Chapter 10 Fifty-Three Days, One Touch
The laptop screen flickered, then steadied.
Marlene's breath caught in her throat. She'd been staring at the loading icon for three minutes—a spinning circle that had become the center of her universe since Gideon's first email had arrived six weeks after he'd left. The one that said I can call. Friday. 2100 your time. If you want.
She'd replied within thirty seconds. I want.
Now it was Friday. 8:58 p.m. The diner shift had dragged, every customer a blur, every coffee she poured a countdown to this moment.
Her laptop was propped on the kitchen table, angled so the camera wouldn't catch the pile of unopened hardware store invoices her father had dropped off that morning.
The apartment was quiet. Mrs. Calloway's television had clicked off at eight—she'd been going to bed earlier lately, Marlene had noticed.
Or maybe time was just moving strangely now.
The spinning circle vanished.
Gideon's face filled the screen.
Marlene's hand flew to her mouth. She hadn't expected—she didn't know what she'd expected. The same face, but different. Thinner. The hollows under his eyes deeper, the scar on his collarbone hidden beneath a regulation t-shirt. Brown eyes. Still brown. Still deep enough to fall into.
"Marlene."
His voice cracked on her name. The connection lagged—a half-second delay between the movement of his lips and the sound reaching her—and the effect was disorienting, like watching someone speak underwater. But it was him. It was him.
"Gideon." She leaned closer to the screen, wishing she could reach through it. "You look tired."
"You look—" He stopped. Swallowed. The camera wasn't good enough to show the details, but she saw his jaw working anyway. "You look like home."
Her throat tightened. "That's a dangerous thing to say to a girl who's been counting the days."
"How many?"
"Fifty-three." She didn't have to calculate. "Fifty-three days since you walked out of this apartment."
The connection hiccuped. His image froze for a fraction of a second, then smoothed.
He was sitting somewhere small—a bunk, maybe, or a temporary quarters.
Blank wall behind him. Harsh fluorescent light.
No windows. She catalogued the details the way he'd catalogued her coffee-making.
Small things were the only things that mattered.
"Fifty-three days," he repeated. "Feels longer. Feels shorter. Time's strange here."
"Where's here?"
"You know I can't—"
"I know." She waved a hand. "Operational security. I remember. I just wanted to hear your voice say something else."
His almost-smile flickered. There and gone. "You're wearing your work shirt."
She glanced down. The Hattie's Diner polo, still stained with coffee from the lunch rush. "Didn't have time to change. Got off at seven. Wanted to be here when you called."
"You could've been late. I would've waited."
"I know. I didn't want to miss a single minute."
The words hung in the digital silence. Fifty-three days. The dog tags he'd given her were around her neck—she'd put them on the morning after he left and hadn't taken them off since. They clinked against her collarbone when she shifted in her chair, and she saw his eyes track the movement.
"You're wearing them," he said.
"Every day."
Something shifted in his expression. Not the soldier. Not the man who'd stood in her doorway with a packed duffel and a set jaw. The other one. The one who'd kissed her vertebrae and said he wasn't used to being seen.
"Can you hold them up?" His voice was rougher now. "I want to see."
Marlene lifted the chain over her head. Dangled the dog tags in front of the camera. The embossed letters caught the light from her kitchen fixture—GIDEON, MARCUS T.—and she watched him watch them, his eyes fixed on the small metal rectangles like they were a lifeline.
"That's the first time I've seen them since I gave them to you," he said quietly.
"How does it feel?"
"Like they're where they belong."
She slipped the chain back over her head.
The tags settled against her sternum, cool even through her shirt.
His eyes followed the movement, and she felt the weight of his gaze through the screen—not quite the same as being in the room with him, but close.
Closer than she'd felt to anyone in fifty-three days.
"I hate this," she said. "The screen. The lag. The fact that I can't touch you."
"I know." He shifted on his bunk, and the camera angle wobbled. "I've been imagining it. Touching you. Every night. It's the only thing that gets me to sleep."
Heat bloomed in her chest. Spread downward. "Gideon—"
"Too much?"
"No. Not enough." She leaned closer to the laptop, her elbows on the table. "Tell me what you imagine."
His breath caught. She heard it through the speakers—a sharp inhale, half static, half surprise.
For a long moment he didn't speak. Then his expression shifted again, and she recognized it now.
The hunger. The same look he'd worn in the diner, in the hallway, in her bedroom with the streetlamp painting him gold.
"You," he said. "In that bed. The one with the unmade sheets and the zigzag crack on the ceiling. I imagine you lying there in the orange light, waiting for me."
"I am. Every night."
"I imagine starting at your ankles." His voice had dropped. Lower. Slower. "The way I did that first night. Kissing up your calves. The backs of your knees. The inside of your thighs."
Her legs pressed together under the table. "Then what?"
"Then I imagine you telling me to hurry up." That almost-smile again, darker this time. "And I imagine refusing."
Marlene's breathing had shallowed. She was aware of the empty apartment around her—the radiator silent for once, Mrs. Calloway long asleep, no footsteps on the stairs. Just her and the screen and Gideon's voice, rough and familiar, painting pictures she'd been starving for.
"Where are you right now?" she asked. "Are you alone?"
A pause. "Yes."
"Can you—" She hesitated. The boldness she'd found that first night felt rustier now, harder to access. But his eyes were on her, and his breathing had changed, and she was so tired of being careful. "Can you touch yourself? While I watch?"
