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She'd hoped, perhaps foolishly, that when they pulled her out of that detainment room in the airport that it was because they were taking her to the tarmac, to a plane. They'd give her a gruff pat on the back and then she'd be on her way back to New York. She'd land in the United States and take a deep breath of fresh air, go to the nearest coffee shop or food vendor and buy a well-deserved coffee or maybe a hot dog. Then she'd call Alex or Chip or her brother and tell them what happened in a suitably rueful tone. They'd all laugh about it one day, probably.
That's not what happens though.
They take her to a prison. Force her into a cold room and tell her to change into the ugly green jumpsuit they put into her hands. Then they walk her down a long, dirty hallway before shoving her into a cell that's rusting and stained and, she can only assume, full of tetanus.
Bradley sits on the threadbare cot along the wall and tries to think of a way out of this situation that she can't possibly get herself out of. Someone, a guard, must walk by her cell door. He bangs on it with his fists, his feet, yelling something at her in a language she doesn't understand.
She goes somewhere else in her mind.
“Hey, what kind of eggs do you like?” Cory peeks around the corner of his kitchen at her, face morning bright and…Happy. He looks so happy.
Bradley's stretched out on his couch, pleasantly sore, ankles crossed, reading random pages from an old magazine she found on one of his tables. “Scrambled's fine.”
“Really? Not sunny side up or over easy? I could make you an omelet. Or a frittata.” He pauses, considering, and she wonders how many more ways to prepare eggs he can possibly come up with. “I know: what if I poached some eggs for you?”
She peers at him skeptically from over the top of her magazine. “You know how to poach eggs?”
“No.” He gives her a sly look, like he's about to say something charming. Which, of course, he does. “But if you like them then I'd be willing to learn.”
It makes her stomach do weird things. This new openness between them is scary, but also welcome, warm. Strangely comfortable. They both know what the other looks like when they come undone; she's had her body pressed to every available inch of his and only found herself wanting more.
“You're willing to learn how to make me poached eggs?” She laughs. “Do all of your guests get this kind of treatment?”
He bites down on a smile, shrugs a shoulder at her. “Maybe I just like you.”
There it is, again. That feeling.
Bradley kicks her feet up off the couch and rises to meet him in the entranceway to his kitchen. His hand finds her waist, her fingers splay over his heart. She stands on tiptoes and presses a kiss to his lips. “Scrambled eggs,” she murmurs, against his mouth. “Final answer.”
She watches him make them, and it is, well. There are a lot of phrases for it. Distressingly attractive is certainly one. Completely, unbelievably fuck-worthy is another.
Cory slides the plate down in front of her when the eggs are done, and then makes a move like he might lean in and kiss her temple. He pauses in the middle of it, like he's suddenly realized what he's doing, and then–so smooth that she almost forgets what he was probably about to do in the first place–he leans around her instead and fishes a fork and knife out of the drawer near her hip.
His hands are warm when he passes the silverware to her. Bradley can't help but stare at the neat curve of his nails, the ridge of his knuckles.
He clears his throat and she looks up just in time to catch his gaze snagging on her mouth. When he finally speaks, his voice is lower than normal; it reminds her of gravel, smoke. “I have to leave soon. Just a quick thing for my movie. But, you'll be here when I get back?”
There are butterflies deep in her chest, fluttering against the bones of her wrists. She's never had the same easy charm with words that he has, but she can show him. “I'll be here,” she says with a nod.
This time, when he leans in, he does kiss her. Sweet and slow, like they have all the time in the world.
She loses track of time quickly, but several minutes or maybe hours or maybe days later, she opens her eyes and finds Cory standing there. Sleeves rolled up, hair long and curling. He looks like he did the night she kissed him for the first time.
She hasn't slept well, she's barely eaten. She knows he's not really there, and yet. And yet. That doesn't stop the traitorous stumbling of her heart.
“Cory?”
Not-Cory sticks his hands in his pockets and tucks his tongue into one of his cheeks, watching her for a long moment. “Remember what I said about not punishing yourself anymore?” he asks eventually. He glances around her cell, taking everything in, knocking his knuckles against the nearest wall like he's testing its structural integrity. When he turns back to her, he pulls a face. “It certainly feels like you went out of your way to not listen to me.”
She thinks she laughs, but it sounds all wrong. There are tears on her cheeks, catching in her eyelashes; she hadn't even noticed. And then, because now she's realized that she's crying, it gets worse, turns to sobbing. She drags in ragged breath after ragged breath while Cory stands against the opposite wall and waits.
