A/N- The ever promised sequel to Cliché…Even though I'm still waiting for a second beta reading, I'm too impatient not to put it up. Keep in mind NOTHING is set in stone, not even the titles. I could wake up tomorrow, hate this story and rewrite it completely. Chances are when my beta gets back to me I'll have to repost…Reminder: While 'This is a great story! Keep it up!' reviews are easy on the ol' ego, I'd really like specifics about what you like or dislike. Keep that in mind if/when you review. Thanks!

Better

Part 1: Walking on Water

The room was quiet. Just the way he liked it, perfect for his own peaceful mind exercises.

            He pulled the familiar book from under his pillow. The raised letters of the main title were worn, yet pointed against his dry fingers. The picture on the front was barely recognizable and the binding had horizontal bending lines along it from being left stretched open under beds, between mattresses, in drawers, and on top of sheets.

            The thin pages brushed against each other as he opened them, searching for a point to begin. The place didn't matter. The plot and the theme were memorized and held deep in the back of his mind. The characters actions had been committed to memory a long time ago and the outcome never changed.

But the story was still timeless to him. He was still happy at the reunions, sad at the misunderstanding, scared during the climax. He felt free from all constraints and circumstances of his own world, free to dive into the fictional universe and experience life completely separate from his own. In this life, there was always a constant that held through crisis, whether it be friendship, compassion, or love…

If only life was like a book…

"What are you reading?"

He looked up towards the door, pushing the book to his stomach. His lips curled into a grin. "Just a book."

He wondered if she knew she was late, if it was intentional. She'd never been late before.

Their nightly pre-bed ritual was his one way of seeing her all to himself, away from their team roles and personalities and pretenses. Not that all of it was a pretense, but there was something about an intimate conversation that had a more natural air and allowed a more free flow of ideas and thoughts and opinions. 

Sometimes he wondered if it was her powers that brought him out of his dull mechanical shell, which sometimes was thicker than his impervious state. The way she conveyed her emotions was poetic, yet simple, and with them she seemed to pull feeling out of everything around her.

Never had he given much thought to the internal workings of others, especially the crazy organic types his upbringing had taught him to look down upon, but she was so different than others he'd met, even in his adult life.  Knowledge didn't rule her world, nor did guilt. She wasn't anger driven. She didn't necessitate a constant adrenaline flow. Her agenda wasn't concealed from the world, or if it was, she had fooled all those around her.

 "What kind of book?" The voice pulled him back from his thoughts. She smiled, eyes twinkling with amusement as she moved fully into the room. Her beige baggy pajama pants rustled almost soundlessly as her bare feet strode along the carpeted floor. She seemed almost to float…

His straightened legs bent at the knee, allowing a spot for her at the bottom of the bed. She sat, pulling her left leg up underneath her, leaving her right to dangle off the bed. Causally, she laid her back against the wall that covered the far side of his mattress and brushed a strand of her soft red hair out of her face.

"The Truth?" She read off the cover, and then returned her eyes back to his face. "A little pretentious, don't you think?"

"No," He replied with mock offense. "It's actually a really good book. You should read it before you decide to joke."

"Fine then. What's it about?" She chuckled, reaching over his knees, leaning her body forward to take the paperback from his possession. Her laugh seeped into his skin, warming it like the heat of a thick blanket. "Let me guess. It's an adventure story."

He placed his palms on the bed beside his chest and shifted to a cross-legged position, facing her as she flipped the tome over to read the summary on the back.

             "Not really." He explained as he reached behind him to adjust his pillows. "It's more of a self-discovery story."

            She looked up from flipping pages. Her gentle blue eyes met his, her head tilted slightly with a half-smile. "I'm listening."

            "It's about this guy's life in his twenties, you know, all the problems, and choices, and dilemmas."

            "I never took you for a realistic fiction reader."  Her hand bent back over her wrist in a nonchalantly giving gesture. "And yet, I'm not surprised."

            "Maybe you know me better than you think."

            She looked down at the floor with a smile. He noticed her left hand placed on her cheek as if to innocently feel her own skin, yet a faint red tint crept out from behind it. "I guess I do." 

            "I like to think of it as a way of fulfilling my need for a normal life. Sort of a living vicariously through a book." He chuckled to himself as he took the book and ran his fingers over the familiar cover. "I don't know, maybe I'm just that boring."

            He stared at the cover for a moment. His mind could still conjure the image of the strong man's hands holding out the book. He could even see his face, hear his voice, as he presented it to him. He could feel the swelling of happiness in his chest at the fact that his father had remembered him on his important government trip.

            "Your dad gave it to you?" Her voice was soft suddenly, but confident, making the question sound more like a statement.

He glanced up at her. Her eyes yielded such concern. He knew she was speculating if the subject was still sensitive. The caring thought made him smile. "Yeah," His fingers opened the book, flipping the pages with a quick whoosh-ing sound. "I've had it with me since I was fifteen, give or take. No matter where I was or where he went, I had a little piece of him." She nodded in silent respect for the memory.

