home so that you have proof that I’m alive. I vow that I will let you wake up first—or at least, think you’re up first—so that you can wake me with your fingers on my pulse. Just checking. I vow, Jackie, everything I am and ever could be. It is yours. It has been from the moment you held my soccer ball hostage for a date and called me pretty. I am yours, Jack. That’s the truest truth I’ve ever known. Forever and always.” The feeling of the cool, smooth metal held by your warm hands on his skin is a feeling he’ll never forget. 

            “Well then,” Jeremy says, his voice strong, but wavering the same, betraying his own emotions, “if no one has any objections, by the power vested in me by the military and my crash course in officiating, I now pronounce you wife and husband. You may now kiss one another.” And Jack doesn’t hesitate, lifting your veil as if he’s revealing the greatest treasure in the world, which he is, tossing it over your head, his hands on your cheek as he pulls you against him, his lips firm as they press against yours. 

            It’s a kiss that tastes of forever. Of always. Of infinity. 

            “My name is Henry and a lot of you know me as her oldest son.” It is Henry’s speech that breaks Jack the most because he remembers everything about that pregnancy, the way he was so scared and so excited. So young. 

            The way you surprised him and held him. The way you were, and always will be, his miracle. Henry is the son that was first, the child that you had when you scarcely older than a child yourself. Twenty-two years old and writing letters back and forth across the Atlantic and Pacific, your words, your voice reaching him in war zones and training stations. Your voice being the reason he came home. 

            That voice that he will never hear again. The voice that will never again whisper his name, laugh or sing or tease. The voice that will never once lilt through the air with news and lightness and pride. 

            The voice that will never again say her children’s name. The voice that will no longer speak again, at all. 

            The voice that was once but never again. 

            “…my parents had an epic kind of love. The kind you read about in books and always say that it’s not real even when you know it can be. That was what I saw growing up. Before I knew my own name, I knew what real love looked like. And that is the greatest gift my mother gave me. The knowledge of what real, true love looks like and the love of a mother. The good kind of motherly love.”

            Jack’s head falls in-between his knees, knowing that he’s next, that he will have to stand and speak a goodbye to the only person he is incapable of saying goodbye to. 

            He has the letters to prove it. 

            That he never said that to you at all. 

July 2, 1995

Hey you,

I miss you. I wish that I could tell you all about what we’re doing. Or where we are but I can’t. Not really. It’ll just get blacked out I bet. But…it doesn’t hurt to try. 

I’m in Bosnia and it’s really dreary here. It’s horrible actually. The bombs and the cries and the dying. The bleeding. I wish I was home with you, curled up on the couch, holding you while you studied because hell knows I never did. 

I wish that I was there with you always. I wish that we were spending the rainy Saturdays together, hibernating in the winter under that big white fuzzy blanket I bought that you cursed me out for buying because it’s white and I always spill stuff on it. I wish I would be there when you turned twenty-one so that I could take you to the bar and buy you a whiskey neat. Your first legal drink with a proper one. 

Honestly, I would take seeing you over this, sweetheart. I really need to see you. 

Love you,

Jack.

*

July 10, 1995

Jack,

I sent you a picture because you said you needed to see me and with that, hopefully, whenever you need to see me, you can look at it. 

I wish you were home too because I miss you. I miss you sleeping beside me and the way that you snore. Yeah, I miss your snores. The world has turned upside down, Jackie, since you’ve been gone. But don’t worry about my 21, Linda’s written up a whole plan that involves a lot of fruity drinks and strippers. 

As much as I would love to tease you about her plans, joke about the strippers, I can’t. Because (cheesy as it is) the only man I want to see stripping is you, but I won’t for a good bit. 

But, you may not be with me, but you are in spirit. When I’m watching old movies, under that (stupid) white blanket, I’m picturing you beside me. When I’m studying, I know that you would hold me if you were here. And I get through the days. 

I love you, Jackie. 

Love,

Y/N.

*

September 15, 1995

Hi,

I liked the report card you sent. Liked seeing how well you’re doing. We’re okay here, not great, but good. Decent. The danger is…less bad now. 

I wish I could tell you more, but I don’t have a lot of time. Just know that I’m alive, that I’m good. That I love you. 

And that I can’t wait to marry you. 

Soon,

Jack

*

January 1st, 1996

Jack,

I rung in the new year without you. I didn’t think I’d ever do that. Your leave seems like so long ago and it was. I don’t know when you’re due again, but I thought you should know that I didn’t kiss anything but your picture on New Year’s Eve. 

You’re the only thing I want in the New Year. 

Come back to me, Jack. Come home safe. 

