Page 99 of If This is Love

The distinctive scent of burning flesh drifted into my nose, and I was shaken out of my mind by a wall-rattlingWOOF.

I blinked, and I was closely staring at the notepad, hunched over it with the pen clutched between my blanched fingertips. My chicken scratch and frantic doodles all over the page. Arwa and Bahar still bickering in Arabic on the screen. Nobody knew Gunner had barked to save me from myself because sucky video conferences taught me the beauty of the mute button, and I’d made such a habit of hitting it that I didn’t even think about it anymore.

From where my colleagues were sitting, it was just me taking notes, and God bless that glorious mute button.

I leaned away from the camera to grab a glass of water and chug down the whole thing, taking a few of those deep, silent breaths that everyone was always yammering about, and then sat up straight in my chair.

I picked up the notepad and flipped it over, then unmuted myself. “It was something like this, right?”

Arwa and Bahar stopped talking, and all three women stared at their cameras.

After a moment, Arwa broke the silence with a rusty, yet jovial chuckle. “Yes. Is something like this.” She offered her thumbs-up again, much more exuberantly this time. “Very much like this.”

Bahar’s dark eyebrows drew together in a deep V, and her pale blue eyes were a little red on the rims. “Yes, precisely this. Can you build this?”

“Yes ma’am,” I told her. “I can.”

“Beautiful!” Arwa exclaimed, clapping her hands together before she wagged her finger at the camera. “I kiss you in New Orleans for this, soldier Gabe.”

A hearty chuckle shook out of me. “You don’t need to do that. Pleasure’s all mine.”

Emma took over from there, going over the expected timeline for when the facility would be finished. Bahar thanked me again, and Arwa swore to Allah that she would kiss me in New Orleans, and then they both got off the call. Just as I was about to tell Emma that I’d clean up the sketches and send actual blueprints to her and Skye, she spoke up again.

“Where’d you go?”

I met her eyes on the screen, furrowing my brow in confusion. “Me? I’m still here.”

“I mean when you were sketching.” Emma sat back in a simple, black, hotel desk chair and folded her arms across her chest. “You were somewhere else. Where were you?” She unfolded one arm to gesture at the screen. “Were you there? Where it happened?”

Either I was nowhere near as good at hiding my episodes on video calls as I’d thought I was, or Emma really was just that familiar with the type of shit that had plagued my entire adult life. In either case, there was no point in pretending nothing happened.

“Yeah. Sometimes I just get lost in my thoughts. These episodes are like a crap shoot. I can just blink out for a second, or a sudden loud noise will just sort of disconnect me for a little while and then I don’t remember how I got there or what was just happening, or sometimes… like just now, it’s like slipping into a state of meditation. I heard what they were saying, and my brain just sort of pulled me into my memories, and in my head, I was just suddenly there again, yeah.”

“What did you remember?” she prompted gently but assertively, sounding exactly like the journalist I knew she was.

“I remember being able to visualize the buildings from the rubble.” I rested my elbow on the table and rubbed the scruff on my cheek. “It’s hard to explain, but I could tell from the larger broken pieces how it all probably looked before it was blasted. Nobody had to tell me I was standing on holy ground.”

Emma hummed in acknowledgment. “Would you consider yourself a religious person or maybe a formerly religious person?”

I shrugged. “More like formerly forced to go to church by my mama. I’m sort of indifferent to it. Religion seems like just another tool that can be used for good or evil.”

“A-men,” she said ironically. “That was my experience not only with Christians where I grew up in South Carolina, but also Muslims in Syria. But in Syria, you have the ultra-extreme version of that.” She gestured with her palm at the screen. “The two women who just got off this call lived through the ultra-extreme version of religion being used for evil. EvenRuth…”

Emma paused and scoffed, but she’d already completely captured my attention by merely utteringhername.

“I’m telling you, I was such a hot mess watching Ruth’s video,” she went on. “I gotsoangry. Did you watch that? I couldn’t believe those people, but yeah.” Emma flitted her hand and dropped it on the table in front of her. “A tool that can be used for good or evil.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t…” Damn it, she meant the fucking selfie videos Chloe had been timidly poking me about recording for weeks. I hated the idea of these damn selfie videos so much that I hadn’t even thought about how Ruth was going to make one. And suddenly, I needed to get off this call so I could watch that video. I coughed into my fist and added casually, “So she had some trouble with her church?”

I already knew there was something totally suspect about her church based on stuff she’d mentioned, but I suddenly needed Emma’s outsider, objective, reporter-type observations.

“Yeah, it was an extremely toxic community,” Emma said, disgusted. “She didn’t mention sexual abuse, but I wouldn’t be shocked if that had happened, too. It was one of those ‘prosperity gospel’ churches.” She curled her fingers in air quotes. “But it sounds like they got what was coming to them in the end.”

“I see,” I said neutrally all the while my fingers were tingling to click the button to disconnect so I could watch Ruth’s video and then call herimmediately. “Too bad for them karma’s tricky like that.”

“Yep.” Emma sucked in a breath and exhaled like she’d just finished a workout. “Well, I’m really excited to see how it all comes together.”

“Yeah, I’ll draw up an actual design and send it to you and Skye.” I bounced my leg under the table. “Should have it to y’all by Friday.”

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