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Danny's gaze flicked upwards - not quite like rolling his eyes, but almost like a glance lade directly to heaven. Only God had enough of a sense of humor to keep orchestrating these run-ins. Danny let out a sigh, resigning himself to the fact that this was real, and CJ was there, and this conversation was going to happen. He never escaped these conversations unscathed, regardless of whether he had precipitated the "break" or "break-up" himself. But this time had felt... different. Danny didn't feel now how he did in every other time they'd broken up. He'd not felt that invisible thread drawing them back together again. He'd felt... Free, maybe. Unmoored, mostly. It was complicated. It had always been complicated.

"Yeah, sure. You know. Work." What was he supposed to say? CJ would sniff the truth out of him, but it didn't mean he'd surrender it willingly. He'd had the first significant non-CJ related romance of his life. And it had left him wondering what the future really held. It had challenged in him, for the first time, what he wanted out of life. And it had really instilled in him that his exhaustion with the on-again, off-again lifestyle he'd led with CJ couldn't ever be again. And maybe... Well, maybe it had left him wondering if he and CJ could ever get to a place where they could thrive together. "You look good." She would always look good. But somehow, when she didn't quite feel like his anymore, she looked... Painfully fantastic. "What uh... What are you doing out? I didn't know you had friends."

It's not until he speaks that something tightens in her chest. It wasn't that she'd forgotten what they were like or how he made her feel, more that she'd been following the plan of out of sight out of mind. Doing her best to shove him from her mind the same way she'd managed to push him out of her life. But with him standing in front of her and them falling instantly into old ways it's impossible to distance herself from those feelings. Every second she's stood in front of him she feels the ties that bind them pulling at her heartstrings a little tighter and forcing her to admit a simple truth. She'd missed him. She'd maybe

Eyes roll and she flashes him another one of those fake smiles. "Original." Her eyes lock back onto his, refusing to let her gaze travel over his features like she wants to just in case she sees that something had changed. Seeing him would be challenging enough without finding some unwelcome reminder that they'd been missing out on each other's lives. There's also the thought that if she doesn't break eye contact maybe she can convince herself that things were fine between them, that she hadn't walked away from him. They were occupying familiar territory after all and maybe it was the several shots of tequila talking but she badly needed things to feel normal between them. "So what's new? You haven't gotten any funnier so you must have been busy with something else."

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Bash scoffed. That would be all too easy - if she accepted it. Once upon a time he would have never dreamed of feeling such disdain towards her. Or desire. And how he never knew the two emotions were such gemini twins. "I don't know why I came here." He looked around - maybe he meant her home, or perhaps, Eureka at-large. He'd been sent on this wild goose chase with this very confrontation in mind. But perhaps the weaker, softer part of him couldn't bear to do it. To hear her out, to listen to an explanation might truly ruin him. "I mean - I do. I do know why I'm standing here, now." Bash shook his head, tongue dragging against the back of his teeth as his lips pursed. "They're making our book into a movie." Our book. The book he'd ghostwritten about their love story. A virtual non-fiction masterpiece of their entire early days. The book that had launched his career - had carried lesser works on its back as he tried to chase the narrative that had been so successful.

She was his muse, after all. And her absence from his life had tortured his art. Twisted it. The hopefulness has left his fingertips as he penned word after word. There was no happy ending - love had curdled as the pages turned. "But I can't do it. I can't -" Bash let out a frustrated sigh. "The studio hired some goddamn PI to find you here. Where you work. Where I could run into you. And I've been here for months. I've done everything I could not to see you. Not to talk to you. To get out of this - this roadblock. Because apparently, apparently..." Bash finally looked back to Nura, hurt flaring in his eyes. "Apparently I'm torpedoing the project. And they seem to think it's because of my feelings toward you." He shook his head again then, breaking that brief moment of eye contact. "But I don't, I can't... I can't rationalize it. The girl in that book doesn't exist. And I don't know that she ever did." There. He'd said it.

Perhaps it all had been a ruse. That closeness, that soul connection. Everything they knew of one another, everything they'd felt. She'd walked away with such simplicity, leaving Bash in the rearview mirror. How, then, could this evergreen version of her, of Damien and Layla, stand up against the dismal reality? What justice was there is letting people believe that such a love could survive the test of time? "I should go." Bash tucked his hands into the pockets of his overcoat, looking down then at his shoes. Ashamedly? He didn't know, now.

