I Will Follow You Into the Dark

CHAPTER 20

So........ this gives you part of what you were looking for..........part--but an important part.............

"Hey," Jen said sitting back down on the sofa next to Derek.

"Sorry about your date," he said quietly.

"We're going out tomorrow," Jen replied.

"Good," Derek murmured.

The pair sat there in silence for quite a while.

"OK, I'm all ears," Jen finally said, but Derek didn't say anything in return. He looked up at her and then put his head back down in his hands and began sobbing. She put one hand on his forearm and wound her other one around his shoulders. She just held him while he let his grief out. His body was shaking from the intensity of his emotion. Jen had never seen him quite this despondent.

He finally stopped crying, but he still was unable to speak. So they just sat a while longer like that. Finally, Jen tried to nudge him again to talk about what was upsetting him.

"Derek, I could have left you here moping and gone out on my date and been back by now. Are you going to talk to me?"

He looked up at her slowly with an expression of complete hopelessness on his face. Jen wasn't sure whether to push him to talk or just to be there for him. "I'm going to go change......," she said getting up and going into her room to give him more time to compose himself.



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Jen took her time changing clothes. She smiled thinking about Patrick as she pulled on the least attractive comfy clothes she could find. She pulled her hair up into a ponytail and sat on the bed twiddling her thumbs a while to give him more time to think. When she couldn't stand the waiting any longer, she opened the door and returned to the den. She sat on the sofa and watched Derek. He had begun pacing around the room, and she knew that he needed to "walk" through what he needed to say before vocalizing it.

After about 15 minutes, he stopped pacing and turned toward her. They'd gone through this routine before. Jen knew that she had to get him to say something before he started pacing again. "OK. Say something. Now!"

He looked at her with pain and grief and fear written all over his face. He swallowed hard and looked at Jen with such a pitiful, pleading expression that she felt tears leap to her eyes.

"Her name is Meredith."

Jen just sat there waiting for him to say something else.

"You asked me who I loved when we argued a few months ago," he said sadly. "Her name is Meredith."