*

March 14, 1997,

To my dear family,

God, I loved writing that so much. All’s quiet right now in Iraq, Baghdad to be specific. It won’t be quiet for very long, but that’s okay. I take it when I can. You know, when I have time and I’m not writing letters to you, I’m looking at that scan you sent me. 

God, I love it so much, looking at our little bean, little Henry. Good name by the way, I’m glad we chose it. You know, he may not be a kid yet, but I already know that he’s the cutest kid in the world and that you’re the best mother. 

Because, I meant what I said, sweetheart. You’re my miracle.

I look at the picture whenever I’m down, the one you sent me a couple of years ago, the polaroid of you at the study table, I’m assuming Linda took it and you’re just bent over the book. Because that’s what I needed then and now.

You.

I wanted to see you and that’s what you gave me, a picture of you being you. The most perfect thing in the world, an image of my miracle being miraculous. My wife being miraculous. 

That’s actually my favourite thing to say; my wife. I’m annoying the hell out of my brothers over here, by always bragging about you, exclaiming about my wife, my wife, my wife. It’s the thing I’m proudest of being, sweetheart—your husband.

That’s the title that I’m proudest of. Not Sergeant or team leader or anything else. Husband, that’s the title I’m proudest to wear. 

But pretty soon, it will be shared with another. Pretty soon it will husband and father. 

I love you, my wife.

Love eternal,

Your husband, Jack.

*

March 25th, 1997,

To my husband,

You are the cheesiest man I have ever met. And that is a good thing, Jackrabbit. Because I’m the same. The title that I’m proudest to have is your wife. Don’t ever let that slip to Linda because she would kill me over that. 

All’s quiet over here too. I’m studying for my first of the med school exams and eating for two, not that I really needed an excuse. And it’s not all junk food, don’t worry. I know you read that parenting book when you were last on leave, I’m taking all my vitamins, going to all my doctor’s appointments and eating green when Linda makes me. 

By the way, I’ve decided on what I want to be: an oncologist. I just want to help people and I think that’s where I’m meant to be. You know how fascinated I am by it, you know how much I feel that care in oncological wards is lacking. I think…I think it’s where I belong. Like you got called to the military, I got called to this. 

And Henry loves that recording we made on your last leave. He loves the sound of your voice, kicks every time it comes on. 

I love you, Jack. Come home safe. 

Your family needs you.

Love,

Your wife, the only, Mrs. Abbot (soon to be doctor).

*

July 6th, 1998,

Dear future Dr. Abbot,

Thank you for the picture of Henry. Thank you for everything, my miracle. I know we’re starting off extra cheesy in this letter, but I don’t care. I’m thinking I’ll retire soon. I don’t think this is what I want to be doing forever, not now. Not when I’m a father. 

I’ve always wanted to serve my country and I’ve done that, but watching my troopmate, my brother get blown up in shshhshshsh I can’t keep going like that, precious. I don’t want to be a funeral for you. I don’t want to be a casualty and I don’t want our son growing up with a flag in place of his father. 

I want to be there. 

Once this tour is over, I’m done, sweetheart. Once this tour is over, Y/N, I’m coming home and I’m staying. 

I’ll try to get back in one piece.

Love, 

Your husband, Serg. Abbot.

*

July 16th, 1998,

Dear Sergeant Abbot,

You have no idea how happy I was to hear that and I am sorry if that makes me a horrible person but I have feared every time you’ve gone over that you would come back to me in pieces. That I would have a flag in place of a husband and a son with more questions than I had answers for. You better get home safe, screw one piece, just make it home alive. 

In other words, Henry said his first word today and I won. It was Mama so when you get back you owe me fifty bucks. We went to the park and the cutest thing ever happened, a butterfly landed on his nose and he just looked at it, babbled a bit and clapped. Then it flew off. I’ve been calling him the chosen one all day and I’m afraid that it may have given him an ego. He’s only been responding to Chosen One and Prince of the Butterflies (blame Linda for that one).

He misses you, Jack. I do too. 

Come home alive, that’s all I care about.

Love, forever and always, 

Your wife, Y/N.

            “Dad,” Henry whispers, the shake on Jack’s shoulder enough to draw him from his stupor, the stupor made up of you and the absence of you and the loss of you where your presence should be. “It’s your turn.”

            And it is with shaking legs that Jack stands, climbing onto the steps, eyes trained on the wood of the podium, refusing to look back at the you-not-you body in the coffin, instead focusing on the blurry faces of people who mourn you without knowing you right. 

            “My wife,” he cries, tears already falling, hands already shaking as he looks at the speech he wrote, the one that Henry carried and set on the podium for him. “Was—everything. She was…she was my,” he draws in a shaky breath, a broken sob, the microphone picking it up and magnifying it around the room accompanied by the shrill notes of feedback. 

