[Jarod] I have... a Nico, Emily had said, and because Jarod was in a tranquil mood tonight, he didn't make any snide remarks about bringing home stray puppies. Instead, he'd just laughed a bit and acquiesced to the change in plan without complaint.
The drive over had been quiet, but Emily wasn't quite as comfortable with silence as he was, so he'd turned on the stereo at a low volume and the distinctive voice of Billie Holiday filled the empty space.
She'd had to give him directions, of course, because she'd moved (twice) during the time span that he'd been away. When they pulled in and parked on the street, Jarod got out and briefly crossed both arms on the roof of the car as he cast a shrewd eye at the building. It was indeed a step up from previous living-quarters. (Even just the state of the neighborhood said as much.)
"Alright, you are officially required to give me the tour." He grinned as he pushed away from the car, absently brushing a bit of dust away from the skin of his forearms. "A little bird told me you have a fireplace."
(That little bird would be Emily, of course.)
[Emily] Just having to focus enough to navigate pulled Emily away from some of the heartache. It focused her, whittled her back to something a bit more solid and sure. By the time they reached her neighborhood, enough of it had slaked from her to leave her a little less hollow. If it were anyone but Jarod, she'd be able to say that she was fine, really, and just needed to sleep it off.
Emily glances at him for a moment, dark eyes studying and remembering all at once, and pulls her building keys out of one pocket. The jingle quietly in the otherwise still night. It's colder here, by the Lake, where there's a little wind pushing through the street.
The neighborhood's nice enough. There's no obvious signs of vandalism. She's been here just long enough for a little slip of paper on a mailbox to read Littleton, E. rather than NONE. That matter had just been sorted a week or so before.
"It'll be a very short tour," she tells him. Weak smile. No comment about how it's not even worth a nickle. Her keys fit into the front glass and steel door, she pushes it open, holds it open for him. Today the lift is working, but it's not as inspiring as Jarod's building.
There's a moment, in that plain box, while they're both doubtless watching the little numbers illuminate and feeling the shudder of mechanics and cables, when Emily is embarrassed. It catches her by surprise, this shame, and she glances away. The doors part. She gestures down the hall as they step out.
"Ah, this is my hallway. I'm all the way at the end."
When she pushes open this door, the first things Jarod might notice are that it's clean, it's sparesly (but adequately) furnished, it smells faintly of a recent meal -- something herbed and interesting. There are carrier boxes that stand, as of yet unpacked, in the corners of almost every room, but there's also no clutter. Dishes by the sink are clean and drying. Doors stand open and the rooms behind them are uncluttered. There is indeed a fireplace, and beside that fireplace there is a lovingly restored wooden rocking chair with a throw blanket resting over one of its arms.
None of the furniture matches. There's a table and chairs clearly from IKEA. A couch from a far nicer retailer. The rocker could be antique. The bookshelves, while mended and painted, are not things of finery.
It almost seems like a home. There is no artwork on the walls, but one of the boxes he'll find in the living room has dozens of black-rimmed photographs. And when she leaves him there, after they've stepped out of their shoes, after he's had a chance to tour and ask small questions, while she makes tea he can page through them if he likes.
Each one has a city and country name on the matting. In Emily's careful scrip, in clear black ink. There are very few with her features, but the places would start to be familiar. Dozens of places. Some he'd heard her list off at least once -- places she had lived.
"I'll put the kettle on," she said when she left him in the living room. He can hear her movements in the next room over, see her over the half-wall that divides them. She's focused, but only absently so. Emily moves on some auto-piloted drive for hospitality.
The apartment is not chill, but it is not warm either. She hasn't turned on the heat. Perhaps the best word was brisk.
[Jarod] [Empathy - embarrassed?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 5, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 5)
[Emily] [Subterfuge: let's call this +3, booze, drama, and extenuating circumstances]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 4, 9, 9 (Success x 1 at target 9)
[Emily] Yes. Embarrassed. Emily hadn't been quite pleased the first time he'd seen where she slept, but students subletting half-rooms from other students weren't expected to have any sort of luxury. Jarod, on the other hand, always had perfectly put together places.
At least it was clean.
She glanced at the floor when they entered. Yes, it was still clean. Not that Nico was a mess but...
