"Jess?" A vaguely familiar voice bolts out of the darkness as I leave the restaurant after my Saturday night shift. I'm exhausted and seeing anyone I know right now is not something I want. What I do want is a nice hot shower, some popcorn and a good movie I can get lost in. I've texted Nathan twice today to see how his train ride to Boston was and I've got nothing back in return.
"Jess?" The voice is louder now and I feel a pit in my stomach when I realize who it belongs to. It can't be. He can't be here.
"Josh?" I turn slowly. He's right behind me. The man I spent three years of my life loving is standing on a crowded New York City sidewalk staring right at me.
"It's you." He rushes to me and envelopes me in a hug. I melt into his arms. This is what home feels like. This is what it's like to be wanted.
"What are you doing here?" I sob into his shoulder. I'm so overcome with emotion. I can't think straight. All the pain that swallowed me up before and during our break up is now a distant tug at my heart. I can't pull it back to the surface. All I can feel is relief at the familiar feeling of his strong arms around me.
"Things between us ended so badly, Jess." He runs his hand up and down my back. It's the same comforting gesture he always did when I had a bad day or when life got to be too much.
"I'm sorry for that." I pull back from his embrace and gaze up into his face. It's the same face I left just a few weeks ago. The same deep brown eyes and dirty blonde hair. His open grin sends a course of regret through me. He was so upset the day I left. His entire face pulled into a painful grimace as I told him it was over and I was moving away.
"You had every right to leave." His eyes stare at my chef's jacket. "Jess. You're a chef." He picks me up and twirls me around on the crowded Manhattan sidewalk.
"No." I sigh when he places me back down. "I'm a sous chef in training which just means I cut potatoes and peel vegetables all day but it's a start."
"Can we go somewhere to talk?" His expression seeps of expectation. I can't disappoint him. I need him right now just as much as he needs me.
"Come home with me." I reach into my purse to send Rebecca a quick text warning her that I'm bringing Josh by. I search the new messages and still nothing from Nathan. "I'll cook you something."
"I've missed you, Jess." He wraps his arm around my shoulder.
"I've missed you too."
Chapter 13
"That was great, chef." He pushes himself away from the small dining table and pulls himself to his feet. He's so tall. Somehow he seems taller than I remember.
"Come, sit with me." I pull him by his hand to the small couch in the corner of the living room. Rebecca must have ditched when she read my text about Josh coming over. The last time he was here visiting, we were still together and they didn't see eye-to-eye. Josh's idea of an ideal life for me was being a paramedic's wife with a few kids by the time I was thirty.
"I can't believe you live in this great apartment." He soaks in the wide space. "You live here with Rebecca?"
"We have another roommate," I offer, even though my interactions with Bryce are typically limited to a passing glance in the hallway or a quick hello over a morning
cup of coffee. "Bryce is his name."
"Is he your boyfriend?" The question is swollen with indignation. Josh's hair trigger was one of the reasons we were constantly in conflict. I had to temper almost everything I told him when we were living together.
"No. He has a girlfriend back home." I don't want to argue with him. I just want to enjoy a small reminder of what I left behind.
"Do you have a boyfriend?" He must have read something between the lines in my reaction to his question about Bryce. Nathan isn't my boyfriend. Boyfriends encompass more than a few sex-fuelled hours a couple of times a week.
"I don't." I don't expand my answer. Nathan is away for the weekend and if Josh's EMT schedule is still the same, he's due back in Connecticut for a shift on Monday morning.
"How are you feeling about things?" My stomach drops at the broad scope of the question. He's going to bring up the one subject I can't bear to talk about. I don't want that. I don't want to hear him mention his name.
"I'm good." My reply is rushed and forced. "It's all good."
"It's not getting any easier, is it?" He's going to push this on me. I can't believe after the blow up we had right before our break up that he would drag this subject back into the light of day.
"I don't want to talk about it." I stand. I need distance. I need to get to the other side of the room.
"He died, Jess. Not talking about it isn't going to change a thing."
I feel the room spin at the mention of his death. I can't do this. I won't. "I'm not talking about this. Is that why you came here?"
"No. I came to see you. I wanted to see how you are." He stands and walks towards the door. "We're going to talk about this one way or another. You can't keep running from it. You have to face it at some point."