Wrong Time (22 page)

“Don’t worry. I just need someone to
talk to,” Lee said.

Trish sat up in her bed and cut the
television off.

“What’s going on?”

“I’m just a little worried is all. I’m
not used to all this, and to be honest, I don’t know how I’m going to fair if I
actually have to fight.”

“You’re smart. You aren’t going to have
to fight. Leave the fighting to people like me,” Trish said.

“See, that’s the problem. If you’re out
there, then there’s no way that I’m not going to be out there. Above all else,
I’m worried that something might happen to you. We haven’t known each other
long, but I don’t think I could live with myself if I just stood on the
sidelines while you did all the heavy lifting.”

Trish motioned for him to come over and
sit by her.

“I promise you that I’m going to be
fine if you want to sit this one out,” Trish said.

“If you’re there, then I will be too. I
mean it.”

“All right, let’s make a promise to
each other. I’ll watch your back, and you can watch mine. With us working as a
team, I know that we’ll both be fine. Here, do you want to stay with me tonight?”
Trish asked while pulling the covers back.

Lee slid into bed with her, and the two
talked for a long while until Trish began to yawn. Lee kissed her softly.

“Well, good night, sweet girl,” Lee
said and started to get up.

“You can sleep in here,” Trish said as
she tugged at him.

Lee lay back down, and the two slept peacefully.

* * * * *

That night at Sam and Nathan’s place,
they were getting into bed when Nathan just had to ask.

“So do I look that bad without hair?”

Sam didn’t want to lie, but she didn’t
exactly love the idea of telling the truth either. She just sat there frozen.

“It’s okay. Just tell me the truth.”
 

“You look bald. Bald is rarely good,”
Sam said.

“I knew it. I look like a middle aged
bald man, while you, meanwhile, look like a hot librarian.”

“Hot librarian, huh? Oh, I see. You
like the way I look now better than the way I looked before.”
 

“No, of course not. Nothing compares to
the way you normally look, but you’re still very beautiful,” Nathan said.

“Thanks, and even if baldness doesn’t
suit you, at least you know that I’ll still love you if you go bald one day,”
Sam said and laughed.

“All right, enough making fun of the
bald guy, birthday girl,” Nathan said and then planted a playful kiss on her
lips.

“Good night, Nathan,” Sam said as she
turned the lights off.

Nathan wrapped his arms around her and
pulled her close.

“Good night, and do us both a favor
tomorrow. Don’t ask the flight attendant about any clubs we can join.”

“And here I was actually thinking about
joining the club,” Sam said.

“Really?” Nathan asked in excitement.

“No, of course not. Now go to sleep,
Mr. Clean,” she said while smiling.

Chapter 21

The next morning, everyone met at the
airport.

“Here you are, Mr. and Mrs. Brown,”
Jason said while handing Nathan and Sam their new passports.

“Brown, really?” Nathan said in
objection.

Nathan once had a professor with the
last name Brown, and let’s just say that he didn’t like the man very much. Mr.
Brown had once called one of Nathan’s papers shallow and pedantic.

“Everyone else always liked my papers,
and if it was so bad, then why did you still give me an A?” Nathan said quietly.

“What was that?” Sam asked in complete confusion.

“Oh, nothing.”

As they inspected the two passports,
they found that they would be Steve and Rachel Brown.

“Rachel? I don’t really think that I
look like a Rachel,” Sam said.

“Oh, give me a break, guys. I just had
to make something up. What does it matter?” Jason asked.

“Fine, come on, Rachel,” Nathan said
and smiled.

“Whatever you say, Steve,” Sam
responded and returned a smile of her own.
 

They all went through the checkpoints
and eventually made their way onto the plane. Trish and Lee, Nathan and Sam, Michael
and Jess, Jason and Burt, and Zane and Dan sat together in pairs before Michael
made a strange request. He got out of his seat after a few minutes into the
flight and walked over to where Nathan and Sam were sitting.

“Hey, can we switch seats for a little
while? I want to talk to Sam,” Michael said.

Nathan thought the request was a bit
strange. Michael and Sam had never really been close, but he complied.

“Sure, why not,” Nathan said and walked
over to where Jess was and sat down.

“So what’s the deal with us switching
seats?” Nathan asked Jess.

“Michael said that he thought he should
try to get to know Sam a lot better if you and she were going to be together.”
 

After hearing Jess’s explanation, it
occurred to Nathan that he didn’t really know very much about Jess, and Michael
at least wanted to be close to her.

