AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!

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Daydreamy.

Distracted.

Carol was almost ashamed of the way she was behaving, and yet she felt entirely helpless to it. It was ridiculous for a woman her age to find herself with her head stuck in the clouds and a somewhat helpless feeling of being unable to draw herself back to her reality.

As she went through her day, she drifted off in the same way she might if her head were an actual balloon and were able to simply bob a few feet above her shoulders on a string.

She'd texted him and called—they'd talked—but it had been three days since Daryl went home after staying with her for a streak that might have been improper if people were still judging each other harshly for that sort of thing. She understood, of course, his need to go home.

He had a home. He had a place where he lived with all of his things there. It was only natural that he wanted and needed to return to that location from time to time. He'd signaled the need for more clothes. If he was going back and forth to work, he needed more clothes—even though Carol was more than content to keep washing the same few items over and over again, he might eventually want something different.

He had some things he needed to take care of. Carol hadn't questioned him, because he'd presented those "things" in such a manner that she felt that was simply the end of the conversation. He needed to do some things of which she wasn't part. He hadn't offered to elaborate, and she hadn't questioned him.

The longer he was gone, though, the more she felt like her mind easily drifted.

Carol had been a daydreamer when she was young. Even without the help of a book, she'd been able to simply sit and let her mind get lost for hours in elaborate worlds of her own creation. She'd lived and relived her entire life thousands of times before she was even eighteen—though her dreams had been very different than the way things had actually turned out. She'd given up daydreaming, though, along the way. Ed had taken that flightiness, as her mother had called it out, out of her. It had been dangerous to let her mind wander when she was married to Ed. Beyond that, she'd lost a great deal of the desire to dream about what might be while she was simply trying to survive what was.

She'd really never regained that dreamy and hopeful part of herself after her divorce. Not to the same extent. A book could transport her to another place or time, and that was one reason that she loved them so much, but her own mind didn't spend the kind of time or effort that it once had showing her scenes of her own possible experiences.

She was finding herself, suddenly, flooded with daydreams, though. And, in fact, she seemed unable to stop imagining a million different scenarios while she cleared tables, washed dishes, refilled and arranged things, and went about her never-ending list of tasks to accomplish.

Several times, hopefully discreetly, she'd found herself letting her hand drift down to lightly brush her fingertips against her stomach.

Her stomach was relatively flat. She'd always carried a little extra "fluff" around her middle, no matter how much she tried to get rid of the softness there. She'd always wanted the rock-hard stomach and abs that television told her was desirable, but she was simply soft and carried a little extra weight there—no matter how many sit-ups she did or how much she denied herself delicious things to eat.

Now she wasn't touching her fingertips there, absentmindedly and as part of a physical manifestation of her inner thoughts, because she was scolding herself for her permanent extra pudge. She was touching her stomach because she kept imagining that she might be pregnant. She kept imagining that she might simply find that she could feel a life growing there—a life that was wanted, and loved, and dreamed about.

She wasn't pregnant.

She probably would never be pregnant—not again.

But she could be, and her daydreams seemed determined to run with that. She could be. At least, she and Daryl had done everything, as far as she knew, that made such a thing possible.

She tried to imagine how she would feel.

It was almost impossible to imagine it. Just to think about it sent her heart into wildly beating and made her hands shake slightly. It made her breath catch. She had been so happy, for just a while, in a past that seemed so distant that those moments of happiness might not have been any more real than her current daydreams. But then she'd been so devastated—but she didn't want to think about that. Not that part. She didn't want to recall it. That wasn't where her mind wanted to be.

She imagined shaky, overwhelming happiness, and she felt it.

She asked herself how she would tell Daryl if such a thing were to really happen.

Daryl loved his favorite kind of movies dearly. The more she got to know him, the more she realized that he'd done more than watch those movies religiously—he'd lived them. In his mind, thousands of times, he'd lived them. Daryl was given to daydreaming and, perhaps, a little of the fancy that Carol remembered her mother chiding her for in the past.

Daryl liked to let his mind go wandering, and it often wandered around in scenes and moments that he'd collected from his movies.

