Digging up old memories

Chapter 4

Lisbon's POV

It was mid-afternoon, and Lisbon was pretending to read the info on her screen, so she could let her thoughts drift. Marcus was putting pressure on her to decide if she was going to go to D.C. with him and she was stonewalling him. She'd only admitted it to herself recently that the reason she was hesitating was because she was waiting for Jane to say something... anything... about the way things were between them since he'd been back, but he hadn't. And she didn't even know what she wanted him to say anyway.

Everything had changed between them... gone was the easy banter and comfortable friendship she'd been expecting and in its place was tension and a knot in her stomach – not the 'what has he done, I'm going to get fired' feeling because he was not her responsibility anymore... so what was it? Did he feel the change too? If he did, he didn't show it.

She scrolled the page up so no one would notice that she wasn't actually reading the case report. Why did it change? That's what she couldn't figure out. The feeling had taken her completely by surprise... For two years she'd been happy and content reading Jane's letters, knowing he was safe and doing well. All the stress of working at the CBI with him was gone and she had felt peaceful that he had finally caught Red John and avenged his family. She'd been bored in her new job – but she'd needed that to recover from watching her career go up in flames, the stress of the Red John and Blake Association cases and the shocking turn of events with the CBI being run by a crooked director.

Her memory jumped to eight months ago when she showed up in that FBI conference room and they'd told her they had Jane – she'd felt happy at the thought of seeing an old friend and partner and worried that they'd found him and what that would mean for him.

When he walked into the room her feelings for him had overwhelmed her and they were not what she'd been expecting. When they'd hugged, she strangely hadn't wanted to let him go. She'd felt all tingly and flush and she had the overwhelming urge to just stare at him, but she couldn't because Abbott had come into the room. And that feeling was still the prevailing one that she had around her old partner... and that's why she was so damn tired these days...

Tired of feeling taunt like a piano wire around him...

Tired of thinking about why she had that feeling...

Tired of wondering about what Jane was thinking and feeling...

Tired of trying to figure out why she hadn't accepted her dream job yet and

Tired of analyzing her relationship with Marcus because of her new feelings for Jane.

He'd essentially turned her life upside down again and he seemed pretty much unaffected, which made her want to scream at him sometimes or cry with the frustration of it all.