“Well, what about you? I don’t know a
whole lot about you. It’s obvious that you and Michael are really close, so
maybe we should get better acquainted.”

“I don’t know how close Michael and I
are or aren’t. Our relationship is one that’s a little hard to define, but what
do you want to know?”

“How did you and Michael meet each
other?”

“We met in the hospital. I was his
nurse.”

“Why was he in the hospital?”

“I really don’t think I should answer
that. I mean, I don’t know if he would get mad if I did. It’s kind of sensitive
information.”

Nathan understood that she didn’t want
to say why Michael was in the hospital, but it still didn’t stop him from
wondering what could have put Michael in the hospital that was so sensitive. He
just sat there thinking for a minute before his train of thought was
interrupted.

“What about you? I know that you and
Michael are good friends, but where’s the beginning to that story?” Jess asked.

“I knew him when we were kids, but we
were never really close until we were teenagers. There was this girl that I
started talking to who he was also talking to at the time. When the dust
settled, neither one of us got the girl. Instead, we found that she wasn’t worth
our time. The first few times he came over to my house, I thought he was kind
of weird. He really didn’t have many friends, so I felt bad for him. I kept
inviting him over, and the more we were around each other, the more I understood
him. He wasn’t weird. He was just really out of practice when it came to
talking to people. I haven’t been able to get rid of him since then,” Nathan
said.

“So my turn. Michael is obviously crazy
about you, even if he doesn’t always know how to show it. How do you feel about
him?” Nathan asked.

“Wow! You aren’t pulling any punches,
are you?” Jess asked.

“I just want to know what he’s in for.”

“Well, I do like Michael. As a friend,
and to some extent, as more than that, but I don’t know if things will ever
quite work out for us.”

“What do you mean?”

“Until recently, Michael has always
been this helpless guy who I had to help. I love him, but I don’t know if I’m
ever going to be able to view him in the way that a woman should be able to
view the man she’s with. Do you know what I mean?”

“Right now, he’s like an injured puppy
dog to you, right?”

“Yeah, kind of.”
 

“Well, just give him a little longer,
and keep an open mind with him. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned about
Michael throughout our friendship, it’s that he’s capable of more than you or
he even knows. Do me a favor, though. If things don’t work out, let him down
easy.”

“Are you worried that he won’t be able
to handle it if things don’t work out between us?”

“No, he’ll be fine. Michael is stronger
than you know. I’m just asking because, as his friend, I don’t want to see him hurt
any more than he has to be.”

Jess nodded. For the first time, she
was starting to see why Michael was so trusting of Nathan.

“Michael is lucky to have a friend like
you,” Jess said.

“He’s lucky to have you, too, and I
have a feeling that by the end of all this, you’ll be lucky to have him, also,”
Nathan said.

Michael had just sat down by Sam, and
she was a little curious as to why he would want to sit by her. She was also
nervous, considering the fact that she didn’t really know Michael very well.

“I wanted to talk to you about
something,” Michael said.

“What is it?” Sam asked.

“I’ve noticed that you and Nathan are
getting really close, really fast. He’s very serious about you, and that’s kind
of a big deal for him. I have never seen him serious about anyone or anything before.
How serious are you about him?”

There it was; the question that she
didn’t want to be asked. Sure, she was crazy about Nathan, but she still didn’t
know how to properly describe those feelings. She wasn’t always comfortable
talking about her feelings with Nathan, much less with Michael.

“I… uh, don’t know,” Sam said.

“What do you mean, you don’t know? Look,
I’m just going to tell you straight out. Nathan is the best guy you’ll ever
find. He’s caring, and you won’t find anyone who is smarter than him. He can
literally apply himself to just about anything. How could you not be sure about
him?”

Sam sat there in silence for a moment.
If Michael had only known about her past experiences, then he probably would
have understood why she was so hesitant, but he didn’t know, so he viewed her
indecision as something that would eventually hurt Nathan. After seeing that
Sam wasn’t going to answer him and that she was growing uncomfortable, Michael
spoke up.

“Hey, I’m sorry. If you aren’t sure,
then you aren’t sure. I just don’t want you to hurt Nathan. He looks like he
can adjust to anything, but you’re the first thing I’ve seen that might
actually be able to break him. Don’t do that to him.”

Sam understood his inquiry a little
more. Michael was only making sure that his friend wasn’t setting himself up
for a fall.

“I would never hurt Nathan. I’m just
not good at talking about what I do feel or don’t feel. I’m with Nathan, and I
plan to be with him. I guess what I’m saying is that you have nothing to worry
about.”

“Okay. That’s a relief.”

