Page 53 of Steadfast
Internal DJ tuned to: Billy Joel’s “Pressure”
It washard to believe that my last set of final exams was upon me.
This—my final semester—I’d only taken two courses. My senior seminar on public health required only a take-home exam, but it was a bear. And my statistics course was no picnic, either.
Two classes didn’t sound like a lot, but I’d been working twenty-five hours a week at the hospital. That left the weekends for homework and housework. No wonder I had no life.
That would have to change in the New Year. Many things would change—I’d need to get a full-time job and move out of my parents’ house somehow. Staying there another year would never work.
But first: exams.
To get through the next few days, I employed two tactics. The first was record-breaking coffee consumption. The second was forbidding myself to think of Jude.
Whenever a particularly tricky statistics concept bedeviled me, it was tempting to close my eyes and remember the feel of his scruff against my face and the press of his hips against mine. A girl could get lost in a memory like that.
But there was work to be done, and I chose to do most of it in places I didn’t associate with him, like the student center, the university library and—closer to home—Crumbs. Jude and I had never been there together because it had opened while he was in prison.
Time marches on whether you notice it or not. It was hard to believe that my diploma was in reach. After Gavin’s death, there had been moments during college when I thought I wouldn’t make it to the finish line. Friends and roommates had come and gone, most of them focused on parties and schoolwork, blissfully ignorant of the fact that your family and then your life can fall to pieces when you’re only nineteen.
Those difficult years were behind me now, and I would soon have a degree to prove it.
I’d arranged to take the next Wednesday off from the hospital in order to study and attend a statistics study session with the course’s TA. But I’d never bail on the Community Dinner. When evening came I put my books aside and headed over to the church.
Once again I walked into the church kitchen with fear in my heart. But this time I wasn’t afraid that Jude would be there. Instead, I was afraid hewouldn’tbe. There weren’t any promises between us. We could never have a real relationship again. For all I knew, Jude could get a better job and vanish into the wind.
Somehow I’d already begun measuring my time in terms of Wednesdays. That couldn’t be a good thing. But there it was.
“How are the exams going?” Denny asked me when I walked in the room.
“Okay, thanks. One down and one to go.” My gaze traveled over Denny’s shoulder to the place where it longed to rest. And there he was in all his tight-T-shirt glory, strong forearms flexing over the prep table as he chopped up something leafy and green.
“Sophie?”
“Yeah?” My gaze snapped back to Denny. I’d been staring at Jude like a lovesick fangirl. “What’s um, the green stuff? My head is so full of, um, statistics that I can’t remember the menu.”
Denny’s face implied that he didn’t believe me. But he answered the question anyway. “It’s taco night.” His thumb jerked back toward Jude. “Cilantro for the pico de gallo. I asked him to do the garlic next.”
“Right,” I said brightly. “I’ll fetch the ground beef.”
I marched my overheated self into the pantry and opened the door to the walk-in cooler. The refrigerated air felt good against my flushed skin. Carrying fifty pounds of ground beef at once was above my pay grade, so I hefted only the top carton and backed out of the walk-in.
My ass ran straight into Jude.
“Hey,” he said, catching me and then my box of meat. “Careful.”
Careful. I was so far past careful that it wasn’t even funny. The woodsy scent of his aftershave enveloped me. I took a deep breath of Jude.
“Hey there,” he whispered.
“Hey.” My voice was breathy.Get a grip, Sophie. I turned to face him. “How was your week?”
“Shitty.” He grinned.
“Why?”
He shook his head. “Nothing for you to worry about. Things are looking up, now. Wednesday and Thursday are the best days of the week.”
“Yeah?”