            “She was my partner, my life! She was—the mother of my children—and the arms…that held me…always. She promised me forever and always but she couldn’t stay—because…because her own body turned against her! And now…now I am left with a hole in my life that—only she can fill!

            “A widower,” he says, drawing in a steadier breath, anger at the disease, at cancer, beating back his sadness for a moment, “is defined as a man who has lost his wife, but she—she said to me—o-once that as long as I—” he draws in another sharp breath, “remember she is still with me! So, a widower is defined as a man who has lost his wife. I am not one because—because she may be…dead but I remember and so I have not lost her. 

            “I am a husband. Always and forever. I will never be a widower because god, I am so lucky to be able to love her and even if she’s dead—I will give forever and always.” He knows there is more on the speech, but he has no more left in him. Rather he feels himself collapsing, folding in on himself, tears pouring down his face, body shaking as he whispers, forever and always over and over, Nerissa, your carbon copy rising and helping him back to his seat. 

            And for a moment it’s like looking at your ghost, the ghost of the days of happiness and youth. The days when he fell asleep to the sound of your heartbeat. 

            The days when he fell asleep to the sound of two.

            His bag is heavy on his shoulder as he pushes out of the centre, his fatigues still on his body. He’s just come back from a tour and he’s tired, the kind of tired that sinks into your bones and invades your marrow, your bloodstream until all you can think about is sleep. 

            Until he pushes out into the blistering sun, the summer day so warm that he can literally see the heat as it bounces off the cracked pavement, your figure standing against the car, looking cool and like a paradise mirage in a loose white sundress. 

            “Hey, Soldier!” you call out, waving your hand and fuck the exhaustion, he runs to you, opening his arms and sweeping you up in them, a small box wedged between the two of you, the only separation between you. And he doesn’t care because he’s so close to you and he hasn’t been this close in months and he loves the feel of your body against his, the scent of your skin and the sound of your breathing. 

            “What’s the box?” he asks as he sets you back down on the ground and you smile at him, the mischievous smile you have.

            “It’s a gift,” you tell him, handing it to him. He prepares to open it but you hold up a hand and ask him to wait until he’s in the car and he obliges, pulling open the back seat and tossing his bag in before slamming that door and slipping into the passenger seat, his bones protesting, joints popping and cracking as he sits and buckles up, your body beside his in the driver’s seat, radio on low. 

            “Can I open it now?” he asks and you nod as you pull away from the curb, out onto the street. He lifts the lid of the box, looking down at a slim, pink and white stick. A pink and white stick with two pink lines like those commercials… “Is this real?” he whispers and he hears your laugh, your hand coming to rest on his knee, rubbing it reassuringly. 

            “It’s real, Jack,” you whisper, but his attention is stuck on the stick, on what it means. “You’re gonna be a dad.”

            “I’m gonna…I’m gonna be a dad,” he whispers, lifting his head and looking at you, the prettiest, loveliest, most beautifully impossible woman, pressing a soft kiss to your cheek whispering, “you’re my miracle, sweetheart. My miracle.”

            Jack is aware of little but the burning in his body and certain words that Nerissa says, some poem she wrote for you, only certain words, phrases sticking like gone too soon. Taken when we needed you most. Does a daughter ever not need her mother?

            You should be here like you were for every one of Nerissa’s readings, cheering and clapping when she was done, turning to talk to him with excitement. You were always so proud of her, of all of them, but especially her. Because she was elbowing her way in to a field already closing, one that was shutting down. 

            Because she was making beauty out of the painful things she went through. 

            And it’s like for just a moment, the fog clears and he can see you, you, standing there in the aisle, looking at Nerissa with tears in your eyes, reaching for her and missing, hand passing right through her. 

            Is that what it’s like to be dead? To be so close to the living and never reach them again?

            Or is this just another illusion like the ones he has in the morning when he sees your different iterations, different ages in that house doing things you used to do. 

            You should still be here. 

            You need to be here.

            Why are you not here?

            Why is he not with you?

            Why did you travel on this adventure alone?

            He can see Linda even before he’s out of the depot, her face drawn into a tight frown as he steps out, foot tapping on the concrete sidewalk, night having fallen already, her body still in scrubs. It looks like she rushed out of her residency to get here, to get him. 

            He was delayed getting in, was supposed to be here yesterday, but a bomb went off before the plane could take off and then there was havoc and it took time to get it all cleared. Sorted. Safe. 

            “What’s wrong?” he calls out, running over to Linda, his booted feet slamming against the concrete with force that reverberates through him. 

            “She’s in labour,” Linda says and he’s running even faster, pulling open the passenger side door, bag still on his back, tossed to his feet, seatbelt pulled on as fast as he can as Linda gets in, puts the car in drive and takes off. 

