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"Hey," she says, nudging his shoulder. "Are you sober enough to listen to me and make occasional supportive nods and grunts while I talk about something serious?"
Nile's sitting on the patio of an all-night cafe. In Paris, which she is finally experiencing, not that suburb of a suburb next to an airport shit. With Booker.
They've spent the past twenty minutes talking about memes, because all of a sudden everyone in her life predates the internet and he seems to be the only one who's kept up. But she didn't ask him to meet her so she can talk about NUMTOTs.
Booker pulls himself out of the depths of his coffee mug and looks her in the eye. He smiles a little, nods.
"It's just, I trusted Dizzy with my life and she betrayed me."
Nile says it louder than she meant to. Like she'd been holding it in until it burst. Which, yeah, she guesses is exactly what's been building up.
But now that it's out there she's not sure what else to say.
Booker twists his coffee mug slowly between his hands. When Nile's silence goes on, he asks, "A fellow Marine?" Nile nods, but she doesn't say anything, so he takes a deep breath and takes a risk, an educated guess. "I felt you die, the first time. I—" and he finds himself covering his neck with his hand — "was Dizzy the one who tried to staunch the bleeding?"
"Yeah," she whispers. Her fingers are like vises around her coffee mug.
Booker nods. His jaw works but he doesn't say anything.
The server comes by and refills their mugs. Nile gestures to the tiny carafe of cream, almost empty, and when the server comes back with a fresh one Nile dumps half of it in her coffee.
"I served with her for two years," she says finally, after a long pull of rich coffee. "Dizzy was like a sister to me. She was always egging me on in PT, was so sure I was going to make Corporal. When we got assigned to a team with Jay she made an "oh no she's hot" joke before my brain even finished processing. She just got me, you know?"
Nile takes a sip of her coffee, then another. Then another. Booker grunts supportively.
"We'd seen some real shit over there. Never a doubt in my mind I couldn't trust her to have my back. Nobody else I—" and her lip wobbles. Booker rests his hand on her forearm while she scrunches up her face, pulls herself together enough to get this out. "Nobody else I would've wanted to hold me if I was gonna die. And then I wasn't dead anymore and it's like I betrayed her. Like I betrayed her. She could barely look at me."
Nile tugs absently at the cuff of her jacket. "There are things about deployments you just don't tell your family until you make it home. Shit got bad, I'd Skype my mom and tell her about the boredom and how much I missed watching cheesy movies while she did my hair. I'd tell Dizzy what really happened, if she hadn't been right there with me when it happened. They train us to lean on each other. But all of a sudden, it's like..."
And she bursts into tears.
Booker gently lays a big, warm hand on her back. When she doesn't shrug him off, he starts to rub slow circles across her shoulder blades.
Nile's an efficient crier. A minute of gasping sobs, a few sniffles, and she's reaching for her coffee again. Booker's looking off into the trees down the block, as if to give her a little privacy, but he keeps rubbing circles across her back. It feels good. Comforting.
They sit quietly for a little while longer, Nile sipping her coffee, Booker absently tracing patterns across her shoulder blades with his palm.
"I'm the same person I was," Nile says. She sets her empty mug down with a finality to it. Booker looks up at her, smiles a little. He pulls back from her but keeps the eye contact. "Whatever this is," and she gestures between them, "healing, not dying, it doesn't change who I am. But Dizzy, it changed how she saw me."
Booker nods again, solemn. He looks away from her just before it would've started to qualify as staring and wraps his hands around his now-cold coffee.
"It just really sucks that I can't talk to her one more time. That the last time I saw her she'd packed my bag for me like she couldn't wait to get rid of me." Nile lets out a deep sigh. "Maybe if I could explain, maybe after she talks to a counselor or something, maybe she would apologize for that." Booker's eyebrows bunch up at that, but Nile is waving over the server, she doesn't see him.
Once she's asked the server for one more refill and doctored it with the remaining cream, Nile says, "I'll never know if she's sorry, because I'm never going to see Dizzy again, or Jay, or Gita or Devonte or Chris or my mom or my brother or anyone who knew me before. And I guess I just have to live with that. Forgive."
Booker smiles at that, sad but wide. "A certain former CIA agent recently told me that betraying someone you love is unforgivable, but it doesn't negate your love for them." He lifts his mug but doesn't take a sip, just holds it in both of his hands. "I felt her hands on your neck like it was my own. Whatever she did after that, doesn't negate how much she wanted to keep you alive."
"So maybe," Nile says, deliberately light, "it's like she's mad she couldn't save me because my new superpower beat her to it."
"Our superpower is fickle that way," he says with a quirk of his eyebrow.
They let the silence rest for a little while. Nile lets herself enjoy the coffee, the breeze across her face. She wasn't sure what exactly she was expecting, calling up this human disaster who she technically wasn't supposed to talk to for another, uh, lifetime and change. But this helped.
"Thanks for this, Booker," she says. She claps her hand on his shoulder and squeezes tight for just a second before letting him go. "If you want to have occasional secret meetings of the We're Not Even Five Hundred Years Old Yet Club, text me, yeah?"
They both laugh softly. "I'd like that," he says. "I'd like that a lot."