And there's a weariness to her. She's pulled herself back enough to cover it from anyone they meet in the hallways, but Emily is tired. And lonely. And tired of being lonely. There an emptiness to her that is about more than just missing people, and while there has been genuine joy -- tonight is more about despair. It's a sadness that touches every movement. It isn't something he can fix. Not in an evening. Not with any word or simple act.
He can see it in the lines of her face, the cant of her shoulders. If he reaches back to the previous night's encounter, he can see all of it lurking there, too.
She's hesitant -- they had been close once. Uncertain what it might to take shelter in him now. Where it might lead. Whether it is okay to want that.
to Jarod
[Jarod] It ought to have been easier, this new relationship that they had. This intimacy without physical intimacy. Friendship. It ought to have been easier tonight than it had been recently, because he didn't feel... frustrated. There was not this ubiquitous hunger for physical contact driving him to distraction.
But in actuality, it wasn't any easier at all. (Make of that what you will.)
In the lift, there was a bout of semi-uncomfortable silence, and he pulled his eyes away from the steadily ascending numbers to look at Emily. Almost, he reached out to put his arm around her again. Almost, he kissed her and murmured something about never apologizing for herself with him.
Almost.
In the apartment, he took off his shoes and walked the floor of the main living space. His eyes roamed, taking in any number of details - the tidiness, the rocking chair, the fireplace, the apparent lack of a guest. He wasn't sure yet whether Nico's absence was something to be grateful for. The box of pictures was of particular interest, and he sifted through them with delicate care, taking in the snap-shots of a woman's life - of Emily's life. Some of these were places he'd been to. Some of them were not. For a few moments, as Emily busied herself with preparing tea, he indulged his imagination and tried to picture a young version of Emily on the streets of these foreign-but-familiar cities.
She kept many more photographs than he did. This was something that had always been absent, both now and before. There were no personal photos hanging on walls or sitting atop surfaces in his living space. If he kept any at all, they were hidden away.
Jarod stood up and moved to join Emily in the kitchen. "I like it better than your last place. In particular, the lack of roommates."
[Emily] It is easy to tell, with photographs, what is old and what is recent. Not just because the format changes, but also the dyes do. The oldest pictures are square formed, their corners rounded, they're heavily biased toward red tones. In one of them, a barely-school aged Emily stands in a row of Chinese children waiting dressed in what must be a school uniform. Compared with most of them, her skin in alabaster-pale. Even with the age of the photo, her eyes are a piercing and deep blue.
Most the pictures have no people in them. They're landmarks or strange moments. There's a row of brightly colored buildings along a cobble walk. Each of them has a white lintel and blue doors. This says Santorini, Greece. A wrought iron table with a brown coat hanging off one of the chairs. It's the coat Emily wore tonight. Kiev, Ukraine. There's a newspaper clipping, a photo of emergency vehicles by the side of a river, black and white, slightly smudged. Prague, Czech Republic. There's a picture of Emily, and some other familiar faces, each blue-woad stained and all gathered together just before taking off on some Awakened mission or another. Chicago, USA.
If he'd laid them out in order, if she'd told him the order, he could track her life and the places she'd lived from birth forward. Now and again are frames labeled Manchester, England. In one is a dark haired, blue eyed boy who looks like he's grabbing for the camera. If Jarod could hear him, he'd be saying Emily... don't!
There's an answer or two to things he may have wondered about her. The earliest frames are almost all from various places within China. It explains the Ai-ya and other incidental phrases. At least a little.
Jarod knows enough about her to know these are more than vacation photographs. To anyone else, she's just another world wanderer. He can see each attempt at a home town. Some glimpses of normalcy. A brown eyed boy (Roma, Italia) who's patient with her picture taking. A pair of barefeet resting on a railing with a view of the coast beyond them -- San Francisco, USA.
He mentioned her room-mates past, and Emily's smile resurfaced for a moment. "Ohh... and they didn't even heckle you the way they did Chuck," she tells him, with an attempt at playfulness. There's a little roll of humor under it. It almost touches her eyes.
Almost.
