Yoss seemed in good spirits. I noticed his color was better. He was still jaundiced, which was a result of the hep B, but his eyes were brighter. He had shaved. It was strange and nice to see his face underneath all that hair. The curve of his chin. The slope of his jaw. The determined set of his mouth.
And even though he was still grossly underweight, he was looking more like the Yoss I remembered. A little older. A little harder. But still Yoss.
“Where did you find that?” he asked, pointing to my desktop background.
“It’s amazing the things you find on the Internet when you should be doing actual work.” I grinned. His mood was infectious. It always had been.
I was more than a little surprised by his attitude. He had been seesawing between bitterness and depression with little room for any other emotion. It had been eight days since I had walked into this room and found him lying in the bed, badly beaten, barely hanging on.
Eight days since my past had crashed head first into my present.
Eight days since I had realized that second chancesdidhappen.
I was still trying to decide what to do with this chance now that I had been given it.
I was walking on shaky ground, struggling to figure out how much of what Yoss and I used to be still existed.
I had to know if I was setting myself up for a whole new level of heartache.
Losing him once had almost destroyed me.
Losing him again would surely annihilate me.
“So you what kind of movie do you want to watch?” I asked, showing him the list of downloads on my laptop.
Yoss leaned forward, his arm brushing mine. Having him so close was a special kind of torture. It was a relief. It was agony.
Because the sixteen-year-old girl I used to be wanted to hold his hand in that intimate, innocent way that I had always done before.
The thirty-one-year-old woman I was now wanted to do so much more than hold his hand. Because my body remembered what it felt like to have his weight on top of me. Sometimes, in the darkest hours between night and day, I would close my eyes and I could almost feel him…inside.
“Shit, you haveThe Parent Trapon here. Is it—?”
“The Hayley Mills version of course,” I interjected.
Yoss glanced at me with a smirk. “Of course.”
“I haveFreaky FridayandChitty-Chitty Bang Bangon there as well,” I told him, leaning over and pointing to the screen. I could smell the soap on his skin. The scent of the hospital shampoo. And the underlying thing that was all Yoss.
“AndEscape to Witch Mountain. Damn, Imi, you’ve got a hell of a collection,” Yoss enthused.
“You know me and old movies. It’s sort of an obsession,” I said.
“Did the ex watch these movies with you?” Yoss asked suddenly and I looked at him in surprise.
Why was he asking about Chris?
It came out of nowhere and I couldn’t tell his intention by his tone.
Yoss was instantly contrite. “I shouldn’t have asked that. Sorry. That was a dumb thing to bring up.”
“Why did you?” I asked.
Yoss wouldn’t look at me. His jaw tightened as he stared hard at the computer screen. “How aboutThat Darn Cat? I haven’t seen that one since I was five or something.”
Obviously he wasn’t going to answer me. Yoss had always been adept at evading my questions.
I clicked on the movie file forThat Darn Catas Yoss lay back onto his pillows.
