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Almost

[spoiler]
They were a dozen almost meetings.

She was the pretty face leaving the bank when he stepped inside. A timid 'excuse me' as she slipped past him in a wash of perfume like flowers.

He was the handsome one disappearing behind the doors of the elevator she'd just missed. A crooked smile as they slid closed. Hands help up in something like a sorry.

She was the tall chai latte two orders before his venti black coffee.

He was the pint of Guinness and the shot of Jameson across the bar from her pink cosmopolitan.

It had sort of gotten to the point where they recognized each other. Small smiles of acknowledgement, finger waves, and quiet, surprised ‘hi’s, but they had never lingered. Never had a conversation, one or both of them usually busy with one thing or another.

Sometimes they missed each other entirely. She was busy trying to find a hastily scribbled address for a delivery, and he was deep in some story with his friends. They were the loud laughter at her back as she pushed her way into an office building.

“Why don’t you talk to him?” Her friends would ask, huddled around a table in a noisy nightclub, heads pressed together to hear each other over the bass.

“I don’t know him,” she’d retort, voice rising higher with the song.

“That’s why you talk to him!” they would shriek as the music reached a crescendo. They would all laugh as the track faded out.

“Is she hot?” His friends would ask, forming a half-circle around a pool table in a smoky bar. Watching in unison as he lined up his next shot.

He waited to answer until he’d solidly struck the cue, knocking the eight ball into the corner pocket. “Yeah, I guess so,” he’d reply over their defeated groans.

“Like how hot?” they’d press, after another shot of tequila.

“I don’t know,” he’d say to distract them, the vowels of the word drawn out slowly with his intoxication. He shrugged his shoulders. “Like… a nine-point-seven. I guess.”

“A nine-point-seven?” One would say, while another murmured, “holy shit.”

“So why haven’t you fucked her?”

He shrugged again, using a long swallow of beer to avoid the answer.

“Sairus, can you help me with this?” She was struggling to pull a large wreath decorated in wildflowers from the back of her jeep. It would have been easier had she not also been balancing a vase of blue dahlias against her hip.

He’d seen the woman having difficulties from his post near the burial plot. He looked around because he was pretty sure she had an assistant wandering around somewhere. He heard her grunt in frustration, so he walked over to her. Coming up behind her, he took the vase without asking. She sighed, and didn’t look at him, automatically moving to use both hands to maneuver the wreath.

“Thank you,” she breathed, turning around with wreath in hand. “Oh!” she startled when she saw him. “Sorry, I thought you were- never mind. Thank you.” She ceased rambling for a few moments, green eyes flitting across his face. Her dark brow furrowed. “It’s you!” she said suddenly, hitching the wreath over her shoulder.

The left corner of his mouth tilted upwards, but there was no humor in his grey eyes. “Hey.” A simple reply. He was less surprised to see her somehow. A part of him felt like he had expected it. Her random appearances had become something of a fixture in his life.

Her helper reappeared before they could say anything else. The large man took both the wreath and the vase and after she instructed him to their placement, he was gone again. She shifted from one foot to the other, pushing a lock of curling hair behind her ear. She looked briefly at her shoes, and then up at him again. She reached out and placed a gentle hand against his arm. “I’m sorry for you loss,” she murmured, piecing the situation together easily enough.

“Thank you,” he replied tightly, his gaze swept away from her. Across the grounds of the memorial garden. Filled with white marble headstones of other soldiers that had died in service. He removed his cover, clutching it in one white gloved hand. He looked nice in his dress uniform, she didn’t comment on it. Didn’t seem like the time or the place. He offered his empty hand in a shake.

“Lieutenant General Owen Hart,” he introduced.

She took his hand in her own. “Julianna,” she replied. She had always assumed he’d been in the military, but not that he had been such a high ranking officer.

Julianna brought her own hand back to her side, crossing it across her stomach and curling fingers around the opposite arm. Someone was calling his name. A sharp bark of the singular syllable across the yard. He nodded politely to her, before securing the cover over blonde strands and walking off towards the command.

Sairus reappeared. “Everything’s set. You ready to go?”

Julianna’s eyes tracked Owen as he joined a group of men standing near the perfect rectangle of a freshly dug hole.

