The Boy I Married [hold]

12 | Recklessness

"Thank you again for having me. Dinner was amazing and it meant a lot," Jacob said as he stood in between the door frame of Pattie's house. "I don't necessarily find myself anywhere but the shop and home these days. This was really good for me."

"Nonsense," Pattie shoes. "Anybody that's a friend to my daughter is a friend of mine. You're welcomed by anytime."

After saying our goodbyes to Pattie, we walked down the driveway in the direction of his car. The streets were quiet as if everyone else had chose to spend tonight inside and the nights air lingered with a sticky dewy mist. I'd never tell Jacob this, but he'd been the first human interaction I'd had in a long time outside of my family. Somehow through the years of trying to figure out life, friendships had gotten lost into a pile I didn't care enough to stifle through. Jacob was someone who made it easy to converse with. Even though our stories weren't exactly the same, he understood some of the pain that festered inside me that I couldn't quite get Justin to comprehend. As much of a service he might of thought it was having him for dinner, it was also that for me.

Jacob hadn't known that my house was next door to Pattie's. I noticed the confusion on his face as I made a detour from his car into the direction of my house and he following close behind with a laugh but didn't question my actions.

The house was absolutely was dark and not a peep rang. My parents must've still been out doing God knows what but somehow them being gone gave me a sense of relief I hadn't known I'd been holding onto. I offered Jacob a cup of wine before disappearing to my room to change into something a tad more comfortable and then joined him back in the family room with a pile of things we had both planned to change for the coffee shop. We both worked in a peaceful silence sketching together a combination of both our interior design ideas.

Quiet carried on amongst us for almost an hour and I knew that after Jacob's third glass of wine, driving home just wasn't going to be an option. He and I drew a little longer in our peaceful quiet until something came to mind.

"So I was thinking," I trailed, smiling at him with a look of uncertainty. He smiled at me and let a nervous laugh slip his mouth before taking another sip of his wine. It was obvious alcohol had now began to alter his sense of self. He probably hated how often I changed my mind but he never made me feel guilty about it. "I was thinking about our name. I know we've changed it about a billion and one times but nothing felt right to me until I came up with this one."

Instead of saying it, I wrote it down on the paper so he could get a visual of exactly how the name would look on the sign outside the shops door. Samaria's. Samaria's Coffee. He looked up from the paper and eyed me for a moment before sitting his wine glass on the table and shifting his body in the opposite direction.

"I'm sorry. It must've been the wine." He says, standing to his feet to clear the brim of his waterline out of my sight.

I could almost feel his pain and in that moment, I knew our hurt was one and the same. It comforted me a bit to have someone who understood how heavy of a weight the loss of a child held.

"Hey," I pause, standing from the sofa to make my way over to where he was standing. I grabbed a hold of his forearm and turned to him to be face to face. His nose was stained red and the tears were only filling up despite his constant attempts to clear them.

I wondered how many time he forced himself not to feel the ache that came with hearing his sons name on the lips of someone else. That same pain was buried deep inside of me too.