Page 102 of Absolute Certainty
“I get that. But your health should come first. You can’t control it.”
“I could have,though. If I’d called out yesterday when I first realized I was having a flare-up, I could’ve probably saved myself from being out for three days.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Sadness docked itself in her eyes, and she looked so small. So broken. His heart plummeted once more, proving that he wasn’t strong enough to see her dejected like this.
“I didn’t want to disappoint people. My mental health has been shit, and I didn’t want my body to give out on me, too.”
God.Setting his empty plate down on the wooden coffee table, he shifted his body to face her more comfortably.“How can I help?” he asked, not knowing what else to say.
Rounding her lips, she exhaled another heavy sigh. “Can you rewind time?”
He inched closer, tucking an errant strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m serious.”
“Distract me with your brain, then. How’dEvery Speck of Dustcome to you?”
Jay took a breath, remembering the specific day off from work when he had stared at his empty document, wondering if he should once and for all abandon it. Years of trying had left him drained, more alone than he’d ever felt, and completely void of ideas. It’d been the dead of winter, but he’d decided to take a drive to the beach. He’d thought that maybe, if he felt the cold air against his skin, then he’d feel less numb and a little more alive. It’d been a stupid idea given the downpour he was later met with, but still.
Sahar was gazing at him, her sparkling brown eyes filled with the transfixing wonder that made him want to consistentlytrya little bit harder. It was a look he wanted to bottle up and open every time he felt the piercing ache of self-doubt consume him. Would it ever stop astounding him thatshecared as much about his work?
“I think Henrywas always with me,” he started to say.He had been, hadn’t he?He was part of a short story Jay had written when he was fifteen, and then, he’d added him intoBeneath the Sunas a background character. The short story version of him would never see the light of day since he was a mere exercise. An escape from his fraught household.
And yet, Henry’s existence always felt visceral—real and vital for some reason.
Katherine appeared shortly after, right as he watched massive waves crash into the shore. He wasn’t sure what their story would be at the time, but he knew their fears—their struggles. There were crosses they both carried, perhaps parts of Jay’s own pain bleeding through…
He looked back at Sahar, her pink thumbnail between her lips as she waited for him to answer. “I was having a lousy few days, and I went down to the beach. I remembered Henry fromBeneath the Sun. Katherine came to me afterward, and they stayed with me. But I was on the train one morning, heading over to the location in Jersey where we were shootingCuts, and…” he paused, trying to push down the lump in his throat.
He’d never told anybody this part of the process, not even Patrick when he first pitched the series. “That line, the one that you said made you cry—‘In my perfect world, you and I would be together’—I heard that line, from Henry’s point of view to Katherine, and I had no idea what it meant, but I wrote it down in my notes app anyway.”
Jay caught the sound of Sahar’s breath hitch, and he wanted to fucking cry. The perpetual light in her eyes held him steady. “And I just kept thinking about them—the longing to find someone who was missing. It all came suddenly, but in broken fragments that I wanted to piece together.”
He paused, staring—trying to find the strength to keep going through her eyes. “But in truth, you brought out the version I wasn’t capable of finding on my own.”
His name fled Sahar’s lips in a whisper.
Her hand was so close to his that if he simply moved an inch, he could glide his fingers over hers, smooth the pad of his thumb across her knuckles. But they hadn’t talked about what happened yet. Their friendship was complicated now. Maybe even a little fragile.
Sahar looked down to where his eyes had been. She crawled her hand toward his, and he rolled his palm over, slowly lacing their fingers together. Instantly, every part of him warmed from her touch, one by one, each cove filled to the brim with her light.
Neither said a word.
The conversation taking place in the silence felt like the most seamless exchange he’d ever had. Somehow, Sahar heard all that he wanted her to hear. Every word he said aloud and the ones he couldn’t find, too.
He had told her something sacred and watched her collect every detail for safekeeping.
Hope coursed through his veins again, and it was all because the woman sitting in front of him didn’t want one more thing making her sad. She wanted to watch another woman make it back home, and he’d give her that every single time.
“When I first read that line, I couldn’t understand why it made me cry so much,” she said, brushing his fingers with her thumb. “I blamed it on my period, but then I kept thinking about it. I kept thinking of Henry’s desperation and longing. IthinkI finally get it now.”
A smile began curving up her lips.
Desperate to have a little more of her, Jay lifted his other hand and cupped her cheek. “Tell me.”
Sahar sighed. “You said it yourself in the script, ‘He can’t hold it anymore. He doesn’t want to.’ The exposition. The confession itself. It all feels so…monumental in its simplicity.”
Pausing once more, she leaned into his touch. “There’s something so human about bottled up secrets becoming too much for us to carry alone. He’s kept it in during every case, every moment they’ve been alone together, and I just…it’s so easy tofeelthe depth of his love for her.”
