Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 98789 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 494(@200wpm)___ 395(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98789 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 494(@200wpm)___ 395(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Hey. Has it been long enough?
Long enough?
For me to reach out. I know I’m supposed to give you time. It’s harder than I thought. You’re on my mind constantly.
You’re on mine too.
How is your dad?
He’s improving. I’m at the hospital right now. He says hello.
Say hi for me.
Did you make it back home?
Yes. I’m sitting here eating dinner (not as good as your cooking) and watching a romantic movie. What have you done to me?
Haha. What’s the movie?
I don’t know the name but it reminds me of something you’d like.
Who’s in it? What are they doing?
Sandra Bullock is pretending to be the fiancée of someone in a coma but she’s spending a suspicious amount of time with his brother.
OMG I LOVE THAT MOVIE SO MUCH
I smiled, because I could hear her saying that and I knew just what expression was on her face as she’d typed. I wished she was on the couch next to me so badly.
My thumbs hovered over the screen, wondering what to do with the things I was feeling. I had no experience with this. I missed my walls.
Guess what?
What?
My agency says my meeting tomorrow isn’t an audition. Apparently I already have the role.
WHAT?!
Gray dots faded in and out, then disappeared. Five seconds later, she was calling me.
“Hello?”
“Dash! Hang on, I’m going in the hall. Be right back, Dad!” A couple seconds later, she was back. “What the heck? You’ve got the role in All We’ve Lost? The one you wanted?”
God, I loved the sound of her voice. “That’s what the message said. I’ll know more tomorrow.”
“I can’t believe it!”
“Me neither.”
“But also, I can believe it. You’re that good, Dash. Never doubt yourself.”
“Thanks. Tell me what’s new with your dad.” As she filled me in, I wandered aimlessly around my house. I’d bought the one-story Spanish style home with white stucco walls and terra-cotta roof last year. It had two bedrooms and baths, plus a beautiful kitchen I couldn’t help picturing Ari in as I crossed through it. I’d have given anything to have her there right now and not on the phone.
At the back of the house, I opened up the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the patio. Today had been hot and sunny, and the red clay tiles were still warm beneath my bare feet. I sat on the couch, propped my heels on the fire pit, and let the sound of her voice fill my head, trying not to think about the hollow ache in my chest.
“That’s great,” I said after she’d finished telling me about her dad’s progress. “So he can have the bypass by the end of the week?”
“Hopefully. The doctors think so.”
“I’m glad.”
Silence.
I opened my mouth to say a hundred different things—I miss you, I wish you were here, I think I might be in love with you—but nothing came out. I was too afraid I’d make things worse, not better.
“I should go,” she said after a minute.
“Not yet,” I blurted. “Don’t go yet.”
“Dash.”
“I’m sorry.” My eyes closed. “I’m just not used to missing someone like I miss you. And I just fucking saw you this morning.”
“It will get better. It has to.”
“Come see me,” I said impulsively. “I’ll fly you out here.”
“I can’t leave the diner.”
“I hate this, Ari.”
She made a hiccupy noise that made me think she was crying.
“Fuck, I shouldn’t have called.”
“I called you, remember?”
Placing my feet on the ground, I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. “I’m sorry. I’m fucking this up. I just want to know when I’ll see you again.”
“I’m going to be honest—I don’t think visits here and there are going to work, Dash. I’ll start hoping for things that are never going to happen. I’ll want more.”
“You deserve more.” And she did. Someone who’d be there for her every day. To help her with the house and rub her feet and hold her when she was overwhelmed or sad or scared. To take her to carnivals and eat fried pickles and ride the Ferris wheel and taste her salty kiss as it descended. To remind her not to put herself last.
“And you deserve the chance to follow your dreams,” she said. “I would never stand in the way of that.”
I closed my eyes, swallowing hard. “I know.”
“Let’s just give it some time, okay?” She was openly weeping now, and it broke my heart to think of her alone in that hospital hallway. “It will let up.”
“What if it doesn’t?”
“Then you find a picture of me and draw horns and a pencil-thin mustache on my face.”
I smiled, despite the open wound in my chest. “Okay.”
“But Dash?”
“Yeah?”
“I have to let you go.”
I wasn’t sure if she meant on the phone or in life, but I supposed it didn’t really matter.
Not every love story could have a happy ending.
That night, to distract myself as much as to prepare for tomorrow, I spent hours poring over the script I had for All We’ve Lost. Closing my eyes, I imagined what it would feel like to be Johnny, this character who’d lived nearly a hundred years ago. Despite the century between his experiences and mine, I needed to put myself in his place. What would it have been like to leave everything I knew and loved behind? To be willing to sacrifice my life for a cause greater than myself? To take a bullet and be left in enemy hands? To fall in love with a woman behind enemy lines who nursed me back to health? To allow her to risk her life for me, and then to love her so much I’d return to save her?