"What would you like for tea?" she asks. The cupboard behind her stands open. There's a shelf full of glass jars and neatly stacked boxes and various hues of leaves from delicate whites through greens and blacks -- not many oolongs, she didn't favor them -- and a couple reds. "I'm having green," she says. Jasmine green. It's what she drinks to help her calm down, to remind her of home, to tether her.
Perhaps the photos have told him a bit more of why.
[Jarod] "Green is fine," he said, giving a slight nod to indicate that he was happy with whatever she was having for herself. He wouldn't have done that, with most people, but Emily understood about tea. He didn't need to worry about being offered a cup full of something that tasted like bitter grass clippings.
His mind was also on other things. Like the distantly familiar face he'd seen in one of Emily's recent photographs.
Zaijian, Wu Dao Lung. ...Dui bu chi.
It took a moment, but eventually his mind processed what it was that Emily had just said to him, and he glanced at her with a slight wrinkle forming at the bridge of his nose. "You're dating a guy named Chuck?"
He didn't have all the details yet, of course. He didn't know that Chuck had long-since come and gone, and that the man Emily was waiting on now was named Owen.
[Emily] "Because Chuck is so much worse that Bastian?" she asks, arched eyebrow, deathly serious expression. For a moment. Before it slides back to a soft and somewhat amused expression. Recants. Gentles.
"And no. He's just a cabalmate." Something about that sentence leaves the word now hanging loudly enough for Jarod to insert it simply. "He's with Molly, now. Who's a Cultist. And trouble."
Emily forms a little oh with her mouth and exhales slowly. Even mentioning Molly in passing makes her blood pressure rise. She reaches up to press a hand against the back of her neck for a moment. There, right there, at the base of her skull -- by Christmas that will be where her permanent, localized migraine named Stormwatch resides. Molly dating Chuck, Molly on the Emissary Council, Molly's cabalmates. It's all enough to make Emily faintly seasick whenever the thoughts crossed her mind.
There's also a more dismissive note to this, to be honest. She is not dating Chuck. She doesn't really worry about Jarod knowing about Chuck. Chuck is not, is obviously not the man she's holding back because of. They aren't equals, Jarod and this Virtual Adept, not in who they'd been to her. That was bound to cause some trouble at some point, but hopefully not tonight.
[Jarod] Jarod smirked faintly. He might have laughed, had he not still been feeling a little off-kilter. "Point taken."
Neither of them had mentioned the previous evening until now, and Emily did not seem inclined to linger on the topic. Perhaps subconsciously, Jarod reached up and scratched the side of his neck, where the skin's perfect tone had been marred by faded bruising. Someone had remarked upon it earlier that day, when he'd briefly stopped into work. They'd said that it seemed strange to see him with a bruise. That is just didn't fit him, somehow. Truthfully, he just hadn't had the time or energy to bother healing something so insignificant.
But there it was. Teeth marks. Something Emily had never left him with.
She mentioned Molly, and Jarod seemed amused by that. "I met her. She's nosy, but not very difficult to distract."
Clearly he did not find the Cultist as insufferably stress-inducing as Emily did. After a long pause, he added, by way of observation, something that Thomas had already affirmed. "He definitely traded down."
[Emily] "It was mutual," she says. It's not that Emily's tired of explaining this, it's that it's starting to feel less and less mutual as time goes by. As if maybe Chuck had been right, all those months ago, when he worried about being a rebound guy.
The kettle whistles and Emily takes it off the burner. There's a measure of practiced ritual to this. It's a delicate thing. Something to familiar and refined in muscle memory that it's almost a dance. Even in this newer kitchen; even with him in the space. She pours a little water into the ceramic tea pot, swirls it around to warm it, measures out the right amount of tea for them both. Pours in the hot water.
Emily doesn't start a timer, and she isn't an Apprentice of Time, but there's a very well engrained sense to her of precisely when the tea has steeped enough. She learned the smell of it, the touch to the heat of the teapot with her fingertips, the way the steam curls. It's a sensual thing; Jarod knows her to be quite aware of her senses. He knows that better than any other in this city. Emily may Sing with a Chorus Celestial, but she hasn't forsaken terrestrial things.
When it's ready, she'll pour with one fingertip bracing the teapot's top, with a grace to her wrists and elbows -- this could have only been learned abroad. The British are not like this, it is an Asian gesture, a thing she could not have feigned if she tried.
