My readers probably think I have way too much time on my hands. I don't, it's just that I should be reading about sociolinguistic crap instead of doing this, but is that any fun? Noooooo..... Plus CG was already written, so really it was just this one I've been working on. It helps distract me when I feel like quitting school and moving to Ghana. I can't not post this fic when I finish a chapter, I just can't help it! I go through periods of not writing anything for a long, long time...but then I just get all inspired and bam! a million chapters in a week. Also, f*** the Ducks!!! Heh heh....we rock. :):):)

today i woke up and you were gone the whole day wondering what i did wrong it's like i'm falling from a mountaintop my heart keeps pounding and it won't stop can you see this hell i'm leaving i'm not giving up there goes a piece of me well i cease to be i never lied to you fought and died for you there she goes and i'm on the ground i'm on the ground i'm on the ground

--"deny" default

Jonathan has already tucked Alex into bed by the time we get back, but he's waiting up for us at the bar, two drinks poured. "Take a seat, Rick," he says. "I'd like to talk to you about something."

Rick squeezes me tightly for a moment before letting me go and sitting next to Jonathan. "Good night, boys," I say, kissing both of them on the cheek in turn. "Behave."

"Always, Evy," says Jonathan. I leave them alone then, wanting desperately to know what exactly it is the ensuing conversation will cover, but suppressing my eavesdropping instincts. In the first little bedroom, Alex is tangled up in the sheets, his consciousness mired in dreams. I sit at the edge of his bed and brush the hair from his forehead. He looks so innocent asleep, so I've learned to savor these quiet moments, because the moment my son wakes he can turn into the human hurricane. Never a dull moment, I suppose. I wonder what Rick looked like when he was a kid. I bet he was blond, and I already know Alex has his father's eyes.

I sigh, leaving my son to his dreams and retreating into the bathroom. There's so much I don't know about Rick. All I really have of his past is the sketchy recollections that he saw fit to share eight years ago, and those have faded mostly into memory. I know his parents died when he was just a child, ten, I think. Raised in an orphanage, thrown to the wolves at the age of sixteen, and...

Actually, that's pretty much the extent of my knowledge. Over a decade missing, and now nearly another one heaped on top of it. What history do we ourselves have with each other except a few weeks in the desert, a few more in Cairo, and...

A night.

~~

He and the lawyer in the trench coat spoke in hushed tones for what seemed like hours before Rick came back to me, holding out his hand for mine and then pulling me out of the room. "Who is that man?" I asked, and he sighed...

~~

I shake off the recollections and set about trying to find the toothpaste. I thought dealing with two men was bad, now I'll be outnumbered three to one and I'll never have a clean bathroom again. As I search my mind drifts again.

~~

Storm clouds gathered above us, blotting out the little twinkling stars one by one as the gray crept over the black. "I have to sign by the end of the month, or it transfers to some distant cousin," said Rick, his arms tightening around me as we watched the sky display. "I want the house, Evy. I remember it. I remember my parents in it. I want to...I don't know."

"I think you should go," I said, and my own words filled me with terror at the thought that he might heed them.

"Boston..." Rick shook his head. "Twenty years must have changed it so much..."

"Well, are you going to find out?" I said, trying to keep my tone cheery.

He looked at me, kissed my forehead. "Of course I am. I mean, it's my home. Technically. And of course there's that distant cousin who gets everything if I don't show up. I actually have a family member. Can you believe that? Family..."

I plastered a smile on my face to match his enthusiasm, my heart consumed in pain and selfishness all at the same time. It was Rick's life, he should have been able to do what he wanted with it. But the thought of him leaving, of him...

...leaving me...

~~

I realize I've finally found the toothpaste, but my brain doesn't feel like doing much of anything except feeling sorry for myself. I sit on the edge of the bathtub and draw my legs up, attempting to wallow in as much self-pity as I can squeeze out of the moment. Everything's fine. Everything's perfect. But the fact remains that it hasn't been for eight years, and we can't ever get those years back.

~~

"I'm just down the hall if you need me," said Rick, walking backwards out the door. He started to say something else but stopped himself, then turned and fled down the hallway. I knew he wanted to stay, I could see it in his eyes, but for some reason he didn't offer and I couldn't bring myself to say it out loud. The storm raged outside; flashes of light followed by waves of rolling thunder that seemed to get closer with every second. I shivered in spite of myself, knowing full well that I was certainly not afraid of thunderstorms, but feeling more terrified than I'd ever been. I hated feeling so alone, so dependent on some emotion I couldn't even name.

Someone knocked at the door, and I opened it to reveal Rick. "Evy, I have to ask you something--" he said, but my lips cut short his words before he'd gotten them all out. I pulled him inside and we shut the door against the howling wind, filled with such a violent ache to be near each other that the storm seemed somehow muted. As the night wore on, as we made love out of harm's way from the tempest swirling outside, I forgot any hesitation I ever had about us, about him. Every moment simply seemed so right that I never thought to question it.

Only as the morning dawned did I begin to have doubts about what we had done. Now more than ever I knew I couldn't bear to lose him. I didn't want him to leave me.

I had to leave before he did it first.

We sit at the bar in silence for a minute. Jonathan gulps his drink down but I leave mine untouched. "What did you want to talk to me about?" I ask him, and he stares into the depths of his glass with somber eyes.

