Perfect Fifths_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [40]
“Not ha-ha funny, but…” He doesn’t bother filling in the rest when he sees a thick layer of permafrost forming over her already hardened surfaces. “I heard your name announced. ‘This is a final boarding call for Clear Sky Flight 1884 with nonstop service to St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. Final boarding call for passenger Jessica Darling.’”
Her face warms, softens. He heard her name. She recalls her first impression of the accident, how it had seemed as if he chose that exact spot on the floor as if waiting for her. In a way, he had anticipated her arrival. He had heard her name.
Both Marcus and Jessica silently ask themselves the same questions at the same time. How would she have reacted to the sound of his name? Would she have allowed herself to believe it was him? Would she have looked for him? Or kept on running? The answers come easily. If it had been up to her, they would not be standing together, face-to-face, right now. They both know it.
“You really heard my name?” she asks, though she knows he’s telling the truth. “When?”
Marcus takes off his glasses, then rubs the lenses with his shirttail—a bit of sprezzatura before answering. “About a minute before you ran me over.”
Before Jessica can respond, Marcus announces, “There’s Starbucks!” with more enthusiasm than the observation requires. For the first time, he speeds up and passes her. “You get their table,” he says, gesturing toward a departing couple, “and I’ll get some herbal tea for what’s ailing you.”
Jessica, dazed and disoriented, bumps into several customers as she wends her way toward the just-abandoned bistro table in the corner.
twenty
Marcus is stymied by the quotidian task at hand.
Jessica can’t decide if Marcus is affecting her constitution or if she’s really coming down with something through hypochondriacal power of suggestion.
Marcus makes his way to the head of the Starbucks queue and orders herbal tea and a muffin for Jessica Darling as if this isn’t the most miraculous thing that has ever happened.
Jessica shivers as he approaches the table, her teeth chattering with a fever or something else.
“I got you the healing tea,” he says, handing her a venti. “The barista promises that it has restorative properties, especially when consumed with this vitamin-C-packed cranberry-orange muffin.”
“Thanks,” Jessica says, remembering to sniffle. Then she clutches her lower stomach and groans. “I hope this combination works for, uh, cramps.”
“You’re welcome.” Marcus tampers down a tiny lip tic. “I sure hope so, too.”
He sits. She sits. He sips. She sips. She speaks. “You drink espresso?”
“I guess I do,” Marcus replies, regarding the cup as if he’d never set eyes on it.
“Since when?”
“Around the same time I shaved off The Beard.”
This will be a treacherous conversation. A simple question about his caffeine intake has already transgressed into dangerous emotional territory. Jessica catches herself nervously sliding the cardboard heat sleeve up and down her paper cup. It’s a gesture that all of a sudden strikes Jessica as accidentally and overtly hand-jobby. She lets go of the cup, reaches for a napkin, and fake-blows her nose. “And when was that?” she asks.
I can wait, he says to himself. I can wait. “That’s a story I don’t want to tell right now.”
Jessica relaxes into the cold, hard curve of the plastic seat, relieved that Marcus is as skittish as she is. “You brought up the subject of The Beard.” She is emboldened by his nervousness. “Twice.”
The corners of his mouth twitch upward again, still resisting the pull of a full smile. She, too, is taking careful note of the words passing between them. “I suppose I did,” he admits without offering an explanation for why he might have done so. “But let’s talk about something else instead.”
“Okay,” Jessica says, hands shaking slightly as she brings the cup to her lips. “Let’s.”
And for the next two hours, they do.
one
(together vow)
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“What question?”
“Why are you headed to St. Thomas?”
“Oh! That question.”
“Was there another question?”
“[Cough.]