Now that she was finally alone with him, Arla had no idea what to say. Jumping straight into defending herself again didn’t seem wise. He hadn’t taken that very well at all before ( not that she blamed him ). She’d waited so long just to see him again.
And now that she did….He just looked so lost.
There were so many things that had changed since 1983. Pay-phones were gone because almost everyone had a cell phone. People had their own computers that could fit in their bags and access to all around the world so email was the new mail. ( Arla did miss mail; though it wasn’t like she’d had anybody to send her any. )
“ ‘Thriller’ is still popular, ” she said when the silence continued to envelope them. “ Though it’s mostly just at Halloween. ”
She let the sentence hang between them as she watched him.
Okay. So that wasn’t as much of an ice breaker as she had been hoping. Sure it’d come out the year before he’d died…disappeared…. left? But it had been very popular for months.
Hands stuffed in her pockets she glanced at the ground, trying to think of something else that might be interesting to him in the time he’d missed. Something safe. Something not too personal.
“ Star Wars has six films now? ”
The world he knows is gone; that much was clear the first time he came out of the barn. But, he’d been sick. The short time that he’d spent outside had been clouded by a fever, confusion, and fear. He’d thought he was going to die. Again. Arla’s presence had been the only comfort in this strange, new world. Until things went sideways, at least.
Looking at her now, James isn’t sure what he’s feeling. Love? Of course. Anger? Absolutely. Under that, though, everything else is just a jumbled mess of hurt. His chest aches. If he looks away, he thinks the pain might lessen. Even so, he can’t bring himself to shift his gaze elsewhere.
❛ And the weather’s beautiful, for this time of year. ❜ The words leave him with a bite that was always reserved for the rockier days of their relationship--- he doesn’t even intend for his tone to drip with sarcasm, but some part of his subconscious must know that it’s warranted.
He heaves out a sigh, squeezing his eyes shut for a few beats. The hurt doesn’t go away. Maybe because she’s still painted on the back of his eyelids. ❛ Small talk seems a little arbitrary, right now, ❜ he says, once his eyes open, again. It means something, though, that she’s telling him things that he’d really want to know about, if the circumstances were different. It doesn’t clue him in on whether or not he’d unwittingly married an evil person and had been too stupid to realize it. But, it does tell him that she cares. That’s important.
❛ Do you want to actually talk, or are we just filling the silence? ❜
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