The understatement left her at a loss for a reply. She looked up at him, lips parted but speechless. He looked back at her, and after a long moment she saw his face relax with his smile. The new, wry smile that was half irony, half apology. 'Sorry, that was-'
She touched two fingers to his lips, stopping him there. 'Don't apologize,' she said, mimicking him in a voice that quavered. 'About anything. Ever.' And he laughed and lightly touched her fingertips to his lips before wrapping them in his hand. 'I didn't…know how I was going to handle this,' she went on, haltingly. 'I haven't known what to do. What to say.'
'There's too much to say,' he agreed, nodding as they walked on. 'Makes it hard to know how to start. It's like what the doctors have been telling me, I guess. Be patient. Take it slow. One step at a time.'
'Well,' Jessie said with a breathy laugh, 'we've made it through the first step. That's the hard part, right? From here on it should get easier.'
He gave her hand a squeeze before he released it to open the guest house door for her. She waited for him to say what they both knew to be true, which was that the hardest parts were almost certainly still to come. He didn't say it, but even in the warm and welcoming lobby, she felt him shiver.
'You don't have to eat if you don't want to,' Jess said.
Tristan looked up at her with a guilty start. It occurred to him that he'd been staring down at his plate for a good bit longer than was polite. Not that there was anything wrong with the food. She'd made a point of ordering some of his favorites-fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy and fresh green beans, peach cobbler with thick cream for dessert-and the house staff had gone out of their way to oblige, even serving them dinner privately in their room. It was just that it still came as a shock to him to see so much food in one place, all at one time. More food than he could possibly eat, even after several days of such bounty.
'It looks…fantastic,' he said, meaning it. It seemed as if he was always hungry; sometimes he even dreamed about food. Right now he felt light-headed from hunger; he just wished his stomach didn't always feel so queasy.
He picked up a piece of chicken-the drumstick; she'd even remembered he liked them best-and bit into it. The juice exploded in his mouth, and the rich, greasy flavors nearly made him lose the tenuous hold he'd been keeping on his self-control.
'Tris? Are you okay?'
He heard alarm in her voice and managed to smile for her as he nodded, swallowed, then said softly, 'Culture shock. Things hit me every once in a while.'
He wiped his mouth with the napkin he'd been given without realizing at first what he was doing. Then he caught himself and looked down at it, almost in wonder. 'This, for example. You have no idea how strange this feels…' His voice trailed off while he watched his fingertips rubbing and stroking the crisp, clean white linen.
After a moment he laughed, quietly and painfully. 'When I got to the carrier, they gave me some things…a little bag of toiletries-you know, a toothbrush and tooth-paste…a razor…some other stuff. It felt…sort of, I don't know, overwhelming, to have so much stuff. I didn't want to let go of it. I carried that damn bag around with me for three days.' He stopped and stared hard at his plateful of food. Those admissions, like the tears he'd shed in prison, embarrassed him.
'So,' she said, when he'd been silent too long, 'what's going to happen next?'
He looked up and saw that she was wearing her bright, brave smile, not the one he loved, the one that made her nose wrinkle and her eyes dance and a little fan of lines spray out from their corners. Right now her eyes, that amazing amber brown with thick sable lashes that made so striking a contrast with her blond hair, were wide-open and luminous. They looked fragile as blown glass, as if they'd shatter if she blinked.
His own eyes felt hot, and he looked quickly down at his plate again and concentrated on the task of picking up his fork and loading it with mashed potatoes and gravy. Looking at her was like trying to look at a bright light after being in darkness. It had been like that the first time he'd ever laid eyes on her, he remembered, that day on the beach in Florida. With her golden hair and tawny eyes, she'd seemed to him like a broken-off piece of the sun.
'What happens next?' His hand went reflexively to the little album of photographs lying on the table beside his plate; like that bag of toiletries, he couldn't bring himself to let it out of his reach.
It had occurred to him that Jess would probably like to go through it with him, sitting beside him and telling him the story behind each picture. He'd barely glanced at it, but that had been enough to tell him he wouldn't be able to handle doing that-not now, not yet. He was going to have to do this by slow degrees and in a very private place. It was going to take time to absorb this new reality into who he was now. Time and some emotions he'd rather not have anyone see and wasn't strong enough, yet, to control. He shifted the album slightly, nudging it furtively back under his forearm as he took another bite of mashed potatoes.
'For the next few days I expect there's going to be some more tests. I know the head doctors aren't done with me yet, and then they'd like to get these intestinal bugs under control before they turn me loose.' He glanced up and tried to smile. 'Sorry-I know that's not a nice topic of conversation for the dinner table.'
'What'd I tell you about apologizing?' She smiled back at him, a gentle smile that made him ache to hold her. Touch her.
If I touch her now, he thought, it would be like that napkin. Strange. Alien. If I hold her, it'll be like holding on to that bag of toiletries they gave me. Like a crazy person, holding on because I'm too screwed up, too afraid to let go. I can't do that to her. I can't.
He grinned and said, 'Sorry,' and saw her relax a little as she accepted his pitiful attempt at humor for the gift it was meant to be. He ate more chicken while she played with hers and the silence thickened. Helplessly he thought,
Casting for something with which to break that silence, he cleared his throat and said, 'I talked to my dad-' at precisely the same moment she got fed up with it, too, and decided to ask, 'Did you call your…dad?'
He laughed and said, 'Great minds…'
And she laughed and said, 'Yeah.'
He began again, nodding as he chewed. 'He was my second phone call. We had a good talk.' He looked up and flashed her his out-of-practice smile. 'Well-actually, he did most of the talking. I guess I was pretty much in a state of shock.' His gaze fell, and he was staring at nothing, his mind a bleak landscape of shifting shadows. 'Still am, if you want to know the truth. I don't think it's sunk in yet. Nothing seems real. I keep thinking I'm going to wake up at some point and I'll be back in that prison-'
'I imagine that's normal,' her voice interrupted, hurrying, trying to hold steady. It scattered the shadows, at least for the moment. They'd be back, he knew. They always came back. 'It'll get better, Tris. You just have to give it time. You need to get well, get your strength back. Once we get home and things settle down…' Her voice trailed off.
He looked up and saw her eyes on him, pleading silently in her pale face, and suddenly felt defeated, overwhelmed. She wanted too much from him. Wanted so much for him to be okay. To be the man she remembered. The Tristan he'd been before.
'You're wondering why I asked to stay over here, aren't you?' he said abruptly. 'When they probably would have shipped me home as soon as they had me cleaned up and deloused and knew I was fit to travel.' He pushed back his plate. He wanted to reach for her hand, but found the album instead, and curled his fingers around it. 'It's not what you're thinking-'
'You don't know what I'm thinking,' she said with unexpected heat. It was a flash fire, only a glimpse of the Jess he remembered, but it caught him by surprise and made a nice spreading warmth inside him-like taking a slug of what looked like iced tea and finding out it was whiskey. He smiled, and for the first time since he could remember, felt like the smile came from someplace deeper than his tonsils.
'Anyway,
