Page 49 of Come Back to Me

“No, I don’t mind that. I told you that already.”

“I’m still not sure what your logic was in taking this job with the marshals. It’s bound to add to your stress.”

“You put me in charge of my retirement,” is my bland retort.

“Yes, but putting a halt to thebelle indifferencedoesn’t involve taking over a detachment!”

“I don’t have control over a detachment. I manage eight people, Mike, in a small town where The General Store expects us to speak to the parents of shoplifters if they catch them in the act. I’m not in a big city.”

He grunts. “So, the tedium of the job is a problem?”

“I guess it might be,” I admit. “It’s not exactly cruising at sixty-thousand feet, but it’s nice to feel like I’m helping without…” My throat grows tight.

“Breathe through it, Cody.”

I stare at the horizon up ahead. The sky’s a bright blue. The sun’s a gleaming ball of light that hurts my eyes.

“I am safe in this moment,” I chant. “And I’m getting better. Every day. In every way.”

Mike soothes, “That’s good. It’s also correct. The first time we met, you weren’t exactly self-regulating.”

“It’s easier at home, but I’m not sleeping.”

“Why not?”

“Can’t switch off.”

“Makes sense. You have a lot of new stimuli.”

“Maybe.” My mouth tightens. “I haven’t told you something.”

“Something interesting? Or something boring?”

I can’t stop my grin from forming, but it quickly dies when I think about what I need to share.

As I explain Butch Cassidy and Calamity Jane, as I tell him how I was a dumbass to write her a ‘Dear John’ and how Tee’s moved in, he heaves a sigh. “You do like to make things difficult for yourself, Cody.”

“Wish I could argue,” I mutter. “Of course, I decided to dig a deeper grave by trying to get her a job at the local school.”

“Isn’t that you being nice?”

“You’d think so, but I might as well have been offering to poison her.” I rub my temple. “I just… She doesn’t have any work right now, and I figured if she had a job, she’d stick around, but she took it the opposite way and...fuck.”

“You have it bad.”

“I do. She’s exceptional.”

“Strong adjective.”

“If the shoe fits. She doesn’t see the world the way we do. I never know what she’s going to say next. She makes me…” I ponder a more rational response. “We have set patterns in the sky. Set routes. Set behaviors. We follow them all so that we can act autonomously?—”

“Like driving while talking to me on the phone. You couldn’t do one without the other if you weren’t comfortable with the machine.”

“Yeah.” Except, the jets I was flying were worth tens of millions of dollars… “When it comes down to it, you’re working on instinct. You’re going up against someone with similar training, a similar weapon, a similar plane—you have to come out on top. It’s kill or be killed.”

“Right. What does this have to do with Tee?”

“She throws all the rules out. I’m flying in a plane I’ve never heard of, facing a pilot from outer space, and she’s coming at me, ready to collide?—”

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