Chapter 13. You Could Come With Me
They showered back at the motel, watching TV as they finished off the left overs from Jack's take out the night before. It amazed him, how comfortable he was around her, just hanging out, after all this time; it was almost like the last twenty years hadn't happened.
Almost.
There was a maudlin side to now her that he was still coming to terms with; they'd be laughing, and suddenly she'd go quiet, staring off into the distance as she retreated into a space they both knew he couldn't follow her to. He couldn't talk to her then; he sat by helplessly, watching as she battled the demons of her past alone, wondering how James had responded to her when she was like this. Had he lost his patience with her? Had he known to be gentle? Or had he been oblivious to the injuries he was adding to?
The first few times Jack noticed this shift in her mood, he reached for her hand to let her know that he was there, that he cared about her, but she pulled it away, shuffling away from him on the bed to let him know that his touch wasn't welcome. He let her initiate contact after that, afraid she would start to tar him with the same brush as men like James and Wayne if he pushed the point.
Fortunately, these moods never lasted long. A few minutes later, she'd be back in the moment with him, teasing him mercilessly to deflect his attention away from her unsettling behaviour. He wanted to call her on it, to force her to talk to him, but their relationship was still too tentative. So instead, he learned to make the most of the moments where she was happy, though in the back of his mind, he vowed to find a way of helping her come to terms with these memories.
He spent the night on the floor again, while she occupied his bed, but she chatted away to him this time, filling him in on the fates of former classmates, making him laugh at things they'd done, things he hadn't thought about in years, like the time they'd freed all the frogs from the high school science lab because she couldn't stand the thought of them being dissected, and above all, reminding him that he hadn't really told her much about his life.
She listened with rapt attention as he talked about L.A., her eyes growing wistful in the dim glow of the streetlight as he described the beaches, his hospital, Berkeley.
"I always wanted to do something important, like you," she told him softly when he'd finished. "Somehow, I don't think serving people coffee is really going to make a difference to humanity."
"It might if you were serving coffee to someone who was trying to cure cancer," he joked, trying to make her smile. "You'd be keeping them awake so that they could work faster, which is kind of like making a difference by proxy, don't you think?"
She humoured him with the watered down version of the smile he was hoping for, and he knew it wasn't good enough. Not for her. Her whole life she'd been made to feel worthless. She wanted to matter, the way he did.
If ever there was a moment to voice his idea, this was it. "I was thinking, Kate," he said, sitting up, hoping she wouldn't consider his invitation too forward. "I'm not going to be able to stay here much longer. My bereavement leave runs out in a couple of days, and then I'm going to have to go back to L.A." Seeing how disappointed she looked, he rushed on. "If you wanted, you could come with me. There's plenty of room at my place – you could stay as long as you needed." Knowing she would be too proud to accept his charity, no matter how tempting the offer, he decided to make it sound like she would be doing him a favour if she came back with him. In a way, she would be. "It's lonely, coming home to an empty house all the time. I could do with the company."
"I'll think about it," she said, looking hesitant at the prospect of leaving the only place she'd ever known, the place where she'd spent the entire thirty two years of her life, but she smiled, her eyes brightening, and Jack was pretty sure he wouldn't be going back to L.A. alone.