"I'm okay," Jessica answered, but her voice broke as two uncontrollable sobs poured out of her.
* * *
Jessica sat propped up in the hospital bed, staring out the window as the lights of the city grew brighter against the darkening sky. She wondered if maybe getting rear-ended was the universe’s way of telling her she had been playing with fire today. Maybe she deserved it. What she hadn’t admitted to Diana was how much she enjoyed sitting across from Aaron while they ate. How good it felt to be shiny and new to someone. Not that Aaron probably found her shiny. She knew he likely thought she was a bit nuts. Maybe even a little pathetic. But he certainly hadn’t acted like it. He seemed interested in her as a fellow human.
After all, the brain craves novelty, and what’s more novel than a totally new person? He hadn’t heard all her stories on repeat for the last nineteen years. He didn’t know her opinions on every little thing under the sun. He was interested in finding out about her, this strange woman who had walked into his office, frantic about being late. And that had felt nicer than it should have. It felt good to have someone listen to her—to ask her questions and watch her while she answered them.“What do you want to do with the time you have left on this planet?”
“That’s the kicker. It’s been so long since I’ve asked myself that question that I don’t have the first clue what the answer is.”
“You mentioned law school. Why not do that?”
Jessica had scoffed at the idea. “I’m too old. If I applied now, I’d be fifty by the time I was finished.”
“So?”
“So, who starts practicing law at the age when everyone else is starting to slow down?”
“People who have a dream,” he told her, ripping off a bit of biscuit and dipping it in his soup. He popped it in his mouth and chewed it while he talked. “My great aunt went back to school when she was seventy-eight. She always wanted to be a journalist.”
“Let me guess, she died before she convocated.”
“Nope, she finished. And she got a job at the local paper where she worked for a few years before she passed away. She once told me that those were the best years of her entire life.”
Jessica nodded. “Good for her,” she said, wanting to change the subject so she wouldn’t have to admit that going back to school wasn’t in their budget.
He smiled at her, showing those perfectly straight, white teeth again. “Good for her, but I should stop trying to sell you on becoming an attorney.”
Jess laughed. “Exactly.”
“I’m doing that thing men do. Trying to solve your problem for you instead of just listening,” he said.
“A little bit, yeah.”
“That drove my ex nuts.”
If it were a romantic movie, the mix-up and the lunch would have made a delightfully fun meet-cute. But it wasn’t a movie and he wasn’t her leading man. Mike was. And she was now faced with a real dilemma—whether to tell her husband what she’d been up to today or not. She still didn’t have an answer, but somehow the accident made it all feel less important. After all, she had learned her lesson. No more going out for meals with strange men. Bad things happened when she colored outside the wife lines. Or maybe it was just a random accident caused by an impatient asshole. Either way, she wasn’t going to do it again.
A throb of pain fought against the drugs they had given her and she closed her eyes. How long had it been since she was put in the ambulance? It must have only been a couple of hours, but it felt as though time had stopped at the moment of impact. In the end, the jackass in the dually had caused a twenty-six-car pileup. Her mind kept returning to the horribly long wait for someone to get her out of her car. The loneliness of it. The fear. Listening to the sirens, hoping to be rescued soon. When the firefighter finally pried open the passenger door and asked her if she was all right, she had sobbed with relief.
Now, she lay in bed trying to stop the scene from playing out over and over in her mind. She wondered if they’d managed to tow her car off the freeway yet, but then she supposed it didn’t matter. She’d never see it again.
The door swung open and Mike rushed over. “Oh my God,” he said, putting a gentle hand on her cheek. His face filled with emotion and she knew he was fighting to find the right words that wouldn’t make him tear up. “Your poor nose.”
“I’m fine. Really,” she answered, attempting a smile.
“No, you’re not. You’re lying in a hospital bed. You’re anything but fine.” He let out a heavy sigh. “I should have driven you to your appointment.”
With slow, careful movements, Jessica shook her head. “Don’t be silly. You can’t skip work because I was going into the city. Besides, you wouldn’t have been able to avoid getting rear-ended.”
He shrugged in that way that said hedidthink he would’ve been able to avoid the collision. Easily. Even through the thick fog of the painkillers, she still had the wherewithal to be irritated by her husband’s cockiness. He should have outgrown the belief that he was indestructible decades ago, but for some reason he hadn’t. But she shouldn’t be annoyed with him when here he was, so worried about her.
“You must be so sore. How’s your neck?”
“Stiff. Everything is stiff.”
He let out another sigh and shook his head. “It’s going to be a lot worse in a couple of days.”
Jessica blinked slowly. “I’ll have to ask them to send me home with some of the good drugs.”