She'd noticed the marks on the side of his neck. She knows them for what they are. Emily's mouth shifts slightly. Her lips press together a little. She says nothing.
"And really," she continues, not addressing whatever it was that crossed her mind just then. "April feels like ancient history, just now. Here -- " Emily offers him his tea.
"The table is abysmally uncomfortable. I recommend the couch," she says, in all seriousness. Upon second inspection, the table does look horridly uncomfortable. Even with the seat cushions she's found for the swede-modern chairs. It's not quite like Emily to make her kitchenette so inhospitable, but she hadn't chosen the table, only endured it.
[Jarod] [Per+Emp - nothing, hmm?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 5)
[Emily] [Subterfuge: Nothing. +2, booze, extenuating circumstances.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[Jarod] Emily said nothing, but she'd noticed, and her lips had pressed together.
She also mentioned, in passing, that she'd dated Chuck in April. One could make certain assumptions from that time-line. Jarod, in particular, could make certain assumptions. To his credit, he didn't make them out loud. Nor even linger on them silently. How Emily chose to spend her time, and who she spent it with, was not for him to judge.
He accepted the tea as she handed it to him, holding the cup and saucer carefully as the two of them migrated from the kitchen and settled down on the sofa. He blew on the surface of his tea gently, watching the steam billow and curl into the briskly chilly air around them. Then he took a careful sip before he set it down on the coffee table.
The side of his neck (the left side) that had been marked was facing Emily, and Jarod tilted his head to the opposite side to indicate this when he said, quietly, "Do you want me to get rid of it?"
[Emily] "No."
She shakes her head a little. Emily is careful with how she lowers herself onto the couch. It's not that she hurts anymore -- though, it hasn't been that long since moving (since even breathing) hurt enough to be cautious. She doesn't want to spill her tea on her lap, or on Jarod. It's a combination of little things. Emily settles, she waves off the question idly.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have stared. It's rude."
She hadn't stared. But she hadn't meant to make any outward acknowledgment of it, either. Maybe she was tired enough that it was showing. Emily leaned forward enough to set her tea on the coffee table. She stayed hunched over like that, resting her elbows on her knees and bowing her head a bit.
"I'm not much company, just now," she tells him. As if she had to apologize for that. As if they hadn't been over this a few times before, back in the time before April. Before that, back before Chuck. It sounds a lot like You don't have to stay. It sounds a lot like But I don't want you to go.
She reaches up and presses the heels of her hands against her eyes for a moment. There's open exasperation, fatigue, frustration to that motion, but Emily doesn't elaborate on it. The tension is back in her frame, a wearying thing, a thing that pulls her shoulder blades together even as she tries to round them out. It keeps her from reaching out to him.
They're this close, and Emily still feels alone.
[Jarod] [You say no, but...]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 5, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 3)
[Jarod] "You didn't," he said, when she apologized for staring. Because she hadn't, and even if she had, she needn't have apologized.
She said she didn't want him to get rid of it, but he did. His eyes closed as he brought a hand up to touch his neck, fingertips tracing delicately along the bruised skin. Gradually, the mark faded from view.
When he was done, he picked up his tea again, took a sip, and set it down.
"I happen to like your company," he countered. "And I'm sorry about last night. I don't usually drink that much anymore."
[Emily] Her fingertips are still warm from holding her mug of tea. Emily sits up enough to reach over and gently touch the place on his skin he'd just mended. There's a gentleness to it; she knows he isn't fragile, but there's a tenderness still to how they approach one another. There's also a subtle and quiet awe for that art they share. She can mend her own wounds now, has had to, but it is still wondrous; still awe-inspiring.
Emily's fingertips trail away, back down to meet the fingers of her other hand, to clasp and hold.
"Don't be," she says softly. There's an edge to it, even so many hours later. A full day. There's a want to it, and a need, and a wishing that they didn't have to dance on eggshells. "I had a good time," she tells him, and the curl of a smile at the side of her mouth is genuine.
"I have been able to go out like that in ..."
Time passes while she thinks back. Emily shrugs a little when she can't happen upon a recent memory, or a suitably distant one, to latch that timeframe onto.
