AN: I feel like I'm turning into a broken record here but... this chapter is a doozy. I mean, she's long. And I really thought about splitting this into two chapters but I was not at all happy with how that would have flowed. I also feel like I have kept y'all waiting long enough and that I owe you the goods! So here it is (a day later than I had originally planned) and I hope you all enjoy. Thank you all so much for the truly kind and supportive words - I owe you all such a debt for keeping my head in the game. And, although this has certainly been challenging to write at times, it's worth it if any of you continue to enjoy it. I won't blather on anymore - I do that enough below - so one more time for the folks in the back: Thank you! And enjoy :)
Chapter Fifteen
Jack left the house while the sky was still the murky indigo of early morning. He arrived at the gym just as the horizon blushed with the encroaching clementine sunrise. The streets, the parking garage, and the locker room were mostly empty - only occasionally populated by Jack's fellow insomniacs as they began their day - either by choice or by profession.
He stepped onto the treadmill and stretched his quads. The floor around him was packed with motionless equipment and the room was quiet - at this early hour, they hadn't even turned on the overhead music yet, lending the room an eerie stillness. He started the belt and launched into a jog.
The rhythmic thump and hiss of his shoes on the rapidly spinning belt punctuated the muted space around him and filled his mind like radio static, the strain on his lungs expanding to fill every corner of his mind until all thoughts of Kate were pushed further and further away; his insistent and hallucinatory dream finally beginning to fade from his senses. He increased the speed and ran faster, his breaths growing more haggard, his lungs burning and his heart throttling, laboring to service his body with oxygenated blood while he hammered his legs and knees harder and harder.
A rivulet of sweat trailed down his spine and his mind was immediately catapulted backwards to the night in the pool and the identical sensation of water trailing over his chest and legs as he stepped out of the water, alone and cold. Jack clenched his jaw and increased the incline of the treadmill.
His mind ricocheted from the night in the pool to the night of her birthday, the feeling of his now damp tshirt clinging to his skin like the ghost of her touch as she had threaded her arm around his waist, her hand pressing into the small of his back while he kissed her. His heart twisted painfully in his chest and pumped ferociously. He increased the speed on the belt again.
A fresh wave of heat flashed over his skin and through his organs as he pushed his body further. The burning in his lungs and pain in his quads surged, his senses on fire, but it was as if those sensations, those thoughts, were happening in another room, down the hall from what was occupying his mind. Somewhere along the edges of his thoughts he felt the understanding that he was pushing himself harder than he should - that he was racing toward the precipice, foot on the pedal, losing the distance needed to hit the brakes before it was too late.
Again, his thoughts careened across his mind and collided with the night of his father's memorial, held at Casa Del Mar, the beachfront hotel in Santa Monica that had been his father's favorite local, upscale watering hole. The gathering took place in the expansive lounge at the back of the property that was enclosed by the wide, arching windows. The westward view bathed the guests in a brilliant winter sunset as they paid their respects to Jack's father on an evening in December. Afterward, Jack had sat at the smaller bar along the far side of the lounge, quietly rotating his tumbler on the bar to watch his melting ice cubes spin and circle the glass like an off-kilter carousel. He told himself he was winding down from the fraught energy required to interact with his father's colleagues, family, and friends under such bizarre and terrible circumstances. Fielding the bereaved condolences for his loss and the nosy questions about the island tipped him just beyond exhaustion, the distance in time both from the event of his monolithic father's death and the survival from a one in a trillion catastrophe too short to make either interaction easy. But what he was really doing was waiting. Waiting to see if she would show up.
Jack leapt off the deck of the treadmill and onto the rails, his heart throttling in his chest like hammering machinery that had gotten ahead of the production line. He leaned against the handrails on the machine; hunched over, gasping for air.
He crushed his finger against the "down" button to reduce the speed of the belt on the treadmill until it stopped, the incline returned to zero. Grabbing his cell phone from the cupholder, he finally stepped off the machine.
Just outside of the locker room door was a towel rack and Jack gratefully took one of the freshly laundered linens from the stack. He pulled it over his head and across his neck, immediately feeling relief as the sweat was wicked from his skin. He looked up and saw one of the gym's employees a few yards away folding another stack of towels fresh from the laundry. He had seen her several times before, working the early morning shift when he would try to fit in some cardio before a day of surgery. It was hard not to notice her high and tight blonde ponytail. It was hard not to notice the other tight parts of her, too.
That morning, she happened to look over as Jack was pulling the now damp towel from his neck. He reflexively offered her a brief smile.
"You're here early," she ventured and he was momentarily taken by surprise. A sliver of her own surprise lingered in her eye - maybe they were both stunned by her boldness. The gym was only about a half mile from the hospital, which was why Jack had decided to become a member. In the two years since he had joined the gym, this was the first time they had exchanged more than a cordial smile or a transient greeting.
"I could say the same to you," he responded, reaching up again with the towel towards his neck. His heart rate had settled since the assault on the treadmill, but not as much as he would have liked.
"I like to get here early," she said, neatly folding a bright white towel into a tight and practiced rectangle. "My shift doesn't start for another half hour but it's nice here while it's quiet."
Jack nodded and thought about this woman - this girl - in front of him. Maybe twenty-three years old, just recently out of college - UCLA most likely considering the school was just a few short miles up Wilshire Boulevard from where they stood. He thought about what such a young person would need peace and quiet for; what someone like her, that looked like her, would find solace from in the dawn hours of Los Angeles in an over-priced gym, within the most monotonous of tasks - folding towels. Jack knew why he was there, what he was trying to quiet in his mind, but he felt sad thinking someone so young would need the same kind of quiet.
"Yeah, it is," he agreed, and draped the towel around his neck. "The music isn't even turned on yet."
She paused mid-fold at this and Jack thought he could see her cheeks take on a new shade of pink. She resumed folding the towel and smiled. He realized he didn't know her name.
"I'll take the blame for that," she said, adding another immaculately folded towel to a growing stack on the countertop in front of her. "I haven't turned it on yet. If it's bothering you, I'll turn it on. We're supposed to turn it on when we open."
"No, I like it actually," he found himself saying, wanting to reassure her that he wasn't the type to complain, not now that he knew she needed the quiet just like he did. "It's almost easier to think and not think at the same time in this kind of quiet. If that makes sense."
Jack felt foolish and dazed - the adrenaline from his workout that had infiltrated his bloodstream to intoxicate his senses was fading. She couldn't tell he felt unsteady on his feet or that the guilt was pooling at the base of his spine. The nameless gym attendant smiled at him all the same.
"It makes sense to me," she confirmed, hesitated, and said, "I'm Kelsey, by the way." Simply, unaware of all that was tumbling beneath the surface of Jack's skin that she couldn't see. Unaware of everything that could unravel from a simple introduction.
"I'm Kate," she had said, on that beach, in another life.
"I'm Jack," he said, then and now, and felt a sharp twist somewhere in the back of his mind, as if he was standing on the threshold of time and tripped an internal alarm system.
"Nice to meet you, Jack," she smiled at him, her eyes bright and warm; warmer than they had any right to be before six o'clock in the morning on a Saturday.
But he could see something else in her eyes, too. Something that could have been an invitation, or an offer. All he had to do was take a step toward her, allow their conversation to travel just a little bit further, and he could have whatever he wanted - things he would have wanted in another lifetime. He didn't have to ask to know that his wedding ring didn't bother her, or that his tshirt and shorts damp with sweat wouldn't bother her either. This was a girl that wanted quiet, whose eyes lingered on his when he saw her across the floor, whose cheeks were a bit pinker now that she was talking to him.
When he mumbled something about getting into the shower, he couldn't pretend he didn't see the disappointment in her eyes. And, if he had to guess, it wouldn't be the first time a man would disappoint her that way, or the last.