            It’s like, for once, traffic is on his side and it takes only a little bit of time before the car is at the hospital and Linda is slowing, preparing to park, but he can’t wait that long, shoving open the door and taking off, his bag still on the floor, body still dressed in full fatigues. 

            He is not missing the birth of your son. He is not missing you holding his hand and swearing and breaking every fucking bone in his arm. He. Is. Not. Fucking. Missing this!

            He cuts through the lobby, running up the stairs, taking note of the sign declaring maternity third floor and then he’s up and up and up, pushing open onto the floor, the waiting room full of men and he can’t believe that these husbands wouldn’t be in there with their wives, wouldn’t be waiting to cut the cord, to hold their child. 

            He runs past them, back to the hall that leads to birthing rooms, looking into every window, looking for you. 

            “Sir!” a nurse calls out, running to him, security behind her. “Sir, you can’t be back here!” He continues to run, pushing past the nurses that get in his way, finally hearing your high-pitched scream and then he’s there, pushing open the birthing room door, the door slamming against the wall and he sees the doctor, nurses, your legs in the stirrups. 

            “The baby’s crowning,” the doctor says and he hears your cry, the one that is his name and he looks over at you, still half-frozen in the doorway by the sight of what he almost missed. 

            “Jack,” you whisper and that whisper is enough to pull him from the door and run to you, his hand finding yours, holding tight, lifting it to his lips and pressing a kiss. “I didn’t think you’d make it.”

            “I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” he whispers, his words cut off by your cry, your hand squeezing tight, tight, tight to his hand as the doctor encourages you. It seems like no time has passed and the doctor has little Henry, the little bean in her hands, eyes crinkled at the edges of her mask as she hands the baby to him. 

            It’s the most miraculous feeling in the world, looking at this little, wrinkled infant, barely minutes old, hands waving, body writhing as it cries. It’s so little, so impossibly tiny as it blinks, eyes that are his, locking onto him. 

            “Hi, bean,” he whispers, this intense surge of rightness, of protection raging within him. There is nothing he would not do for this little boy in his arms. “I’m your daddy.” And then he hands the baby to you and he goes silent, goes still for a moment before letting out a coo as if he’s right where he belongs. 

            And Jack has never seen such a perfect sight as this—you, his miracle, holding his child. His…family. 

            “You came,” you whisper and he falls to his knees beside the bed, chin resting on the edge of his mattress, eyes that match the baby in your arms fixed on you. 

            “You needed me.”

            The procession begins, your coffin lifted up and Jack can’t handle it, the sight of his sons, your sons, carrying your coffin. 

            This was never supposed to happen. 

            You were never supposed to go first. What happened to forever and always? Why can’t you just come back?

            Just come back and be with him again?

            That’s all he wants. To be with you again like he always was before. 

            To be yours again and not the one you left behind.

            Pain. Jack knows nothing but pain and these beige walls. He hates this place and hates the way that loud noises send him ducking, bending, hiding, shivering. Cowering. As best one can cower in a hospital bed with a stump where a leg used to be. 

            One second…one second he and his team were leaving and the next the world was on fire and there was a ringing in his ears and nothing else but pain and then nothing but numbness and that dumb fucking ringing. The one that doesn’t go away no matter how much he hits his head on the bad days. 

            He lost his team. He lost his leg. 

            He lost too much. How much else will the world take?

            He was supposed to come home and retire not be medically discharged with some medal that is no way a replacement for the brothers he will have to watch be buried. He was supposed to come home in one piece for you. 

            “Hey,” he hears your voice as the door to his room pushes open and then an auburn haired boy pushes in, ripping around the room with quiet excitement in only the way a three-year old has. 

            “Leave,” he says, turning his face to the window, away from you, but he hears your soft footsteps, knows without looking that you will be wearing scrubs, that you will have come from a shift, just to see him and he doesn’t want you to see him. He is nothing. Less than nothing. He doesn’t matter.

            “I can’t do that, Jack,” you whisper, sitting down beside his bed. He can hear it, your hand reaching for his, but he curls it into a fist, your hand closing around the closed extremity instead. 

            “I don’t want you seeing me like this,” he hisses, his jaw gritting together, teeth grinding to dust.

            “I’m not leaving you, Jack,” you whisper. “I’m never leaving you. I love you.” He can hear the sound of Henry, the light and bright sound of innocence, the sound that reminds him why fighting was worth it, but it hurts at the same time because he doesn’t deserve it. 

            “I can’t dance anymore,” he says, so much layered in that sentence, but he feels your hand on his chin, gripping it and turning him, making him look at you. And god, he does, drinking in every last detail of you, every line that’s appeared. 