If words had been lodged in her throat earlier, it's her own breath that just about chokes her now as it catches. As shameful as it was to admit, it hadn't occurred to her just how much her retreating from his life would take from him. She wasn't callous enough to think that she hadn't broken his heart - they'd been engaged after all - but she'd thought that she would be the main casualty of her choice. That the heart that would ache the most would be hers, living in the knowledge that she'd had the most perfect love and it hadn't slipped through her grasp, she'd thrown it away. But in all honesty she hadn't done all that much reflection since leaving, drowning herself in work and a passing excuse for a social life, convincing herself that her life still had meaning when she was saving lives despite ruining hers. As if fixing other people's hearts would somehow mend her own.

Tears pricked at her eyes, threatening to fall, but she blinks quickly and refuses to let them. Bash was one of the few people she'd ever shown such vulnerability to but that's not why she shies away from it now. It hardly felt fair to act as though she were the wounded party, that his words had hurt her when they were only the truth. Crying felt as though she was trying to cheat herself out of the consequences or worse, make him comfort her despite the way she'd made him feel. She's still stunned by it all when she started to speak again, words coming out at an unusually frantic pace, pleading and begging. "Then don't be polite, I don't need you to be. And I'm fairly sure I don't even deserve it." That was the masochist in her talking, feeling as though a few lashings from him was the least that she'd deserved. "If it'd be good for you to talk openly then that's what I want too. Or if you want to leave -" Voice caught, entirely sure that her heart would shatter the moment she had to watch his back go through the door way. There was a selfish thought to not even offer him the option but she chided herself, swallowing to dismiss the notion before she continued. "- then I won't bother you again."

As silence hung between them she felt for the first time in her life she didn't know what he'd do next. Gaze flickered over the man she'd once loved ( still loved if the way that her heart threatened to both beat out of her chest and stop altogether indicated anything ) marking out changes as she waited to see if he'd be merciful or her sentence would be a noose of her own making. There was a hardness to him that she didn't recognise, after all she'd been the one he could be nothing but soft with, and that thought alone made her heart ache anew. Eyes fell to her own hands, suddenly focused on her trembling fingers as though she expected to see some kind of blood on them at his accusation of killing parts of him. Years ago those same hands would have reached for him, sought to provide him with the kind of comfort she could never voice. "I am sorry. For all of it. I know words can't change anything or maybe won't even mean anything but they're all I have right now."

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The aching familiarity of making one another tea was nearly enough to crack Bash's chest wide open. It wasn't so long ago, really, that coming home to one another had been a glorious ritual, day-in and day-out. The kettle on. Fan or heater whirring white noise. Sometimes, a record was playing, sometimes it was just the sound of keyboard smashing, pen scribbling or page turning. Together physically, but minds constantly occupied. Until, of course, the kettle whistled, and one or the other clamored to the kitchen to pour a cup for both. God, it made Bash sick with the poetry of it all. The beauty of what they'd had sometimes felt easier to hate than to look back on fondly. He missed the little things — even when he was caught with a cigarette, or chastised because his socks never seemed to make it to the hamper.

"Yes, well..." Bash could sense the door beckoning him. 'Open me up and breathe again' it seemed to whisper to him, a seductress. Tempting him away from what surely could come to no good. "I'm not that man anymore. It's been too long. I had to change. I had to adapt." It had nearly killed him, shedding the skin she'd once known him in. Like a snake, he'd had to molt it, to release the ghost of her caress, the specter of her lips on his, the ghoulish muscle memory of their shared ecstacy. "Missing you killed me. The me that you knew." Whatever he was now surely couldn't be loved. It mustn't be loved. That was the only way he could survive. Because this was survival — calm and peace belonged to the rest of humanity. But to Bash, who felt more beast than man, he could not risk even a single creature comfort, least of all love.

"I don't think I can sit in your home and be polite to you." That was the truth of it. He wanted to shout. Part of him, sickeningly, wanted to see her cry. His misery demanded company. "I..." Bash trailed, scouring his brain for the right words. "I don't know what I miss anymore. You, or me." His arms folded across his chest, finally daring to look at Nura straight-on. "I gave you my heart. You know how difficult it was, to let every last wall down. I gave you my grandmother's ring, for Christ's sake! I can't sit and have tea with you, Nura. There's so much pretense I'm sick to death with it." Bash stopped finally, out of breath and sucking in air to steady himself. "Saying I missed you is just too benign."

