Stealing Kisses

Chapter 8

Tim POV: 

Faith and I sit at some seedy twenty-four hour diner outside of town, with stale, steaming hot coffee sitting on the table in front of us. She has hardly said a word, while my mind can't help but pour from my lips. I look across the table, noticing her fingers trembling on her coffee cup, while my foot taps anxiously. I feel nauseous, so I don't know why I thought it'd be a good idea to come here. I haven't been able to catch my breath since she touched my arm. 

"We were in a hospital..." I let out, as she nods quickly. There's no way we could've seen the same thing... "What happened in the bathroom?" I ask, trying to quiz her on specific details to see if what we saw was the same. 

"You..." She starts, before shutting her eyes for a moment. "You begged God to..." She tries to force out, but just can't. I nod, knowing what she's trying to say. "The date we married..." She quizzes me. 

"October 6th." I answer, while she nods. 

"Year?" She presses. 

"'96." I add, as she shuts her eyes. She presses her palms against her forehead, before setting her elbows down on the table. "I don't understand how, or why... but what we saw..." I start, before I start to realize that I have no clue what to say. "Why?" I croak out, watching her closely. She shrugs, seeming truly scarred by it. 

"I don't know." She replies, before clearing her throat. "Do you think this is somehow.... I don't know... Maybe it's fate?" She rambles, while I shrug. In a normal circumstance, an explanation like that would be mocked by myself, but this isn't a normal circumstance. I saw myself with her from beginning to end... forty years worth of memories piled in a matter of seconds, and she saw it too. She looks around the dead diner, before reaching across the table toward my hand. I quickly pull it back. 

"Don't..." I let out, not ready to go through something like that again. 

"I just want to see if it's a continuous thing." She says, leaving her hand reaching. I cautiously reach out toward her. I feel her fingers rest on my arm, causing us both to brace accordingly. We wait a few seconds, before the tension dies. She moves her fingers from my arm to the table, sighing, before biting her lip. "I don't understand..." She admits, before our waitress drops off our food. Faith ordered a stack of chocolate chip pancakes, which I'm sure Dan would probably tear away from her in favor of a spinach egg white omelette. I ordered eggs, toast, bacon, and hashbrowns, but I couldn't imagine eating right now. She, on the other hand, tears into her pancakes, taking large bites like she hasn't eaten in days. I watch her, before laughing a bit to myself. 

"Nervous eater." I recall from the memories, causing her to glance up at me. She cautiously sets down her knife and fork, taking a sip of her coffee. I can tell her thoughts are racing, before something seems to weigh on her. "What?" I call, causing her to shrug. "Tell me..." I request, as she looks toward the breakfast counter, her eyes drifting down toward her food again. 

"Your step-dad?" She releases, making my stomach ache as I go to take a sip of my coffee. It burns going down, sizzling in my stomach. 

"I don't want to talk about that." I assert, looking down at the table. She nods, before taking another oversized bite. She swallows harshly, like it was a little too much to go down all at once. 

"That's fine." She agrees, before clearing her throat. "I think I know all there is to know, anyways." She releases under her breath. That's true... Oh my god... I stare at her, realizing that a woman who I've been battling with for nearly a decade now holds every secret I own. That said, I hold each of hers too. 

I know about her parents, and how she'll chew her nails down to the quick, if you let her. I know losing a child is her worst fear. I know she lost her virginity to a twenty-five year old while blackout drunk at a party she should've never been at... she was sixteen. I know all of these little, yet large secrets. I could turn around and run behind her back, telling every press source from here to Timbuktu that her parents were druggies, or that she was raped by a much older man, but I would never. Because with the memories of these secrets come the memories of how I discovered them in the first place. I learned about her parents because she was terrified of having children who felt like she did when her parents would shoot up in front of her and completely ignore her. I learned she chews her nails when we'd argue and she'd start to get anxious about where the argument would lead. I learned that she was afraid of losing a child when we lost one of ours and it took her years to recover. I learned that she was raped when she woke up screaming and crying in the middle of the night, sobbing so hard she couldn't breathe. 

"We first met in a bar along broadway, probably in '93..." She recalls, as I glance up at her. I feel my stomach twist a bit, before sighing and nodding. 

"Tootsies." I release, as she stares. "I was sitting down the bar... you started walking my way." I start, before she shuts her eyes. 

"Oh my god..." She says, covering her mouth. "But wait... both times I went outside." She tries to think through. I nod, before clearing my throat. 

"Yeah, and only once did you come back inside." I point out as she shakes her head. 

"No, I came back inside both times. You were there once, and you weren't the next." She says, rubbing her forehead. She stares for a second as I laugh a bit to myself. 

"I probably wasn't there, because I was on my way to the hospital." I let out, causing her eyes to lock onto me. She narrows her eyes, before looking down at the table. "That was the night I was hit by the car." I admit, watching her pale out. She places her head in her hands, before covering her mouth, her eyes starting to well up. 

"One time, I took a moment to calm down, the other, I went right back inside..." She recalls, before taking a deep breath. "Shit..." She releases. 

"I went outside to look for you, that's when I got hit." I connect for her, as she stares. Her hands tremble as she tries to catch her breath. She stares for a second, her eyes shifting back and forth quickly, as if she was reading words out of thin air. 

"If I hadn't hesitated for that minute, we would've been..." She starts to figure out, before she places a hand on her chest, her skin breaking out into hives. She hugs herself for a moment, before forcing a few short, fast breaths. "That was a few seconds... You're telling me that a few seconds changed all of this?" She tries to rationalize, but fails. I nod, having a much easier time processing it. "So what exactly are we supposed to do now? Just forget this ever happened?" She says, panicking over what this implies. I shrug, leaning back into the vinyl booth. "What's running through your mind?" She asks after a brief moment of silence. I glance into her eyes, dreading what I have to say. 

"It's easier for me to say, because I don't have what you have." I admit, as she narrows her eyes. "I don't have a spouse and a young kid waiting at home, Faith. I can say that I'm thinking about how maybe we should try this, but it's not tangible." I ramble, as she stares at me. "For me, I'm just struggling to understand where one side ends and the other begins." I confess, watching pain come across her. 

"Maybe it's better this way." She says, pushing around her pancakes with her fork. I stare at her, wondering in what world that would be true. "I love Dan." She says, making my chest ache. "Maybe what you and I have is a once in a lifetime thing, but... maybe it's not. Maybe it's meant to be this way." She tries to reassure herself. 

"Why would something like this happen if it weren't once in a lifetime?" I spit out, before realizing that I'm crossing the line. She's married, and happily so. I should let her be. She takes a deep breath, clearing her throat gently, before waving for the check. I wince, knowing I overstepped. She lays down cash, before slipping out of the booth and leaving the diner.