Jack stands and puts a hand on my shoulder. “It will. Just give it a little time to sink in.”

He gets a soda from the fridge and comes back with one for me as well. At least ten minutes pass in silence as we both slowly drink our sodas, staring at nothing.

Finally, I ask a question the only way I can think to ask it. “Why, Jack?”

He shrugs. “Cuz I figure one of us should probably take a crack at being happy.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Eliot

“Do not call her.”

I glare at the two people sitting across from me at the restaurant. We’ve just finished dinner and now we’re sharing a couple desserts and talking about our lives. Well, my life. It’s been five days since I had the epiphany to turn Jessie into a character in my webcomic. I took some vacation off of work and did nothing but draw, edit, eat, and take catnaps. I currently have a cold-pack ace-bandaged to my drawing hand.

The chapter went live this evening and instead of just anxiously prowling my home like an alley cat, I decided to call up Vera and Fred and force them to have dinner with me. And instead of keeping all these secrets locked up in my brain where nobody could see them, I tried something novel and I told both of them the entire story. Starting in Vegas and ending with uploading my webcomic a few hours ago.

I feel like I’ve been to church. Like somebody just dumped out all the rocks that have been in my shoes. I didn’t even know they were there but now I feel like I could jump ten feet in the air if I tried. I should have known that these two would listen to me with nothing but compassion and curiosity. Joyfully crowing over the triumphant parts of my story and calmly listening through the more dubious chapters.

“I’m serious, Eliot,” Vera says, jabbing a very know-it-all finger at me from across the table. “Don’t call her. I know you’re going to go home and you won’t be able to handle the suspense so you’ll call her and see if she’s read the comic yet, but don’t do it.” Her pointy finger finally relaxes and she immediately channels that energy into polishing off the key lime pie in front of her. “I still can’t believe you’ve been creating one of the most popular webcomics on the internet for years and you never mentioned it. Can you believe that?”