She moves to make them tea, focusing on the familiar action to take her mind off how on edge she feels about it. "It's taken me so long to find a decent tea out here." It's a weak joke, inane chatter really, and her movements stop almost immediately when he announced his reticence to be there. "I thought - " The words die in her throat, it suddenly tightening with panic at the idea of Bash leaving when her just when her house had finally felt like a home. It might have just been a glance towards her door but the thought of him leaving out of it was a painful one. Still, Nura supposed it would be some kind of karma if that's what happened. But as much as she wanted him to say, she didn't have a good answer to his question. She had never been particularly loquacious but she had often considered herself somewhat eloquent. Maybe not quite to the level of Bash ( his talent with words was far behind anything she could hope to achieve ) but she knew how to string a sentence together well enough. But now they were all failing her and she was left fumbling not only with words but with her thoughts and emotions too.

"You're right, I'm sorry. I just - " Head shook slightly, both out of a feeling of futility and some vain hope that it would help her organise her thoughts better. There was so much that she felt like she wanted to say to him when so much time had passed. It was overwhelming to even begin to know where to start when she was convinced no words would ever come close to truly voicing the depth of her emotion for him. But Nura knew she had to say something when she was so unwilling to watch him just walk out the door and possibly out of her life with a sort of finality she'd never want for them. So she takes a breath, steeling herself against another possible rejection, choosing to keep her sentence short and truthful. After being evasive with him for so long perhaps she owed him that small amount of forthrightness. "- I wanted to see you. I wanted you here. I'm sorry if it was selfish of me." But it doesn't feel like enough and even though she might be committing the same sin again that she had just apologised for, more words slip from her lips. They're a soft confession but one she wants to ensure he at least knows before he decided to leave. "I missed you."

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Oliver Jackson-Cohen as James in Surface (2022) episode two “Muscle Memory”

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Danny could count on Maggie and Adam to keep him occupied — but the baseball season was on-going, and that on its own was enough to leave him exhausted and ragged by the end of the day. Still, part of keeping a good work-life balance was finding time to grab a drink with his friends, friends that, to most peoples surprise, weren't just Maggie and his older brother. It was strange to be out without either of them, let alone not at Adam's bar, but Danny was feeling flexible, and more than that, was almost trying to prove to himself at this point that he didn't need to rely on Maggie for his entertainment.

Awaiting another drink, Danny stood at the bar waiting, casual as ever. Maybe, more than that, he was doing his best to avoid who'd he'd caught out of the corner of his eye — thankful she hadn't yet noticed him. So he kept his back to her, hopeful he could get his drink and close out in quick succession, convincing his friends to move on to a new bar in the process. But all of that had come to fail when the siren song sounded and their eyes met. Fuck. He shouldn't have glanced back. "Oh, my bad. I thought they kept you ladies and your brooms locked up until Halloween." He replied with an equally weak smile.

CJ & Danny

Busy had always been her default. Growing up with parents that never stopped and a house full of siblings who were always up to something, CJ had always thrived when life was at its most hustling and bustling. But for all it's what was natural for her, in more recent weeks it had become a necessity for her. Her time was filled with work mostly, taking as many extra shifts as she could fit, and then when she wasn't working she was either with her abuela or friends. Usually, she was the first to snigger at her friends' varying ideas for ways to pass the time but she'd turned herself into a yes girl and tried knitting, yoga, ballroom dancing - anything that meant she didn't have enough time on her hands to think about her breakup.

Tonight though, she was back in more familiar territory as she joined some of her colleagues for a birthday celebration. But just as she was about to throw back another shot of tequila, prepared to relish the burn it'd send down her throat, something catches in her peripherals. Nose screws up slightly as recognition dawns on her. She'd spent too many hours trying to get through that thick skull to not recognise the back of his head anywhere. For a heartbeat, she considers just ignoring him and continuing on with her night but that feels far too much like admitting defeat and she'd never been one to surrender. Peace so rarely an option for. So instead she quickly takes her shot before making her way into his line of sight, overly sweet smile on her lips. "Of all the gin joints." There's a vague smile on her lips but it's lacking any real warmth. Dangerously saccharine tone faded to make way for more familiar "Do you not know any other fucking bars, Mancini?"