He slipped into the locker room and abandoned the now sweaty towel as he turned on the shower. The showerhead sputtered to life before spraying a fierce stream of water into the stall. Jack peeled off his damp clothing and stepped into the shower while the water was still tepid.
The lukewarm water washed over his scalp, down his face, and over his eyelids. It fell over his lips in runnels, down his neck, and over his shoulders and chest while the stall filled with steam. As Jack leaned his hands against the tiled wall in front of him, as the water grew steadily warmer, his mind felt drained, nearly emptied, and the relief was such that his legs almost gave out beneath him.
The water in the early morning pipes of his ostentatious gym was finally heated thoroughly and he felt his skin prickling beneath the heat. He reached towards the faucet to adjust the temperature and again his mind hurled backwards with such force his hand slipped, his knuckles pressing into the cold tile, catching his weight. Jack clenched his jaw, felt his lungs squeeze in his chest, and his eyes instinctively closed against the images that spun in his mind like a rewinding film reel.
Their first night in the home they now shared - boxes scattered in every room, furniture covered in plastic and haphazardly arranged - Jack had gone upstairs to take a shower. They had shared a simple and satisfying meal of Giancarlo's pizza and beers in the kitchen, standing at the counter eating right out of the box without a second thought. The fact that only a short time prior they had been fighting for their lives on a remote topographical anomaly, unsure of their own futures, barely registered in their minds.
That night, Jack had stepped into their new shower as he had at the gym - letting the tepid water wash over him. He allowed it to increase in temperature, filling their glass-enclosed shower stall with steam. He rolled his shoulders, releasing the tension of a long moving day while his mind tumbled over the last two years, which comprised some of the most incomprehensible, difficult, and gratifying moments of his life. The water, having reached a scalding peak, traced a blazing torrent down his back.
Jack had let the assault of the hot water linger long enough to numb his skin into a dull, tingling hum. He finally twisted the shower faucet into submission and the temperature relented slightly, just as he became peripherally aware that the shower door had been pulled open. He felt her hand slide across the overheated skin of his back.
As he turned in the shower towards her, the water changed course and redirected across his skin. Then she was in front of him, beneath him, and the water that cascaded over his shoulders splashed onto her. His eyes trailed over her bare skin, freckled with the mist of water that rebounded from his skin to hers.
In the muted light, filtered by the steam held captive in the shower, her eyes seemed to burn an otherworldly emerald. She said nothing as she slid her hands up over his shoulders and onto his neck, holding steady. His hands found their way to her waist, the small curvature of her hips feeling in that moment like they had been carved for his hands. She was still, her face turned up to him, waiting.
The water pounding on his back, threading across his skin and down his arms to where his skin met hers, blurred the boundaries between their bodies. Jack took a small step closer to her, the space between them eliminated, and his breath stilled at the feeling of her bare skin against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her tighter and as he leaned down to close the only remaining distance between them, he could see the steam collecting on the skin of her cheeks in the smallest droplets. Her fingers opened, threading into the short hair at the nape of his neck, and he let a breath escape his lungs into the shadow between their lips.
Kate tilted her head back slightly as she let her lips open to his kiss and he dove into her hungrily; driven and dominating, like a man who hadn't seen or touched a woman in longer than he would admit. And he had felt that way too - as if, by pulling her closer towards his body in that moment, their skin hot and slick - he was consuming and possessing her in a way he hadn't yet been able to. As if none of it had been real until then.
He took another step forward until he held her against the cold tiled wall of their shower, his hands desperately exploring her body - over the slope of her lower back and up across the side of her torso, into the corner of her neck, his thumb resting over the delicate architecture of her throat. The roaring water around them and the rushing blood in his ears drowned Jack in a crescendo, the sound falling from his mind as he pressed his body against hers, unrelenting and forceful.
When he lifted her in his arms, she wrapped her legs around him, born by second nature. Their mouths briefly separated and their chests heaved breathlessly. Her lips were swollen, the skin across her chin and jaw pink from the abrasion of the stubble on his face, marked by him.
As Jack descended into her, he could feel his tether with reality slip and begin to unravel - his own frayed edges pulling away until he spun apart and was no longer himself, but rather just a part of her. His movements - growing feverish and mechanical - fed into her circuitry to form a continuous loop. He gasped for air and his knees shook as every thought in his mind and particle in his being narrowed to a single point. He leaned his head forward until his face fell into the corner of her neck where his breath was hot and close, the water dripping from his hair, the tip of his nose, the edge of his chin, onto her skin while her hands grasped his back urgently.
The boundaries of his mind began to constrict and the intoxicating scent of Kate's coconut shampoo fell around him like a cloak. The water sprayed across his back and although he had shielded Kate from most of it, he felt wet strands of her hair clinging to him, across his shoulders and neck and tickling the edge of his jaw.
Just above the cacophonous rush of water around him and the pounding of his heart in his ears, Jack's mind registered another sound humming somewhere between the folds of his thoughts, raining over him as if with the water. The sound was Kate's voice, insistent and low, repeating a refrain over and over again - a prayer, a plea, a promise.
"I love you, I love you, I love you."
Jack collapsed into Kate, spent and ravaged. With his hands still wrapped around her and supporting her weight, he could do nothing but grasp her tighter to save himself from falling.
Just as he had then, Jack slumped forward. But instead of Kate's warm body catching him, it was the cold, antiseptic tile of the gym's locker room wall pressing into his skin.
He muttered an obscenity and reached for the faucet, turning the dial sharply, all the way to cold.
Kate found Sawyer in the kitchen, moving between sizzling pans on the stove top and a laptop he had open on the counter. Laid out beside it was a steaming cup of coffee and a newspaper. The double doors leading to the deck were open, flooding the space with the cool morning air and the bright, blameless sunshine. As he turned from the stove back to his computer, he saw her standing in the doorframe, already changed into her clothes from the previous day, having discarded his tshirt and shorts into the laundry bin she found in his closet.
"Mornin'," he smiled. "Coffee?"
"Please," she smiled back, although not as broadly, as she stepped into the kitchen. Her mind had begun to percolate with a hangover that fizzed at the periphery of her senses.
Sawyer placed a mug in front of her and poured dark coffee from a french press. Kate realized she could faintly hear jazz coming from the stereo in the living room and she wasn't sure which felt more strange - to be drinking coffee standing in Sawyer's home thousands of miles away from the last place she could remember seeing him, or simply the fact that the coffee had been brewed in a french press within earshot of jazz, things that, although simple and benign, Kate couldn't see when she had conjured him in her mind's eye. But, then again, there were a lot of things she had never imagined that were not parts of her reality.
"I hope you're hungry," he said from the stove, stirring a pan of scrambled eggs.
"Sawyer, you didn't have to do all this -"
"I'm a big believer in breakfast," he turned to her, wooden spoon in hand. "Especially when my old pal Jose Cuervo has been to visit."
Kate smiled at this, at how simple it all was, could be. Even after their strained, and at times openly hostile, conversations the previous night had been, it made more and more sense to her how she had found solace in a friendship with Sawyer, and how much a person could evolve into a version of themself you didn't expect. Their island had turned them all into things they had to be for a short time - hunters, fighters, survivors - and now it was clear to Kate that moving beyond that was possible. It was possible to find yourself with no sand in your hair and jazz on the stereo, a roof over your head made of wood and brick and mortar, not scrap metal and tarp, and a friendship that was more than just strength in numbers, but strength in support.
"Why don't you head outside. Food's almost ready," Sawyer's back was to her again as he pulled plates down from a cabinet next to the stove. She noticed his hair was wet from a shower and wondered how well he had slept on the couch that night while she occupied his bed.
Kate sat in the same chair at the table on the deck as she had the night before, taking a deep breath of the sun-laden air. Her mind began to waver like the shimmer of heat refracting off a car that has been parked in the sun all day and she closed her eyes to still her thoughts. The sunshine on her face was warm and comforting, but she felt the quiver of apprehension beginning to spin in her stomach all the same.
