I fell back a step. “Derrick…”
“There was an emergency vacancy, and I’m needed to fill in.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I felt like I was grasping at the ocean, trying to hold it back with my hands.
“I only found out last week. I was hoping to get through tonight before having to break the news to you.” He swallowed and looked down. “We could be an amazing team. And after last week, I thought you thought that, too.”
I did. I really did.
“Why not for once in your life take a chance?” He took a step closer, then one more. The way his eyes seemed to reach my soul nearly undid me. “Please, just—”
“I’m sorry, Derrick.” Tears rolled down my cheeks, but this time, I didn’t bother to wipe them away. “I just can’t.”
35
Mistakes
Jessie
The drive home was the most miserable I’d ever endured, even worse than the time I’d purposefully broken curfew with one of my friends on a dare when I was fourteen, and my dad had come to fetch me. Derrick looked more like a military statue than ever, his jaw hard and resolute. And it broke something inside me to know that it was me he was angry with.
We didn’t speak a single word until he pulled up in front of my house. Even after he put the car into park, we sat there for several minutes in complete silence. He didn’t even turn the music on.
This was why I didn’t go out with airmen.
“Derrick, can’t we—”
“You know why you’ll never be like those characters in your books, Jessie?”
I winced when he said my name like that.
“Because,” he continued, his eyes cold and hard as they turned to meet mine, “you’re too much of a coward to step into the unknown. Because for once in your life, you might not be in control. And one of these days, you’ll come to the realization that no matter where you are and who you’re with, you don’t control a freaking thing.”
I grabbed my handbag and threw his door open, glad when it slammed shut harder than necessary. Then without looking back, I unlocked the front door, fumbling the key several times before turning the handle and falling inside and sliding down against it.
My perfect fairy tale had turned into a horror story.
* * *
“Jessie?”
My mom poked her head into my room as I ran to my desk and yanked on the handle so hard the drawer fell out. I snatched a pen from my pencil cup, knocking that over, too. But just as I began to scratch away at the first piece of stationery I could find, her cool hands gently pried the pen from my grasp and pulled my hands over to her lap. I didn’t even bother to get up off the floor, but let my head fall into her lap and wailed like one of my six-year-old students. She stroked my hair as I drenched her bathrobe.
How had this happened? Tonight was supposed to be a fairy tale. My knight had shown up in dress blues, and he’d ridden away with me on his fiery red horse. Then he’d done the most idiotic thing on the face of the planet. Then he’d stabbed me in a way not even my best friend knew how to do.
“What happened?” she asked when I’d finally quieted enough to hear myself think again.
“He asked me to marry him,” I whispered.
She blinked at me. “And that’s a bad thing?”
“Right before telling me he’s deploying.” I swiped at the tears that seemed determined to stick to my face.
“Well.” My mother sighed. “This sounds like a long story. And pajamas make everything better.”
There was sense to this suggestion, and my feet were killing me in the heels, so I changed while my mother went out to the kitchen to make me some chai tea. Ten minutes later, we were on the bed again, her sitting on the foot with me curled up at the top, clutching my tea mug like a lifeline. And I told her everything. Well, except his parting words. They hurt too much to repeat.
“Jess.” My mom fingered the rim of her cup. “I know this was probably…sudden for you.”
