Page 35 of Third Time's the Charm

Is the sky still blue?

Berlin

Iscraped the earth away with the side of my trowel, the edge sharpened to a razor’s edge. I could kill someone with this. Either by slicing them like a knife or sword, or by stabbing them with the sharp point. Most people didn’t consider how deadly the tools of archaeology were. Even our shovels were razor sharp.

I wasn’t supposed to be excavating today but after our little snack by the mudflats, Ryker needed a nap, too. Everyone else was still asleep and I couldn’t stand to sit around doing nothing when my brain was spinning out of control.

So I came here. The one place I knew I could find focus through doing something. Scrape, scrape, scrape the layers away, watching the color of the soil slowly change as I approached yet another treasure left behind by Mrs. Townsend.

Did she have kids? I couldn’t remember. I didn’t think so. She came here to teach and wound up staying into retirement, her husband killed years earlier during a yellow fever outbreak.

More importantly, didIwant to close the door on kids? Actually, you know what? More importantly, what did I want at all? I never would have been able to afford to live here, to take over the archaeology fellowship, if I hadn’t inherited the house. Archaeologists don’t exactly make big incomes, so not having to worry about hundreds of thousands of dollars for a place to live, helped immensely. This was always where I wanted to spend my life. I had so many fond memories of visiting, camping, snorkeling, kayaking, and scuba diving after I got my license.

I loved history and had considered a future in it, when I learned about the Keys Archaeological Fellowship. It felt like destiny. My college direction picked. I was excited when Jack landed the Miami Pythons job. It felt like fate. The universe sent me a man just as passionate as I was, and saw fit to give him his dream job just up the road. All we had to do was live.

Ever since that dream died, I floundered. I know I did. But meeting Ryker made me feel like I had my feet under me again. Until today. I didn’t feel very grounded anymore.

Maybe that’s why I was digging in the earth.

“So this is where you’re digging?”

I froze and slowly looked up until I saw the man who matched the voice. “What are you doing here?”

He didn’t come closer. He stayed a good twenty feet away, actually.Huh.

“I was out for a walk. Didn’t mean to run into you.”

And yet here he was. Again. Like usual.

“Well Merry Christmas.” He studied me for a minute. I didn’t like it and began to squirm, so I tried to cover that with making a show of cleaning my hands.

“Why are you working?”

I chuckled because we reversed roles. It was me saying that so many times in the past. “I needed to think.” I looked around at my trowel, the little shaker screen, at the bags and markers. “I needed some time to be myself.”

His eyes softened. “Passionate people don’t like to rest.”

“And they inevitably wind up alone.”

“No.” He took a step toward me and then stepped right back. “Passionate people love to get lost in their work. And they need other passionate people around them so they don’t have to be alone.”

Well that was a laugh. “Hasn’t worked out so well for me so far, Jack.”

“Does Ryker get this about you? Does he love this part of you? Or does he tolerate it?”

I jerked back and couldn’t stop my mouth from taking off. “You don’t get to ask those questions anymore.”

“No,” he agreed. “But I’m asking anyway because my guess is that he doesn’t understand your passion at all. He doesn’t understand that it’s not obsession. It’s your lifeblood. It’s what pumps through your veins. You live and you love it. I know this because I’m exactly the same and I always thought it was damn special to find someone who would always understand who I truly was inside.”

The big, dumb jerkface didn’t get to say nice things like that! Not now! Not anymore. “Stop.”

He swallowed, looked down at his feet. “Look, I’m leaving in the morning. We have a game tomorrow night. I won’t be around to annoy you. But I did want to apologize.”

That got my attention. Jack apologizing? Was the sky still blue?

“Yeah I know. Go ahead and laugh,” he chuckled. “I’m sorry for being a selfish ass when we were married and I’m just as sorry that I kissed you and made you uncomfortable this week. It was a bad move on my part and I want you to know you don’t have to worry about me anymore. We had our shot and I blew it. I will move on and give you the space to do the same.”

I think my jaw fell open in shock. There was definitely a lot of air on my tongue and in the back of my throat.

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