Sawyer placed a plate in front of her and she opened her eyes. The aroma of bacon, eggs, and crispy breakfast potatoes was enough to make her hungover palate start revving its engine. He sat down beside her with his own plate.
They ate in silence, Sawyer casually skimming his newspaper between bites. Kate realized she was having the first real breakfast she could remember of the last three years. Before long, her plate was nearly empty. Kate cradled her warm coffee mug in her hands and assessed Sawyer's backyard as she had the day before, comparing it to the dreamt blueprint in the basement of her mind. Just down the steps, she could see Sawyer standing at the folding tables arranged with the kitchen cabinet doors, the coils of bright orange extension cord snaking around their feet. The landscaping had evolved considerably, and the young tree in the corner bore six or seven lemons that she could see from their position on the deck.
"Did you sleep okay?" she asked cautiously. He shrugged and set his fork down on his plate before leaning back into his chair. He raked a hand through his damp hair.
"Can't complain," he looked over to her before adding, "What about you?"
Kate returned his shrug and avoided his eyes. Her mind was still flipping through the small snatches of memory she retained of the hours spent in Sawyer's bed, drifting in and out of a near delirious sleep state, one unlike any night of sleep she'd had over the last few days. If she was being honest with herself, she would go as far as to say that what she remembered of her dreams - or, more accurately, what she didn't remember - frightened her. After waking up, the images clouded around her mind began to scatter, elusive and skittish, slipping out of her grasp just as she would nearly catch one. What she was left with were disjointed fragments that didn't make sense together or apart, and the harder she struggled to reach for them, the more they faded against the backdrop of her confusion.
"I checked on you a few times," he confessed.
"Sawyer," she frowned, disapproving. It was bad enough she felt lost in her own mind, helpless even. But to be babysat, cared for like a child, was something else entirely.
"You must have been having a nightmare, or something like it," he said. "I just wanted to make sure you were alright." But she wasn't, she hadn't been.
"I can't remember it," she said, shaking her head, but that wasn't completely true. Each fragment was lodged in the material of her mind, with only a corner visible. And while she strained to excavate and unearth more of what she had dreamt, what she did recall was vibrant and frozen in her mind: the bright and unforgiving television screen broadcasting the evening news featuring a picture of Jack wearing a dark suit outside of what she assumed was the courthouse downtown, beneath which read the headline: "Shephard the last stand in Austen trial". The glimpse of her shaking hands as she reached for the run-down water faucet in a bathroom she didn't recognize, filling her trembling fingers with cold water and splashing it over her face that was tear stained and punctuated by two red, swollen eyes. The sight of the formidable and treacherous Pacific ocean coastline falling away beneath the balcony she stood on, the grey water an unabating force against the cliffs below, at once filling her with reverence and a piercing terror. The picturesque view of their backyard, manicured and filled with people - friends and family from so many corners of their lives - dressed for a happy occasion she didn't recall, laughter and music and the symphony of life lived out loud surrounding her, yet her eyes searched the faces for the only one she wanted to see in that moment, yet couldn't find.
Kate's knee bounced under the table anxiously and she pressed her hands down on her thighs in an attempt to settle her nerves. Sawyer set his coffee mug down on the table and rested his hand there. He gave her a sidelong glance. Kate knew he wouldn't press her for details, and for that she was thankful. Her mind pulled each dreamt fragment of a memory closer to her heart, shielding them from outsiders.
"Sawyer," she started, reaching out to place her hand over his wrist. "Thank you."
He didn't respond, just placed his other hand on top of hers for a moment. She took a deep breath, her chest heavy and dense with fatigue. She knew what had to come next, but her body felt unyielding and resistant, her limbs taking on extra weight in an attempt to hold her in place.
"I should get going," she said, hoping that the wobble in her voice was disguised by the sounds of his neighborhood around them, the sigh of the breeze through the lemon tree, the jazz in the living room.
Sawyer gave her fingers a squeeze in acknowledgement and stood from the table, collecting their dishes and carrying them into the kitchen behind her. Kate once again pressed her palms against her thighs, urging the static energy from her muscle fibers before finally standing up, willing one foot in front of the other to finish what she started.
Kate unlocked the door of her small rental car and pulled it open, the trapped heat inside spilling out in a flood. She turned to face Sawyer who she saw appraising the car.
"Damn, does this thing even have airbags?" he scowled, lifting a reproachful eyebrow at both her and the vehicle. "I can't believe Jack is letting you drive around in this thing."
"I didn't exactly ask his permission," she said, sheepishly.
"Never were big on authority," he smirked and she rolled her eyes, dropping her purse into the car before turning back to him again.
"Look, Sawyer," she started, but he held a hand up to stop her.
"None of that, Freckles," he said and crossed his arms over his chest. She smiled, understanding that whatever form of apology she could muster wasn't necessary.
"Listen," he continued, "I was thinking about driving up north tomorrow to look at some properties in Ojai. It's a bit of a drive and I'd be open to the company if you're looking for something to occupy a bit of time."
"What about Juliet?" Kate flashed him a teasing smile.
"She's out of town visiting her sister until Monday night."
"Alright," Kate said nodding, "I'll think about it."
"This ain't an invitation for another disappearing act," he warned. "Just a little road trip to get outta dodge for an afternoon, that's all."
"Bonnie and Clyde," she smiled but he didn't, just offered her a small shrug. She paused for a moment, briefly imagining how different things would be if they had traveled the other path, embarking on the road trip they had only ever joked about, half-heartedly mapping out the future they could have had together. But she didn't have to remember it to know that Sawyer had been right - there is danger in being too similar to someone, and those people are sometimes best left at the outer edges of your life.
Kate turned to get into the car. Sawyer stood just outside her window while she put the key in the ignition and the small car mumbled to life. She rolled her window down and Sawyer leaned over, his hands resting on the window frame.
"Hey, let me ask you somethin'."
She looked up at him, the sun just above him, his form almost perfectly silhouetted. She had to squint into the halo of sun framing his face.
"You ever come to Los Angeles before all this? On vacation or passing through, or anything like that?"
Kate frowned at the peculiar question, and shook her head in response. He nodded in consideration, his brow furrowed before lifting into a peak, his curiosity spiked.
"Why do you ask?"
"Just curious, is all," he said. "LA is a confusing place. And here you are in your little toy car with no memory of the last three years and yet you managed to get all the way out here from the West side, across three freeways, with nothing more than an address in your phone. I don't know," he shrugged, nonchalant, "but I'd wager that you remember a whole hell of a lot more than you think you do."
Jack pressed his pen into the patient's chart in front of him and left nothing but an impression. He shook the pen and tried again, but it did no more than leave the ghost of his signature on the page. He tossed it aside in frustration and shuffled the papers on his desk, maneuvering around the growing pile of charts and paperwork he had been working through for the last several hours in search of another pen. Out of habit, he reached for the pockets of the white coat he wasn't wearing, instead finding the empty pockets of his jeans having come straight from the gym.
Finally he pulled open his desk drawer to continue the hunt and rifled through more papers - discarded receipts and dry cleaning tickets, two cell phone chargers, and a watch he had been meaning to replace the battery in. Paperclips and a box of staples rattled as he pushed the contents around in the drawer, his frustration growing steadily, his mind's narrow focus that he had been able to maintain over the past few hours beginning to falter and fray at the edges. If he could find a pen, he could continue to grind his way through the backlog of paperwork that had accumulated over the past week while his mind had been elsewhere, exactly where he was trying to restrain his mind from going now.
Reaching towards the back of the drawer, Jack shuffled the contents again and his eyes landed on a pen just visible under a discarded notepad. As he pulled it out, its metal clip caught the corner of something and tugged it out with it from under the notepad. Jack pulled the small square free of the pen clip and leaned back in his chair.
