She shifted away. “What will it be like for you when you go back into your book? Will you remember all of this? Will you remember me?”
Jack rubbed the back of his fingers across her cheek. “I’ll rememberyou when I return. It’s difficult to explain what it’s like when I’m not here. It’s a state of being, but it’s like being in my whole life all at once, like everything happens simultaneously. It’s not controlled by time like life is here, and it’s not like a movie on replay as though I’m reliving my life from start to finish indefinitely. The awareness of daily life and timekeeping... they just aren’t something that’s perceived.”
While he struggled to explain, a line formed between his dark brows.
“That’s mostly confusing,” Stella said, “but it almost makes sense.”
“There’s no equivalent I can use as an example. The closest I can imagine is inner stillness, or heaven, but that’s still too much for the human mind to completely grasp. It justis. All things, all time, all connected, forever.”
Stella grinned. “Yeah, that clears it up. When Arnie brings you back, do you remember all the times you’ve been here before?”
Jack nodded. “That returns instantly. The easiest way to explain is that it’s similar to downloading a file on a computer. All of my moments here are downloaded immediately into my mind as soon as I arrive.”
Stella moved closer to him. “How strange that must be. It sounds like waking up after a dream.” She entwined her hands with his. “Does it feel like a dream for you? Being here now?”
Jack shook his head. “No. Being here with you feels more like reality to me. Nothing has felt more real.” He leaned down and kissed her.
Stella pressed into him, tumbling into the exquisite moment of kissing Jack. A tingling sensation started in her chest and then increased tenfold, shooting blasts of heat through her veins. She thought it must be the power of the kiss, but when Jack inhaled sharply, she realized it was much more than that.
Violet words pulsed from her shirt in rhythm with her beating heart. But bright purple words also erupted from Jack’s T-shirt, arcing toward Stella’s words until the two sets formed a bridge between their bodies. Then in a smooth motion, the words lifted into the air between them, pulling away from their bodies. Jack and Stella stepped away from each other.
Heat continued to course through Stella’s veins, but unlike the times before, she wasn’t in pain. This experience was more like being dropped into a hot tub, surrounded by warmth and flowing water. Instead of rootlike tendrils hanging from the words, they sprouted wings. In awe, Stella spoke them aloud. “‘He talked about eternity and love as if the two were impossibly entwined.’”
The words acknowledged her voice, flapped hard enough to send blasts of wind over them, and flew high into the arched foyer ceiling. Then they dive-bombed the circulation desk and shot right through the countertop, disappearing into the wood. Stella didn’t realize she was trembling until Jack rubbed his hand up her arm.
“What just happened?” he asked.
A wild storm of thoughts bombarded her, rendering her incapable of answering immediately. Stella opened a bottom drawer of the desk and reached for her journal. She found the page where she’d been cataloging the violet words and wrote down the new ones. The collection now read:I fell in love once. Did I ever tell you that? He was excruciatingly handsome and no ordinary man, but one built from paper and rich black ink. He talked about eternity and love as if the two were impossibly entwined.Stella looked up, her wide eyes finding Jack’s.
“What?” he asked.
The last time the painful words appeared, Stella had asked them to come gently. They’d obeyed her. This instance had filled her with a sense of profound love.
Jack touched her arm again. “What is it, Stella?”
She closed the journal and returned it to the drawer. “The words aren’thappeningto me, making me a helpless victim of their whims. We’re more like partners, working together.”
“They looked different this time,” Jack said.
Stella placed her hand over her heart where it beat in a synchronized rhythm. “I asked them to change after the last time, to not be so painful.”
“And they obeyed,” Jack said, sounding amazed.
“I also think the words are about you,” she said, finally connecting the various pieces together.
“Me?”
Stella nodded again. “You can see them, and this last set, they cameout of you.”
He pointed to her. “And you.”
“Both of us,” Stella agreed. “Reading them all together now, it sounds like I’m talking about you. About us. The beginning of a story.”
Jack smiled. “That’s a story I’d like to read.”
“Stella,” Vicki called, coming up a nearby aisle. “One of the indoor vendors has requested power even though they didn’t originally sign up for it. Can we get power to them?”
“We might be able to,” Stella said. “It depends on if we have an open space to hook them up to it.” She looked at Jack. “We’ll continue this later?” Jack nodded, and they both joined Vicki to check the library’s power grid.
