Risk: Chapter Twenty-Three
It wasn't for another couple of days that Rose sat Jake down and explained to him just exactly what he'd witnessed. It was a lot to take in, she knew, and she knew it would be hard to believe, but she told him he had to trust her, at her very word.
"So, you are a time lord," he finally said, leaning back in his seat, gaze reaching the ceiling as he mulled over all that she'd told him.
They were in the privacy of one of the library study rooms, borrowing it for a few hours if only to utilize it for this very conversation instead of actually studying. Rose was so far ahead with her homework, she didn't really need to work on it, however she'd brought it anyway, and it was open before her as if she truly was ready to get started on it.
This conversation kind of took precedent, though.
"I guess?" She knit her brows at his statement. Was that all he seemed to get from all that she'd revealed to him. The titans, the young soldiers, nothing about that seemed odd to him? "All I know is that I'm technically… not from this time period. I'm from there. And I was brought here when I was a baby by accident. Now I'm somehow flip-flopping between both timelines."
"That's… so cool."
"It's… okay." Rose narrowed her eyes a bit. "I mean, it's been pretty dangerous, Jake. Kidnapping, hostage situations, being shot at – again – these titan creatures looming about. It's constant hoops trying to stay alive every time I go there."
"Is there anyway you could just… not go, then?" he inquired, being truly earnest in his question.
She pursed her lips as she thought, looking away for a moment, then back at him. "I don't think so. I think my being there is serving a purpose. I just don't know what, yet." Except she still hadn't explained the whole twin, "Heart of Titan", thing. That was a whole other conversation for a different day.
She'd brought up that she did, in fact, have a family in this other timeline. Just not how important they happened to be.
"You should take me some time," Jake suggested, still being serious.
"Absolutely not," she said, crossing her arms. "I can deal with the dangers as I've become accustomed to them. I don't want you to get involved and, God forbid, get yourself killed."
"What, you don't think I could handle my own?" He was clearly joking, but Rose didn't like the question, anyway.
"It's not that," she answered softly, seriously. "It's that I care about you and want you to be safe. Here. Where you belong. Let me do the time jumping. I got it handled."
"Bring me back a souvenir, at least," he said with a chuckle.
"I could bring back your jacket," she muttered with a sigh. "I left it there this time, I'm sorry."
"It's alright. You're going back, right? Then… just bring it back next time. Besides, I like you wearing it around a different timeline. Kind of solidifies us, elsewhere, you know?"
"'Us'?" Rose repeated, her face growing a little warm at the word.
"Yeah. I mean, I know we're not official or anything, that we're taking things slow, but if or when we do become official…" He trailed off, waving a hand as if that was answer enough.
"I see," Rose said, trying her best not to smile too big. But then, as they proceeded to actually work on their studies, the conversation clearly over, an afterthought occurred to her: what about Levi?
She couldn't deny it with herself anymore; she had feelings for the man. And with the way Hange talked the other day – like about how he liked her hair – there were certain aspects that he liked about her as well. Also, when they were captured by Nathan, neither of them denied their captor's accusation of them having feelings for one another.
Should she have taken that at face value?
As they finished with their work, they opted to get something from the coffee shop before going their separate ways. They both ate slowly, seeming to enjoy the other's company. They didn't talk about time jumping or letterman jackets and what they signified, just about casual things like work and basketball and how the rest of their week was anticipated to go.
"I have a couple of recruiters coming to watch me this week," Jake said, seeming a little sheepish to admit as much.
"What – Jake, that's great news. Why didn't you say something earlier?"
"We kind of had more pressing matters to attend to," he reminded her, and he was right.
"Still, that's amazing. What do people say in this situation? Good luck? Break a leg?" She didn't want to jinx him, after all. If Jake had the opportunity to go completely Pro, she wanted him to take it.
That would mean that he could possibly go to a different school, which made her sad. However, she wouldn't stop him if he did. And if he did attend a different school, that didn't mean they'd never see each other again.
And part of her believed that even if that was what it meant, she didn't know if she'd be entirely heartbroken. She didn't like having this idea of boy troubles in her life, and one boy down meant one less boy to worry about.
"I think 'good luck' is just fine," he said with a chuckle. "Thank you."
Rose didn't enjoy her writing class as much as she thought she would, but turned in her homework as they were assigned to her. This week, they were to write a story about a voyage. Rose could definitely do that, but she would be basing it off of real-life events; not that her teacher would know that.
As the week ended, Jake had told her that one of the recruiters had gotten back to him. He was located in Atlanta, and wanted Jake to start as soon as next month. Sadness did consume her a little bit; she did just lose Bunni, and now she was losing another friend. But Jake needed to do this – it was his career, after all.
They met up at the diner she worked at, even though it was her day off, as it was a familiar place and also middle ground. She had arrived first, getting them a table, and when he'd walked in, she had stood up and given him a congratulatory hug.