It was a Polaroid picture, the edges of the photo only slightly faded, otherwise the image was as clear and bright as the day it had been printed. Jack had forgotten the camera even existed, let alone had any film in it, when Kate pulled it out of a box in his closet at his old apartment a short time after she had moved in.
The image it contained was simple enough, but the memory of that night was distinct, and brought with it a wrenching nostalgia that he was beginning to recognize as recurring with an uncomfortable frequency, triggered by the smallest crumbs of life that hid in the most inconspicuous corners.
Within a few square inches was a second of his life, frozen in time, that now seemed to belong to someone else. Kate had come into the bathroom while he was lathering up to shave, having just come out of the shower. She snuck in with the Polaroid camera, reaching up to catch him by surprise with a photo, but hadn't been fast enough. The camera flashed just as he had caught her around the waist, turning to place a messy, foamy kiss on her cheek. The picture that slowly developed, and that he kept in his desk drawer at the hospital ever since, showed Kate's laughing face streaked with bright white across her cheek. Jack's face was a blur, caught in mid-turn, and almost unidentifiable. But Kate's face was clear, her grin wide and exuberant, her eyes shut tight in surprise. It was a picture he could hear even then, her laughter echoing at the back of his mind.
That night, just ahead of the people immortalized in the picture, they would go to dinner with Cody and Alice for Jack's birthday. It was early December and the city of Los Angeles was dressed in all the trappings of the holiday season on the West Coast. Palm trees were twisted with lights and storefronts were filled to bursting with exaggerated displays of holiday ornamentation. They had an extravagant meal at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills and Kate wore a dress the color of cabernet, the thin straps over her shoulders delicate and dangerous. They drank champagne and laughed and talked about the future, like it was the easiest thing in the world to do. As they were preparing to leave, Cody and Jack stood at the sinks in the men's bathroom. While Jack dried his hands, he looked up at the reflection of his best friend in the mirror and told him he would be proposing to Kate in a month's time, after the holidays. Cody had crushed him in a hug, slapping him on the back in congratulations and Jack felt ten feet tall. It was all going to work out, he had told himself. He was finally coming out on the other side.
Jack let the Polaroid fall back into the open desk drawer in front of him. He pressed the found pen into the signature block of the last chart he was working on and signed it, his name now carved into the paper with black ink. Folding the chart closed, he dropped it on top of the stack to his left and placed the cap back on the pen. He knew it would be futile to even open the next chart, to run his eyes over the information endlessly, struggling to pick up and process the details of his patient's condition. Instead, he tossed the pen on the desk and shut the desk drawer without taking a second look.
He glanced at his watch and was surprised to see it was just past noon. He pinched the bridge of his nose as he considered his next move. He had to get out of there, away from the radius of fallout triggered by the tripwire he'd stumbled upon in his desk drawer. But wherever he went, he knew it couldn't be home. Not yet.
Even before their house came into view on their street, Kate knew she wouldn't see Jack's car in the driveway and wouldn't find it in the garage either. She parked the small silver rental car on the street in front of the house and killed the ignition. It was quiet and close in the car and Kate could nearly hear her pounding heart echoing around her.
Upon unlocking their front door, she pushed it open gingerly, tugging her silly little suitcase behind her. She half expected to see Jack come around the corner from his office to confront her, but he never came. The house was silent and still.
She trudged up the staircase, her limbs once again weighed down by her own regrets, the ways she had chosen to exist in relation to those around her each like a rock in her pocket, slowing her down.
At the top, she pushed open the door to the guest room and paused, seeing the room in a state of disarray she didn't recognize. The trial boxes had been extracted from the closet, which stood open at the other end of the room to show the empty space where they had previously been stored. Although all four boxes were stacked next to the bed, only one was open. The once neatly made bedding was rumpled, but not slept in. And on the bedside table she saw a tumbler, which still holding a few drops of amber liquid. She wouldn't have to smell it to know it was scotch.
Walking around the corner of the bed, she could get a closer look at the box which stood open. The front of it read "Austen - Case No. 1642-15: 4 of 4". Inside the box was the familiar pile of thick, bound manuscripts. But unlike the other boxes she had peeked into, this box was filled with the transcripts from the trial itself, not the pre-trial documents she had dared to explore so far. She delicately lifted the first from the pile and could see the corners were slightly bent, the thick document bearing a deep vertical curve embedded in its pages, evidence that it had been recently opened and read thoroughly.
Before she could stop herself, Kate let her thumb leaf through the pages, and her eyes skimmed them as they fluttered in her hands. What she saw was his name, everywhere: line after line, page after page. Her hand began to tremble and she shut the document, her breath catching in her throat. She dropped the transcript back onto the stack in the box she had taken it from and looked at the others at her feet.
Quickly, she pulled the box marked "1 of 4" towards her and flipped the lid off the top, letting it fall to the floor behind it. Her hands made quick work of the documents, pulling them out in fistfuls and dumping them on the floor until she found what she was suddenly desperate to see:
"State of California v Katherine Anne Austen, Defendant. Los Angeles, California. February 2, 2005. Whereupon, the proceedings in the above-entitled matter commenced."
She turned the page and began to read.
"Jack?"
He looked up and out the window of his car parked behind Cody's garage to see him jogging towards him, tugging his headphones from his ears and frowning.
"What are you doing here?" he panted, wiping sweat from his brow. "Is Kate ok?"
"Yeah, she's fine," Jack said, and wondered if Cody could hear the lie in his voice. "Was just in the neighborhood."
"Have you been waiting here long?" Cody asked, suspicious, and fished his house keys from his shorts pocket.
"No, not long," Jack said, climbing out of the car and shutting the door behind him.
Cody unlocked the door and they went inside and up the stairs. At the landing, Jack had the phantom sensation of anticipation, as if they would turn the corner and he'd hear the shout of his friend's voices, as he had on Kate's birthday.
But the house was empty and Cody went to the kitchen, pulling a glass down from a shelf. He turned to Jack as he filled the glass with water at the fridge.
"Can I get you something? Water? Beer?"
"I'm alright," Jack said, stepping into the living room. "Where's Alice?"
"Baby shower," Cody said after chugging down half the glass of water. "Out in Pasadena. Probably won't be back for a few hours."
Jack nodded and awkwardly pushed his hands into his pockets, feeling like an intruder in his friend's home. If Jack had to take a guess, he'd venture to say that Cody didn't buy his 'in the neighborhood' story and that, if he hoped to find any solace there that afternoon, he'd have to explain himself one way or another.
"Let me take a quick shower," Cody said, moving towards the hallway that led to the bedrooms. "Take a load off."
Cody disappeared down the hall and Jack let himself sink into the L-shaped couch in the living room facing a large flatscreen TV. Just ahead of him were the accordion paneled doors that led onto their balcony, through which he could see the shimmer of the Pacific in the high afternoon sun.
He lifted the remote control from the coffee table and turned on the TV, flipping through the channels until he landed on the Dodger game. He leaned back into the cushions of the couch and let Vin Scully's color commentary wash over him as he tried to decide how he was going to tell his best friend why he was avoiding going home.
Kate wandered into their bedroom, the room existing in shadows as the afternoon grew towards sunset. She was light on her feet and skittish like a stray cat who snuck in through the doggy door. She pulled the suitcase across the rug and let it fall on its back in front of the dresser, only vaguely aware that she had been home alone for hours with no indication of when Jack might return. Just as she had when she arrived home, she expected to hear him behind her, standing in the doorframe to their bedroom, but he didn't appear.
She unzipped the suitcase and let the top fall open. From somewhere deep inside her own mind, she watched her hands methodically unpack her belongings and return them to their rightful resting places, safely secured in their drawers and on the neatly organized closet shelves. The bathroom drawer slid open silently, and inside she deposited a jar of moisturizer and a hairbrush. She dropped her toothbrush into the cup that sat between their sinks, the glass chiming like a bell with the strike of the plastic handle.
