Somewhere in that thought process, Joe moved us to the bed, and shed his jeans. I made a mental note to compliment him later on his multitasking. His skills were quite impressive. He wore a pair of boxers and lay on his side next to me. My view of him was somewhat obscured by his angle, frustrating me. I wanted to see more.

His mouth and hands made me forget.

His hand slid down into my panties and I was sure I was going to die tonight, my vision got the date wrong, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t think of any better way to go. I even heard bells. Maybe they were the bells on Saint Peter’s gate.

I came to my senses the moment Joe’s body was gone, like in the The Time Traveler’s Wife. Maybe that was Joe’s big secret. Maybe he time-traveled.

But Joe was still in the room, on the floor, digging his ringing cell phone out of the pocket of his jeans. He looked at the number. “Shit!” he said before he answered. “Yeah.”

His brows furrowed as he listened.

“Yeah,” He said and then he hung up.

I heard guys weren’t big on talking on the phone, but that call was ridiculous.

“I’ve gotta go.” He sat on the edge of the bed and scrambled to put his jeans back on. Then he stuffed his feet into his still-tied shoes.

“What? Now?”

He reached over and pulled my head to his, giving me a quick kiss. “You have no idea how badly I want to finish this, but I have to go.”

“Will you come back?” I couldn’t have gotten this close to stop now.

“I don't know how long this will take. I’ll call you tomorrow. We’ll work on your list tomorrow night.”

He grabbed his shirt off the floor and pulled it over his head as he walked out of the room.

I threw on the first thing I could find, a t-shirt that didn’t cover my bottom. My panties, amazingly enough, were still on my body. I ran after him.

“ Joe, wait!” I stood in the kitchen doorway, watching him climb into his car. I didn’t care who saw me. “Where are you goin’?”

“Work.”

“At nine o’clock at night?”

He was already in the car, but got out and stood next to the door. His face changed. He wasn’t my Joe anymore. If I had run into this Joe at the bar in Jaspers I would have run home. “Don’t ask me questions, Rose. If you’re smart, you’ll stay out of this. Now go back inside.” The last part was a direct order. One he expected me to obey.

I didn't tell him to stop bossing me around because for one thing, his car had already left, and for another, I was too scared. For the first time since I met Joe, I was honest to goodness scared of him.

Chapter Eighteen

Joe didn’t come home until around two in the morning. I felt like Mildred, snooping through the window, as I spied on him. But Joe didn’t go directly in his house; he went to my shed. He opened the door, slipped inside and came out less than a minute later. What could Joe up to?

And how did he get in?

Joe went inside his house. As he passed my bedroom window, I noticed his clothes were dirty and grimy, like he’d been rolling in dirt. A million questions ran through my mind, but I was tired of pondering it all. I just wanted to go to sleep and so did Muffy. She lay on my bed and looked irritated that her glares hadn’t stopped me from getting up and down. I finally fell asleep, cuddling Muffy, until I couldn’t take the smell rolling out of her every ten minutes and covered my head with a pillow.

The next morning, I made a pot of coffee and stared at the television. Here I had gone to the trouble of getting cable and I still hadn’t watched it. So I turned it on, flipping through two hundred channels until I found a rerun of Little House on the Prairie. I spent most of the morning slumped in the chair, which made me frustrated. I had a day and a half left to live and I was watching reruns.

I made myself shower and dress, and then clean up the mess in the kitchen. There wasn’t much to clean but we’d left out Chinese food cartons and the chopsticks were stuck to the table. I threw everything away and found two fortune cookies, still unopened. In twenty-four years, I had never had a fortune cookie, which seemed pitiful. I ripped the cellophane wrapper open and broke the cookie in half, pulling out a rectangular paper.

Your future looks bright and promising.

I almost laughed. I must have really bad karma.

The phone rang, and I jumped. Everything startled me these days, obviously with good reason.

“Rose? What are you doing home? Why are you off work again?” Joe asked.

“Joe, if you don’t think I’m home, why do you keep callin’?” I asked, suddenly weary.

“I wanted to leave you a message.” He sounded like a kid caught throwing rocks at the neighbor’s window. “I wanted to apologize for last night.”

I sat silent, unsure what to say. He took my silence as encouragement.

“I was really harsh with you and I shouldn’t have been. I didn’t expect to be called into work last night. They called me in for a tense situation and it made me short. I’m sorry.”

I still didn't say anything, unsure how I felt. Why did he have to be so complicated? But then, if that wasn’t the pot calling the kettle black, I didn't know what was.

“Can I make it up to you tonight? I want to take you out to dinner. We can go to the Italian restaurant, Little Italy. Then you can check off go to Italy since you can’t actually fly there before Sunday.”

My eyes burned. “You remembered Go to Italy?” How did he remember?