"I will," I said, still refusing to look him in the eyes.
He didn't let the air settle with my words. "Right now?" So much hope it was sacred. And I was going to kill it with a swift slit to the throat.
"Right later," I whispered, forming a half smile that was more frown than grin.
He was silent for what felt like an hour, like he was waiting for me to take it back, or processing the words and the meaning behind them. Finally, he sighed-long, deep, and one that pricked new tears to life in my eyes.
"Love you, Luce," he said, pressing a kiss into my forehead. "You change your mind, you know where to find me. I'll marry you in the middle of the night in some crummy wedding chapel in Vegas if that's the only option we have. Whatever you want, whenever you want it. I'll be there." Burying his face in my hair, he inhaled deeply before turning and walking up to the security gates.
My throat was too tight to let words slip through, and my eyes were so glazed over with tears that I saw nothing but a tall shadow walking away from me. Two seconds had gone by since his last touch, and my body was already quaking with withdrawal.
It was going to be a long two weeks.
FIVE
Two weeks-fourteen days-hadn't just gone by slowly. It had been like living a year in hell every passing second. Jude had called every night, sounding as beat as you'd expect a rookie NFL player to sound after a grueling daily double in eighty-degree heat. I lived for those calls, but I kind of dreaded them, too, because I knew we'd be hanging up shortly after and the clock would reset until we got to talk again. Another twenty-three and a half hours on the clock, please.
I tried to keep busy, immersing myself in the last weeks of school, dancing late into the night for no audience, just an empty auditorium. I'd taken my last final yesterday and was feeling confident my junior year of college had been my most successful to date.
I'd spent the first part of the day picking up applications in hopes that I could land a summer job that would work with my summer class. However, plenty of schools had already let out for summer, and it seemed the majority of jobs, or at least the good ones that didn't pay peanuts, had already been scooped up. I'd be lucky if I could swing a part-time gig waiting tables at a late-night café.
I'd take it. I wasn't picky, especially these days. I'd take whatever employment I could find, especially with Jude being gone the entire summer. I needed something-in fact, many things-to keep my mind off missing him.
And if that meant pouring coffee and slapping hash browns down on diner tables until I was blue in the face, I'd do just that.
After gathering a couple dozen applications, I'd stopped by a few specialty markets in search of just the right ingredients for tonight's dinner, because today was day number fourteen. Jude's much anticipated homecoming. Cue the hallelujah choir, because I'd been jiving and waving my hands at the heavens all day long. Jude's flight was coming in late, so it wasn't exactly "dinner," but I'd never known Jude Ryder to turn down a good meal no matter what time of day-or night-it was.
In the years since starting college, I'd learned to cook. Well, kind of learned to cook. Not out of curiosity, but out of necessity. Cafeteria food was the last resort, especially after dining on my dad's culinary masterpieces for years. In fact, I was fairly certain the number one ingredient in cafeteria pasta was cardboard.
The other option was eating out every night, which, with an appetite like Jude's around, was impossible on a college student's nonwages. So I learned how to cook. Nothing fancy, but good, nutritious home cooking.
Tonight's menu consisted of roast chicken, garlic mashed potatoes, and roasted green beans-a Jude Ryder favorite. Like the weekends during the school year and the last two summers, I'd moved into Jude's and my apartment in White Plains. This year, though, I was planning on living in it during senior year and using public transportation to get to the city. I was done living in dorms. Done.
The apartment was a notch or two above being deemed condemnable, but God, I loved it. It was ours. Where we could be together. Where we'd formed more memories than most couples do in a lifetime. It was home, and I was happy to be here for another summer.
I would have been happier if Jude was here, too. But tonight I'd have him for almost twenty-four hours, because he had one rare day off of training and had to be back by Monday morning. So as soon as he walked through that door, I wasn't going to fixate on the fact that he'd be leaving in less than twenty hours. I was going to live each moment like it was a year. I was going to make time my bitch, pay it back for what it had done to me the past two weeks.