Flipping off the light to the bathroom, Kate stood just inside their bedroom. Her now empty suitcase still sat on the floor between the dresser and the end of the neatly made bed she had never slept in.
She felt lost, numbed. Her mind was so swollen with information and questions she could hardly walk in a straight line as she made her way to Jack's side of the bed. Lowering herself to sit on the edge, she felt like her body was immense - elephantine and clumsy and just beyond her control. The circuitry of her mind functioned now like a home that had blown every fuse in its fuse box and as she fumbled in the dark, beneath all the confusion, she felt an inescapable and eclipsing loneliness.
Everyone that she had allowed herself to care for in her life was emblazoned on the pages she had finally allowed herself to read; thousands of words and countless hours memorialized within each thick bound transcript. Some came to support her, champion her and defend her. And some did not. But above all else, people made sacrifices for her. Many, if not all of them, in exchange for very little.
Kate ran her hands over the bed linens around her: soft and pristinely laid, a convincing disguise against all the destruction that she had wrought just beneath the surface of their well-intentioned lives. After all that she read, everything she had begun to turn from the soil of her mind across the past few fleeting days, she needed to know and to understand how it was possible that she still existed there at all, within any fabric of support or kindness amongst those she had wronged so relentlessly.
Gently, Kate laid her palm on Jack's pillow, the pillowcase yet undisturbed, and she imagined him there last night while she was sleeping in another man's bed. With all that he had done, all that he had made available of himself to her, she erected the barriers around her heart nonetheless. When, at first, she had felt angry and betrayed, kept in the dark about the trajectory of her own life by the person she expected it from the least, now she understood. The man who slept there, who laid his head down in search of respite and recovery from a complicated life, only worked to protect them, and her, from the ways their pasts sought to harm them even now. Kate existed in this life not in spite of his protection, or his support, but because of it. She needed to understand how it was possible, after so much, that he could still exist in her life peacefully and in partnership with her. The ghost of her past existed within her as a poltergeist of a specifically treacherous variety; it reached into their earthly realm to haunt her and endeavored tirelessly to tear Kate from this life that they had built together - miraculous and safe and exquisite - to send her spiraling away, into her unknown future alone. A tear slipped down her cheek that she could not feel.
As if it were disconnected from her body, she watched her hand reach out to Jack's bedside table and pull open the drawer. She leaned over to examine its contents. Inside, she found a forgotten paperback of A Broom of the System, dogeared and bearing the wrinkles and folds of his reading, a half-empty bottle of aspirin, an accordion of four condoms, and an envelope that was folded in half. Kate reached into the drawer, her fingers tingling with the anticipation of examining that which she had no right to. Kate lifted the envelope from the drawer and studied it - it was a simple white business envelope, unremarkable in every way but for its location. She turned it over in her hands: the front was blank, adorned only by the creases and bends of frequent use. Delicately, she pulled open the winged enclosure. Inside the envelope were two things: the Oceanic ticket he had shown her the other night and a small folded piece of paper.
Carefully, she extracted the folded piece of paper and opened it to see a short written note. She recognized the handwriting immediately as her own. Although the message was foreign to her, she felt her heart stir with a comprehension that transcended time to ring true to her even now, within the limited knowledge she possessed of her life in that moment. It was just as true the day she had written it as it was then, while she read it for the first time.
"I choose you. And everyday, I choose to try to deserve you. Since the beginning, I have been with you. Please know, I'm still there. Please let me keep trying. I love you."
Kate blinked and a tear dripped from her chin and onto the back of her hand. Her heart crashed against her ribcage, lunatic and fraught, like a bird with a broken wing caught in a cage. Terrified and directionless, Kate was descended upon by her own fate. She knew that, even amongst all that she still did not know, still could not possibly understand, she had one untrodden path which opened before her as she allowed the envelope to fall back into the bedside table drawer beside her. The path of surrender.
"What's the score?" Cody asked, coming into the living room, his hair wet from the shower.
"Four-Three, Rockies," Jack replied from the couch.
"Shit," Cody mumbled. He marched into the kitchen and called over his shoulder, "I'm having a beer. You still alright?"
"I'll join you," Jack called, watching Matt Holliday of the Rockies hit a line-drive down the third base line for a double. As Cody handed Jack a beer from behind the couch, he groaned.
"This game's over," Cody declared glumly. He sank into the couch next to Jack and leaned his head back, raking his hand through his wet auburn hair.
"Have a little faith," Jack said, reaching over to cheers the neck of his beer bottle against Cody's, who listlessly raised it to meet Jack's.
"The Dodgers need a little bit more than faith this season," Cody retorted and took a long sip from his beer. They sat in silence for a few minutes, watching the top of the sixth inning play out. The Rockies would score another run, bringing the score to Five-Three. The television erupted into the bright advertisement for home insurance during the break.
"Let's hit the deck. Maybe if I'm not watching they'll turn things around," Cody said, standing up from the couch without waiting for Jack to respond. He pushed open one of the doors to the deck and immediately the sound of crashing waves infiltrated the space.
Jack followed Cody onto the deck and the two settled into chairs facing the railing that overlooked the sand and the water beyond. Jack took a sip of his beer, swallowing hard against the tension he felt in his chest.
"How's Kate really doing?" Cody asked, cutting right to the quick. Jack winced.
"I don't know," he said, defeated, and shook his head. "I mean, when I'm with her, she's okay. And then…"
He couldn't finish his sentence for fear of what he would say if he really tried to complete it. And then... what? Whenever she was left alone, to her own devices, something happened. Something he couldn't see and couldn't understand.
"Do you think her memory is getting worse?" Cody asked, glancing sideways at his friend.
"I don't think so. Things have actually been okay, almost good, here and there."
"But?" Cody prodded and Jack frowned, clenching his jaw.
"She didn't come home last night."
"What?" Cody demanded, his head spinning toward Jack in shock. Jack couldn't meet his eyes, couldn't risk betraying the anger and hurt he actually felt. Instead, he played it off.
"She's fine, she's at a friend's. Just needed some space to think. And, all things considered, I get it."
"Where did she go?" Cody didn't miss a beat, asking the one question he didn't want to have to answer. So he didn't; Jack instead took another drink from his beer.
"You've got to be kidding me," Cody said, doing a poor job at hiding the disgust in his voice. Cody knew exactly where she had gone, just as Jack had, in some shadowed corner of his mind, when he had come home to find her gone.
"It's fine," Jack's voice was curt and colder than he intended, but he wasn't exactly interested in continuing this line of the conversation.
"Is it?" Cody sounded incredulous, and if Jack was being honest with himself, he had every right to be. Was it okay, was it 'fine'? Fine that his wife spent the night at the home of a man he didn't even trust to be in the possession of asthma medication? His perusal through Kate's trial transcripts had proven that much to him at least. And, sure, people change. But old habits die hard.
"Cody," Jack warned in an attempt to redirect their conversation.
"What's going on, Jack?" Cody pressed on and Jack could see him turning in his chair to face him. Jack took a deep breath and looked at his beer bottle settled between his hands on his lap.
"I don't know," Jack surrendered, with a shrug that betrayed his dismay. "I came home from the hospital and she was gone. I didn't know who I should call first - the police or the hospital."
"Or Sawyer."
"Right. Or him," Jack couldn't even say his name.
"And you have no idea what could have set this off? Did anything happen?"
"No," Jack shook his head, still in disbelief. "I have no idea. It's like she just needed to… disappear."
They were quiet for a moment, the rhythmic and deep crashing of the waves falling on their ears, occasionally punctuated by the sound of a child's voice racing across the sand towards his parents, or the laughter of a group of friends making their way back to the car after an afternoon on the beach.
