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She smiled at him. “Okay. Good.”
“Will the TV keep you awake?”
“No. When I’m feeling nervous or upset, I often fall asleep with it on.”
He nodded and closed his eyes. His thinking clouded even more. Soon he was no longer aware of Eve beside him, so he popped his eyes back open.
She was still there, curled up on her side and facing him. Breathing steadily. Asleep.
He relaxed and closed his eyes again. This time he drifted off too.
Three days later, Jude sat staring at his laptop screen, a low-level headache throbbing behind his right eye.
He’d been sitting there for almost an hour, staring at the extra line space to mark the scene break on the page.
He knew what he should write next—the first sentence of the last scene in this book.
But he couldn’t make himself write it.
Eve wasn’t here. She’d had a meeting with her dissertation director this morning, so she’d left yesterday and spent the night with one of her friends from graduate school. She’d offered to reschedule the meeting so she wouldn’t have to leave, but he’d insisted she not do so. He was working most of the day anyway, and he didn’t want her to put her own life on hold any more than she already had.
But he’d missed her. A ridiculous, embarrassing amount.
It was late afternoon now on a Friday. She’d stayed to have lunch with some friends and then was driving back to Green Valley.
She should be here soon.
Maybe when she got here, he’d be able to get the words out.
He typed out three words and stared at them. Then backspaced to delete them. He sat for six more minutes until he heard activity in the hallway. Nancy’s voice muffled by the closed door.
He was turning in his chair to look when the library door opened. Eve walked in, wearing a beige top and a long, soft skirt in an intricate pattern of pinks, browns, and sage greens. She wore sandals and a single long braid in her hair. She smiled, her face brightening when she saw him.
He was hit by an intense surge of relief.Relief. That she was finally home again.
“Hey,” she said, moving quicker as she approached.
He stood up. His instinct was to grab her and pull her into a tight hug. But he’d never been the kind of person who made gestures like that. And he had no reason to assume she wanted or expected that from him.
When she reached him, she lifted both hands to hold his face, tilting his head down so she could see him better. Her eyes were warm and soft as she pulled him down farther and gave him a brief, hard kiss. “I thought I told you to take care of yourself while I was gone,” she said, still smiling as she withdrew.
He blinked. The kiss hadn’t lasted nearly long enough for his needs, and he still wanted to hug her. “I thought I did.”
She laughed breathily and glanced behind him at the surface of the desk. “There are at least three coffee cups there and two undrunk glasses of water. And you look tired and stressed.”
“I worked a lot,” he told her. “But I was all right. How was your trip?”
“It was fine. I hung out with some friends, and the meeting with my director went pretty good. We basically made a schedule for getting the dissertation done. I won’t really start until the fall.”
He would be dead by then.
He didn’t say it, but they were both thinking it.
Eve’s face twisted slightly, and she pulled him into a hug. He gripped her tightly. Too needy.
The hug lasted a long time, and he felt better when they finally separated.
She dragged a side chair closer to the desk and waved him into his seat. “How’s the writing going?”