"So," Jack laughed, "When are you going to tell her?"

Josh's brown eyes glanced over his laptop for a second and he frowned, "What?"

"I'm not stupid Josh," Jack laughed as he rose and paced the edge of the carpet, "You like her."

"You're right," Josh didn't look up, "I do. She's a great friend."

Jack stood and put his hands in his pockets, eyeing the red backed cover of the book on the nightstand. It was an older copy, the binding seams torn and pages poking out from their cover in segmented rectangles. Stairs in millimeters up and down its spine.

The air is cold and Josh pulls his sweater a bit further down his arms, spinning his pen in his fingers as he worked. He has some song stuck in his head from one of the shows, can't seem to focus. What were the words to that song anyway?

 He was so excited to see Jack earlier, now there's just a dull headache and discomfort. Why did everyone assume there had to be something?

Why did he sometimes feel like there was?

He scrolled through the page on Steele Industry employees and his cursor paused at the name at the bottom of his screen. He scribbled it down on a sticky note and frowned. The name was real but all the files around it seemed faked, replicas of the others. 

"You reading this?" Jack asked.

"Yeah, why do you care?"

Jack flipped through the pages, "Not like you that's all. You don't like reading."

"I don't."

"Hm."

Josh shut his laptop with a snap and got up to briskly remove the book from Jacks hands. He carefully repositioned it on the table, "It's not mine. Mel left it."

"So we're calling her Mel now?"

"Jack come on, I barely know her okay? She wouldn't think that way about me anyway, I mean look at me."

The last was murmured more as a reprimand than a statement. A reminder to himself in the form of a quiet whisper that cracked his voice and made him a bit worried.

Worry as he wrapped his scarf around his neck and his heart sped a bit faster. He had to be sick or something, maybe he hadn't Cloroxed the counters enough this season. Maybe he'd been spending too much time out in the cold.

"She seems to know you pretty well."

Josh grabs his coat off the chair and didn't speak another word on the topic. They took a bright yellow taxi cab out to lunch, the back seat flooding with the strong smell of hand sanitizer. Whatever was going on, it was making his face burn.

"So Jack how's work?" A question he knows will have a indefinitely long and complicated answer. 

And he quickly deletes anything else. 

--------------

Josh remembers sitting atop the stairs at nine, knees pulled to his chest as he listened quietly to the conversations downstairs.

"She would have wanted him in a school. It's for his own good. He gets to learn."

"But when does he get to be child?" JJ laughed sadly tightening her ponytail and setting the knife beside a lopsided pile of chopped carrots, "Dad tormented him for years, he needs a break. A break from whatever half a life this family is. He's the only nine year old I've met who has borderline existential depression."

A silece came up between them, the waxy, half absorbed kind that carrot juice leaves on wooden cutting boards. The kind that stains if left unaddressed.

"You are eighteen," Her aunt hissed, "Violet's just a child she needs your attention-You think you can do this alone? You're in no circumstances to take him anyways."

JJs jaw clenched, her pale cheeks flushing red, "Then why don't you raise him?"

The whole room seems coated with grey in his memory. He supposes probability was it was sunny like most days in his old town. But now everything he recalls seems murky and dark. That is when he can remember it at all.

Silence in reply.

She made her way briskly to the back of the kitchen door, "Enough. I know enough. I think it's best you leave."

But the doubt was planted, the resentment, the regret.

Josh smiles at her from the stairwell, Violet on his shoulders. It's innocence, painful bliss that only lasts a second. Then it twists and contorts into pale worry. His stomach drops as if he's been thrown from a precipice, the air knocked from his lungs. 

JJ reaches for the phone, and looking away in shame she makes the call.

--------

He hung tightly with clammy hands to the large metal bar in the middle of the subway car.

"Sorry," he muttered to a bystander, checking his phone as a small alarm went off.

Another apointment canceled.

Another day gone to waste.

A change however small, she always seems to be in the back of his mind.

His eyes scan the small car as flashes of bright blue light shoot by, each person a mystery.

Every day is full of choices, inevitably other peoples affect him occasionally, but hers seem to constantly intercept his thoughts. A virus in the hardware, pop up ads in memories and advertisements in her laughter. Inescapable, the defects he now sees so clearly in himself. 

He gives up his seat to an older woman and bending down magically produces a quarter from behind small ears for a child. He hands his umbrella to an apprehensive passer by and walks home with his coat collar upturned. Mel likes the way the rain feels, climbing down skyscrapers, plummeting thousands of feet just to feel cold and brisk against her cheek. He's starting not to mind it too much himself. 

It used to plague him, and yet now in dreams and damp clothing there is a yielding of worry, a hunger for contentment he is willing to fight for. 

-----------

Josh agrees to lunch with Jack and Mel just as soon as the weather clears up. Begrudgingly of course, but at least he could trust that Jack would be tactful and not say anything out of turn. A small part of him admittedly, the scientific part, wondered what the outcome would be if Jack did mention something. If he looked up from his meal and told Mel bluntly his understanding if she would even be able to look at him the same afterward. It was best kept silent, run as a simulation in his mind.

The restaurant is small, framed by windows on two sides and pictures on the others. They sit at the booth furthest left per Josh request. He likes the angle it gives to the door, just in case he needs to survey or spy on the kitchen to make sure no one mishandles the food. After all somethings been making him queasy lately.

"I just don't get it, why would they remake the same documentary within a year?" Jack sips his drink, "True, medical history does have infinite advances and subtopics but I would think someone could compress it or split it into a series rather than just recovering the same information twice! Right Josh? Josh?"

Jack looked up from his phone and laughed a little.

They were quite the sight, giggling terribly as they smiled back with wide orange slice smiles. Josh mumbles something and Mel chokes a little.

"Josh come on this is a nice place..." Jack scolds.

As Josh gestures in reply his sleeve dips into his plate and he only laughs harder. Mel hastens to grab a napkin and get the ketchup off. He looks like he did when was younger, excited, aware and eager to talk. Jack has missed his chatter, the goofy smile that sweeps across his face and wrinkles the bridge of his nose. He remembers the twelve year old kid his parents had lectured him to watch after. Hearing about how when Josh was ten a broken plate would get him screamed at worse then Jack had ever experienced in his life. He remembers when his brother used to only nod or shake his head to communicate, scared to speak. He remembers the first time he saw half of a smile and his mother had practically bought out the candy from the store to celebrate. 

Mel takes a deep breath, her shoulders rising and falling as she recovers. Jack watches as she moves further to the right of Josh, fingers picking anxiously at the vinyl covering of the seat. It's the look she gets when Josh is busy talking, the way she can't exactly look him directly in the eye, the way at the same time she doesn't really ever glance anywhere else. Josh doesn't flinch when the waiter across the way drops a plate and the pieces ricochet across the floor, he's too busy talking.

And suddenly piece of Josh's personality that seemed to become cemeteries were blooming. Barren scapes of blank stares and command keys are concert lights and strumming chords. Oh what a tragedy Josh had always treated it- life was doomed from the start in his eyes. Though funnily enough he didn't say that much anymore. 

Late nights lamenting being mortal and fearing death had ceased, now he seemed so fixated on living. There they were talking about trips and landmarks and museums he wanted to see someday. And all the while Mel listening attentively, hanging off his every word. One of few who realized the privilege of his company and little insights. 

Jack sees it all, and as both grow quiet and pick at their food, he smiles knowingly to himself. A bit proud of the secret he now gets to guard.