here without you

38

"What are you doing?"

Jade has parked the car in their driveway. She tells me she'll be right back. Before I find anything to say, she opens the car door and gets out. I see her entering the house.

I sit in the car, still sort of mad, but also confused. What the hell is she doing? I don't know what I'm supposed to do, so I just sit there for a moment.

After a while I decide to leave the car to look for Jade, and I get out of it the same moment as Jade comes out of the house again. She's accompanied by her dog that runs up to me, barking.

"Hey Blue," I murmur, while giving him a pet.

"So you drove us to your house to get your dog?"

I look up at Jade, who shrugs.

"Obviously."

She gets down to put a leash on Blue. When she's finished, she puts it in my hand. She walks into the direction of some trees behind her house, turns around and says, "Well, are you coming?"

I walk over to her, with Blue following me.

"You are seriously going to take your dog for a walk right now?"

"We are going to take him for a walk."

I stare at her, not knowing what to say. Her blue eyes stare back at me, serious. There's nothing telling me whether she is mad at me. Then, Jade starts walking, so I just do too. I ask her where we're going.

"You'll see."

After that, neither of us says anything for a while, but I don't think I mind. The silence isn't bad, but rather comfortable; it helps me to calm down. I look over to Jade a few times, and I catch her looking back at me more than once. I don't know how long we've walked, when we finally reach a meadow. Jade removes Blue's leash, and he starts running around the field.

She takes my hand, like it's the most normal thing, and leads us to a tree which is standing by a river. We both sit down, our backs leaning against the tree, right in front of us the river. I hear the water flowing, and it feels oddly calming.

"This is where I like to go when I need some time alone," Jade says.

"It's a really lovely place."

"Yeah, it is. In fact, it's my favourite one. I've been planning to show it to you, and even though I wasn't thinking of taking you here today, I'm glad I did. It can be quite calming, which I figured you would need right now."

I turn my head to her. I've feared she'd be mad at me for what I said earlier to her, but it doesn't seem like she is. Still, the feeling of guiltiness hasn't left me.

"Jade?" She looks at me. "I'm sorry about what I said. I know you were trying to help me, and I shouldn't have acted like that. It was just really..." I pause, trying to find the right words which could describe my behaviour.

"... really understandable," she says.

What?

"Look, I won't pretend that what you said didn't bother me at all. You screaming at me was... Well, it wasn't exactly nice, but... It's okay, Roze. We all freak out once in a while, and I know you didn't mean to."

She waits for me to say something. It takes a while before I do because her words don't make sense to me.

"So you forgive me?"