And hope flutters through me at his answering grin, at the growing wonder on his face. “Really.”
“Okay,” I say. “Okay. Because…me either.” But what would this look like? A long-distance relationship? One where we hardly see each other?
I sink deeper into my seat, leaning away, and a line forms between Jacob’s eyebrows. He senses it, this shift, and he pulls back, giving me space, pivoting in his chair to face me.
“What if I stayed? Temporarily?” My mind whirs, returning to its earlier buzzing. “We don’t start filming for a month, and you said you have a couple weeks before the semester starts?”
The line between his eyebrows deepens. “Yes, but—”
“What if I—I could talk to the hotel I was at, and I could work from here for a little while.” I swallow. “Maybe it would be good, because I’m working on something new, and there’s something about—I got the inspiration for the new show here, actually, and—”
“And what about when you leave?” he asks.
“I don’t know. I don’t know how long I’ll be in L.A. or where we’ll be filming. We haven’t decided yet.”
“I can visit,” he says. “Wherever you are. For a weekend or—”
But I know what those kinds of trips look like, what they feel like. Short visits across an ocean, time spent apart.
“Let’s just see,” I say, and he winces.
“No,” I continue. “I mean, I want to try this. I want to be with you. I don’t want to fly back now. I want to stay, and we can try to figure out what…what this is. And when it’s time for me to go, we can talk then, but for now…”
“Two weeks,” he says.
“Yes. Two weeks.” I lick my lips, my mouth feeling dry. “Unless you—I don’t know. Do you feel differently? Would you prefer that I go home and you visit sometime later? Or what is it…What do you want?”
He watches me for a long moment, his face tight. “I’m scared,” he says. “I’m scared towant. I’m scared that you’ll—My circle of people is small, Neelu. It’s Maggie and your dad and my sisters. And that’s it. And I live every day terrified that the next phone call, the next text, is going to be about one of them. An accident, a diagnosis, something that means they’re gone. Taken from me forever. And I don’t—I didn’t want to open that circle up. I keep things the same. My routine, the people around me, but you’re…you’re in it now. That circle. And that makes me—”
“Jacob,” I say, my voice soft. My chest feels cracked in two, all ofme open, exposed, and I reach for him out of instinct, a desire to comfort, but he holds me at bay.
“I want you here,” he says. “Two weeks is—it doesn’t—the idea that you’ll go back, that you’ll be all over the globe, traveling for the show—” He swallows, his Adam’s apple rising and falling. “It scares me.”
“I’m scared too.” We have different fears, but they’re similar in some way. Both of us are terrified of getting left behind. It’s something I recognized in him that first night, a shared thread between us.
“So let’s not think about it,” I say. “For two weeks. Let’s just allow ourselves to…to exist.”
There’s something firm about the set of his jaw. Hard. Determined. But slowly, I watch it melt away. “All right,” he says.
He takes my hand, interlacing his fingers with mine. His palm is warm, and I can feel his pulse, sure and steady against my wrist.
“On one condition,” he says.
“What?”
He hesitates. “It’s not a condition, actually, but if you’d like to, you don’t need to extend the hotel. If you wanted, you could just stay with me.”
A smile pulls at my lips. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve never seen your place.”
His face softens. “I can’t wait to show it to you.”
He pulls me close, his lips brushing my forehead, and it’s there again. A glimmer of hope.
“I need to fill up the car,” I say, but he shakes his head, telling me he’s got it. He steps out, closing the passenger door behind him.