He liked the decorative pillows around Carol's house because they reminded him of the houses that seemed overflowing with pillows—with comfort items—in his movies. He liked the candles that she kept burning, now, on nearly ever surface because they reminded him of his movies. He liked the prospect of the weather finally tipping cold enough to merit lighting a fire in her fireplace because fireplaces were things that meant snuggling and happiness in his movies.

Daryl would appreciate it if Carol were to tell him by borrowing something nice from a movie—or at least coming up with something that made him feel like he was in one of his movies. He would appreciate some gesture—a nice way of telling him the news.

Every time she imagined a different way of telling him, and she imagined his reaction to finding out the news, it felt like it turned everything inside her inside out for a second.

Her imagination couldn't imagine him reacting in any way other than being absolutely overwhelmed with happiness. The little voice in her mind—the one that had plagued her for years—whispered to her that he would change his mind. It whispered to her that he would find the expectation and the responsibility overwhelming. It told her that he would be angry because she would find a way, somehow, to do it wrong and to displease him. It told her that it would be a nightmare all over again.

But that had been Ed. That had been her experience with Ed.

That wasn't Daryl. The voice, it seemed, didn't know Daryl at all, and her imagination didn't seem to appreciate the intrusion of the voice into the work it was doing churning out scenarios of how everything felt just like it came straight out of one of Daryl's movies.

Daryl wanted it. He wanted the whole thing—though the voice reminded Carol that Ed had wanted it too. But he hadn't wanted it in the same way. He'd never been as sincere and honest as Daryl had been about everything.

The struggle in her mind had made Carol stumble over some breakfast preparations—causing toast that was too done, eggs that weren't cooked just quite to order, and coffee that was strong enough that they had to advertise it slightly differently than the pot they re-brewed. That was not to mention the fact that Carol had delivered the wrong order to a table more than once and had to apologize, hot-faced, for the mix-up that nobody really minded since it was easily corrected.

She'd washed her face with cool water in the bathroom and tried to shake her invading thoughts out, but it didn't take long until they started to slip again.

As long as the daydreams were ruling—nice thoughts where she imagined good scenarios, her slips were less often. She was able to work through those—her fingers seemed to know what they were doing while her mind wandered in the kind of winter wonderland, with Daryl, that Georgia hadn't seen in decades.

When the voice snuck in, though, and tried to make itself heard—battling against her daydreams—was when she started to simply feel like she was failing at everything she did and her hands were somehow put on backwards.

Ed had always made her feel that way and, it seemed, that even thoughts of him and reminders of how he made her feel could stir those inadequacies back up.

By the time they were starting preparations for the lunch time customers, the voice had a new concern that it tried to introduce to her. Daryl had left her house three days ago. He'd left her, before work, with sleepy kisses, and warm smiles, and even that sweet little thing he did where he nuzzled her neck while he held her in a hug. He'd left after waking her super early to ask if she wanted, before work, to sacrifice a few minutes of sleep in trade for slow, quiet, lazy sex. She couldn't think of any better way to wake up; that's what she'd told him.

He'd told her that he had some things he needed to do. He had things he needed to take care of around his work schedule. She'd accepted that. She had no actual right to have expectations of Daryl and, even if she did, she didn't want to be the kind of person who expected to control every waking minute of his life.

He texted her whenever he got the chance. She turned her notifications off because her phone would randomly go off throughout the day. She responded, in kind, whenever a break presented itself. They called each other at night, and Carol fell asleep with the phone in her hand, for the first time, since she'd been a teenager.

Daryl simply had responsibilities and things that he had to accomplish. He needed some time and space to take care of the things that he needed to take care of before he came back to spend a few days and nights in her presence. The rational part of Carol's mind, which spent its time wallowing in warm daydreams of how they might spend their time together, understood and accepted that without question.

The voice, however, kept trying its best to barge into Carol's daydreams and suggest that Daryl had simply changed his mind and, being as kind as he was, he'd decided to take this as an opportunity to quietly slip away.

"Sweetheart—are you feeling OK?"

Carol was snatched out of her thoughts by Jacqui's voice and the touch of her hand on her shoulder. Carol gasped and sucked in a breath. The transition back to reality was hard and fast, and she hadn't been ready for it. She felt something like tears, almost, prickling at the inside of her eyelids. Her throat ached. She'd ventured too far into the world the voice wanted her to create to replace her daydreams. She'd listened too long.

