Cardboard Hearts

#5: part 3

For the rest of the hour Tegan is quiet. She never shares very much; normally just a fragment or two of her messed-up past. But today even Ryan notices her silence. As everyone files out of the room with a little less weight on their shoulders, he stops and asks her if she's okay.

She tells him she is. "Just trying to let everything go," she says.

He nods and gives her a soft smile. "Well, I hope it works out for you. See you next month."

It's chilly out when she exits the building, and her thin coat does nothing to stop the wind from howling through her bones. A sudden longing for her tiny apartment rises through her. The bedroom door that creaks when it opens, the paint slowly chipping off the walls, and the kitchen window that never fully closes. She misses Otis, with his large soft eyes and forgiving gaze. But there's somewhere else she needs to be.

He called her a week ago. She had been sitting in bed reading when the phone rang, and she'd recognized the voice from some long-discarded memory.

"This is Jack," he said in his soft voice. "Jack Sorenson. From high school? Beth gave me your number."

Tegan had sat frozen in shock. She opened her mouth but nothing cane out. "I-uh- wow. It's been awhile."

"Yeah." He sounded tired and sad. "Listen, I know we haven't talked since school, but I miss you. I haven't seen you in forever and I want to know how you're holding up. Do you want to maybe go out for dinner sometime? We could catch up. Talk about the good old days."

It took all she had to keep from crying. "You really want to see me?"

"Yeah." She could hear his smile through the phone. "I really do."

"I'll be there."

~•~

Now Tegan drives eagerly, barely paying attention to the heavy traffic that crowds the streets. What will he look like? she wonders. Will he have changed?

Of all her high school friends, she liked him the most. He's the only one she would still agree to meet. They shared countless dorky inside jokes, days spent in the public library when it was too gloomy to be outside, and secrets she would never dream of telling another soul.

She misses him.

When she pulls up to the park where he asked to meet her, he is waiting for her. Hands in his pockets, sandy hair covered by a winter hat. It's an odd place to meet, she thinks, in the winter. Who would want to have a picnic in the snow?

But she forgets all her questions as she steps out of the car. Because there he is, arms outstretched, the one person she would trust with anything. The person she shut out when she was too afraid to live anymore. The person who would've stayed by her through anything.

Strange, isn't it? The way your human hearts work?

Tegan nestles herself in Jack's arms. "I missed you," she says, face buried in his jacket.

She knows he is smiling. "I missed you too."

They untangle their arms and Tegan stares up at him, grinning for the first time in years. "So, are we going on a picnic?"

"Something like that."

At the edge of the park is a large pavilion. It's sheltered from the snow and rain, and faces a winding river that children play in during the summer. Right now, though, the banks are covered in a thick layer of ice and the trees are lined with snow. Flakes drift down through the trees and land on Tegan's nose as they make their way towards the pavilion.