“Have you never asked Arnie about it?” Ariel asked, ignoring the “stop talking” look Stella shot in her direction.
“Of course,” Jack said. “Some rules can’t be broken.”
“But some can,” Ariel said.
“Subject change!” Stella insisted. If there was a way for Jack to stay longer, wouldn’t Arnie have already figured that out? Wouldn’t he have told them? Thinking about Jack leaving shortened her breath. “What was Blue Sky Valley like in your time?” Stella led them toward the deli and glanced at Ariel. “Jack grew up here.”
Ariel nodded. “I remember the story.”
Of course she did. How many times had Stella talked about Jack as though he were someone she knew, someone who might have been an active participant in her life? That was the thing with characters in books: Theywerereal to the reader. Readers felt as though they intimately knew their favorite characters, like they were long-lost friends, best mates, and sometimes sworn enemies. Talking about characters provoked genuine emotions in readers. And now Jack was more real to her than he’d ever been.
Stella continued, “Does the downtown area look a lot different?”
Jack nodded. “The basic outline is the same, with the same streets, but there are more buildings downtown now. I remember how it looked in my time, but because Arnie has shown me pictures of the town through the years, there are all of these layers in my mind too.”
As they walked, he described the storefronts that were the same and which businesses had occupied the buildings when he was younger. He pointed out places he used to visit with his parents and where he and his friends had hung out on the weekends. Frost Biteshadn’t changed much through the years, but it had originally been a soda fountain shop where Jack tasted his first root beer float.
For fifteen minutes of walking and talking, Stella forgot her anxiety. She enjoyed being with Jack and Ariel and not concerning herself with anything else—not her past or future.
It wasn’t until Jack said, “I could do this forever. Walk with you on a street that never ends, talking, learning, smiling,” that her fears returned.
She slipped her hand out of Jack’s as the three of them stepped beneath an awning that provided a rectangle of shade on the sidewalk. “It’s not possible to do this forever. It would end. Everything does.”
“Stella,” Ariel said, a trace of sorrow in her voice.
Jack looked intently at Stella, and she squirmed beneath his gaze before averting her own down the street at the vendors setting up in the park.
He grabbed her hand. “Love is eternal. Infinite. It never ends.”
Stella made the mistake of making eye contact with Ariel, who mouthed,Love is eternal.
Stella cleared her throat. Love might be infinite, but Jack’s time with her wasn’t. “You’ll be gone in days.Thatis what I know. And I’ll be here without you.” She tried to release his hand, but he held on.
“You’ll never be without me,” he promised, pressing their bound hands to his chest. “I’ll carry you in my heart for the rest of my days.”
Stella would have swooned if she hadn’t been sweating on a city sidewalk. In all her daydreams, Jack Mathis had never been as eloquent as the man standing before her. Against impossible odds, he was looking at her like he sincerely cared for her.
“I wish I had your optimism,” she said.
“I have plenty to share,” he replied.
“I do too,” Ariel chimed in. “I’ve also heard it’s contagious.”
“We should get lunch,” Jack said. “I don’t want to keep you from the library for too long, not with everything going on.”
He released her hand and continued walking up the sidewalk toward the deli while Stella trailed behind, watching tar-like words ripple across the pavement.Be present. It’s coming. Silver light.Sometimes the words made sense, and other times they were a cross between a reprimand and nonsense.
Ariel leaned close to her and whispered, “What if there’s a way?”
“A way for what?”
Jack crossed the street toward the diner, and Stella turned to face Ariel on the sidewalk.
Ariel’s expression glowed with hope and possibility. “A way for you to be together.”
If only. “Are you trying to get my hopes up and then have them smashed to smithereens? How would that even be possible?”
Jack stood on the opposite sidewalk and waved them over.