            “Don’t sell yourself short, Jackrabbit. You can dance in a chair, with crutches…even laying down. Dancing doesn’t need legs, Jackie. It just needs you.” He watches you swallow hard, tears gathering in your eyes and he reaches his free hand to cup your cheek and you lean into the gesture. 

            “I don’t deserve you,” he says, his own throat thickening, tears threatening to fall. 

            “It’s not about deserving, Jack. It’s about needing and I need you. Like you need me. Won’t you…” you pause, sniffling in and looking at him, nostrils flaring. “Won’t you at least try? For me? For Henry?”

            “For you,” he whispers, nodding once, “always.”

            Your coffin lowers into the ground, into the grave that was dug six feet down, six feet under and Jack wants nothing more than to hurl himself after you because wasn’t it just yesterday that the two of you talked about growing old together?

            About sitting on porch swings, watching grandchildren run wild in the backyard like figments of memories of your kids?

            What happened to those times? Where did they go?

            Where did you go?

            “Why do you have to go?!” he cries out, the words shattering in the stillness, storm clouds brewing in the background, swelling, hanging heavy with rain. 

            “It’s okay, Dad,” Nerissa whispers, “we’ve got you.” That’s when he realizes that he’s being held up by your children. His children. Our children, he thinks. 

            Because he can’t stand on his own without you. 

            Not when it was supposed to be forever.

            “I want to grow old with you, sweetheart,” Jack whispers, watching the sun dip below the sky. “I want to watch an army of grandchildren run around this backyard with great grandchildren too. I want to embarrass all of them just like we do the kids and kiss you. Because even as an old man, I’ll love you.”

            “I want that too, Jackie,” you whisper, curling up against him, body folded tight to his. “I want it all.”

            “Always and forever, right, sweetheart?”

            “Always and forever, Jackie. Always and forever.”

            The rose feels like the weight of the world in his hand right now as he steps up, vision blurry, ground sloping downwards as he looks at your coffin, the one littered with other black roses like the one in his hand. 

            He hopes the ground will give way, that he’ll slip and fall and smash his head on your coffin, dying then and there, the dirt tossed on top of him too, but no such luck and he lets the rose drop. 

            He lets it drop with a promise to you whispered into its petals, “I love you, sweetheart. See you soon.”

            “Jack,” he hears you call out, your voice echoing from the bathroom and he pushes himself up, prosthetic squeaking as he does so, setting aside his medical textbook and climbing up the stairs, hand gripping the railing tight, the sound of cartoons coming from the den accompanied by Henry’s high-pitched squeals of delight. The ones that make him smile even around the demons that claw at his mind. 

            “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” he calls out as he steps in, pushing open the door to see you standing at the sink, holding it tight between your hands. You’re looking at something and he steps deeper in, his hand finding the small of your back as he looks down at six thin pink and white sticks, all six showing two pink lines. 

            “I’m pregnant,” you whisper, your tone high and excited as you turn to him, but he can feel only crushing pain, sadness. Failure. 

            He can’t be a dad again, he’s already failing at being Henry’s dad. He’s already fucking him up. How can he raise a kid? How can he be a good dad when he’s haunted and scarred?

            “Jack, talk to me.”

            “I’m scared,” he whispers, looking back up at you and your hands come to rest on his cheeks, holding tight to him, making him look you in the eyes. “I’ll be a bad dad. I’ll fuck this kid up because I’m fucked up.”

            “Jack Leslie Abbot, smarten up!” you say and he blinks, surprise warring with the pain. “Henry loves you, he calls you the best dad in the world. Brags about you all the time and calls you a hero, never mind that he has a doctor mother. And I love you. And our daughter will too. You will not fuck them up because, you, Jack Abbot, are the best man in the world.”

            “A daughter, huh?” he whispers and though the fear is not gone, it’s lessened. He’s willing to try, at least. 

            “Mother’s intuition,” you tell him and then he’s kissing you, teary kinds of kisses that taste like hope and laughter and toothpaste. 

            “DADDY! COME PLAY!” He hears Henry yell and he pulls back from you, squeezing your hand and turning, but glancing back and whispering, “you’re my forever miracle” before disappearing to find his son.

            Jack watches the kids toss handfuls of dirt down on the grave and he can feel his heart break. Can feel it crack wide open. 

            Because when does a child not need their mother?

            When does a husband not need his wife?

            When does he not need you?

            The screen is loading, Columbia’s logo there and Jack watches as you pull Henry against you, some of the rigidity of his muscles fading, eyes never once leaving the page. Acceptances were supposed to be updated today and Jack stands, arms crossed, little Cyrus holding tight to his hips and Nerissa on the back of the couch. 