Gideon's jaw tightened. The camera resolution wasn't good enough to show the flush creeping up his neck, but she knew it was there. She'd mapped that neck with her mouth. She remembered every inch.
"Marlene." Her name was a warning. Or a plea.
"I want to see you." She threw the words back at him—the same ones he'd said to her in the diner, a lifetime ago. "I've been imagining it too. Every night. Your hands. Your mouth. The sounds you make when you're close."
He exhaled. A long, unsteady breath that crackled through the speakers. "This connection isn't secure."
"I don't care."
"You should."
"Gideon." She waited until his eyes met hers through the screen.
"I have spent fifty-three days caring about everything. My father's store. The diner. Whether I should stay in Grady or finally leave for California. Whether you'll come back. Whether you'll want to. I am exhausted from caring. Right now, in this moment, I want one thing that isn't careful.
I want you."
The silence stretched. Then—
"Stand up," he said.
She did. Her chair scraped back, and she stood in her small kitchenette, the laptop on the table, the camera angled up at her. She was wearing her work polo and jeans and the dog tags and nothing else special. She'd never felt more exposed.
"Take off your shirt."
Marlene's fingers found the hem. Pulled it up and over her head. The diner polo joined the pile of unopened invoices on the table, and she stood there in her bra—plain black cotton, a replacement for the one he'd unclasped on that first night. The dog tags gleamed against her sternum.
Gideon's breath hissed through the speakers. "You're beautiful."
"You said that before."
"It's still true." He shifted, and she heard fabric rustling—the sound of him repositioning, maybe, or the sound of more. She couldn't tell through the lag. "Touch yourself. Your collarbone first. Where the tags are."
Her fingers found the metal. Traced the embossed letters. Then moved lower, following the path his mouth had taken—the hollow of her throat, the plane of her sternum, the swell of her breast above the lace.
"Like this?" she asked.
"Slower."
She slowed. Her fingers traced circles over the fabric of her bra, and she watched his face on the screen—watched his pupils darken even through the low resolution, watched his lips part.
The lag made every expression last a fraction too long, and she found herself holding her breath between his reactions.
"Your turn," she said. "Show me."
Another pause. Then the camera angle shifted—he must have been using a laptop too, propped on something—and she saw his hand. Just his hand, resting on his thigh, the familiar calluses and scars. Then his fingers moved to the waistband of his pants.
"We're doing this," he said. Not a question.
"We're doing this."
His hand slid beneath the fabric. She couldn't see details—the camera cut off at his chest—but she could see his arm moving, could see the tension in his shoulders, could hear the change in his breathing. Her own hand pressed harder against her breast, and she made a small sound without meaning to.
"Marlene." Her name was strangled. "Tell me what you're doing."
"Thinking about your mouth." Her fingers found the clasp of her bra.
Released it. The straps slid down her shoulders, and she let the fabric fall.
The kitchen air was cool against her bare skin, and her nipples tightened, and she heard Gideon's sharp inhale through the speakers.
"Thinking about the way you kissed me in the diner. The way you pressed me against the wall. The way you felt inside me."
His arm moved faster. She watched the rhythm of it, the way his shoulder flexed, the way his head fell back against the blank wall behind him.
"I think about that every night," he said. His voice was wrecked now, all pretense of control gone. "The way you said my name. The way you scratched my back. The way you looked at me after—like I was something worth coming home to."
"You are." Her hand slid lower, past her stomach, to the button of her jeans. "You are worth coming home to. I'm wearing your name around my neck. I've been waiting fifty-three days. I'll wait fifty-three more. I'll wait as long as it takes."
"God." The word was half groan, half prayer. "I'm close—"
"Look at me."
His eyes found hers through the screen. Brown. Deep brown. Desperate and devoted and a thousand miles away.
"Come back," she said. "That's not a request."
Her hand pressed where she ached most—still through denim, still not enough—and she watched his face change, watched the control slip, watched his mouth open on a sound that the speakers couldn't fully capture.
His arm stilled. His shoulders shuddered.
And Marlene kept her eyes open, kept watching, kept her hand pressed against the ache he couldn't reach.
For a long moment, neither spoke.
The radiator clicked on. The connection crackled. Gideon's breathing slowly steadied, and he shifted on his bunk, and the camera angle wobbled again. When he looked back at the screen, his eyes were wet.
"Fifty-three days," he said. "I don't know how many more."
"Then I'll keep counting for both of us."
The almost-smile returned. Fainter now. Exhausted and tender and hers.
"I love you," he said.
The words landed like a stone in still water. She hadn't expected them—hadn't known she'd been waiting for them until they came. Her hand stilled against her jeans. Her heart hammered against the dog tags.
"I love you too," she said. "I've loved you since you walked into my diner and didn't look away when I said I wanted to leave."
"I know."
"Then why did it take you fifty-three days to say it?"
"Because I'm a coward." His voice was softer now, the post-release tenderness creeping in. "Because I was afraid if I said it, it would make leaving harder."
"Did it?"
"No." His eyes met hers. "It made it easier. Knowing I have somewhere to come back to."
Marlene pressed her palm flat against the laptop screen. Gideon mirrored the gesture on his end—she saw his hand fill the frame, the calluses and scars she'd traced a thousand times in memory.
The screen was cold.
But somewhere, on the other side of the world, his palm was pressing back.