“You're not real,” she says finally, around her tears, around the soft hiccuping noises she can't help but make. She presses a fist to her mouth to try and make it stop.
The look on his face is sad. He shakes his head. “No, I'm not.”
“But you're here.” It hurts a little to look at him, to see him and remember the hopeful way he watched her cross the room toward him, back before she destroyed everything so irrevocably. She tries not to think about what it means that her brain has conjured him up. That she's trapped and alone, far from home, and he's the person her subconscious decides she needs to see. The last person in the world who probably wants to think about her, let alone see her, right now.
But this Cory doesn't seem to have any of that baggage. When he looks at her now, it's with a softness around his eyes, a slight curve to his mouth. “Yes,” he says softly. “I am.”
Bradley grips the edge of her cot tightly, until both hands ache. “Will you stay?” she asks.
He nods, kind of shrugs. It's like Here we are. It's like I didn't. I don't. “If you need me to.”
Her cell door banging open startles her out of a half-sleep. The lights overhead are burning, burning, burning. Bradley squints into them and tries to remember where she is. A heavy hand grabs her by the front of her jumpsuit and hauls her into a sitting position on her cot.
It's a man who looks like he's in charge, insignias on the shoulders of his uniform, buttons brassy and bright. “Why are you here?” he demands in heavily accented English.
Weirdly, she thinks about her students. About their hands raised high and afternoon sunlight slanting across their desks. She should have taught them about this side of journalism and she didn't. Barely knows what to do with it herself. “I'm a journalist,” she says, trying to sound calm, friendly. “Just a journalist.”
The man shakes his head like that was the wrong answer. “Who did you meet with?”
“Nobody.” Her mind scrabbles for what's safe versus what's true. “A friend.”
He eyes her warily. “Which is it? Nobody or friend?”
“I–” Before she can get any other words out, he shoves her back against the wall, hard. It knocks the wind out of her. Stars wheel and burst in front of her eyes.
The man turns on his heel and heads for the door before she can catch her breath.
“I'm not a spy,” she wheezes out, panicked now, but it's too late. He slams her cell door shut behind him. “Fuck!” Her full voice comes back in the middle of the word; she yells it at the lights above her head. “Fuck!”
This is so far out of her depth. Too far.
That's when the music starts.
“I'm sorry, you know.”
Cory's sitting cross-legged on the floor of her cell. He looks momentarily surprised by her words but then tucks it away. “We don't need to talk about it.”
“What else are we going to talk about?” she asks, using both arms to gesture at the empty space around them. “The wide ranging music selection?”
“I'm not sure what you're trying to say, Bradley. This is great. It's…” he trails off, cringing slightly when the music impossibly hits a whole new level of ear-tingling screaming. “Loud.”
She blows out a breath that she's sure he can't hear, not with all this racket. “It certainly has that going for it.”
It's–well, it's not quiet between them because it'll never be quiet for Bradley again. But there is a stillness. They watch each other for a moment.
He must see on her face that she can't let this go yet. “I'm not here to haunt you, Bradley,” he says eventually. “I'm not that kind of ghost.”
“I know, I just…” There's this need to explain herself, a growing twinge beneath her ribs. She's gotten some distance–in time, in miles–from the horrible moment in his apartment, and she can see everything a little better now. How unfair that she had to end up on the other side of the world to figure this out. She whispers softly into the stale air, “This story felt so important.”
Something flickers briefly across his face. Pain, maybe. “It is.”
It's silly, but even here, in a foreign country with nothing but her own subconscious to keep her company, she's scared of getting too close to the truth. Bradley lays back on her cot. She picks a spot on the ceiling, away from the lights, and stares at it through half-closed eyes. A lot of time passes or maybe no time at all, and then she says, “But you're important too.”
She turns her head to catch his reaction, but he's already gone.
She's not sure how the time moves, rolling forward faster and faster, but it does.
She eats a little, but not enough, and sleeps even less. She memorizes the way Cory looks at her when she sees him for the first time each day and the way his eyebrows furrow with concern when he thinks she's not paying attention.
It's hard to say how long it's been, but one day or night the same man from before barges into her cell already in the middle of yelling at her.
“–you meet with?” he asks, shouting to be heard above the music before it clicks off. He swings a fist out, hitting the nearest wall with a loud clang. “Tell us who you met with!”
Bradley backs away from him like he's a wild thing, slowly and with her eyes fixed on him, until she feels her back hit a wall. There are some kinds of animals you're supposed to charge, to make yourself bigger, louder, to scare them away, but she doesn't think this guy is one of those.