            “It’s updated,” he hears Henry whisper, watching as his oldest son leans forward, scrolling and screaming. “I GOT IN! I GOT IN! MOM AND DAD, I GOT IN!”

            And then the room is a mess of screaming and cheering and hugging, Nerissa jumping on her brother’s back and amidst the chaos, Jack looks at you and you look at Jack, a million words passing in that single glance. A million lifetimes. 

            But most of all, forever and always.

—

            Everyone is leaving, but Jack can’t. It’s like he’s glued to the sight of your grave and he takes a single step forwards, pulling away from Henry and Nerissa, his body buckling and he falls onto the mass of fresh dirt, his body bending towards your gravestone, hands reaching for it and he may not be able to stand on his own, but he can do this.

            He can hold onto your gravestone because it is the closest he will ever get to holding you again. 

            It matches his, the one that will be fitted to yours when he dies, the other half of the broken heart, the quote you wrote continued onto yours. Yours reads My life’s greatest adventure and his reads was always you. He wants to be here now, buried beside you, following you into the afterlife, his spirit holding yours. 

            Instead he kneels here, his arms curved around cold marble that doesn’t have a heartbeat, knowing for the first time, with absolute certainty that you are dead. 

            And you’re not coming back. 

            So, all he can do is hold your gravestone and pretend that it’s you. 

            And that he can feel your heartbeat one last time. 

            One last dance. 

—

            “NO!” Jack cries as the doctor steps out, closing the door behind him, the diagnosis of Stage 4, metastasized, everywhere, still lingering in the air, hanging like an acrid wave. “NO! No, no, no, no, no.” Jack is crying, sobbing really and you are holding him, your heartbeat beating, beating, beating and there cannot be a world where it never beats again, can there?

            “Jackie, it’s okay,” you whisper and he pulls back, his hands drifting to wipe away his tears, the gesture rough and furious, painful, clearing his vision enough so he can see you and the greys in your hair and the smile lines on your face and the wrinkles by your eyes. Signs of ageing that will never become more. That will stop. 

            “I don’t want to live without you,” he says and you reach for him, your hands taking his and pressing them against your heart. 

            “You won’t,” you tell him, face twisting with pain, with tears. He thought you were just tired, stressed. He didn’t think this. He didn’t think you were dying. But you knew. “As long as you remember me, you will not lose me. I’m always with you.”

            “How are you so calm?” he asks you and you shake your head, tears spilling over, dripping down your cheeks. 

            “I’m not. I’m angry and sad and so pissed because I dedicated my life to this and it’s what’s killing me, but you need me. So, I can’t fall apart.”

            “Yes, you can,” he whispers, pulling you against him. “Fall apart, sweetheart. I’m here. I’ll hold you.”

            And you do. You fall apart because he’ll always hold you. 

            Forever and always.

—

            “The kids,” Jack whispers against the marble of your stone, “have been my rocks. They’ve been steady while I feel like I’ve lost the entire world. Like the sun went dark. Because it did. You’re gone, after all. And I don’t think it’s right that you’re gone. You promised me forever and always. Where is that, sweetheart? Where’s my forever? Where’s my always?”

—

            “Jack,” you whisper, reaching for him, your hand papery and thin and more skin stretched over bone. “I love you.”

            “And I love you,” he whispers, throat already thick, voice already hoarse. “Always.”

            “For…” you pause, a cough rattling your body, echoing through his, “ever and al-always.” There’s nothing but a thin steady beep emanating from your heart monitor. 

            “NO! NO, SWEETHEART! COME BACK TO ME!” he screams, standing from the chair by your bed, the chair falling over with the force of his stand, his hands coming to your sternum, pressing down again and again and again and again and again, anything to start your heart. 

            Anything to bring you back. 

            And he is aware of nothing else but the crack of your bones underneath his hands and the growing rigidity and then he’s pulled off of you and he doesn’t know by who, it doesn’t matter, he can’t see them, only you. Only ever you. 

            “NO!” he screams, fighting against the people restraining him. “NO, I HAVE TO BRING HER BACK! WE’RE SUPOOSED TO GROW OLD TOGETHER! FOREVER AND ALWAYS! FOREVER AND ALWAYS!”

            But they don’t let go and pretty soon it all goes black anyways. 

—

            “Come on, Dad,” Henry whispers, his arm slipping underneath Jack’s pulling him up and away from you, just like he did when you died. Pulling him up and away as the sky opens up, rain falling down, pouring as if the world mourns you just as he does. 

            “We have to go,” Cyrus says and that’s the worst pain, Jack finds. The fact that he was trained to never leave a man behind, yet the world expects him to leave you, his wife, behind just because you’ve died. 

