Jess is finally going! That New Zealand holiday is at its dawn, and all she can think of is landscapes, walks and adventures. But what she does not expect to find, is what is waiting around the corner - someone.
Someone who will turn her holiday up...
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Jess strode out the door the next day much more purposefully than she was feeling.
Every waking moment since her walk the day before, had been full of heavy, weighty, miserable confusion. As she walked now, she knew this was her chance to force it all away; empty her head of the thicket and fog that seemed to have filled it, and loosen that almost painfully tight knot in her chest.
Despite this, and despite the pace with which she was walking, Jess could not help but dread, just a little, meeting James again.
She didn't even notice the clear blue sky and pleasant breeze, as she battled against the thoughts that were trying so hard to force their way past her defences, and into her mind. She simply did not want to believe them - to entertain - those little bubbles of doubt, floating around
Obi was strolling beside her, moving a lot slower than he usually did.
Jess would have noticed his slackened pace, and the way he would glance up at her every few minutes, as though knowing she needed him to be there for her, but not knowing how to go about it.
She probably would have, if she had known all this, been rather concerned for her four-legged friend. Chances are she would have been glancing down at him as often as he was, up at her, trying to urge him to speed up and chase something.
But, as it was, all she seemed to be able to see was James's back, retreating from her; his pale, frowning face and wide eyes of the day before; and the tone of his voice, of his 'oh's of reply, on the day all this had begun...
All at once, as the image of James's frowning features swam before, she felt her barricades begin to falter, allowing the notions she so dreaded to begin to seep in, and make themselves known. To begin to plant themselves, forcing her to recognise them, acknowledge them and sink into the melancholy they reeked of-
Obi Wan was tugging on the leash.
Jess raised herself from her stupor to find that they were a few houses from the streamside path. And that she knew what Obi was straining to get to.
She could hear footsteps across the street.
Turning her head so fast she almost got a crick in her neck, yet fearing what might greet her eyes, she glanced over. There was the sight she had both been dreading and hoping for, alternatively, and in equal measure, for the past day.
She opened her mouth, willing words to come; experiencing a feeling she had never really felt before.
The feeling when you are about to say something, and want, almost with every power of your being, to say it, and yet find yourself unable to. That instance where you find yourself hesitating, on the brink of speech, unsure whether to push the words out.
In that moment of strange, lingering hesitation, Jess's eyes fixed upon her friend and she perceived, fleetingly, a turn of the head. A flicker of his eyes. The faint sense that he knew she was there; that he had seen her.
