Chapter 2: Where Time Stops
The days folded into each other, soft and seamless, a welcome erasure of the three-week gap.
Mini-golf was a disaster. Matt’s philosophical putting failed him utterly against Sarah’s ruthless, uncomplicated focus. She sank a hole-in-one on the UFO green, did a little victory shimmy that made his heart stutter, and gloated over a chili dog afterward at the clubhouse. “The journey,” she said, ketchup at the corner of her smile, “looked a lot like my ball ricocheting off your ball into the gutter.” He kissed the ketchup away, tasting salt and relish and her.
They walked it off in the park, the one with the bench where she’d once pointed out Orion to him, insisting the constellation looked less like a hunter and more like a lopsided shopping cart. The wind carried the memory of her laughter from that night, or maybe it was just the current breeze rustling the new leaves. He held her hand, their palms sticking together slightly.
“It’s good to be still,” she said, leaning her head on his shoulder. The simple weight of it felt like an award.
“The best,” he agreed, and for a while, they were.
The museum he’d found was a tucked-away place dedicated to retro video game art. The air smelled of dust and old carpet. Sarah moved through the rooms with a quiet curiosity, different from her golf-course competitiveness. She stopped in front of a massive, pixelated mural of a dungeon map.
“You know,” she said, her voice echoing slightly in the quiet hall, “this is just ultrasound static if you squint. Different kinds of mapping, I guess.”
He looked at the vibrant, blocky screen. “You see the hidden secrets in blobs. I see a level I could never beat.”
“Same thing, probably.” She bumped his hip with hers. “This was a good find. Weird. I like it.”
Dinner was at a cramped Thai place downtown, steam fogging the windows. Over drunken noodles, she told him about a particularly difficult patient in Cleveland, an elderly man who cried when he saw the grainy, real-time image of his own failing heart. She recited the story clinically, but her eyes were soft. Matt listened, watching the candlelight flicker in her pupils, and fell for her all over again in a new, terrifying way.
The third day dawned grey and drizzly, a perfect blanket for the planned inertia of her apartment. They migrated from the couch to the floor, a nest of blankets and chips established between the coffee table and the television.
Mario Kart was a brutal, hilarious war. Sarah played with a serene, cutthroat precision, launching blue shells at the exact worst moment. “It’s not personal,” she’d say, not looking away from the screen as Matt’s character careened off Rainbow Road for the third time. “It’s just physics and poor life choices on your part.”
Later, they streamed episodes back-to-back. He showed her the animated show he loved, full of earnest lore and friendship speeches. She played an episode of her favorite, a cynical British comedy about people making terrible decisions. He laughed at the wrong parts, asked questions about the dry humor. She explained, her body relaxed against his chest, his chin resting on her damp hair.
During a quiet moment, the rain a steady tap-tap against the living room window, she took his hand and placed it flat against her stomach. The fabric of her sweatshirt was soft under his palm. He held his breath.
“Just so you know I’m really here,” she said quietly, her voice a vibration he could feel. “Underneath all the travel and the sarcasm and the blue shells. I’m right here.”
He didn’t have a poetic answer. He just tightened his arm around her, pressing a kiss to her temple, letting the warmth of her seep into his skin. The unsaid passenger from the truck seemed to shrink, placated for a while.
It was later, when she was in the kitchen refilling their water glasses, that he heard her phone. Not the regular ping, but the specific, two-toned ring he’d come to recognize.
He saw her posture change. She leaned against the counter, listening, her free arm crossing over her body. “Okay,” she said, her voice shifting into its professional register, crisp and clear. “Yes. I see the open assignment. Phoenix. The sixteenth. I can confirm that.”
The words landed in the cozy room like stones. Phoenix. The sixteenth. Today was the eleventh. The math was cruel and simple.
She came back into the living room, placing his water glass on a coaster with a precise click. She didn’t sit back down.
“That was the agency,” she said, looking not at him, but at the paused screen where a cartoon hero was frozen mid-inspirational speech.
“Phoenix,” he said. The word was dry in his mouth.
“Short-notice fill-in. Someone’s out sick. It’s a good hospital. Usually means interesting cases.” She was selling it, to herself or to him, he wasn’t sure.
“So. Five days,” he said.
“Four and a half, really. I fly out early.” She finally looked at him. Her expression was caught somewhere between apology and defiance. “It’s the job, Matt.”
“I know.” He did know. It didn’t make the hollow feeling in his ribs any less acute. The cozy nest now felt like a crime scene, the happy clutter evidence of a happiness about to be interrupted. The momentum of their perfect days slammed into a sudden, immovable wall.
She sat on the edge of the couch, not touching him. The rain picked up, drumming harder on the glass. “Don’t make it a thing. Please. Let’s just… have the time we have.”
He wanted to make it a thing. He wanted to ask all the questions, to demand a different universe where her job was in this city and her suitcase stayed under the bed. But the set of her shoulders, the careful neutrality in her eyes, warned him off.
He reached out and hooked a finger around hers. A small connection. “Okay,” he said, forcing his voice into lightness. “Your turn to pick. Do we subject my heartwarming heroes to more cynical British people, or do we go back to the race track so you can humiliate me some more?”
A flicker of relief passed over her face. She twined her fingers with his. “Race track,” she said. “Humiliation is a better distraction.”
He grabbed the controller, pushing the hollow feeling down, down, beneath the pixelated sounds of starting engines. For now, he would just be where she was. The countdown, silent and relentless, had already begun in the back of his mind.