Survivor's Guilt (A Jay McGuiness fanfiction)

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

Jay coughed and spluttered as more debris showered down on him. He felt his hands shaking and forced himself to take a few deep breaths to help focus his thoughts. Priority number one= get out. Ok Jay, you can do this, he thought to himself, and started pushing gently at the mess around him, feeling for weaker spots that wouldn’t bring the lot crashing down on him even more. After a long dragging minute he found one, and he punched through, filled with hopeful desperation. He kicked his feet and scrambled out of the small gap he’d created for himself. When he managed to drag himself all the way out, with dust falling from his hair and covering his clothes, he gulped down a few breaths of cold, fresher air and he felt his heart beat slow down a little from the rapid pounding in his chest and ears.

“Avery?” he coughed, his lungs trying to expel the dirt he’d inhaled “Avery, where are you?”

 His eyes darted around, frantically searching for the woman, and he listened intently for any sounds of movement. He could hear people from other carriages screaming, babies crying, children yelling, but there were no signs of the blonde he’d been talking to not ten minutes before.

“Avery!”

 Jay shot up in his bed, startled b his dream self’s yells. The cold January wind of the dream was preferable to the stifling July humidity of reality, but he wouldn’t swap it to go back, not in a million years.

He should have known that his subconscious would punish him sooner or later for not even doing a quick google search for Avery in a few weeks. He’d been too occupied by trying to pluck up the courage to tell Ebony how he felt about her, which hadn’t worked at all yet.

 Jay looked across at him alarm clock and saw 8:04 blinking back at him, and considering they had a long awaited day off, that was much earlier than he’d planned. But he knew he wouldn’t be able to fall back to sleep, so he threw back his quilt and padded into the living room.

 As always, Ebony was already up, and Jay smiled at the semblance of normalcy and routine that her presence created. However, unlike usual when they had times they had to be ready for, Ebony wasn’t up cooking or setting things out to help them get themselves sorted. Instead, she was curled up on the sofa with her hair bunched up in a loose bun, her glasses on the end of her nose, with a book in her hand.

“Good morning McGuiness.” She chimed quietly without even looking up, surprising Jay.

“How did you know it was me?” he asked with an amused grin as he plonked down heavily next to her.

“You’re the only one who would even think about getting up this early when you don’t have to be.” She replied easily while she finished reading the page and slipped the scrap of paper she was using as a bookmark inside. When she’d closed the book, she tossed it onto the seat between them, got up, and stretched before padding over to the kitchen.

“I’m making a cup of tea, you want one?” she asked him, and Jay couldn’t help but look at her slightly tanned legs as they strode across the room, clad in the shorts she’d slept in.

“If you’re making one, thanks.” Jay replied, stumbling over his words as he caught himself staring. There was a silence between them while Ebony boiled the kettle, and while to her it was comfortable, to Jay it was filled with mental conflict and turmoil. He didn’t set his thoughts straight until Ebony wandered back over with his mug in her hand.

It’s now or never McGuiness.

“Eb, can I tell you something?” he asked her on a shaky breath, nervous beyond belief. He wanted to tell her how he felt; he wanted her to know so that he could know whether or not she felt the same way back, and he’d decided to adopt a more carpe diem approach to life. Whether that would actually work out was yet to be proven.