            He’ll never leave you behind. 

The oddest thing he recognised was that the washing machine went more often than it ever had before, folding your jeans out of the dryer. It warmed his soul to see you trade your old ripped up t-shirts for one more you after Trin dragged you to go shopping. 

It was an odd adjustment for Jack, his almost always empty apartment slowly being filled by your belongings. A new fluffy blanket on the couch, new shampoo conditioner and body wash that Jack had bought in your favourite scent. 

You’d woken up to complete silence in the house, it wasn’t an unfamiliar happening, most of the time you rose before Jack and just stayed in your room until you heard his movement in the living room.  Even if you lived here you still didn’t feel like it was your home, no it was Jack’s and you were just staying there until you could find a place to live. 

But after a few hours you were still met with nothing, you carefully moved into the shared space, hours later there was still absolutely nothing. You’d assumed Jack’s room was only his to enter thus until now you hadn’t even stepped foot inside, that's why it felt so insane to knock on the hardware. The door slid open exposing that there was absolutely no one in his room, the bed perfectly made with the corners tucked (something you didn’t even know you could do). “Jack-” you tried to suppress the panic that threatened to rise.

You stumbled around the apartment pushing open every door before grasping your new phone, one of Jack's old ones, quickly calling him and pressing on his contact. Your body sank against the island, knuckles aching from how tightly you gripped the phone, curled in the fetal position. 

“Hey roomie-” you raggedly let out a breath of relief at the sound of his voice “is everything okay?” The sound of the car door slamming shut made you jump as you stared at his profile picture. 

“Where are you?” your voice cracked, rocking gently.

“I just went to get groceries I’m on the way home now- right now…” he clarified realising how stupid it was of him to leave you home alone with absolutely no notice. “I wouldn't leave you like that honey, I was just getting food.” his voice dripped with concern “Just watch some TV and relax”

You hung up, sliding over to the couch and turning on the TV fiddling with his remote, still struggling with some of the buttons. You switched on some random sitcom, staring at the screen as you cocooned himself in the fluffy blanket you’d bought. Tears burned at your eyeline as you watched the family on TV laugh and eat dinners together, you and Jack eat dinner together when you can. It sucks, the little reminders of what you did not and will not ever have. 

The door clicked open and shut rapidly, the thud of a full bag of groceries against the kitchen floor, the hardwood creaking with Jack’s uneven gait, his hand moving gently to your shoulder, “wanna make dinner with me?” he spoke softly, he’d learned that was the best way to approach you, with kindness. 

“Can I just watch?” you replied as he nodded, “do you want the chair?” Jack had an ergonomic chair he could use instead of standing to cook. There was a guilt attached to the whole debacle, making a disabled man tend to your needs because you’re just utterly clueless. He nodded again as you grabbed it for him, he sat with a gruff hum of relief, you lowered to detach the prosthesis and the lining so his leg could breathe. “Can I help in any way…?”

“You wanna try chopping some vegetables?” you nodded moving onto one of the island stools, Jack maneuvered around by gripping onto counters, pulling out a large wood chopping board and the appropriate knife placing it down in front of you. Over the weeks spent in Jack’s house you’d see him go through the motions countless times, the rotation of the wrist, the size and shape needed for the perfect tasting dish. 

The weight of the knife was unfamiliar yet you managed to mimic Jack’s movements, a soft smile on your lips as Jack stared over at you, his heart thumping in his chest. Your eyes flickered up to him only to feel a deep sharp pain seer through your finger. It took several seconds to look down and register that you had fully just chopped off a whole part of your finger. Jack was already staring back at the meat he was preparing, your hand darted to a tea towel, wrapping up your hand. “I’m going to the toilet.” you darted over to the room, locking the door behind you as blood stained the probably very expensive hand towel. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck”

Jack leaned against the counter as his head turned to where you were sitting, seeing the blood all over your chopping board, the bloody handprint on the counter, the sliver of your fingertip on the wooden board. “Kid!?” he froze for a few seconds, his leg was still by the couch, his chair was his only option to make it to the bathroom, pulling himself frantically along the walls to pound on the bathroom door.

The floor of the bathroom toilet was a haven, towel discarded on the tile as sobs forced themselves out of you “I’M SORRY JACK!” your lungs began to burn, air not entering them as the room spun. 

“Don’t be sorry!” He barely thought about the volume of his voice as he pounded on the door "Sweetheart I can’t get you out!” Jack’s heart pounded as he pulled at the door handle.

“Please don’t be mad!” it was hard, registering when people were getting angry, really registering any emotions people felt around you. All you knew was that Jack was screaming and that usually meant that trouble was on the horizon. 