"What?" She croaked out, aware of the froggish quality of her voice.

Jacqui was sincerely concerned, that much was evident on her expression. She didn't pull her hand away from Carol's shoulder. She did raise the other, though, and touched it to Carol's forehead and then to her cheeks.

"You might be a little warm," Jacqui said. "Carol—sweetheart—are you OK? You need some water or—to go home and lie down?"

"I'm fine," Carol said quickly. "Why?"

"You haven't been yourself today," Jacqui said.

"I've had a lot on my mind," Carol said, stirring the pitcher of tea that she'd been preparing.

"I know that much, Carol Ann. You want to talk about it?" Carol shook her head in response to Jacqui's question. Jacqui held her ground. "Is it about your boyfriend? Daryl? Did he do something?"

"Daryl's never done anything," Carol said. "At least—nothing I can fault him for."

Jacqui laughed to herself.

"That doesn't sound possible, honey," Jacqui said with a laugh. "T can do ten things wrong before he gets to breakfast, and that's usually without trying."

"Not Daryl," Carol said.

"Then what's wrong?" Jacqui asked. "And don't you tell me nothing's wrong. I've been working in close quarters with you long enough that I can tell when you took cough medicine or your period started."

At the mention of that, Carol's stomach nearly turned inside out again.

"It's nothing," she dismissed, stirring the sweet tea.

"Well—you let me know when you want to talk about that nothing," Jacqui said. "In the meantime, honey, you pour that tea out. I don't think anybody here wants a glass of tea mixed up with two cups of salt."

Carol's stomach sunk.

"I didn't," she said, groaning, and fully accepting that she had.

"You wanna tell me now?" Jacqui asked with a laugh, as Carol poured out the pitcher of tea.

"It's nothing, really," Carol said. "Just—Ed."

"Ed—your ex?"

"It's not really Ed," Carol said. "It's just—things are really good with Daryl and me. And it feels like Ed keeps wanting to mess that up."

"He's in Living Springs?"

"The Ed in my head," Carol said with a laugh. "I sound insane."

Jacqui laughed to herself and it helped lighten Carol's mood again. Slowly, she felt the heaviness that crept over her body when she thought about Ed dissipate a little. She felt her muscles relax again and start to return to the state they'd been in before.

"You don't sound crazy," Jacqui said. "My mother used to be so damned critical of everything I did. I couldn't even chop an onion to suit her. I hear her, sometimes. Criticizing everything I do."

"I've never seen you poorly chop an onion, for the record."

"My point is we've all got those voices, Carol. But—when you're not putting salt in the tea, you've been doing OK for a while, right? I mean—since you met this Daryl. I've seen you around here. Smiling to yourself. Humming."

Carol smiled in spite of herself and the feelings untangled a bit more. Jacqui raised her eyebrows as if she'd just made a point.

"I haven't seen him in a few days," Carol said. "That shouldn't be a big deal, should it? He's been working and busy—and had a few things to do. I've been here. We just—haven't seen each other in a few days. That shouldn't be cause for concern."

"And it isn't," Jacqui offered. "But if it's got you flustered..."

"Is flustered what I am?" Carol asked with a laugh.

Jacqui smiled at her.

"It's almost lunch time," she said. "Work or not, a man's got to eat. Why don't you meet him?"

"And leave you to handle the lunch rush?" Carol asked. "You don't even have any help today."

Jacqui smiled.

"And when have you known Andrea not to help out if I tell her I need her to smile and look pretty while she takes some orders and fills a couple glasses? I'll throw in a free meal, make sure she has time to eat it around customers, and she'll love it."

"I don't want to put you out," Carol said.

"Don't take this the wrong way," Jacqui offered. "But you're putting me out more if you're working in this condition. You have to clear your head and silence a voice before you're any good to either one of us."

Carol accepted Jacqui's assessment of the situation.

"I'll throw something together," Carol said.

"You check the napkin dispensers for me," Jacqui said. "And make sure all that's out. I'll make something for you to eat." Carol made a face at her and Jacqui smiled, her lip curling into the type of grin that made Carol steady herself and prepare for the woman's teasing. "You're dangerous in the kitchen right now, sweetie. This is better for all of us."