"You know…" Cody started, and Jack could see him shaking his head in thought just at the edge of his peripherals. "I really didn't get it, for the longest time. If we were still in college and a girl was doing this shit to you, you know what I would have said. The same shit I said to you when Danica was flaking on you all the time. Remember? I told you to get real and wake up."
"Yeah," Jack nodded, his eyes still down on his lap. "I remember."
"I wondered for a long time if I had to do that again, with Kate," Cody paused, looking out at the water beyond his expansive deck. Jack had long envied this piece of real estate Cody had managed to snatch up, but try as he might, Jack couldn't imagine a life this close to the sand and the incessant pounding of the waves, no matter how picturesque the sunsets.
"Jack, I watched you kill yourself all through med school," Cody went on. The sun was growing tired above them, submitting to the horizon to slowly begin its long descent toward the other side of the world. "Like you had something to prove. And I guess you did, or at least you felt that way. You just couldn't quit - doing things that no one asked of you, no one expected. Girls literally waited for you to come home, do you remember that? They'd make up excuses to show up at the apartment, hoping to get a word in, maybe have a conversation with you. And you'd show up like a zombie, a corpse with a heartbeat, and ignore them."
Cody laughed, a heartless and regretful kind of laugh. He took another sip of his beer.
"And it paid off. I mean, you get out of school a year early, barely alive, but you're out. And your dad invites you to work at one of the most prestigious, revered surgical hospitals in the country. I mean, I half expected you to turn him down, tell him to fuck off and go to the other side of the globe. But what did you do? You said yes. You agreed to work with - no - for the man who ruined your life."
Jack finally cast a glance towards Cody, who had begun unspooling his tirade and was nearly impossible to stop. But with the reproachful look from Jack, he paused briefly to hold his hands up in mock surrender.
"Your words, not mine, Jack-o," he said and Jack shook his head, chuckling in resignation, lifting his beer to his mouth. "I had to listen to you, weekend after weekend, sitting at that shithole bar over on Wilshire, tell me all about how Christian was the next coming of the Antichrist and had spent his entire life trying to make you into some Frankenstein experiment, some version of Christian that he could never be."
"What's your point?" Jack challenged. "Sounds like you're trying to say I've done it to myself, again and again."
"Maybe that is my point," Cody shrugged simply. "You drive yourself to the brink, again and again. Do you remember what it was like during Kate's trial?"
Jack frowned, but couldn't look at Cody. He remembered, more than he wished he did.
"Here's what I remember," Cody went on, unapologetic. "I remember you working twelve hour shifts at the hospital and then going to meet with her lawyers, strategizing or preparing for whatever hearing was next. She wouldn't talk to you, and boy did you make up for it by spending quality time with her lawyers. Do I have that much right so far?"
Jack seethed, but nodded, his heart descending to somewhere deep in his core, hiding in his own shame at being exposed so effortlessly by his friend who now sat beside him in jeans and a tattered, old UCLA tshirt.
"Right, so you are killing yourself at the hospital, then spending untold hours with her defense team, only to get on the stand and have them treat you like a throwaway, a cliche."
Jack clenched his jaw again and drained the last of his beer, his temper simmering at the memory of sitting on the witness stand only to be ripped to shreds by the team he thought he was supported by, the team he had been working with for weeks preparing for that very moment, only to be double crossed and treated as the enemy.
He stood up abruptly, empty beer bottle in his hand, and walked past Cody and into the house. He wasn't sure if he was going to stop in the kitchen to get a new beer or keep walking, down the stairs and out the door to his car. If Cody hadn't followed him, it likely would have been the latter.
"Alice and I would talk about you, you know," he said, planting his hands on the immaculate white kitchen island that stood between them. Jack yanked the refrigerator door open and pulled out two more beers. Turning back towards his friend, he saw Cody's obstinate stance: hands leaning on the counter, his jaw and brow set defensively. Jack twisted off both bottle caps and pushed a fresh beer towards Cody begrudgingly. Jack took a healthy swig of his beer and waited for Cody to continue, knowing that however painful or agitating it was to hear, he needed to hear it.
"Alice and I, we would talk about what we were going to do about you if things didn't go your way. If things didn't work out."
The memory of standing in her lonely, dilapidated apartment played slowly in his mind and his heart twisted, just as it always did, as he recalled the way she had looked at him and told him to leave. A splinter of time so small, so short, but engraved in the seismograph of his life as a cataclysmic event. The kind that had the power to derail the trajectory of his life if he had let it. And he almost had. But instead he had pushed on, put in more hours, and let himself sink further into the pit of his own denial, the memory of that single moment draped across his mind, day in, and day out. Even with the time that separated him from that night, that desolate and empty drive home, and after all that had transpired since to prove his efforts worthwhile, the pain still cut through him as if it was yesterday.
"And you know what I remember most?" Cody asked, and Jack finally looked up at him across the countertop. Cody had left his beer untouched, his hands still planted firmly on the bright white marble that separated them. "I remember the night of your dad's memorial, down at Casa Del Mar. Do you remember?"
Jack nodded, blinking slowly. Of all the ways he remembered his father, that night at Casa Del Mar was one that burned brightest in his mind.
"I took Alice home but came back for you. You were at the bar, alone," Cody's voice was softer now, just barely, knowing that he was trespassing in delicate territory. The beat of the ocean outside Cody's door turned into the distant hiss and crash of the waves that echoed through the great walls of the Casa Del Mar while he had attempted to climb into his glass of scotch and disappear.
"When I found you, it was like seeing a ghost," Cody looked down at his beer on the counter. He pulled it toward him, maybe six inches, but didn't drink it. Jack could see the minuscule trail of condensation it left on the countertop.
"I went there prepared to give it to you straight. To give you the Danica speech, just like I had in college," Cody shook his head in regret. "The speech that I maybe should have given you when you were with Sarah."
Jack's heart took on another dagger and he took a sharp breath. He and Cody had hardly talked about Sarah, had hardly ever needed to, and to hear that it was still on his friend's mind after so many years fell like a stone into the pit of his stomach.
"Do you remember what you said to me?" Cody asked, challenging Jack to an answer, his brow set in a firm line. Jack shook his head. He remembered only fractions of that night, for better or for worse. Cody went on.
"I told you that you needed to go home. That Kate wasn't coming, that it was time to call it a night. You didn't want to hear it at first, stubborn bastard that you are," Cody let out a short bark of sarcastic laughter and reached for his beer for a quick sip. "You wanted to wait. Just one more drink, a few more minutes, you said. So I waited with you. Until it became clear to everyone in that hotel bar that no one else was going to walk through the doors that night and I finally convinced you to let me drive you home."
Jack remembered the slow walk from the bar to the valet, the excruciating wait for Cody's Mercedes in the cool beachfront night air, well after midnight, on the night that Jack had needed Kate to show up most, and she hadn't.
"You didn't speak a word to me the entire drive to your place. Full silent treatment," Cody went on. "If I had let you, I think you would have sat at that bar all night. But instead, you were in my car, going home, and you were pissed. And the whole time I wondered how I was going to break it to you, how I was going to tell you to open your eyes and realize that Kate wasn't it for you. That she couldn't be, not after everything that had happened. And just when I was going to lay it out for you, you finally spoke. After nothing but the cold shoulder for hours, you finally said something that made me understand it all. You said: 'She makes me feel like enough.'"
Jack looked up at Cody from across the counter, his mind spinning backward to remember this exchange but falling short. He remembered the hours at the bar, the slowly diluted scotch and the emptying lounge around them. He remembered the torturously long wait at the valet for Cody's car. He remembered the unrelenting black sky outside the passenger window of Cody's car while he drove him home to his empty and indifferent apartment. But he didn't remember their conversation.
"So I didn't say a word," Cody said, finally catching Jack's eye over the counter that separated them. "Because, I realized, that was what I had been waiting to hear you say for years. You never said it about your work. You never said it about Sarah. And you never said it about your dad," Cody's tone was conciliatory, softer.