The subject had come up once before, during his father's latest and last venture into his life. While the comfort of others had helped, it wasn't until he'd decided to lay all the emotions before this caring woman that he's actually been able to reach his true feelings about the man and move beyond the past. She understood his feelings and disappointments and empathized from her own life. She'd hadn't had her parents for long either, and no matter how long and hard she tried to deny it, the neglect and eventual desertion had made a emotion wound. Their shared feelings of abandonment had helped them connect as confidants.

"No wonder you like it so much." She pivoted her body to face him, reaching out her arm and gently taking the book back once more. "So, do you have a favorite part?"

"Oh, lots of them."

"Like?"

He thought for a second, contemplating which to mention to her inquisitive mind. Smiling at the carpet, he replied, "Page 122". She began to search for the stated page. He took her hands, which grasped the book, and turned them so that he could see the text to tell her where to begin. "Start with 'That night…'"

She held the page up to her eyes and began to read aloud, "That night, I didn't sleep. It was like my mind was running full speed down a strange, winding tunnel of thought, searching for some sort of answer.

"She'd asked me who I was. More importantly, I couldn't answer. I always thought I knew who I was, but my mind had completely blank and all the things I'd taught myself to say were gone. When had that changed?

"Around 3 AM, it finally hit me. She had changed me.  Her words had changed me. Her movements had changed me. Her eyes, her smile had changed me. She questioned things I'd always relied on. She knew things I'd never hoped to find. She did things I'd always dreamed of doing. And through her, I questioned, I found, I did. I'd been opened up to a brave and strange new version of myself, broken out of the programmed, close-minded, ignorant shell I'd been enclosed into. Just experiencing her, her mind, her presence, her being, made me better."

She stopped. He glanced up from floor at the sudden break in the text. Her eyes were vacant for that moment. They fixed themselves intently on the text, or just perhaps the page, in front of her. The long puzzled stare was vaguely reminiscent of whenever she tried to read someone's emotions, but lacking a certain intensity.

"It keeps going."

"I know." She replied softly, then cleared her throat to continue.

"As I smiled up at my ceiling, I knew for the first time I was in something different. It was something indescribably amazing and strange and scary. My mind suddenly sprang free into a whole new place. It had finally met my heart and I knew I was ready."

Her mouth remained open on the last syllable of the monologue. Her lips quivered trying to form some word or sound.

"Jesse…" Her eyes rose to his meeting his gaze for the first time in what seemed like ages. She trailed off in sudden thought. Staring at him, she remained completely motionless, her breathing still, the same expression of determination on her face.

Her face changed abruptly, turning from resolve to defeat and yielding perhaps to something more powerful than she. "Never mind." She said, a hint of self-disgust in her voice. She dropped the book beside her, desperately trying to give him a happy smile, which came off disappointed and pained. "I think I better go to bed. You know big day tomorrow."

He watched as she moved to the door without any of the same float she had when she entered. That one moment drained her of some sort of energy, a passion, that she had carried into the room.

"Emma!" He heard himself call out to her, almost rolling off the bed. He met her at the doorway, facing her as she looked up at him expectantly.

She was shorter than he. He'd never realized that. It was only a slight difference, but still, he'd never noticed how much smaller she was.

Her face…

Never had his mind ventured past the simple adjective of 'cute', but suddenly the perspective changed. It held strangely exotic, yet familiar features that seems so perfectly sculpted, her little upturned nose, thin eyebrows, small chin. Her blue eyes had such a striking tint, the sky might have been accused of a poor replication. Even in the dimly lit corridor, and with the sense of sorrow, they glittered like stars. Her classically innocent air, which permeated his senses like her sweet flowery smell, was enchanting.

And yet her appearance looked unusually worn. Underneath, he knew she had her own heavy inflictions. On the pathway life had led them down, the task of escaping the thorns of isolation, scorn, and injustice was hardly different from walking on water. He knew the marks on his own heart were deep and painful, and he kept the world at a distance.

But she, she embraced the world, submerging herself in it. Instead of staying inside or dashing in and out, her heart led her into the rain that characterize their lives. She was brave enough to dance under the gray and black clouds and soak herself full of the cold water. Yet along with that courage, she was tortured still and with more effort than those who ran through the storm or avoided it all together. Everyday, she felt the weight of the tainted emotions of the people that surrounded her and, by her own choice and desperate need to help, she took those weights upon herself. 

It hadn't been until recently that he'd began to see her as the angel that she was, but then, in that moment, he saw the dark side of that role.  She kept the faith for everyone around her, pushing them, comforting them, cheering for them, keeping them focused on their goal, but who did that for her?

He did. The thought ran through his body like lightening. That's why she came into his room at night to talk. That's why they shared such a bond. His brain had never realized that he was the one she needed…

And he needed her.

Before he could even react to his own thoughts, his hand was on her cheek and his lips were on hers.

By the sudden tension in her body, he knew she hadn't been expecting it. The initial shock died quickly, though, as he felt her body almost melt against his. Her passion and energy revived as the action passed.

The kiss was over as quickly as it had started, but the moment stood frozen in time as the feeling lingered on his lips and in his mind. Jesse felt himself smile.

"Goodnight, Em."

"Goodnight, Jess."

Maybe books can bring out emotions and reactions, maybe they provide comfort and take you away from everything painful…

            But sometimes life is better than a book…