Page 35 of Echoes

Rosie looked back at her wife, who was clearly irritated, and said, “We’re roommates, technically. Felicity was just grabbing food and, apparently, got me something, too.”

“I’ll give you some time,” Felicity said.

“Five minutes?” Rosie asked.

“Sure,” Felicity replied and turned to go.

“Five minutes?” Ami asked after the door closed. “I haven’t talked to you in five days, and I only get five more minutes?”

“It’s her room, too, Ami. She needs to sleep.”

“Why are you sharing a room, exactly?”

“Smaller boat,” she replied.

“You know she liked you, right?”

“What?” Rosie asked.

“Felicity. You had to know.”

Rosie swallowed and said, “What are you talking about?”

“Rosie, she had those goo-goo, in-love-with-my-teacher eyes whenever you were around. I saw it all the time.”

“I was never her professor.”

“Whatever you want to call it.”

“Well, even if that’s true, she knows I’m married. And for all I know, she’s married too.”

“You haven’t asked her?”

“We haven’t had a lot of time to just talk. I told you, things have been crazy here. And I’m sure Felicity is over whatever crush you might have thought she had back then. It’s been years.”

“It wasn’t a crush. It was the reason I…”

Rosie tilted her head and said, “The reason you what?”

“The reason I stopped by that morning.”

“What morning?” she asked, knowing the answer.

“I overheard her on the phone, talking to a friend. She admitted her feelings for you to that friend, and they talked about how you were going to be home for four months and how that would be the best time for Felicity to tell you how she felt and ask you out. I stopped by the following morning to ask you to talk.”

“You… Youonlydid that because Felicity might have asked me out?”

“No, I did that because I still loved you, and when I’d run into you months earlier, you hadn’t moved on yet, and I knew she liked you. That morning, I stopped by because I thought it might be my last chance to get you back.”

“I didn’t know that,” she replied, thinking that shehadknown it in a way, but that vision or whatever it was hadn’t made much sense to her back then, so she’d doubted it.

“It doesn’t really matter anymore.”

“No, I guess it doesn’t.”

“You have to go, don’t you?” Ami asked.

“Yes, but I’ll try to call you in a few days.”