Everett laughed and started toward the door.
“I mean it—don’t hurt yourself trying to get better too fast. I know you, Deacon. Don’t do that,” he said.
“Sir, yes, sir,” I said, and he grinned.
“Atta boy, soldier,” he said and ducked out of the door.
“I’ll be right back,” Rebecca said, tapping my leg with one hand and smiling. “Is there anything I can get you?”
“Water. That’s all.”
“Be right back.”
Rebecca stood and walked into the kitchen, and I tried to relax into the chair as I waited on the pills to take effect. Even if it meant I was going to go really loopy, I’d rather be loopy than try to pretend that what was going on inside my body wasn’t some of the worst pain I’d ever been in. Very clearly at least as much as I had been in since the attack in Iraq.
When Rebecca returned to the room a few moments later, she was ending a phone call and hung up. She smiled as she walked through the room and into the kitchen, where she filled a theme park bottle with water. She brought it back and held the straw in front of me so I could get a few gulps in. When she pulled it away, she sat it on the table beside me near the tray where I could lean over and take a sip with the long straw without moving it.
“Where did you get that?” she asked, nodding toward the cup.
“Everett and I went to a theme park in Virginia last summer. Out near Colonial Williamsburg. Neat place.”
“Sounds fun.”
“Well, maybe I should take you sometime,” I said. I watched her face as she went through a range of emotions. Finally, she settled on a smile with a tear welling up in the corner of one of her eyes.
“I would like that,” she said. “I would like that a lot.”
“Look, I don’t have a whole bunch of time before the drugs kick in, and I might not be terribly good at conversation. I’d like to talk to you before that.”
“I’d like to talk to you too. I know I have a lot to say. Just tell me if you start fading off.”
“Will do,” I said.
She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, pulling both arms down in her lap and sitting with her legs crossed.
“Okay,” she said. “So, I grew up with parents that loved each other very, very much. When they died, I knew that the only solace I had was that they went together. They couldn’t live without each other, so they died at the same time. I took solace in that, you know?”
“Yes.”
“I also knew that I wanted that. I wanted someone who I couldn’t live without. A love that was so deep and powerful that nothing could break it, nothing could compare. A partner for life.
“I don’t date. Going out on that one date with Josh, that’s kind of how things go with me. If I agree to go out and I don’t think it has real possibility for forever, I’m done. That’s meant I’ve been done after one date, every time. Josh was no exception. But you, I feel something with you. And I didn’t know where you stood with me.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “I thought you knew how much I liked you.”
“Liked,” she said, “yes, I knew you liked me. But we got intense, really quickly, and that isn’t like me. I am a person who wants a partner, a husband, a future. And here I was with this man, this older, traveled, sophisticated man, and I didn’t know where we were.
“I knew you liked me, but I was just some young waitress from Ashford, Tennessee. I’m nobody. You’ve traveled around the world and had these huge dramatic moments in your life when you were my age, and that was a decade ago. What could a young waitress slash tattoo apprentice have that would interest you for more than a few weeks at most?”
“I didn’t know you felt like that. I really didn’t.”
“I don’t want you to say anything right this second,” she said, putting one hand on my chest and clearly trying to keep her composure. “You are literally recovering from a near-fatal accident, and you’re on painkillers and all that, and I don’t want you to say anything you might not mean one hundred percent. Just know that I want so much more than to be a fling or a temporary girlfriend. Something that amuses you before you find someone better. I want to be the one you choose to be with.”
I nodded. “Okay,” I said. I felt like that wasn’t enough, like I should tell her all the thoughts in my head, about how ridiculous it was she would allude to herself as just some girl from Tennessee. About how smart and talented and fun and gorgeous she was. About how I was absolutely smitten with her. About the future I could see with us.