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“It’s a business decision. I mean, I expect a cut of it. But at least then I’m working for it. No?”
“For a man who claims he doesn’t think ahead... You sure have a plan.”
“Look. I just don’t...” He looked at her, at the hopeful expression on her face. The glitter in her eyes. “Forget about it,” he said.
“Forget about what?”
“Forget I was gonna say anything. It’s not anything that we need to talk about.”
“I want to talk about it. Tell me. Tell me what’s going on.”
“All right. You know, when somebody that you love is dying, thinking ahead just means thinking to a future without them. And I never could muster up a belief in miracles. So I just knew that if I imagined what I wanted to be when I grew up... I would be imagining a world without Sophia in it. It’s a habit. All right. It’s a habit that I never got around to breaking.”
It was one reason he was all or nothing. In the moment and never in the future. Black-and-white was easy, and he’d lived a black-and-white life. He’d known there would be a before and an after. Sophia here. Sophia gone. There were no shades of gray in loss.
He found there weren’t really any shades of gray in life.
Those glittering eyes went liquid.
“Jace...”
“It’s been a long time. I don’t live in the past. That’s the other thing. You learn to live in the present, and she can’t... You can’t go back there either.”
“Well that’s pretty sad. Because even though she’s gone, she is your sister. And maybe it would be nice if you could revisit her.”
“She’s gone.”
“I don’t believe that the people we love are ever really gone, Jace,” she said. She looked back at the bar, up at the bottle that held her grandfather’s ashes. “You know I talked to Grandpa every day. He’s with me. I believe that.”
“Well. Sophia’s not with me. She’s gone. One day, she just died. And she was never with me again. That’s all I know.”
And he didn’t know why he had always felt so hard-line about that. So rigid. Maybe because if there were miracles to be had in the world, if divine power existed at all, and it had not extended its hand to keep Sophia with him, physically with him, then he didn’t see the point of it anyway. And frankly it was a bigger comfort to believe there was just nothing there. That was all.
Maybe some people preferred the comfort of faith. He didn’t find it comforting. He didn’t find it comforting to think that there was someone who could’ve lifted a finger to save her, and hadn’t.
He didn’t find it comforting to think that somebody might be there in spirit when he couldn’t actually talk to them.
And he didn’t like to think about any of this. Because there was no damned point to it. None whatsoever. It didn’t accomplish anything. Didn’t fix anything.
He didn’t know why she was pushing.
“I’m sorry that I never met her,” she said.
He thought back to the boy he’d been when he had met Cara. “Well, you and I never would’ve met when she was alive. Because we had to live in Portland as long as she was sick. Make sure she was near the hospital.”
“I know. I’m just talking about what-ifs.”
“I don’t get the point of those.”
“Not even a little? Like you never ask yourself... What might happen if you set your foot on a different path? This one or that one?” She looked up at him, and her blush pink lips parted. She drew in a breath, and her breasts lifted.
Fuck. Right then, he wanted to ask what if. Wanted to ask what would happen if he stepped on a different path. But to what end?
Since when do you care about the end?
One foot in front of the other. Just as far as the eye could see. And no farther.
If a man was meant to see beyond the horizon, there wouldn’t be a line.
