Problem A: Desperate need to leave the island, intensified by meeting with H and ensuing fallout. Self-conscious awareness of exposed moment of weakness would be much easier to stomach somewhere far away.
Problem B: Desperate need to leave self. Self-conscious awareness of private moment of weakness two leave trips ago. He'd managed to tamp down the last one by limiting it to an hour-long run to a pet store and a dollar store before fairly crawling back, afraid of being left alone.
Were America here he might have chanced asking her to go; he considered Peyton and discarded this as still too uncomfortable for the two of them alone. Laconic Bashmet was out--he needed someone who'd talk and given the Russian's division having him around in case of civilian-side moments of weakness seemed ill-advised--and Bix's leave days were, Taym thought, probably all filled up with Ceres. Cee was rejected out of hand even before Fiona reminded him of certain rules.
So, nervous, he'd caved. He had a good excuse for one more person. He'd texted, told her the weather was positively autumnal in Albany right now, and had she ever been to upstate New York, and by the way he needed to blow some of the project budget and did she want to help and he'd buy her lunch if she wanted?
And to his shock, to his commingled relief and disappointment, she said yes.
Taym looked autumnal too, the beard gone in favor of a week of scruff and the usual sweater supplemented with a hooded shooting jacket that looked (and had been) expensive. It was not the most early-August appropriate gear on a tropical island, but he was always dressed as though he was a few months in front of the weather, and it would be, besides, milder and crisper on the other side of the portal where he waited, smoking and tired-eyed and with his hand wrapped around the strap of his bag like it was a lifeline, for his unwitting chaperone.
Nesshime
