If Misery Loves Company

Chapter 20

Confession

By Kristen Gupton-Williams

I'm not exactly sure how long I slept after that. Shera got up at some point, and I awoke enough to notice her leave but promptly passed out again. Who knows how much more time passed before I felt her sit on the edge of the bed and touch my shoulder. "Cid…"

With a generally discontented grunt, I forced my eyes open, looking up at her. As annoyed as I might have been about being woken up, seeing Shera brought an honest smile to my lips. "Hey there…"

She made me get up and ushered me out into the kitchen. Though I still felt like I could have slept for another three or four months at that point, my hunger got the better of me. She dropped a plate of waffles onto the table before me, and I made something of a pig of myself.

I'd missed her cooking almost as much as I'd missed her.

Shera sat across from me. Though I could feel her eyes on me, for the time being I was feeling really… introverted. There were two things going on inside my head that I was struggling with.

The first thing was how I'd been toward her in the previous years. I'd loved her all along, but because of my resentment over the launch, I'd always kept her at something of a distance. There was no excuse. I'd been the world's biggest ass to her, and never once had she told me to get bent. How she could have tolerated me this long was beyond reason. In short, I was feeling guilty.

The other deal was my tendency to do things in certain order. Before the launch I made all those grand plans to marry her, have some dream life… The reality, though, was that I felt I wasn't going to survive the launch so all those grandiose inward promises were a load of shit. Now, I had come to a point in life where my doubts over living much longer were there again. Just like before the launch, I was once again dreaming up all these wonderful things to do with Shera after Meteor. Just like before, there was a good chance I'd never get that far.

But if I did survive…

There was no turning back. Things between Shera and I had already changed. We were now on a one way road. After the rocket failure I'd been able to back track because I'd not really ever revealed anything to her. But it was all on the table now. No going back. This mission couldn't be aborted. Life had me in a proverbial nut hold.

I just hoped that Lady Luck was going to be a little kinder to me this go around.

No comment.

I hoped that Shera didn't think that my silence was a bad thing toward her in any way. It's just I really was having a time with these thoughts. Once I was stuffed with waffles, I migrated to my chair and spaced out, under the guise of watching a John Wayne movie marathon.

Shera didn't press me for anything, letting me just drift along in my mind, occasionally placing a beer in my left hand without me asking. She perched herself on the couch and I could feel her eyes on me. I was just so ashamed of the past… It was rare that I could even bring myself to look at her.

A while later, she was off to cook dinner.

When I saw her setting the table, I got up and went to my place. The knot that had been growing in my gut all day did not prevent me from wanting to eat.

Shera had refrained from saying anything all day, but as she sat across from me, the silence was finally broken. "Cid? Are you… okay?"

I pretended to study the piece of steak before me. "Yeah, I'm jus' tired."

Her tone let me know that she didn't believe me. "Oh… it just seems like you've got something on your mind."

You'd forgotten she was a witch and could read your mind, dumbass.

Inwardly amused for no good reason, I snickered. "I am sorta in the middle of tryin' to save the world."

Shera's voice seemed to lighten in response to that. "I would imagine that's quite a burden."

"You'd think…" That momentary levity slipped away as quickly as it'd come and I opted to just eat. I'm not sure really how long a time passed before I picked up my tea cup and spoke again. I knew damn good and well that she was waiting for me to crack. "You can tell when I'm full of shit, can't ya?"

She rose and collected our plates, not replying until she returned with a cake. "There are times, yes, when I know you're not being entirely open with me."

Chocolate cake. Better than sex. Well, as far as I knew, anyway. At least I could have cake with another human being without worries of performance failure, right? I helped myself to a large slab, opting to veer from the serious for a moment. "I been cravin' this forever."

Shera seemed a little amused. "You do seem to have an affinity for it, I've noticed. You took the last one I made you back onto the airship. I had to buy a new cake pan thanks to that."

Shit! It's sitting in my locker back on the ship… I was gonna bring it in! I thought silently, tensing my jaw for a moment. "Guilty as charged."

Nothing more was said because Shera knew that I was not to be disturbed when in the serious act of cake eating. Four pieces in my gut and I was eventually sated.

Her gaze never left me, and I knew that she was waiting for me to carry on with my previous line of thought.

I fidgeted and kept my gaze to my empty cake plate. "Yeah, well… anyway, it ain't jus' the mission on my mind."

"Is that so?" she asked quietly.

This was it. Time to sack up and be a man. I looked up into her eyes, feeling my heart pounding in my ears. I questioned the sanity of eating as much cake as I had, because there was a good chance I was gonna heave from my nerves. "Since that rocket launch and… seein' that you really were right about that eight tank… To be real honest, I've felt like shit. The way I've treated ya all these years… Why didn't ya ever jus' tell me to go fuck myself? Why put up with it when you knew, you knew, Shera, that you were right?"

"I felt that it was my responsibility to have found that mistake long before the launch, so that it could have been fixed ahead of time. It was my failure," she whispered back, wriggling around in her chair. I would have expected silence, but she went on with questions she must have had forever. "I think the better question is why did you, believing that I'd ruined your dream, still look over me when I was evicted and living in my car? I know it was you, Cid, that covered my back window after it was broken out, that had left me that money and those sandwiches, that fought off Gregory when he attacked me, and that…"

I shoved aside my plate and leaned forward a bit. Yeah, it'd finally happened. Shera was savvy to everything and I was the one, now, that could be questioned. The tables had turned. No, I wasn't surprised she'd figured all of that out. After all, I'd already admitted that she was smarter than I. "That what?"