"That's what you need to remember, right now," Cody continued, his voice regaining his confidence, his stance as Jack's best friend and barometer. "I've known you for a long time, Jack. And I've watched you put yourself through a lot that most men couldn't handle, wouldn't even attempt. But none of it has ever meant to you what Kate has. So, regardless of where she spent the night last night, as long as you can get back to that place, the rest of it doesn't matter."
Kate lifted her head from the arm of the couch, the fabric thin and rough against her cheek. She blinked heavily against her fatigue and focused her eyes on the glowing television in front of her, the screen bright and chaotic.
Sitting up, she tilted her head from side to side, stretching her sore neck. The fog of sleep cleared from her mind slowly and her eyes lazily drifted across her surroundings. The nondescript and impersonal furnishings around her registered within her memory faintly, refracting off a distant recollection at the far reach of her mind.
She blinked again against the harsh light and color projected into the room from the television. Slowly, her eyes adjusted and the images in front of her began to take shape with the beginning of the six o'clock news. Somewhere in the cellar of her mind she wedged her finger into the pages of her own memory to find this place in time and could just faintly understand where she was: the small, grimly furnished apartment provided to her by Oceanic airlines after their arrival in Los Angeles. Where she lived as she awaited her trial; her fate.
The opening sequence of the Los Angeles early evening news broadcast doused her in glowing images of the Hollywood sign, aerial footage of Dodger Stadium, the chaotic tangles of freeways, and a glittering slow-motion panorama of the downtown skyline, shimmering in the golden hue of of a Southern California sunset.
Kate curled her legs beneath her on the couch as two reporters emerged on screen to begin reporting the day's headlines. She felt her heavy eyelids struggle to stay open before an image filled the screen that showered her senses in a cold hail of sparks.
At the bottom of the screen was the headline, "Austen Trial Starts Tomorrow", in unforgiving capital letters. Playing above it was a video of Kate, her head bowed, as she was being escorted by a group of men she did not recognize through a crowd of people - police or lawyers or some combination of the two. Kate felt the slow descent of fear slither down her throat and into her gut, the serpent of her own foreboding curling around her organs and beginning to squeeze.
"The trial that has gripped the citizens of Los Angeles, and the country, will begin tomorrow as jurors hear opening statements from prosecutors," announced one of the reporters, her measured and affectless tone loud in Kate's ears. "Kate Austen, a survivor of the Oceanic Flight 815 disaster, will face charges including murder in the first degree and manslaughter, for crimes that took place in the years proceeding the tragic events of the plane crash that mystified the world."
The screen cut to still photography of plane wreckage on an island - their island. Kate's heart stuttered sharply in her chest, what she remembered of their existence there reduced to digital impressions on the screen; the torn and jagged fuselage, the debris and remnants of the aircraft's viscera scattered around them and repurposed as tools and shelter. Somehow in its pixelated state, Kate felt her memory of the island stretching like a rubber band as it pulled further away from the flat and incomprehensible representation on screen.
"The Los Angeles Police have begun establishing a perimeter downtown in preparation for the trial's opening day," the screen cut to live images of downtown Los Angeles and the metal barricades that had been erected around the courthouse. In the distance, rows of police cars could be seen arranged along the street and clusters of police wearing riot gear were scattered across the screen.
"Authorities are taking extra precaution as demonstrations have increased leading up to the trial. A spokesperson for the LAPD says they are prepared to enforce all measures of crowd control necessary to ensure the fair pursuit of justice in this case, and has cautioned citizens to avoid the area if possible due to what they expect to be large crowds and street closures to ensure the safe passage of all necessary personnel to and from the courthouse."
The screen transitioned to older footage cut together of huge and active crowds outside the arrivals terminal at LAX; the flashing cameras from news crews and shouting voices of reporters incessant and unruly. The reporter's voice cut over the din to continue.
"Since arriving back in Los Angeles, the survivors of the Oceanic Flight 815 tragedy have been the targets of intense and unrelenting attention from the press, which has been magnified by the trial. Many of the survivors have spoken out, requesting privacy as they struggle to return to normalcy after an unimaginable experience."
Suddenly, the television in Kate's humble and dingy apartment was filled with the radiant and youthful face of Shannon. While her skin still held the deceptive healthy bronze glow of the island sun, her eyes were hard and dark with the truth.
"We need time to recover… to heal… from what happened. We lost people important to us, and we will never be able to move on if the endless harassment by the press doesn't stop," her voice wavered and a glimmer of tears filled her eyes. "Please, just leave us alone. Let us grieve. Let us move on."
The screen returned to footage of several survivors making their way past a cluster of photographers and reporters as they ducked their heads into large black SUVs. Kate caught sight of Charlie just before he lifted his jacket to shield his face.
"Several of Austen's fellow survivors are expected to testify during the trial," the screen cut back to the newsroom and the reporter sat stoically at the desk, her pressed suit pristine and impossibly blue, her hair glossy and stiff. "Judge Frederick Osbourne will hear the case and has restricted reporting access to the courtroom, also citing concerns related to the highly publicized nature of the case and the defendant."
Again, an image of Kate filled the screen and she felt her stomach twist violently. This time, the image they used was her mugshot. As the reporter's voice went on to detail her crimes in an unnaturally even-timbered tone, Kate looked at the black, white, and grey pixels that filled her eyes on screen. The woman that stood in that photo, that took the actions being described in cold and colorless detail, sat in her skin even then. And as the serpent of fear writhed and turned inside her, she felt the fleeting wish for another life drift across her mind; the way a child might wish for a different parent while fuming in time-out, the way a teenager will wish for clear, poreless skin while examining her face in the mirror before school. An empty wish, a preposterous wish, not worth making - but one that bubbles to the surface in moments of base desperation, nonetheless.
There was a knock at the door. Kate turned to look at the beige rectangle across the room that led to the equally beige hallway beyond. She had almost convinced herself that she didn't hear anything at all when the knock came again, this time just barely louder. Three quick raps. She stood from the couch and walked on her slightly unsteady bare feet to the door. Before reaching out to the doorknob she imagined herself returning to the couch and turning the volume of the television up a bit louder; just loud enough to drown out any other disturbances.
Kate pulled open the door and felt her stomach drop, as if it had been thrown down a well. Jack stood in front of her wearing jeans and a plain gray tshirt. His hair was still cropped short but he was clean shaven and seemed to fill out his clothes a little better than she recalled from the island. When he offered her a smile, the corners of his eyes wrinkled just like she remembered.
"Jack," she was surprised and her voice was cold in her ears. She kept a hand on the doorknob and watched him, as if she was looking into a dazzling tank at an aquarium - rapt by the incomprehensible and complicated lifeform that existed just behind the thick glass before her.
"Hi Kate," he said, and his voice rippled through her. Over the last three months, she had of course heard his voice - on television, in her voicemail box, in her dreams - but this was different. Standing just a few feet in front of her, the sound of her name from his lips seemed to vibrate through her; her bones acting like a tuning fork.
"I wanted to…" he started, and shifted nervously on his feet. He glanced down the hall to his right and pushed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. "How are you?"
Kate gripped the doorknob in her hand and leaned against the door, the edge of the doorframe pressing through her jeans into her hip sharply.
"I'm fine."
He nodded slowly and pursed his lips in thought. As she saw his eyes search hers, she felt herself shrink under his gaze, as she had so many times before on the island. She thought that was behind her, that she had distanced herself enough to be immune.
"Good. That's good," he said, an olive branch. Their lies floated on the air around them, stale.
He took half a step forward and extracted a hand from his pocket to rest it on the doorframe to her apartment. When he spoke again, his voice was lower.
"Kate…" her body hummed again with his voice. "I needed to… Can we talk?"