"I want to know something, O'Connell. I want to know you two aren't going to screw up and ruin each other's lives all over again."

I pick up the drink. "It worked out okay."

"You don't know that." Jonathan shakes his head, slowly. "You haven't stood by and watched Evy sink for eight years, trying to convince her to climb out of the emotional hole she dug for herself. She's still not out of it. She never will be. Alex knows a different woman than I knew before you left. You have no idea how much she changed."

"I'm going to find out."

Jonathan chuckles. "Don't get me wrong, Rick. You two are so perfect for each other it's sickening. I just..." He sighs now, tipping a little more alcohol into the glass, watching it swirl around the bottom as he pours. "It's not going to be easy. You two need to understand that. And if either of you give up on it, I'm going to hunt you both down and tie you together so you can't hurt each other like you did. Not again. I don't think Evy could survive that again."

A suspicion begins to form in my mind, though I can't give voice to it. "What did she tell you happened?"

"She didn't tell me much." Jonathan tops off my glass though I haven't yet drank out of it. "A few months later I knew all I needed to know. So did everybody else."

I want to defend myself but no explanation I could give would satisfy Jonathan. I wanted her to go with me. I was in the midst of asking her, but with one thing and another I never got that far. Afterwards, when I couldn't find her, I wrote a note instead. I know she got it; Jonathan told me so the last time I saw him. But even when the likelihood became larger that it was she who had abandoned me, she who had decided I wasn't worth it... I still couldn't believe the reality that was quickly taking over. Before everything turned to Hell, I remember thinking I'd found Heaven. Until that morning came.

~~

I woke to the first rays of morning and an empty bed. At first I thought maybe she'd gotten up to go to the bathroom. Maybe she was in the sitting room. As the minutes passed more possibilities entered my mind. She went to get breakfast, she had to go to work, she...

Left.

The apartment was empty save for myself and the sunlight that slowly crept in through the curtains and clashed with my frame of mind. She left. A million explanations entered my mind but somehow I knew that she didn't think of any of them. She was just...

Gone.

~~

"I have to ask Evelyn something," I say. I don't think Jonathan replies as I fly off the stool and away, but my mind is on other things and I'm not really paying much attention. Evelyn isn't with Alex, and she isn't in the other bedroom, so I try the bathroom and find her sitting in the bathtub, staring forlornly at the faded tile.

"Hi," she says, in a voice so tiny that she doesn't sound like herself. "Sit with me, would you?"

I take a seat on the edge of the tub, noting the forgotten toothpaste in Evelyn's hand. "Are you okay?"

She takes a deep breath and smiles through it, putting a brave face over some emotion I can't yet discern. "I am. I'll be okay. We're going to be okay."

Suddenly my earlier eagerness to learn the truth, no matter how horrible it might have been, diminishes as I contemplate the woman I love, sitting in a bathtub for no apparent reason. She's in pain. "What's wrong, Evy?"

"Have you noticed..." she says, then pauses. "Have you noticed," she starts again with renewed determination, "that every time the past comes up we do whatever we can to sweep it under the rug?"

"Maybe that's how it should be."

"No." She shakes her head. "No. If we don't deal with it, it'll just continue to eat at us... Then there won't be a relationship left for us to protect."

There it is. I have to say it. "Evy...I have to ask you something."

She rips her concentration from the bathroom tile and stares at me, point-blank and honest. "I panicked."

"What?"

"There's your answer. You want to know why I left before you woke up; you want to know where I went; why I..." She squeezes her eyes shut, about to cry, then apparently decides against it and looks at me again. "I panicked. I was scared. I don't know what else to say, Rick, I just... I was scared that it didn't mean anything; I was scared that you were going to get on a boat and go to America and forget about me."

She does start to cry now, and I lift her out of the bathtub and sit her on the edge next to me. "Then why weren't you on that boat, Evy? I tried to find you; I searched for hours. Finally I wrote that note just in case, and I know you got it, Jonathan told me. Then you didn't show up. If I hadn't thought you didn't want to come, I would have gotten off the Goddamn boat and tried to find you again."

Evelyn looks to the ceiling, wiping away tears with her free hand. "I found the note. I packed. I said goodbye to Jonathan. I went to the ticket office and they said there was no ticket under my name. Or yours. I thought it was a trick or something." She looks at the toothpaste in her hands, seeming to remember now that she still clutches it. "I guess I was looking for something to blame it on. I wanted to blame you. I wanted you so desperately, but I..." Her head falls to my shoulder, and she buries her words there. "I gave up. I gave up far too easily, and I don't deserve a second chance with you. I don't deserve--"

"Evy. It isn't your fault. Those idiots at the docks screwed up. I reserved your ticket, it should have been there. Even then, I shouldn't have gone, I should have tried to find you again--"

"No! Then you would have lost your rights to the will. You had to go."

I raise her face up and rest her forehead against mine. "I would have stayed for you." She smiles a little, and I kiss her forehead lightly, then her nose, her lips.

"I know," she whispers. "I know."

A long time passes, but we stay where we are, just holding each other. We sit in silence, for no other reason than that the silence is enough.

~*~*~*~

Much appreciating your support...merci:):):)