"I'm really going to have to hurry up and get you your jacket back."
"Nah, keep it," he said as he sat down in the booth across from her. "Have it forever in my memory."
She playfully slapped him. "You're not dying, idiot, you're just moving across the country. For a good reason, might I add."
"Yeah, yeah." But something in his voice was tinged with a bit of sadness.
So Rose decided to egg it out of him. "What is it?"
"Rose, I don't know if I want to move that far away. I mean, that's so far from my friends, my family… you." At the last word, he dared to even look into her eyes.
Rose couldn't help but blush. "Jake, this is your career we're talking about. Your future. Take the leap. You'll regret it if you don't."
"I knew you'd say that," he said with a small smile. "You're always the voice of reason. Is there a reason for that?"
"Comes with age, I think," she said, mimicking his expression. "Remember, I'm older than you."
"By like, four months." But he laughed all the same.
They dined in, then, not talking about careers or futures or anything of the sort. Rose could tell it weighed down on Jake, and she didn't want to be anymore of a burden than he was already feeling. After dinner, they went to their respective cars, Jake first walking her to hers and giving her a hug good-bye before she entered her little Beetle.
And that pull she knew all too well sucked her up from her seat and backwards through time.
This was not the room she borrowed from Hange.
Rose sat upright on the bed she'd landed on and looked around; the office was too clean to be Hange's, way too organized.
She was in Levi's room.
As if summoned, the door opened and he walked right on through, stopping when he saw her.
"It's been a day," he said simply, shutting the door behind him. "What are you wearing?"
"Why do you do that?" Rose snapped, getting to her feet to face him. "Just so you know, this is pretty tame compared to what a lot of women in my century are wearing."
He seemed a little taken aback by her sudden attitude, but didn't let it deter him too much. "I'm just noticing it's a lot more… frilly than your other clothes."
She quickly glanced down at her dress: a sweet pink dress with frills at the bottom, coupled with a cropped white jacket, knee-high socks with their own frills at the top, and her usual black tennis shoes. "I just wanted to dress nice," she finally stated, placing her hands on her hips. "Anyway, I don't think that's important right now."
"No, I guess not." He moved around her to get to his desk, sitting down. "May I ask what you were dressing so nice for?"
She didn't want to have this conversation with him, of all people. But there was no point in lying to him, either. "I was with Jake," she answered, a little shyly, hands behind her back, gaze averted. "We were talking about his future and stuff."
"His future?" That seemed to intrigue Levi, he had even stopped writing to look up at Rose.
"Yeah, he's trying to become a professional athlete," she began to explain, sitting back on the bed as she did so. "And… he's going to be moving across the country to play his sport."
"I see." He continued writing again, head back down on his paperwork. "How does that make you feel?"
Was he playing therapist now? "Well… I feel like I should be sad about that. But I'm not? I'm actually really happy for him. I'm going to miss him, don't get me wrong, but at the same time, I'm happy he's going to be living out his dreams. I think that's great."
"Is that so?" By his tone, he didn't believe her.
"Well, yes," she answered, a little defensively. "Besides, maybe… maybe then he'll stop thinking we're almost a couple."
There, she said it out loud.
The thing that bothered her the most about her relationship with Jake, that she didn't want to admit to him lest it hurt his feelings. She liked the idea of being liked, sure, but at the same time… she didn't really like him like that.
Not him.
Levi sighed, as if she'd something that exasperated him, and set his pen down again, standing up. Then he maneuvered around his desk to join her on the bed, placing his elbows on either of his knees. "Why don't you just tell him that?"
"Because he's so sweet, and he's such a good friend. I don't want to hurt his feelings. But…" She felt warmth color her cheeks, and she kept staring at her hands instead of Levi as she continued on. "But it's not him that I want to be with. However, the person I want to be with is so stupidly hard to read, I don't even know if it's worth bothering with. So I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place, as far as where my heart's concerned." She heaved a short breath, shrugging. "Anyway, this is so stupid, you don't need to listen to me drone on about my boy troubles."
As she lifted her blue eyes to meet his, she noticed he was staring at her, but not as if she was some idiot girl, but with something soft in his gaze.
"This other person, do you want to be with them?"
She hesitated; she could say who it was, just blurt it out now, and see where the pieces lie. Or continue to be vague – she went for that route instead. "Yes, I do."
"Why not tell them?" he asked this matter-of-factly, as if it was the most obvious question.
"Because… I want to be sure they care about me the same way. I'm not in the business of breaking my own heart, you know."
"No, I guess you wouldn't be." He stood up then, pushing against his knees to do so, and heading toward the door. "It's almost dinnertime. Did you want to cook?"
Conversation over. Duly noted. "Sure, I'd like to," she answered with a small, sad smile, following after him.
