Page 8 of Fifty First Times (Sharing You 0.40)
“We have three weeks,” he pointed out.
“Brings a whole new meaning to the twelve days of Christmas.”
Wes grinned and threaded his hand through mine. “Best present ever.”
I couldn’t help but agree as we lay in the dark under a silent moon. Wes bent to brush his lips softly against mine. “I’ve been looking up at that moon and dreaming of you, Jacqueline Kelly.”
“It took you long enough to tell me,” I said, nipping his chin with my teeth playfully.
“Different cities, different lives,” he reminded me in a soft voice.
I squeezed his hand tightly, knowing he was right, but knowing there was so much more to us than geographic coordinates. “Same moon.”
About the Author
GENNIFER ALBIN is a recovering academic who realized she could write books of her own and discovered to her delight that people would read them. She lives in Kansas with her family and writes full-time. Her debut novel, Crewel, the first in a trilogy, was published in October 2012 by FSG/Macmillan.
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Daylight
JULIE CROSS
JACK SLIDES THE key into the doorknob of his tiny apartment above my father’s church. His fingers still and he turns to me, “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be at a hotel?”
“That’s so not us.” I twist the ring around my left finger. It’s foreign to my body, but in the same way a new pet is foreign to a person’s home. It represents work and responsibility, but somehow you know that it will eventually become a part of you.
Jack’s already a part of me. It’s just the ring that’s new.
He finally opens the door, stepping into the studio apartment with its combo kitchen–living room–bedroom. My heart is drumming as I pass through the doorway, listening to Jack bolt the lock behind me. I fight the urge to wipe my palms on my mother’s beautiful white dress. Instead, I glance around the room at the stacks of records and novels piled neatly in different corners and the soft brown plush couch I used to lie across on summer afternoons, reading a library book, while my dad worked on his sermons or held meetings with church members.
A wave of fear and dread sweep over me as Jack’s gaze meets mine. If tomorrow morning is the last time I see him, if he doesn’t come home from his mission, this room that has held nothing but comfort for me will never look the same.
“Audrey?” he prompts, probably seeing the tension on my face. I shake my head—now’s not the time to let fear set in—and force a smile. Though with Jack, lies and concealed emotions never get past his carefully trained eyes. “You look so beautiful,” he says, breathing out the words, giving them a moment to waft toward me before he moves closer.
He looks beautiful. Even better—he looks happy. And happy is the opposite of what I saw in Jack’s eyes the first time I met him over six months ago.
My dad had sent me up here to meet a man named Mr. Sanders and to hand over the keys to the church apartment the board had recently decided to rent out. I don’t know why, but I’d expected someone much older regardless of the bachelor pad feel to the place. It is part of a church, and that knowledge alone has a way of cutting into a person’s impure plans for their living space.
Seeing Jack with his boyish face, dark hair, and muscled body, leaning against a dirty truck, had thrown me for a loop. As I approached him that day, keys dangling from my left hand, I felt the intensity of the giant wall he’d placed between him and the world. I felt ghosts swarming around him like a hive of bees.
And those eyes . . . sadness isn’t a strong enough word to describe them.
His message was loud and clear, despite the wall he’d put up—he needed the company, he’d been alone too long. So I stayed and helped him unpack.
“Your father’s a preacher. What’s that like?”
I laughed and tore open a box filled with hardcover novels. “Tell me what you really think.”
He studied my face long enough to cause my cheeks to heat up and my gaze to fall back on the box in front of me. “I think you’re going to find a way to surprise me, Audrey. So I guess I’ll just wait for that to happen before I form an opinion.”
“Come on,” I teased. “We both know you’re thinking one of two things—either I’ve been living in a bubble for eighteen years, sheltered and protected from the evil forces of the devil himself. Or two, I’m sleeping around and partying behind my parents’ backs and then sitting in church on Sunday trying to look innocent.”
“So you do go to church, then.” Jack busied himself creating a tidy stack of old records. “And you’re eighteen. College or high school?”
“College,” I said, flustered by the rate he took in facts and information. I felt like I’d revealed some secret I didn’t even know I’d had. I eyed his records, tempted to sift through the titles and learn more about this mysterious man. “I’m a music major.”
“Music,” he repeated, not looking up.