"I found my sleeping pills in your medicine cabinet. You took them out of my car…" she said weakly.

The memories of that time washed in, adding to my shame. "Yeah, it was all me, Shera."

She simply asked, "Why?"

I owed her, I owed her a real and honest explanation after all the bullshit I'd dragged her through. Like I'd said before, there was no turning back, this was a one way street, and I wasn't going to fight it, no matter how much this was going to emasculate me. "I liked ya. I sorta had… started to feel like there was somethin' between us before the launch and even with as fuckin' pissed off as I was afterward, I just couldn't write you off completely. I wanted to, but I jus' couldn't. I found myself walkin' past that car on my way home from the bar every night since I took to drinkin' real heavy that first few weeks. You didn't deserve all the shit that fell on ya then so I just… I did what I felt like I had to do."

My cheeks burned and I knew I'd gone fire engine red, letting my eyes drop away. Shera reached over and took my hand. "Cid?"

Don't stop now, don't you DARE fuckin' stop now…

"I knew I had to take those pills… You left that Goddamned diary you write in on the passenger seat and I read it through the window. I saw that you intended to kill yourself… I couldn't let that happen so I stole 'em." With that, I looked at her once more.

Shera was silent for a second, obviously a little shocked with the situation. "Cid… if the launch had gone as planned and you'd survived… what do you think would have happened?"

God in heaven it was hard to be on this end of the spectrum, but my pride was gone. Completely and utterly fucking gone. "I was… kinda thinkin' that I'd try goin' for a real relationship with ya if you'd been interested. I wasn't sure if you were jus' so nice to me, though, because we were friends or if y'all really liked me like that."

Nice way to leave out complete mention of the fact you were just going to propose to her after gettin' back to the ground. Still can't be completely honest, can you?

If I had been red before, Shera's blush now surely put that to shame about a million times over. "I would have definitely been interested."

All that cowardice and she woulda been into it. Feel like an ass much right about now?

Yes.

I nodded a little, trying to not get my hopes up prematurely. "After the launch failed, sure, I was mad but I still… I never woulda let you into my home… I never woulda let you stay here for all these years if… I mean… I'm tryin' to…"

She gave me that same sweet smile I'd come to love, and she gripped my hand tighter. "Cid, you don't have to say anything that you don't want."

She was giving me a way out, and I almost took it. That, in turn, made me angry with myself. I wasn't going to back out. Not this time. No fucking way. It was time to confess in no uncertain terms. "Shera, I love ya, I always have."

I literally held my breath, waiting.

Shera did much the same, and I could have sworn she wavered a little where she sat. "C…Cid…"

"Well… I shoulda said it five fuckin' years ago. I shoulda told ya before the original launch in case I'd died so you woulda known. I shoulda said it afterward. I shoulda said it before I ended up with AVALANCHE. I shoulda said it when ya saved my life again on that fuckin' rocket. I shoulda… I shoulda said it the last time I was here in case anythin' happened to me…" I let my words trail off. I hurt on some level because I'd known all along that I should have been enough of a man to say it before that moment.

"You showed it, though…" she said quietly.

My eyes burned and I realized I was on the verge of crying for the first time in years. "I'll never forgive myself for the Hell I've put you through, Shera. Never."

She took up my other hand, now having both. "It's all right, Cid…"

Shame… I was feeling pure shame. I couldn't look at her anymore. "No, it ain't. I've wasted these five years, Shera. Now, the world might end an' we don't got the damn time for shit."

Forever having faith in me, Shera spoke up. "You're not going to fail. You and the others will win this, I believe it completely. Then afterward… we can take things from there."

This got my attention again, and I asked for the one piece of information I was most hungry for. "You… you said you woulda been interested if I'd asked ya to try a relationship with me five years ago. You… you meanin' to say you still feel the same way?"

I grew worried when she instantly got up. That was pushed aside, though, when she came around the table and leaned against my back, snaking her arms around my neck. "I think you know the answer to that."

God I loved her. I placed a hand over her arms. "Shera…"

She continued to hold onto me. "I don't want you to worry about anything, Cid. Look, it's almost nine now, and that movie you wanted to watch is about to come on. Go in the family room and I'll bring you another cup of tea, okay?"

I was feeling a little awkward still, and took up her offer. After standing, I placed a kiss on her cheek and then went to my chair.

Shera remained in the kitchen to follow through with her tea making. The thing is, she never realized I could see what she was doing in there from my chair. I could see her reflection real damn well in the china cabinet.

I watched to see her dancing around while the water boiled.

Yeah, that was out of character for her but it meant one thing.

She was happy, and she was happy because she loved me.

I tried not to laugh, and I got myself back under control when she returned to hand me my cup of tea. She landed on the couch and I got to watching my movie. I would look at her, and she would look at me now and then, but we remained pretty quiet. Our relationship was resetting itself.

At some point or another I fell asleep in my chair, since I was still pretty burnt. I'm a little fuzzy on the details how me falling asleep in my chair ended up with me in my bed, but it did, and Shera was right at my side.

It was around two in the morning when I woke up to find myself laying there with her. I didn't move or anything, I just looked at her as she slept. She had nuzzled against my side, and was snoring a little.

I'll be damned if it wasn't the cutest damn thing I'd ever seen. A while later, I was back asleep again.

I'd surely missed being home.