“Yeah, yeah,” Emmett stepped forward and placed a kiss on her cheek. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”
“You will?”
“Well, I’m kinda tied down to this shopping trip, now,” he shrugged.
“I forgot about that,” Birdie looked to Reesy.
“It’s okay,” she assured her. “We’ll do it tomorrow. I wanted to do it before your reunion with Brian, so you’d have something besides those rehab clothes to greet him in. But Em insisted we not wait any longer.”
“Well, then,” Birdie turned back to Emmett and grabbed his hand, “Looks like I don’t really have anything to be mad at you for, after all.” She pulled him back to her and planted a kiss on his cheek.
“No love for Reesy?” Reesy made puppy-dog eyes.
“I can’t believe that’s why you two were fighting this morning. You go home and get your love from Jodie,” Birdie made a smug face, but then let it melt into a grin. “I’ll see you two tomorrow.”
She went into the apartment as her friends headed back to the car, and closed the door behind her. “I should take a swing at you,” she said to Brian as she made her way towards him where he was sitting on a stool at the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room. “But I’m waiting for the surreal feeling to fade away, so I can use my entire upper-body strength when I do it.”
“As long as you still love me,” he glanced at her with a bit of a grin.
Glancing at the closed laptop on the counter in front of him, she shook her head and huffed a breath of laughter. “If you only knew how absolutely insane it made me when I found out that thing was missing,” she told him. “All of my law enforcement experience, and I had zero ability to figure out what happened to it.”
“In my defense, I wasn’t the one who took it,” Brian told her. “I was glad when they gave it to me. But I would have dealt with the loss, had it given you some peace of mind.”
“I… I’m not exactly sure it would have,” she admitted. “I didn’t have the closure I needed, that’s for sure. Hell, I thought someone had robbed your dead body. Or maybe had been in there with you and let you die. That’s what was so frustrating about it; the scene hadn’t been processed for anything. I found you, and Sinese processed the scene as though you just overdosed. It wasn’t until later, that I realized your laptop was missing…” her eyes wandered the air, in the memory. Her fingers played absentmindedly on the corner of the book she’d set down on the counter along with her journals.
“What’s that?” he asked, wanting to change the subject, for both their sakes.
“Uh,” she glanced down at the items to remind herself. “Just my old journals and a housewarming present Emmett got for me.” She handed the book to Brian and sat down on the stool next to his. “I had the entire series, back in Dagsboro. But they could only grab the journals.”
“You like Phantasmal?” he looked at her with curious and surprised eyes.
“I love it,” she confessed. “Colt is this amazing writer that just kinda popped up out of no where with this amazing story, a few years ago. There’s usually a new book out every few months. I really like the series because the main characters kind of remind me of us,” she looked down a bit, sheepishly, then up again, meeting Brian’s seemingly judging eyes. He let out a bit of a laugh and shook his head. “Don’t laugh at me!” she smacked his shoulder. “You should read it before you get all judgmental.”
“I have, actually,” he countered.
“And you don’t like it?”
“I didn’t say that,” he cocked his head to the side. In that instance, something beside him on the wall caught her eye. It was a framed certificate of some kind. The bold writing stood out, before anything and she found herself reading it out loud.
“To S.W.Colt, acclaimed new sci-fi writer of the year…” her sentence tapered off and her gaze fell back on Brian. “No way,” she shook her head, disbelievingly. Brian couldn’t hold back a smile. “No way!” she said, louder.
“I can’t believe you’ve been reading them this whole time,” he said. “I mean, I’d hoped. But I never figured you for actually going out and buying books.”
“I didn’t… I wasn’t,” she explained. “The first one was just kinda sitting in a drawer in my new office when I took the job in Dagsboro. No one knew where it came from, so I kept it; took it home and decided to try it out…”
“That… seems almost too convenient,” he let out a nervous laugh.
“After this past week, I’m honestly not surprised.”
“Not that you were ever before,” he smirked. She felt the corners of her mouth tug up, maybe a bit involuntarily. Then she looked away a bit, thoughtfully; her eyes settling on the book that now laid on the bar between them.
Remembering something vaguely, she took the book and opened it, flipping past the copyright page and table of contents until she found what she was looking for. “This,” she pointed, handing the book back to him, “This is what made me start reading.” It was the dedication page, and she decided to read it aloud, “To my sister; my best friend. Until we meet again on the other side.”
Brian smiled sadly, avoiding her eyes for a moment. “That was my only way to communicate with you,” he told her. “That’s why I’d hoped you’d read the books.” Birdie watched him as his eyes darted around the counter top. Then they settled on hers. “Did you read all the dedications?” After a moment, Birdie nodded. “Do you remember the second one?”
“Off the top of my head?” she made a face something between incredulous and ashamed.
Brian smiled and stood, heading to the bookshelf in the living room. She followed after him, sitting down on the couch where he met her with the book in question. He handed it to her, the dedication page open. “I miss you every day, more than anyone,” it read. No name mentioned.
“This was for me?” she asked, not looking at him just yet, as she willed herself not to tear up.
“Yeah. Is it stupid?”
She looked at him, then. “You’re an idiot if you think this is stupid.”
“Guess I shouldn’t think that, then.”
“Damn straight,” she replied. Then she couldn’t hold back the grin that was fighting its way through, so she looked back down at the book to hide it. “I missed you, too, ya know,” she said, softly, looking back over at Brian once the grin faded. “Nothing was the same after you…”
“It killed me, not being able to let you know that I was okay, Birdie,” Brian told her, looking apologetic.
“I get why you couldn’t,” she replied. “I’m not angry. I’m… confused, mostly. About all of this. This place is… kind of insane,” she said, with a small, nervous laugh.
“That, it is. Definitely takes some getting used to. Especially the part where we can’t go anywhere outside of the island unattended.”
“Well, apparently I’ll be one of those people that does the attending, since my profession before all of this was law enforcement. But that’ll be after I’m here for a while, aka when I’ve been cleared for loyalty of not running off the grid.”
“There’s only ever been one reason I’ve wanted to leave here unaccompanied. Now, it’s no longer a factor.”
“There’s really no reason for me, either,” she gave him an amused but sincere grin.
The serene conversation was interrupted by a rumbling noise that was quickly joined by the room shaking around them. Vibrations rattled the glasses in the cupboards, and made the bookshelves teeter a bit.
“What is that?” Birdie looked to Brian, wondering if this was a regular occurrence on the Island.