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Instead I sit there. Aching from the inside out. Glaring at my phone.
Hating it.
Hating myself.
I lift my chin upward, wishing I could see the sky instead of concrete. Wishing I could see my dad. Talk to him. Have him remind me that it’ll all be worth it once I make partner.
It’s what I always do when I get discouraged with the course of my life, when loneliness nips at my heels. I remember Dad and how proud he’d be—will be, from wherever he is—once I fulfill that deathbed vision.
But now, whether it’s because I can’t see the heavens or because of all that’s happened today, I find myself wondering:
Would Dad have wanted this?
Would he want me to be sitting here alone on a bench in a blizzard? Would he want me to be thirty-six and divorced? Would he want me to dread every moment of the Christmas season?
I wish I could ask him if it will be worth it. All the hard work. The sacrifices and losses.
Just the one loss, mostly.
I feel an unfamiliar burning sensation in my eyes, a tingling, prickling feeling I hate. I quickly slam them shut before the tears can escape.
“It would serve you right, you know,” a low voice says from behind me. “If you were to fall asleep here, with no one to wake you up.”
My eyes pop back open again, and though my vision is blurry with the unshed tears, I know the voice. That horrible, wonderful voice.
I lift my face toward Tom as he comes around the bench to glare down at me. His expression is frustrated and stormy, understandingly so. Though when my eyes make it all the way to his, he blinks in surprise at what he sees.
I know he knows how close I’ve just come to crying, and that he doesn’t mention it is the kindest thing he’s done all day. Considering what he’s sacrificed, that’s saying something.
“I thought you’d left,” I whisper.
He runs a hand through his hair. “Thought about it. Changed my mind, for some unfounded reason. Then damn near broke my neck jumping off a moving train.”
For me. He doesn’t add it, but I feel it. Know it. Tom jumped off a train. For me. Just like he came to the hospital for me. Got off a plane. For me.
Because he’s St. Tom?
Or because of something else?
I so desperately want to ask, but I quickly wipe away my tears and say the expected thing instead.
“It’s a bummer you bungled it. The neck breaking, I mean.” I frown. “Wait. I’m not your emergency contact, am I?”
He lets out a genuine laugh. “No. God, no.”
I smile. “Yeah. Then bummer you bungled it.”
Tom lets out a defeated sigh and drops down onto the bench beside me. His shoulder presses against mine, but he makes no effort to move away.
Neither do I.
“Katherine?”
“Yeah.”
“I hate you,” he says without heat.
I smile a little and can’t resist saying, “And yet, you jumped out of a train for me.”
I await his comeback, but when he gives none, I glance over at him, surprised to see his expression serious, though no longer angry.
“Well, here’s the thing, Kates,” he says after a moment, still not looking at me.
I quickly turn my head away and face forward, the old nickname leaving me a little vulnerable. A bit yearning. “Katie” he uses because he knows I don’t like it. “Kates” is a different thing entirely. A name only he ever called me, a name that I’m not even sure he’s fully aware of, but that simply slips out when his guard is down.
“What’s the thing?” I nudge when he doesn’t continue.
This time it’s him who turns toward me. He waits patiently until I turn to look back at him. When I do, when our eyes meet, something shifts, the moment suddenly filled with memories, but something else too. Something trickier.
“The thing is,” he says softly, “I wanted to leave you. I meant to leave you. But then I realized how well I know you. And I know that if I left you here to die of your stubbornness, you’d commit yourself fully to haunting me for the rest of my days.”
He smiles, and there’s something wistful about it as his gaze roams my face. “Hell, sometimes I think that fully alive, you’ve found a way to haunt me anyway.”
My lips part in surprise at the comment, about what it reveals, and I look quickly away, not wanting him to see how much his words affect me. How much he affects me.
“See, I don’t know about that,” I say, pursing my lips, considering. “Purgatory has always seemed a little wishy-washy for my personality. I think I’ll just take the express straight to heaven, thank you very much.”
“That’s cute. That you think you’ll be headed up north when it’s your time.”