There's movement over the man's shoulder as he walks into the center of her cell, and when she finally lets herself look, Cory materializes into view. His dress shirt is such a clean, bright sky blue, the lines of him pressed and sharp. She wants him to be real more than anything in the world right now.
The man puts his hands on his hips and scowls at her. “Are you paying attention?” He waits until she looks at him again before continuing. “You tell us who you met with and all of this…” When he pauses, he points up at the lights, gestures at the air around them in a way that suggests he's referring to the music. “All of this stops. Understand?”
She doesn't trust herself to speak just yet, so she nods. From behind the man, Cory mouths something to her that looks like Careful.
Bradley swallows around the lump in her throat, wincing when her voice comes out raspier than she'd like. “I'm not a spy.”
The man nods, and for a moment, there's hope sitting high in her chest, tickling at the back of her throat. It's all crushed rather quickly though when he sighs unhappily. “No…No, I think what you are is a liar. So, I will ask you once more: who did you meet with?”
Cory, again. This time he steps out and around the man before coming to stand beside her, pressing his back against the wall the same way hers is pressed against it. His shoulder bumps hers, their fingers tangle briefly.
She thinks of Alex and Chip and Mia and Stella and Yanko and Chris and Claire and Hannah. Her brother. And Cory, of course. All the people who have put their trust and faith in her at one point or another. All the people she's loved and left behind.
It makes her stand up a little straighter. When she meets the man's stony gaze this time, it feels like she's doing it through the eyes of all the other journalists she's ever known, all the friends who have ever had her back.
He takes it exactly how she means it: an outright refusal to give him what he wants. His face colors. First pink and then slightly purple. He points a finger at her and says something that she thinks is very likely a swear word, and then he turns on his heel and storms out of her cell.
Relieved, Bradley goes to sag sideways against Cory and then belatedly remembers where she is and the fact that he's not real. She manages to catch herself just in time, but she still stumbles slightly.
Cory looks at her, and she recognizes the furrow between his eyebrows, the concerned look he normally tries to hide from her. “They're going to keep coming,” he says. The music comes back on, climbing to a roar rather quickly, almost drowning out his next sentence. “What are you going to do next time?”
She's so, so tired all of a sudden. She doesn't want to think about all the possibilities of how this could end stretching out in front of her. It's too much right now.
“Bradley.” He leans in toward her, looking for her attention. “What are you going to do?”
She's already moving away from him though, back toward her cot. When she gets there, she curls herself into the ragged mattress, presses her hands over her ears, and closes her eyes. The music still reverberates in her skull, the lights still blaze away behind her eyelids, but she can't hear Cory's pressing questions or see the worry in his face anymore, and that's something, right now. “Sleep,” she mutters thickly. “I'm going to sleep.”
She doesn't know if it's a memory or her imagination or a dream, but he lays with her on her cot once. Cory slides his fingers through her hair, warm against her scalp, and watches her mouth almost as much as he watches her eyes. She's never wanted to bottle anything as badly as she wants to capture and keep this moment.
His voice is low, meant just for her. “Do you remember when we first met?”
It was so long ago. When Bradley thinks of it, it feels like she's looking through a glass at two people who aren't them, not anymore. They've gone through so much–together, apart, because of each other, for each other. The bold and brash reporter she once was seems so far away now.
“I thought you were crazy,” she admits.
That makes him grin. “I thought you looked like the sun,” he says. “Warm and bright. An unstoppable force of nature.” He holds a hand up toward the ceiling, as if the sky is right above them and he can touch it. “If you look closely around UBN, I think you can see people leaning in towards you. Like flowers. Or trees.”
She huffs out a laugh. “Well that's much more poetic than mine.”
He moves closer to her, brushing a kiss over the tip of her nose and then against her mouth. “It's okay. You can just tell people you thought I was hot.”
Bradley opens her eyes and isn't sure for a moment if she's been sleeping or just wide awake with her eyes closed. She's laying there trying to figure it out when there's a grating sound of metal on metal. Her food tray being slid under her door, she knows. Like a desperate dog at meal times, she's become annoyingly attuned to it.
She goes to stand up and walk over to the door, but her legs give out beneath her. She stumbles and falls awkwardly, landing on her back. For a split second, it's like she blacks out. The noise above her, the bright lights–all of it cuts out.