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If Bash had been a braver soul, perhaps they could all spare themselves the trouble of rehashing their past. He could just move on, as she seemingly had. He wouldn't have to fascinate after a woman who wandered through his dreams at night, who haunted his every waking thought. But the fear of never knowing her again was a far more powerful force than Bash knew how to recon with. How do you let go of your first love when you've never truly stopped loving them? No therapist had been able to answer that question for him. Innumerable bottles he'd found the bottom of couldn't answer it either. So he stuck himself to vices, to numb the void her absence had left, but it felt as the time passed, it took more and more just to stifle the ache. So When Nura had offered a second round, another spar, Bash felt like a glutton in accepting the invitation to come to her apartment. God, he was curious. He might walk around in her skin if he could, just to feel her heart beat as intimately as possible, just to get inside her mind, to dig through her memories, figure out if she'd been missing him, too. And not the sort of missing someone that was fond, fleeting, with a knowledge it was all best left in the past. No, Bash needed to know — did Nura yearn inexorably for him? Was there a subtle, constant suffering in their time apart? Was it true for her, too, that not another soul had measured up? Not even close?

Bash shook his head. How long had he been lingering on her doorstep now? Knock, you coward. He willed himself, watching as his knuckles rapped against the wooden door. He looked down at himself, at the sweater that hung loosely against him, chinos that would forever feel pretentious, sneakers that were then altogether too casual for the rest of his outfit. But he was a creature of habit — change wasn't something he'd ever taken well too. And maybe he'd chosen the outfit because it was familiar, a Bash that Nura had known. And that felt good, if nothing else did. The door opened, and there she was. Bash exhaled softly. "Hello." He greeted, feeling so completely stupid, for no obvious reason. Stupid just to be standing there, he supposed. Frankly, Bash was still hungover. The thought of red wine was... Less than appealing. "Tea. Sure." He nodded, following her indoors, staring back as the door shut behind him. Trapped. And somehow, he felt like a criminal, trespassing in Nura's inner sanctum — her happy place, he could already tell. And perhaps that was all he was doing now, trespassing in her life. "You know what —" Bash's tone was laced with sudden trepidation. "I don't... I don't know if I can do this." He glanced back at the door again. "What's left to say, anyway?"

Nura & Bash

Brave had never been a word she had particularly associated with herself. Resilient maybe but she had always been far more reactive than proactive. Always the speculator and never the risk taker. But for all she had never considered herself courageous, Nura had never thought herself a coward either. Her run-in with Bash had turned her into that though, his questions veering a little too closely into territory she had barely even covered on her own. She might have been reflective but the more she turned her memories of them over in her mind the more she wondered why she'd made the choices that she had. It had led to her bowing out of their surprise meeting, summoning some vague excuse and feigning that she had somewhere ( anywhere ) else to be. Guilt had inevitably crept in again when she realised that she had robbed him of closure yet again. Stolen any sort of clarity from him and instead just left him with more questions. It was out of equal parts care for him and dislike of the person she was turning into by placing her needs over his that she had reached out to him.

There'd been an internal debate about the location of their next meeting, wondering if a neutral location would be best. But then she wondered if any location was truly neutral when Eureka had been hers much longer than Bash's. So she'd settled on her home if only for the privacy of it, ignoring how it felt almost vulnerable. As though she was leaving some part of her overexposed. There'd been a time she wouldn't have thought twice about vulnerability with him, if anything they'd have embraced it, but as she hears a knock at the door she wants to delay it. But if she waited until she was ready for them to have any sort of meaningful conversation then they would never have it. It was now or never. "Hi." She kept her greeting short lest her voice waver with the anxiety of seeing him. "Come in." Stepping to one side she made room for him to enter her home, the space that she'd built without him. The thought is an uncomfortable one when as soon as he's there she's forced to realise just how much it had been lacking. How it only really felt like hers now he was in it. Throat is cleared lightly as she moves through the space, beginning to chatter away about drinks options just to fill the silence. "There's wine if you'd like - I found a great vineyard that does a fantastic red - or the kettle's on?"

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The hair. The scruff. The dip. UNWELL

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DANNY'S INSTAGRAM

featuring a lot of photos taken by both @maggiealbright & @cjxricci

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@sebastian-thibodeau

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E U R E K A  T A S K  0 0 2 // FINDING YOUR ROOTS

SEBASTIAN THIBODEAU’S FAMILY.

Keep reading

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The front and back cover of Sebastian’s first novel ‘Isn’t It Pretty to Think So’

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S E B A S T I A N ‘ S  I N S T A G R A M

Template Credit: @showmaxter

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OLIVER JACKSON-COHEN as James in SURFACE (1.05)

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Oliver Jackson-Cohen as James in Surface (2022) episode eight “See You on the Other Side”