“So while you’re here, I might have a
few questions for you. For starters, what was Nathan like when he was younger?”
Sam asked.
  

“He was pretty much like he is now,”
Michael said for lack of anything better to say.

“Oh, come on. You have to tell me more
than that. Is there anything particularly interesting about him that I should
watch out for?”

“Well, let’s see. He has a tattoo in an
area that shall remain nameless, he’s obsessed with some football team in
Wisconsin, he can’t sing or dance, and you should probably never let him go around
someone named Holly Daniels,” Michael said.

Sam was curious about the tattoo and
everything, but one thing in particular stood out to her.

“Who is this Holly person?”

“I’ve never seen him look at anyone
like he looks at you besides Holly. They’ve been friends for a long time, and
until Nathan met you, he really wanted their relationship to be a lot more than
it was. You have nothing to worry about, considering the fact that he may never
get to go home again, but if the day ever comes that we do all go back home, I
would make sure that he kept his distance from that one.”

Sam thanked him for the heads up, but
she wished that he hadn’t even told her about this other person. If Michael
would be worried about Nathan even seeing this girl again, then how close were
she and Nathan really? What am I thinking? I can’t even tell one of his friends
that I love him. Who am I too judge where he’s at right now, Sam wondered.

Lee and Trish had been sitting one row
behind Michael and Sam, and they were listening to the whole conversation.

“I can’t believe that he just told her
about the tattoo and worst of all about Holly,” Lee said.

“Tattoo?” Trish asked.

Yeah, he has a little tattoo on his
right butt cheek.”

“How do you know about it?”

“Well, I was with him when he got it,
and let’s just say that neither of us were in our right minds when we got the
tattoos.”

“Tattoos, as in a plural form?” Trish
asked in surprise.

“I’ve said enough. Let’s talk about
something else,” Lee said and quickly looked away.

“What were the tattoos of? Come on. It
can’t be that embarrassing.”

“Do you promise that you won’t laugh at
me?”

“I promise.”

“We were really drunk, and we did a
search on the internet for different Chinese symbols. After a while, we both
figured out two symbols that each of us wanted. Sadly, we didn’t look up the
meaning of the two symbols.”

“You didn’t see what they meant? Why
wouldn’t you have seen what they meant?”

“I told you that we were messed up. I
don’t know why the guy at the tattoo shop even agreed to do the tattoos for
us.”

“Well, what did the symbols mean?”

“Nathan’s was the symbol for peace, but
mine . . . mine was a symbol for soy sauce.”

“Soy sauce?” Trish asked in surprise.

“Yes, the Chinese symbol for soy sauce
is on my ass.”

Trish burst into laughter.

“I thought you said you wouldn’t laugh
at me,” Lee said.

 
“Oh, come on. How would I not laugh at
that? Maybe I should talk to Michael about your life sometime. Who knows what
else I may find out?”

“I don’t think that would be a good
idea,” Lee said nervously.

Meanwhile, further back in the plane,
Burt was telling Jason how he single handedly took down the facility in
Atlanta.

“When I first got there, a man didn’t
want to accept the load, so I showed a little muscle and told him that he
wouldn’t like to see how I was with people who wasted my time,” Burt said
menacingly.

“Muscle, what muscle?” Jason asked.

“Just let me finish the story. Then I
went outside and backed the truck up to the dock in a single try. Once the
trailer was unloaded, I pulled away from the facility and parked a little
distance away and watched as the building exploded. As it burned, I smoked a
celebratory cigarette for a job well done. I’ll be honest, though. The screams
from the building still haunt me in my dreams to this day. You think you want
to be an agent like me, but I’m telling you that the life of a stone cold killer
comes at a price.”

“Burt, the place didn’t explode until
late that night. Did any of that stuff happen at all?”

“No, the truth is that I begged the
woman at the front desk to accept the load, it took me thirty minutes to back
up, and the only recurring nightmares I have seem to have something to do with
a blue monster that is always trying to steal my cookies, but I think when we
tell the story, we should use my version,” Burt said.

Jason laughed hysterically.

“Burt, I don’t know what I’m going to
do with you.”

“Hey now, enough with the Burt stuff. I
am now Agent Jones to you,” Burt said.

Jason only laughed. How did this guy
get to work in the field before me, Jason wondered and shook his head.

Zane and Dan were sitting up in first
class.

“So you don’t think the others are
going to be a little upset that we’re sitting in luxury while they’re in coach,
do you?” Dan asked.

“What are you talking about? It’s
simply a coincidence that things worked out this way,” Zane said and then
smiled.