“Shh,” She murmured gently as she felt a sob wrack his body, her gut wrenching painfully in response. Abby’s hand rubbed a gentle circle on his back, forcing herself to breathe steadily and not give into the desire to sob right along with him.
“It’s all right, Connor. Shh.” Her throat closed on the words and she grit her teeth, dismissing the urge to give in and let it out. She’d cried once today, wasn’t that enough? Not in front of Connor, she wouldn’t cry in front of Connor. When she was alone, curled up by herself… she’d let the tears fall then, because they were safer where nobody could see them. They didn’t mean as much then, if nobody else saw them but her.
She didn’t want them to mean anything. She wanted this to be over, done with, she wanted this to be done, just as she was telling Connor while lying through her teeth.
“I’ve think I stained your top.” He told her, and despite the tightness in her throat that she was hiding, she had to laugh. Was it possible to stain it even further than it already was?
“Join the likes of the raptors, the spinosaurus …” She trailed off. “Connor, I think this shirt could go in the Guisness Book of World Records by now.”
”Yeah, we’re all right now. Just think, we get to sleep in a real bed tonight.”
Abby was surprised to find that it didn’t raise any excitement in her. The thought of sleeping in a bed … it meant little to nothing at the moment. It was the people that she cared about – and some of them were missing. Some of them she’d never see again. Besides, she didn’t think she could sleep on the soft surface of a bed, despite how much she’d been longing for it during that year.
She wanted Rex back. She wanted Sid and Nancy. Abby stopped her eyes from sliding back over to Becker, from going over and asking if they were okay and where they were.
“Yeah,” She lied, glad that it sounded convincing enough. “And some tea. Maybe we can find you that cappuccino, yeah?” That she could do. She could be excited about coffee and tea. She couldn’t be excited about sleeping. About closing her eyes and seeing the past repeat itself, all over again.
”Can I move back into your flat for a bit?”
“Of course,” The words didn’t miss a beat. “The company flat, you mean. We won’t have …” Her words trailed and she restarted them. “We won’t have our old flat. It happens when you don’t pay rent for a year.”
The thought of going back … of finding the old flat and moving in, it was a pleasant one, but it was, of course, out of the question. It wasn’t hers anymore. Nothing was. This world was different and nothing she could do was going to change that.