"The last few times ... haven't gone well." She slides her arms back to wrap across her middle. It's a protective gesture, one that belies the upsetting nature of the memories she's glossing over. Emily closes her eyes for a moment, then blinks them open. Even in profile, he can likely read more of what crosses her face than she'd want him to.
It's been a damned long summer, she told Nico. If only that were the half of it.
[Jarod] [Manip+Sub - you touched my neck...]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 9 (Failure at target 6)
[Jarod] Emily touched his neck reverently, still new enough to her own healing abilities to find such things quietly wondrous. The touch took Jarod a little by surprise, but he welcomed it. More than. It was not quite so chaste, for him. (But she had to know... from those nights they'd spent together, how touch-sensitive his skin was. His neck, especially.)
It wasn't an obvious thing, exactly. But it wasn't masked either. His pulse jumped slightly when her fingers touched his skin, and he closed his eyes again. His lips parted when he breathed. His head tilted away just... a fraction.
She pulled away, and he turned his head to look at her. She said she'd had fun, and it elicited a soft smile. Then she said that the last few times hadn't gone well, and the smile faded.
"I know some better places, if you ever want to go again."
[Emily] "I'd like that," she said, knowing it was a little across the line she'd drawn for them. Emily didn't care, so much, right now about whether people like Ashley thought she was doing the right thing, or whatever it was that had Ashley's knickers in a bunch this evening. It had been nice to be out, for an evening, with someone she trusted. To just be people on the dancefloor. To not be anything more.
"I don't get a lot of time to just unwind anymore."
It wasn't something she needed to tell him. Jarod could read that fact in ever lineament of her body. Just like he could read in her expression the fondness and interest that arose at his reaction to her touch.
There had always been a gravity to them. They were never close for long without falling in beside one another. Without returning to that closeness after whatever had come between them with loosed. Like now, they'd often sat just a little bit apart on the couch only to end up entwned with one another later.
There's a line, somewhere, between what she wants and what she's willing to do. It is harder and harder to define with clarity the longer he's in town. These things are only natural; they hadn't split because of any enmity or wrong-doing. They hadn't reunited because one of them sought out the other intentionally.
"But I'll probably be skittish for awhile," she tells him. Emily says it blankly. There's no overabundance of emotion here, even though it threatens to come through. This is the first offering, something to bridge the quiet, and all the questions he won't ask because they don't talk. Because it's usually enough to intimate and assume the other understands. "There's... there's things I haven't told you, about what happened in the Labyrinth."
In fact, Emily might not have told him about the Labyrinth at all.
She exhales, a little shakily. Regroups. Struggles. They're simple words, and don't truly get at the heart of what she's trying to convey, but taken in context of someone who knows her well, they're rather chilling.
"I had to -- It made me relive some things. Like what happened in Prague." She whets her lips a little. Swallows back some other sentence. "I'm --" She's going to tell him she's okay, but Emily stops short. "It's... a lot to deal with some nights."
And on others, it's just fine.
[Jarod] She hadn't told him about the Labyrinth. Not really. Or rather, not so specifically. And he hadn't asked, because...
...things were complicated.
Because things were different between them now. Because Emily was... involved. And he was not. (In more than one way.) Because he had Ilana, and she couldn't be exposed to things like this. Because he didn't want any more responsibility. Because he didn't want to... care. It was pragmatism. It was survival. Not just for himself any longer, but also for his daughter.
But he did care.
There was a twitch of muscle between his eyebrows, and almost (but not quite) imperceptible changes in the expression around his eyes. A quiet sadness. Something restrained but... acute. Somehow it made the blue of his irises seem more vibrant, though in actuality there wasn't any change.
"I understand," he said quietly. Almost a whisper. And he wanted to say more, but there didn't seem to be anything that he could say. Not honestly, anyway. Funny, how someone with such mastery of language could be struck silent.
"You don't... need to be alone with it, you know."
[Emily] Maybe this was why they didn't talk about things. There was too much gravity to the words. Emily spoke them, and they settled like river rock to the bottom of the conversation. They were weighty. They dragged everything down.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
She picks an imagined piece of lint off her sweater. Because it's imagined, this pursuit could take all night. Emily knows that it doesn't shade her hurt or sadness from him but maybe, if their eyes don't meet, maybe they could pretend that they weren't within arm's reach of one another and yet a million miles apart.
