Hereafter

Instinctively, I took a quick step back.

He stopped and frowned.

“Uh … sorry. Too enthusiastic?”

God, no. I just wasn’t ready for this to end before it starts.

“No,” I said aloud. “Just … unexpected.”

He laughed. “Sorry. I probably looked like a golden retriever or something. Big, dumb dog. But this was a little unexpected too, you know?”

“How so?”

“You showed up. Unexpectedly.” He half smiled, and the ghost of a dimple tugged at his cheek.

I found myself smiling back a little too. “I aim to please.”

“Then mission accomplished.”

“Oh.”

Brilliant, Amelia, I screamed in my head. Death had obviously not improved my vocabulary. Joshua’s half smile crept a little farther upward, possibly a sign of his amusement at the flustered look on my face.

Unfortunately, our banter wasn’t going to last forever. He swept one hand back to the table like a maître d’. “A quiet park bench, as promised?”

I sighed. No putting this off any longer, so it seemed. “Yeah, I guess it’s time.”

Joshua’s eyebrows knit together as I strode past him to the bench.

“Look,” he said, “I’m not going to conduct the Spanish Inquisition or anything.”

“I know,” I said flatly.

I sat down, feeling the pressure of the bench but not really the bench itself, and folded my hands in my lap. Joshua turned toward me but made no move to sit. I stared down at my lap and tried to ready myself for the inevitable ending. But there was something I needed to know first.

“Before we get into explanations, can I ask you a question?”

“Anything.”

I looked up to see him shove his hands into the pockets of his jeans and tilt his head to one side. Judging by his stance, he was probably more than a little bewildered by my behavior, so I asked my question carefully.

“Did you … intentionally drive off the bridge?”

“Ha.” He barked out a sort of laugh. “Not exactly.”

It was odd, but I thought he sounded almost embarrassed. I too tilted my head and raised one eyebrow, encouraging him to continue. He laughed again, a little sheepishly, and a flattering blush spread across his cheekbones.

“The only thing I did intentionally was take a stupid shortcut.”

I kept my eyebrow raised, so Joshua continued.

“I was following a bunch of my friends to a party. For some crazy reason I decided to take a shortcut across High Bridge Road by myself. I have no idea why I did. My family practically forbids me to drive over the bridge since it’s such a death trap. Anyway, right before I crossed on to High Bridge, I thought I saw something in the river. I was distracted; and when I looked back at the road, I saw something dart out at me—a deer or a bobcat, maybe; it looked so black, I couldn’t be sure. I swerved to miss it and then my car spun out across the bridge. I must have hit my head on the steering wheel, because I really don’t remember any part of the crash after that. Thank God I’d rolled down the windows. I guess that’s how I got out of the car before I sank with it.”

“And your friends got there so fast because …?”

He gave an embarrassed shrug. “Because I … um … had the beer in my car.”

As he finished, I exhaled slowly. I was grateful that at least one of my theories behind our interaction was wrong: suicide wasn’t our commonality; it was only our mutual deaths, however brief his had been.

“Would it be weird, Joshua, if I said I’m glad?”

“Why, because I like beer?”

I smiled slightly. “No, because you didn’t mean to drive off the bridge.”

He laughed. “Then that’s not weird at all. I wouldn’t exactly choose High Bridge for my exit scene, you know?”

I gasped.

Seeing my strange reaction, he spoke quickly, almost apologetically. “Sorry. I’m … Look, I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m not trying to upset you or anything. I guess … I mean … you really don’t have to do this. To tell me anything, that is.”

“But I do,” I said, unable to keep the misery out of my voice. “I don’t really think I have a choice, if I ever want to talk to you again. If you’ll even want to talk to me, afterward.”

“Why wouldn’t I want to talk to you?”

His gentle tone, and the implication in his words, made me meet his gaze. With his strange blue eyes locked onto mine, I felt the little ache ignite again in my chest.

“You won’t want to talk to me because I’m going to tell you the truth.”

“And the truth will make me … what? Decide to shun you?” He grinned and raised one eyebrow, obviously skeptical.

“Something like that,” I murmured.

“I find that hard to believe,” he said as he momentarily broke our eye contact to walk over to the bench and finally sit beside me.

“Actually, you’re probably going to find what I’m about to tell you hard to believe. But it’s the truth.”

He clasped his hands and leaned closer to me, placing his elbows on his knees before raising his eyes back to mine.

“Good. I want to hear the truth, Amelia.”

Inexplicably, my breath quickened. A pulse, one I knew I didn’t have, began to race through my arms and along my neck. I could swear I felt heat from the nearness of his body—heat that threatened to turn into a blush on my unblushable cheeks. The kind of heat that could make me do or say just about anything. Words started to fall from my mouth almost before I thought of them.

“You said you saw me under the water, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re the only person who saw me at all?”