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Ortiz hit a home run. Jack wasn’t watching, but he heard the announcer and it drew his eyes back to the TV from the front door. The audience cheers as he runs the bases, and Jack’s knee bounces, foot slapping against the ground.
The Red Sox are winning; it’s a miracle. But Jack’s chest is so tight. As if his skin is a size too small for his ribs. His eyes flick back to the door, and distantly his mouth waters for a drink. Just to take the edge off. Sand down the sharp corners of the panic slowly rising in his throat.
He digs his nails into his palm. It isn’t worth it.
James has surely just run into some traffic. Nothing more.
Three outs. The Blue Jays are up to bat.
He reaches for his phone, comforted by the familiar feel of it in his hand. But he sets it down just as quickly. How many people has he had on his table because they’d looked at their phone rather than the car in front of them? How many accidents have been caused by the ringing of a call drawing someone’s attention from the road?
It’s just traffic. That’s all.
(But now he’s seeing blood, spilling out like a faucet, no handle to turn. Now he’s hearing the long beep of a flatline and his own heart, too quick in his ears.)
(There is nothing more paralyzing than the image of James, small and lifeless. Color drained from his sun-kissed skin, face slack, empty of all amusement.) (It makes him feel like a child again, standing in front of his father. So helpless. The smell of liquor stings his nostrils.)
It’s LA. It’s rush hour. It's impossible not to be late.
But maybe the driver behind him drank too much at lunch. Maybe something slipped off the back of a truck and landed in the middle of the road. Maybe the radio played a particularly good song and he glanced down, just to find the volume knob.
James tells him he worries too much. He thinks he worries just enough. There’s no fretting over aliens or vampires or the dark. Last year alone there were five and a half million car accidents, three thousand of them in California. It’s statistics. It’s reality. He has a reason to worry.
Strike out, the announcer calls. Go Lester.
Maybe he should call the hospital, just in case. Any hospital in the area. Or turn on the police scanner. Just to make sure.
He was supposed to make it for the game. He was supposed to make dinner.
(It’s okay, though, because Jack isn’t hungry. His stomach is tied into knots too tight for food.)
He’ll hold off until six. That’s thirty minutes late, it’s enough of a reason to make some calls. The twenty three minutes he’s at now isn’t cutting it. It won’t to James, at least, if he comes home to find him on the phone with the emergency room checking his name.
Just wait until six.
His knee bounces, louder than the TV. He notches up the volume, and then turns it back down. The noise of the door could get drowned out that way.
Maybe work ran late. Maybe he took a different route home. Maybe he ran into an old friend in the parking lot. (Each excuse just tugs his chest tighter, like the strings of a corset. When he inhales, the breath gets stuck in the top of his throat. There’s nowhere else for it to go.)
And then—
the sound of the key in the lock.
Jack jumps off the couch quicker than a dog, forgetting the game, feet carrying him like lightning toward the door just as it opens. James raises a brow when they catch sight of each other. He stands there, unharmed. As himself as he ever has been, a bouquet of roses gripped in his hand.
“Hey. Sorry I’m late. I stopped to get these, and then there was an accident or something so it took fucking forever to get back on the highway—”
Jack kisses him before he can finish, like he’s been dying for it. Starving. He stumbles across the doorway and James puts a steadying hand on his waist.
When they pull back, he looks at him with a curled up grin. “What was that for?”
“I missed you.”
“Missed you too.” He lifts up the flowers, a boyish smile flushing across his face. “Here.”
Jack takes them, eyes dancing over the delicate petals, so deeply red. More beautiful than the color of the bloody image that had moments ago latched onto his brain.
“Thank you.” He squeezes them tighter and the plastic wrap crinkles. “I love you.”
“Love you too, Doc. Now, can I come in?”
Jack steps back. “Yeah, sorry.”
James just smiles, shaking his hair back as he walks inside. “How’re they doing?”
“Surprisingly well. Maybe you’re bad luck.”
“Ah, that’s it. Guess I’ll just have to stay away, then.”
He shakes his head. “No. Let them lose.”
He kisses him again, crushing the roses between their chests, and James laughs against his mouth.
With that sound, with his lips, with the scent of the roses wafting up into his nose and surrounding them like a fog, he forgets what he was ever worried about. Couldn’t have been more important than this, anyway.