Or, the one where Jo gets a chance to tell Henry why she didn't wanna go to Paris with Isaac - and Lucas doesn't get to hear any of it. Now a multi-chapter, contains spoilers for episode 01x20 and beyond.
"Hi." Jo strides into the shop like it's the most natural of places for her to be, and he supposes that on any other night, it would be.
On any other night, he would whisk her away to the shop after a long day at the precinct, distract her from the reality of her job with Abe's fantastic cooking and his own rather fantastical stories of adventure. But tonight, she's to be on a flight across the Atlantic with none other than her new beau. Tonight, she's to let someone else whisk her away. Tonight, she's not his to enchant over stellar food and even better wine. (He knows well that she's never really been his to enchant, or his at all.)
"Shouldn't you be on a plane?" And he cannot help but blink once, twice, to make sure she's really standing before him.
She sets her suitcase down by one of Abe's hulking imperial vases, doesn't look at him as she makes her way further into the shop. "Um..."
His gaze doesn't leave her, now, and he takes a good few steps in her direction as she speaks. Not so many that she feels uncomfortable, of course, but just enough to let her know that yes, he is listening. That yes, he is here.
"I realized that I..." A hundred unsaid words whisper through Henry's mind as Jo pauses, turning towards him. But never, never does he imagine her saying, "I didn't wanna go" until the words are falling from her lips, voice just above a low murmur.
"What?" Henry asks, adding "to Paris?" around the smallest of smiles. As if he's mistaken, as if he's somehow misheard her. He must have misheard her. And there must be some explanation, some reason for all this-
"With Isaac." And there it is.
He wonders, then, if she'd seen the way his smile had faltered when he'd caught a glimpse of the two kissing a few weeks before. He wonders, then, if she could sense the stab of jealousy and regret that'd knifed through him when he realized that it was far too late to admit his feelings for her.
"I didn't want to go. With Isaac."
Henry can feel something inside him unraveling when she says it again, another truth untold sitting just on the tip of his tongue as he gazes into her warm, dark eyes. He swallows and ventures a soft, "Why?"
But he can think of why. He can think of every soft look they've ever exchanged, every subtle brushing of fingers or holding of hands. He can call up fond memories of their joking banter on empirical hotness, on gyros, on even death itself. He can remember a handful of whispered conversations long after Abe lay sleeping on the couch between them, can think of laughing together over horrid made-for-television movies with Lucas. And he can recall one long, cold night she'd spent with her head against his shoulder, huddled against him as it'd started to snow. It'd been the anniversary of her husband's death, and he hadn't hesitated to wrap his arm around her, then.
Now, though, he stands rooted in place as he awaits her answer. Afraid to lean any closer, afraid to even breathe, lest he risk breaking the familiar spell falling over them.
Jo shakes her head, then, looks away from him a moment before she meets his eyes and says, "I don't know."
He, too, moves to say something, anything, but he's completely and utterly past the point of forming coherent sentences. She waits for him to respond nonetheless, and when he doesn't, can't, she says, "Maybe I thought that I should go to Paris with someone else."
"Someone like whom, Jo?" He doesn't know when his pulse began racing, but it echoes in his ears as he takes a step closer to her, and she, him.
"Like…" She pauses as she moves closer still, and her voice sounds the way the softest of kisses feels when she finally murmurs, "Like you, Henry."
He can imagine it, then, snapshots of them in Paris. Can see the two of them wandering down Parisian lanes arm in arm, getting lost in the city and in each other.
The space between them is charged, electric, as he brings himself back to the present moment. If he were to move a mere inch forward…Well. If he were to move a mere inch forward, he could give her the softest of kisses in reply.
Abe makes his appearance just as Henry's really and truly considering closing the breath of distance left between he and Jo. He's caught between asking her to stay a while longer and attending to Abe's concerns, but she's out the door and off into the night before he can even begin to voice his question, let alone his feelings.
When she's gone, Abe tells him all about his latest discovery. It's one that leaves him speechless, utterly and totally speechless. Because his son believes he's found Abigail. Really found her, this time. They soon move upstairs to the apartment and talk late into the night, not just about Abe's discovery but about their memories of Abigail. And not for the first time that week, or even that day, he wishes Jo were around to hear their tales.
He ends up staying awake long after Jo goes home and Abe goes to bed, mind alight with racing thoughts and theories. Some, about death, and others, about Abigail. Many, about Abe, and a good number about Jo. Strange, how effortlessly she's crept into his thoughts and made a home for herself there in the last few months. Strange, how he can be so honest with her. How he can be so easygoing, so sarcastic, and everything in between. He can be everything, anything with her. And she accepts that, accepts him.
Thinking about her doesn't stir the same guilt in him, tonight. No, it doesn't stir anything of the sort. He's lived a lifetime of distracting his heart from ever missing Abigail. But when he is with Jo, Abigail is the furthest thing from his mind.
As he lays in bed in the dark, he realizes now that he never got the chance to tell Jo that he feels the same for her as she does for him. He didn't get a chance to say that he'd follow her anywhere, whether that be down the sunlit soaked streets of Paris or the blood soaked alleyways of New York City crime scenes. He'd never imagined that he could feel quite like this again, like the world is light and new and full of possibility. Really, he knows that the world can be dark and sinister and full of chaos. In yet, when he is with Jo, he knows not chaos. For when he is with Jo, he knows only calm.
It's a long story, this life of Henry's. But for the first time in a long time, he thinks he's found someone he can trust with that secret. And as he drifts off to sleep, he thinks that maybe, just maybe, he can entrust this someone with the other one as well. It's smaller in scale, this second secret of his, just a simple three words. All the same, though, he thinks that if he can entrust her with the truth of who he is, then he can entrust her with the second truth, as well.
He can only hope that he's right.
Because this needed to happen, so I made it happen.