"I don't know," she says.
Her tea sits on the coffee table, still. It's not longer steaming. It's trending toward luke warm. She hasn't even sipped from it.
"I don't know how to be anything but alone with it." There's no deception in this; it's pained and sorrowful and honest, poignantly honest. "I should have died down there -- I know the rote he was casting, I can't work it myself yet, but I know it. It hurt, a lot more than any one thing has hurt before, but it should have been a lot worse. I got lucky."
She glanced up at the mantle above the fireplace, back to her mug, to the corner of the coffee table. Anywhere but him. Anywhere but Owen's chair.
"Jarod I don't -- How does that even work? Ashley lost Daiyu. Molly got kidnapped. Lots of people got hurt worse than I did and how do I tell them I'm lonely. That my problem is everyone who's walked away this summer, and all the hurt and fear that has nowhere to go -- there are real problems out there."
She drops her hands back into her lap.
"Not this."
And is finally quiet again.
[Jarod] I don't know how to be anything but alone with it.
Was there anything he could say to that? Anything that wouldn't make him feel as if he were choking on his own hypocrisy? The only honest answers he could have come up with were... not anything that he wanted to say to her right now. Emily did not need to hear that she was right. She didn't need more reminders that the world was a harsh and unforgiving place. She didn't need him to tell her that it never really got any better, or easier.
In the end, he just said... "You can tell me."
It was all he had to offer, and the only honest thing he could say. Though in truth, she didn't need to tell him that she was lonely. He knew that she was. He'd known that for a long time. But how much comfort was it, really, to hear that from someone who'd left her once already, and who was currently the source of a significant amount of frustration and turmoil in her life? Maybe not much.
All the same, he reached out and touched her arm, resting his hand on it as if he could steady her.
[Emily] Jarod wasn't the source of a lot of turmoil and frustration in Emily's life. He may have been a symptom. More likely, he was a (partially) innocent bystander caught up in the train wreck she'd made of her personal life this year.
She glances over when his words reach her, but Emily doesn't look away. There's a need there, but not for anything more than comfort and acceptance and compassion tonight. Her gaze flicks over to his hand, where it touches her arm, and then back to him. There's a quaver to the underlying firmament, to whatever has kept her stable (or near enough) this long. There's a question to it, the searching look in her eyes, and Emily does her best to voice it.
"Jarod, may I --" His name is soft, something valued, something precious. That much has not changed, regardless of the circumstance.
"Can I ..."
But these words aren't easy for either of them. It's all but impossible for her to shape them. They get stuck in her throat and have to be swallowed down.
Will you just...?
Instead of words, Emily lays her hand atop his where it rests on her arm. It's there for a moment, a long and thoughtful pause, the space of several heartbeats. And then, if he doesn't stop her, if he won't turn her away, she shifts to slide in next to him. Close enough for him to wrap his arm around her, for her to borrow on his solidity, his certainty. Because she has been lonely, and scared, and hollowed out for too long, and the last person that held her was Ashley.
Who then promptly drugged her sorry Singer ass and sent her to bed.
[Jarod] [This is a... how contained can I be during this situation? WP roll]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 5, 9, 10 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[Jarod] He wasn't going to drug her, or drag her to bed. But Emily wasn't hurt tonight - not physically, anyway. She just needed, like anyone would, to be held, and to feel safe for a few moments.
He could do that.
When she leaned into him, it was like instinct to put his arm around her and pull her in closer. It just happened, without him even having to think about it. Not many people could claim to instill that kind of reaction in him. It required a closeness and familiarity that he usually tried to avoid, but for all the time and distance they'd placed between each other, tonight it was as if he'd never left.
They fit together too easily. Emily molded against him, and his arm curled around her, and they were quiet but for the rhythm of intermingled heart-beats. Jarod rested his cheek against her head, and breathed in the smell of her hair. Softly, he kissed the edge of her ear.
They'd stay like this for a long time. Perhaps they would talk a little. Perhaps they'd simply hold each other in silence. Eventually, Emily would need to sleep, and Jarod would have to untangle himself and go home. Before leaving, though, he'd kneel down and place another kiss on her forehead.
"Good night."
