Just Remember to Breathe (Thompson Sisters)

through them, which would not have been a very cool and collected thing to do. I carefully kept an inch of space between us, because if we’d touched I might have thrown myself on him. Oh, God, it was intense.
    I wonder if that’s why it was so painful when we split up? Because we’d fallen so hard, so fast. I lost myself in him.
    One thing I knew for sure. I would not allow that to happen again.
    When I got back to the room, Kelly was there. She was lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling. Absolutely still, eyes wide open.
    I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Kelly stationary, except possibly while passed out.
    “Kelly!” I asked. “Are you okay?”
    She burst into tears.
    “What’s wrong?” I dropped my bag and rushed to her side.
    “Joel,” she said, then erupted in a new burst of weeping.
    “Oh, honey,” I said, sliding onto the bed next to her.
    “He needs space. He wants to ‘play the field,’ whatever the hell that means.”
    “Son of a bitch,” I said. “What an asshole.”
    She burst into a new round of tears. Was this what it was like living with me last spring? No wonder she got so impatient. I hugged her, not saying a word.
    After a few minutes, she stopped sobbing, then said, “So, um, how was your day?” She giggled, but not a good giggle… more like she was going to go into hysterics.
    “Well,” I said carefully. “It turns out that Dylan Paris is out of the Army and going to Columbia. And we’re assigned to the same work-study job.”
    She sat up suddenly. “Oh, my God, what ? You have got to be shitting me.” It’s possible the neighbors three blocks down heard her screech.
    I nodded my head, miserably.
    “It was super awkward. And… hostile.”
    “What did he say?”
    I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to stop myself from crying. “He said he’d hoped we wouldn’t run into each other.”
    She reached out and grabbed my hand. “Oh my God. I didn’t think it was possible to hate him even more, but I do. Let’s go. Right now. And get drunk.”
    I nodded, because right that minute, it seemed like the best possible idea.

    Ground Rules (Dylan)

    “I think we need to set some ground rules,” she said.
    It was the third day of classes, and our first day actually working for Doctor Forrester. Forrester had a gigantic pile of information, books, files and source documents. It was a disorganized mess. Our first assignment was to begin organizing it and cross-referencing it. We divided up the work fairly easily: I set up a database, and she sorted the material and began feeding it to me.
    Unfortunately, it was difficult to work together when we spent most of the time either glaring at each other or ignoring each other.
    “What are you talking about?” I asked.
    “Look… like it or not, we have to work together.”
    I nodded. I’d tried to get reassigned to a different work-study assignment, but there weren’t any openings.
    “So, let’s go get a cup of coffee. And talk. And figure out how we can do this without being at each other’s throats.”
    I felt a lump in my throat. It was one thing to sit here in Forrester’s office with her. It was another thing entirely to go somewhere else with her, and sit, like normal people, and talk about anything. But she was right. If we were going to be doing this every other day, we had to set some ground rules, or we were both going to be miserable.
    “Fine,” I said. “When?”
    “I’m finished with classes for the day. What about right now?”
    I nodded. “All right.”
    I slowly stood. I was in a lot of pain. The day before I’d had my first physical therapy session at the Brooklyn VA hospital. Loads of fun. My physical therapist was a forty-five-year-old former Marine, and he was of the school of thought that pain was good for you. Problem was, it’s hard to argue your point with someone missing a leg. Seriously, what sympathy was he going to give?
    I never liked Marines anyway.
    So I followed her to the coffee shop around the corner from Forrester’s office. It was nice, a small place, with a few outdoor seats. I was incredibly self-conscious as we walked. She’d picked up a New Yorker’s pace during her year in college here. I, on the other hand, moved at something like the pace of a turtle, thanks to the gimp leg and the cane.
    She slowed down to keep pace with me. About halfway there, she finally said something.
    “So… what happened to your leg?”
    I shrugged, gave a terse answer. “Hajis thought I would