Jack's brows were pulled together - with concern, with humility - and Kate could feel her core being pulled toward his center of gravity. The feeling was familiar and dangerous. She should have shut the door. Turned the volume up on the television. Pressed a pillow over her head. Instead, she silently took a step backwards and pulled the door open wider to allow him to come inside.
As Jack stepped over the threshold and into her apartment, she watched him survey his surroundings and she was surprised to feel the prickle of shame dance across her tired heart. He looked around him at the room that comprised almost all of her living space: her small kitchen with dull linoleum flooring and laminate countertops both bearing the same dreary shade of beige. A toaster and coffee pot sat on the otherwise barren counter. The living room featured a couch that warranted no description aside from its brown high-tolerance fabric, flanked by two matching armchairs, a small entertainment center atop which sat a moderately sized television, and a coffee table that bore the scratches and scars of past inhabitants. A small, round table with four chairs sat in the far corner of the apartment and served as a dining room that she had never used. Finally, on the far wall was a short hallway that led to the similarly beige bathroom and bedroom. Over time, she had come to accept the shoddy and deteriorating lodging she had been provided as transitional and avoided any effort to make a home out of the space; she changed nothing, added nothing, removed nothing. The thought suddenly occurred to her that Jack must think she was an uncompromising clean freak, given the fact all surfaces in view were devoid of any sign of human life.
When he finally turned back to her, the look in his eyes turned her stomach. She could see that he wanted to say something reassuring, something to bolster her with his support, just as he had always done, but she could see, too, that words had failed him.
"You shouldn't be here," her voice was flat, listless, and with it she felt a fresh wave of fatigue lap her edges. The way she had come to understand her place in the world, in relation to others, had allowed her to slip to the bottom of the ocean where the silt and detritus drifted simply and slowly, looking up at the distant light and life above. A spectator, never to surface again. There was peace in that.
"I know," Jack acknowledged, his tone apologetic. "I know I shouldn't have come here like this. But I wanted to see you - see how you're doing. Before tomorrow."
"Well, now you see how I'm doing."
"Kate, come on."
"What, Jack?"
He sighed in regret: for showing up there, for how their conversation was going, or both - she couldn't tell.
"You won't return my calls. What was I supposed to do?"
She crossed her arms over her chest instead of responding, watching the light from the television wander around the room.
"Look," he tried, working to shift his tone towards casual, benign. "Did you eat? I was thinking we could grab something nearby..."
"I'm not hungry."
Jack nodded and in their silence, the television informed them about low introductory interest rates on a new rewards credit card, the music tinny and cheerful and incongruous to the moment they stood in. Kate could feel her heartbeat in the farthest reaches of her skin, just below her jaw, in the shallows of her wrists. She became shrouded in her own disadvantage, the way she had sometimes felt when she worked high-end waitressing or catering jobs when she was younger and fighting to make ends meet. The way she felt now was how she imagined it would feel to invite an upscale charity function guest into her apartment and watch them realize that they were somewhere they fundamentally did not belong. A shadow fell over Kate's heart as this feeling became linked with Jack in her mind, this moment now a stain on their collective memory.
"You shouldn't be here," she said again.
"Kate, I needed to -"
"Jack," she stopped him, crossing her arms more firmly over her chest. "Don't. Please. You shouldn't be anywhere near this."
He frowned and shook his head, as if trying to recalibrate to what she had just said.
"Near this? What is that supposed to mean?" His voice turned slightly, coming around the corner towards frustration. She felt a fresh crack splinter across her heart. But even in her pain, the sound she heard escape her lips was low and derisive.
"You know what it means."
"No, I'm not going to play that game with you," he fired back, and for one of the few times in her memory, Jack raised his voice to her in anger. "If you have something to say to me, you need to say it. You owe me that."
"You don't belong here," she forced out, her voice thin and strangled to her ears. He flinched but regained composure, but not quickly enough that she didn't catch it first.
"That isn't fair," he tried, but his voice had lost its agitation, and she knew that she had broken through to him.
"Jack, listen to me," she begged, allowing her eyes to drift to the floor beneath her feet. "You have to understand… They aren't going to let me go. They can't. The things I've done… there's only one way this can go."
She hugged her arms around her like a shield, catching another shift in light from the television again. She could feel the tremble of her fingers even through her balled fists pressing into her ribcage.
"On the island, it was like you said," she started, her voice unsteady. She took a deep breath and looked up at him, steeling herself. As she spoke, her heart swelled and ached in her chest unbearably. "We got to start over. That was mostly true. Even after people started to learn the truth about me, I was still important there in some way. I could still contribute. It was another world where that was okay; it was okay for someone like me to be a part of the group. I could know someone like you. Someone real, someone good."
Kate took a shuddering breath against the thundering heart in her chest, her mind forced to forge ahead even as her body revolted in protest.
"And even through the terrible things we saw, the horrible things we went through, I am so thankful for that. That for a short time, I could know you; have a man like you in my life."
She reached up quickly to brush the tear from her eye that threatened to fall, and the look that fell across his face was enough to crack her heart completely in two. Before her eyes, she could see him deflating, his chest that lifted and fell with his breaths becoming shallower as she sucked the life out of the room for the both of them.
"But we aren't in that world anymore," she shook her head with finality. "We're in the real world now. And people like me, that have done the things I've done, we don't get to have people like you in our lives," she shrugged at the simplicity of it, as if what she said held little importance. Because, to her, it couldn't if she was going to survive what lay ahead of her. "And you don't see it. You'll tell me that I'm wrong, that none of that matters. That it isn't fair. And that's what I love about you. Because you're right. And it's also why I have to be the one to walk away. Because you won't."
Kate pressed her arms over her chest tighter still, feeling pain flare across her ribs as she compressed them, unrelenting. The man that stood in front of her was frozen and her heart was breaking.
"And after everything that I've done, it's the one good thing I can finally do for someone that is important to me."
Her lungs on the verge of collapse, her heart humming desperately in her chest, Kate finally tore her eyes from Jack's to find some relief in the hard, worn flooring beneath her feet. But the relief was fleeting; Jack's presence was surrounding her, in a space he was never meant to be, pressing into her skin like a vice.
"Kate, look at me."
But she couldn't look up, her body only left with the energy it took to keep her on her feet. She feared that if she moved, if she took a step in any direction, she would shatter.
Jack took a step towards her and suddenly the toes of his shoes came into view on the graying tile below her. The dark leather of his boots stood in sharp contrast to her bare feet, her small pink toes washed out in the harsh overhead light of the kitchen.
"Kate," he tried again, and in his voice she heard something she hadn't before, something that she hated.
"Don't do this."
She saw his hand reach out to her, and before she could elicit any control over her body, she recoiled and stepped backwards, out of his reach. It was as if, on a molecular level, she knew there was only one path to survival. If he touched her, she was doomed.
"Jack," she choked out, her voice barely overcoming the tears that were racing up her throat. "You need to leave."
Jack was bewildered, his mouth falling open to speak but remaining silent. She knew he couldn't find the words to bring to his defense and, in a way, it was by her design. This was the only outcome that would allow them both to survive, even as she felt the remnants of her heart decaying in her chest.
Again, he reached a hand out to her in desperation but again, she took a step back. This time when she found her voice it was a bit louder, a bit colder.
"I don't want you here, Jack."
His hand fell to his side and he closed his mouth, resigned. If there had been anything for him to say before, it was useless now. For a brief moment, he tilted his head as he watched her, as if trying to understand an especially difficult math problem. Then, he stood up a bit straighter and turned away from her, heading to her front door.
The tears coursed down her cheeks and terror gripped her core fiercely as it dawned on her that the image of Jack's back to her, as he walked out of her life, may be the memory of him that she was left with for the rest of her days.
With a simple twist of the wrist, Jack pulled open her front door and disappeared from her unremarkable and forgettable apartment, her complicated and unfortunate life, for what Kate could only assume and hope was forever. For both of their sakes.
TBC