Route 262

~20~

It's like a jigsaw puzzle at first, because for a moment, I feel like it all makes sense, it all fits perfectly. Snap, and two pieces, totally lost before, have come together to form something perfect. 

Except right when the pieces click, an instant wave of guilt and regret follows. 

I pull away, even though it kills me to do so. 

He leans in again, following me with his head, and when I take a step away from him, a look of confusion clear on my face, his eyes pop wide open. 

Before I can even say anything, he breaks in. "I knew it was a sham." 

I'm dazed, dumb. "What?" 

His voice has gotten lower and sullen, like it's being dragged through dirt. "Look, forget it. It was - dumb of me. Something dumb I thought. I just - just -"

And it's so dark in the cave, that after his voice breaks off, it takes me a minute to realize he's slunken off into another part, away from me. Away from anything that's just taken place between the two of us.

"James - James - wait."

My first step out to find him, I stumble and gash my knee on a rock. "James-" I say, but my voice is cut off abruptly by a stinging. I'm clutching my hand to the cut, warm blood trickling underneath my fingers. "Shit," I mumble. 

"It's not that - that I don't want anything to do with you," I say after a second, projecting my voice into the darkness. "Or even that I don't want to do - that - " 

I can almost feel him out there lurking, somewhere - but listening to my words nonetheless. 

"Just come back," I say, a little louder, a little more desperately, "please, so we can talk about this?" 

I feel like a fish out of water, sputtering, flopping for the right words to come to my head. That I can't say anything right, that I can't think of anything to say that could possibly bring him back to me. And for a minute, I'm certain that I'm saying them too late, that James has stepped too far away to hear me. 

But then after another moment passes, in which I'm straining to hear something, anything  - I hear a scrabbling of footsteps over rocks. 

He reappears in my line of vision, and I jump involuntarily. He's pale, ghostly, clearly shaken emotionally. 

"God, you almost gave me a heart attack," I say. 

He's smiling a bit. "I almost just gave myself one." 

He squats down next to me. I'm still clutching my knee from where I've fallen, but all of a sudden it's easy to ignore any of the pain. 

"So," he says, "let's do some of that talking then."