As she slowly opens her eyes, she becomes aware, bit by bit, of Cory leaning over her. Bent at the waist, his hands skimming carefully along her hips and ribs, then her arms and shoulders, as if he's checking to make sure she's still whole. (She's not, but he won't be able to tell that just by touching her.) He keeps working his way up her body until his thumbs graze her cheeks, there and then gone in an instant. “Get up, Bradley,” he says softly. “You have to get up.”
She doesn't move. Tears prick at the corners of her eyes. If there's ever been a time to feel sorry for herself, she supposes it's right now. “I'm going to die here,” she whispers to the ceiling, mournful.
Cory makes a noise in the back of his throat. “Well that's–”
“Correct?”
“No,” he says, and she's surprised to hear a note in his voice that sounds an awful lot like teasing. “Melodramatic.”
A laugh bubbles up; she can't keep it down. She sits up fully, meaning to make a face at him, but she finds him already watching her, hands on his knees, a bone-achingly tender look curving his mouth. It takes the sting out of any teasing and steals the air right out of her lungs. He's not even real and he still manages to have this effect on her.
“Listen,” she says, when she can breathe normally again. She looks up at him from her spot on the floor and wishes she had done this ages ago when they were wrapped up together in his bedsheets. “I didn't say it before because I was scared or whatever, but I do lo–”
Cory shakes his head. “Don't,” he says firmly, and then, “Not like this. Tell me that. The real me.”
“If I get out of here, you mean.”
“Hey.” He slides his hand into hers and she grudgingly lets him pull her up. Even when she's finally standing again and firm on her feet, he keeps hold of her hand, squeezing it once, twice. “You're going to get out of here,” he assures her, ducking his head slightly to get a better look at her. She can see the deep brown of his eyes so, so clearly. “Hold fast, Bradley Jackson.”
The man comes back again, just like Cory said he would. She's only slightly more prepared this time because the music preemptively stutters to a halt before her cell door even opens and she knows, she knows, she's just not lucky enough for it to mean anything good for her.
This time, he brings a chair in, scraping its legs against the floor unpleasantly before setting it down directly across from where she sits on her cot. Once he's sitting down too, he shakes his head at her. “You really don't look well. Are you ready to sleep?”
There's nothing she wants more really, so she nods.
He slides something out of his pocket and places it next to her on the bed. A small pencil and a piece of paper. When she doesn't immediately react, he points to both and says, “If you tell us the name of the person you met with, then you can sleep.” He shrugs like this is no big deal. “We just want to talk to them. Verify your story.”
She can see Cory standing just behind the man, watching her with interest. He raises his eyebrows at her and she thinks of how badly she wants to go home. She thinks of taxi cabs and sun on her cheeks, the smell of her dressing room and the delight of takeout melting over into the hum of a TV in the next room and the cocooning softness of her mattress. The way her fingers tingle just before going on air. The bittersweet taste of Cory's mouth.
Bradley thinks of how badly she wants to go home and she reaches for the pencil.
Her hand shakes as she writes. It takes embarrassingly long for just a few letters and even when it's done she realizes how sloppy it looks, like a child still learning, all capitals and wonky lines. She shoves it away from her as soon as she can.
Cory leans in closer to read the slip of paper when the man picks it up with meaty hands, unfolds it.
Fuck you.
The corner of his mouth quirks up, a smile. “That's my Bradley.”
She's so focused on that smile, how proud he looks, that she doesn't even hear the man start yelling or the way the music becomes unbelievably, catastrophically louder.
And then, one day, there's no more music. They give her back her clothes and she tries to ignore how they hang off of her now, how she feels like a sliver of herself in them.
Then: there's a dark car and the gentle breeze of air conditioning across her face. The airport and–
She stumbles when she sees Alex, falls into her arms.
For a moment, when she gets on the plane, she doesn't see him. Or, more accurately, she sees him but she doesn't notice the difference.
She's spent the last month of her life imagining him almost every waking moment of every day, when she was scared or tired or at the end of her rope. So. When Alex leads her onto the plane and she sees him sitting comfortably in one of the airplane's chairs, she thinks, briefly, that she's carrying him with her still, and it's reassuring, in a way. Not-Cory got her through so much and now he's here to see her leave that place behind. There's closure to that. A full circle with a pretty bow on top.
But then, Alex turns and looks right at him. Her face softens in a way Bradley's not used to seeing; she looks triumphant, relieved. “Got our girl,” she says, and then this Cory, the real Cory, offers Bradley the smallest of smiles, a raised eyebrow.
“Let's get you home.”