“I’m not mad! Doll i’m not mad i’m- i’m scared-!” his voice was raw as you stared at your hand, the way it was bleeding over your shirt. “SIRI CALL ROBBY!” 

It was minutes later when Robby rushed into the apartment, sweating as he threw his body against the bathroom door, bile rose up Jack’s throat every time he heard your destroyed squeals as the wood of the door splintered and cracked with the impact. 

The door swung open, revealing your form hidden behind the toilet, Robby rushing in to crouch in front of you, taking your palm to inspect your injured finger. “It’s okay…no one is mad- we’re gonna fix it okay?”

He ushered you to stand, pulling you out of the kitchen to find Jack on the couch, pulling on his liner and prosthesis. The second his eyes locked on you, his whole body bolting over to meet you. His arms wrapped around yours, one weaving up into your hair, the other with his palm pressed to the small of your back, his chin moving into the crook of your neck just to relax himself. “Don't hide when you’re hurt…okay? Never, i’ll take care of you, i’m not mad i’m not-” 

“Promise?” you rasped. 

“Promise.”

………..

It felt weird, being watched as much as Jack Abbot tended to watch you. Since the day with your finger he never seemed to take off his prosthesis around you, the simmering guilt returned. In the most simple terms you weren't used to the level of care Abbot had assigned to you. Making sure you were constantly comfortable both at home and at work. 

It was some football player from a match in a nearby park. He was rowdy, his whole team was rowdy yet you moved around the party without a second thought. Trying to treat the guy who had come in with a dislocated shoulder, moving him carefully from chairs. “Okay so we’re going to try to pop it back in…” you grasped your hands around the tablet as you sat him down in south 15. “I have to ask you some…questions about your history-” you pulled up the ergonomic stool to the edge of the bed, offering a sweet smile in an attempt to sooth his discomfort. 

You ran through your standard questions feeling a coarse dirty finger against your cheek bone pushing a strand of hair out of your face with his good hand. You ducked away with an awkward chuckle “i don’t know…if that is appropriate.” you stated turning back to the tablet.

“Sorry you’re just so pretty…you must be really smart- to be a nurse-” you couldn't help the heat that rose up your neck at his words, his praise, his attention. “Just…how about you reset my shoulder and I take you out to dinner after?”

“I have to finish my shift…” you chuckled attention his oxygen monitor and helped him strip off the football gear. “And your arm is gonna hurt for a while…” 

“I can power through for you…besides- i’ll take you out to breakfast.” he smirked lazily, and somehow it got to you…

“fine…I’ll be outta here around 8am…that's good for you, you gonna come pick me up?” you teased slightly as he nodded. 

The shift came and went, you sat out on the curb outside the hospital, checking your phone every minute waiting for the described jeep to pull up and take you on a cute little lunch date. You’d made it to the curb at 8 am on the dot, it was now….8:48 am.

“I don’t know if he’s coming, kid.” Jack strolled over, stood tall by your side as you sat in one of the outfits you and trin had picked out. 

“He’s gonna be here, his arm just probably hurts…” you rationalised, fingers itching to type out another query on his location, on if he was coming and how you weren't mad you were just excited to see him.

“Sweetheart.” His hand came down softly on your head with a gruff sigh “he’s not coming. Let's go home.”

“No he’ll be here.” 

“Honey.”

“No he’s coming.” 

Jack groaned realising you weren’t going to give up, huffing as he sat on a flower pot by your side. “Then I’ll wait with you.”

9:00am nothing.

9:24 still nothing.

9:32

Ding

You jumped up at the sound, opening your phone to see something far worse than the simple excuse you’d expected. Sorry. One of the guys bet that I could get you to go on a date. But you’re not my type. Sorry. 

“We’re going-” you shoved the phone in your pocket, jack standing without a word and following you to his car. Once again you sat in Jack Abbot’s car sobbing as he drove you home, only this time the vulnerability came not in the form of fever but instead from humiliation. 

“Do you wanna-” the door to your room in the apartment slammed shut, his hand forming a strong grip with a sigh. “-talk…about it…” 

Was it humiliating to be sobbing into your pillow in your late 20s over some frat guy? Oh absolutely it was. But it didn’t stop your mascara from staining the white sheets, nor your eyes from puffing up, or crying yourself to sleep. 

It was hard heavy rasps on the door that stirred you from your slumber, “honey c’mon wake up…” you stumbled to the door, looking like 10 kinds of crap, sliding the door open. 

“Wow.” 

“I know….now what?” you sighed as he tugged at your hand, pulling you down into the living room “you should take off that leg abbot-” your words filtered out as you stared at the spread which had been laid out for you, croissants, pain au chocolat, eggs, bacon…everything. 

“I thought we could have brunch….?”