“He can’t still be mad about the jelly thing. That was forever ago.” Luke shook his head.
Except it somehow feels like it was just yesterday.
I shrugged, “He looked angry…”
“Well,” Luke looked around me and shrugged, too. “Let me walk you home so you don’t get attacked with a blow-up doll.” I hid my smile and followed after him.
We made it one block before I finally asked, “So…how ya been?”
He slowly looked over at me. “I’ve been fine.”
Guilt had started to weigh on my shoulders the night after he’d come to the hospital. I was angry with him before, clouded by contempt over what had happened with Ash, but as soon as he told me the truth, I felt absolutely sickened at that fact that I hadn’t even had the courtesy to ask him how he was since coming home from Afghanistan. Did he see anything awful over there? Did he have any more run-ins with bullets?
His haunted eyes from the night he’d confessed his memory to me filtered throughout my head anytime I tried to sleep. I would toss and turn and sit up in bed to look in the direction of Luke’s house, just wondering how he was doing, and then I’d plop myself back down on my pillows. I felt so selfish to not have asked him. I should have.
I pushed my guilt away. “You’ve been fine since… coming back…to normal life?” My voice dropped and Luke looked over at me, scrutinizing my motives.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” He paused for a moment, stopping on the sidewalk. I stopped beside him and looked over when his smooth voice filled the air, “The hardest part about being over there this time was the fact that I couldn’t get a hold of you to tell you the truth.”
I swallowed and half-wanted to just crush my arms around his neck, but the other half of me didn’t know what to do. I was at a loss. I was stuck, just staring, dazed by his words.
Luke started walking again, at a slow pace, and I followed. Keeping my mouth shut.
“How have you been?” he asked, simply. As if he hadn’t just stolen my heart again.
I shook myself out of my trance. “Fine.”
I could see him nodding in my peripheral vision and I felt the words in the back of my mind egging me on. I wanted to ask if he’d given up on us, or if this was how it was going to be from now on. Was he truly over the thing with his ex-wife? How could he ever want to be with anyone ever again after that monster?
I took a deep breath. “Did you get things figured out with Ash? The divorce and everything?” Her name felt like poison on my tongue and when I glanced up at Luke, he was staring at me intently. Then he motioned behind me and my mouth gaped.
I was home. How the hell did we get on our street so fast?
I pulled my takeout bag closer to my body, hearing it crinkle. “Well…thanks for walking me home.”
Luke didn’t look like he was going to answer my question about Ash, and that set a knife to my stomach. I started to walk up my porch steps, the knife digging in further with each climb. The second I got my door open, he answered, “Things are over with Ash.”
I turned around to say something, anything really, but he was already walking over to his house.
I watched him climb his steps, pull out his key and insert it into his door. He peeked up and smiled, “Watch out for those blow-up dolls, Doc.”
And then my heart leapt in my chest. There was hope.
A light knock on my door woke me from catching up on all the sleep I had missed on my night shift. I sat up, massaging my neck from sleeping at an extremely uncomfortable position on the couch. My cream cardigan was half off my shoulder, but I stumbled to the door anyway, stubbing my pinky toe in the process.
Once I swung it open, cursing my throbbing toe, I was blinded by the sunlight bouncing from behind the person standing in front of me.
I shut my eyes again and then opened them, trying to focus on who was at my door, but all I could make out was the black outline of a head.
Wait…is that?
&
nbsp; “Hi.” The voice had my eyes un-blurring themselves pretty quickly.
Anger bloomed within. “Aren’t you at the wrong house?” I sneered. Ash had some fucking nerve. I stared at her, and then my eyes traveled to her now smaller stomach. I only let them linger there for a few seconds before looking at her face again.
She was still pretty. Pale skin, jet black hair that was pin straight and framed her face. Her eyes looked a little tired, deep bags formed underneath, but nonetheless, still pretty.