“Yeah. Uhm. Yeah, let’s go.”

“Are you sure you’re okay to drive, man?” A heavy hand on his shoulder, a pounding in his head. A muddling of his senses. The taste of bile on the back of his tongue.

“Yeah,” he said. He maybe lied. Grey eyes wouldn’t meet hazel ones. Another crooked smile. “Just tired.” He maybe lied some more. “I’ll catch up with you guys in the morning.”

Owen left the party early, because of course they would have thrown a party. Sanders would have wanted it that way. Standing in the lawn, Owen breathed in the cool night air. He tilted the beer bottle he still held on its end and watched the rest of the amber liquid pour in the grass. He tossed the bottle behind him and pushed hand through his hair.

“It’s dark,” Sairus commented, but it sounded more like a warning.

Julianna zipped up her sweater, pulling up the hood to cover dark hair. “I’ll be fine,” she replied. “I ride my bike home all the time,” she reminded him. He fixed her with a hard stare. She ignored it as she pulled her iPod out of the pocket of her jacket, pushing the earbuds into her ears.

“You know I’ll be careful.”

Owen blinked and ran a hand across his face. He blinked, rapidly before squinting. He tried to find the road in the blurry darkness and the bright glare of the headlights.

Julianna sat straighter on the seat of her bike, carefully letting go of the handlebars until she was sure she had her balance. When the bicycle continued forward without threat of toppling over, she lifted her hands into the air. Wind rushed past her face, billowing her hood out around her cheeks. She inhaled and closed her eyes. Holding the breath. She opened her eyes to watch her breath billow out in a puffy white cloud. She was vaguely aware of the sound of tires on gravel. She could hear the approaching car over the music. She wasn’t worried, her jacket was white and she had a light on the back of her bike. As long as she stayed in the bike lane she was fine.

He hadn’t seen her until it was too late. He hadn’t noticed the cyclist in the lane next to him until he’d swerved into her. He had only closed his eyes for a moment. He was so tired. It was the sound that caught his attention and he slammed on the brakes. He’d collided with something. Someone?

Whatever-whoever- it had been rolled across the hood of the vehicle, connecting with the windshield before sliding back off again and hitting the ground.

For a moment it was quiet. If you didn’t count the pounding in his ears. “Oh my god.” He could almost make out the words over his beating heart. Someone kept saying them over and over. Eventually, as he opened the door and stepped out of the vehicle he realized it was him. He couldn’t breathe, he clawed his hands through his hair as he rounded to the front of the vehicle. “Oh my god,” he said it again. He didn’t know if he was capable of saying anything else. He stood over the motionless form of the person he had hit. As he moved closer he spotted the tangle of metal and rubber he assumed was a bicycle catching the glare of his headlights.

Owen knelt closer to the body, petite and feminine and he could have sworn he recognized the curve of her silhouette. He moved close enough to roll her over, and he couldn’t smother the sound like a sob the escaped him against his will.

Julianna gasped and then coughed. Both actions resonated with too much effort, with too much liquid. Blood stained her chin. Scared green eyes rolled wildly, looking for something to settle on. The found his face, half-illuminated in the darkness. “You,” she rasped, somehow, like she was pleased to see him.

He dropped to the asphalt and pulled her into his arms. She was small and light and easy for him to arrange her against his chest and in his lap.

“I’m so sorry,” he said automatically. He said it again, and again over her labored breathing. He may have been crying. He didn’t know for sure, but his face was hot and wet. She coughed again, and they both winced. He held her tighter against him. He used a hand to push hair away from her face.

She smiled at him. Why was she smiling at him? He would never forget the way she smiled at him.

Julianna lifted a hand, stained with dirt and marred with scrapes. She pressed it against his cheek. She pushed at the wetness on his face with her thumb. “I’m sorry about your friend,” she whispered. Perhaps she misinterpreted the reason for his tears, perhaps she didn’t care. Perhaps, she didn’t want what felt like her final moments being angry at him. “I’m cold,” she said suddenly.

“Don’t talk,” he demanded quietly, one hand searched desperately for his phone. His cell wasn’t on him, he didn’t know where it was. He didn’t want to leave her to find it, and didn’t trust himself back in the car. “I have to get my phone,” he told her, but she didn’t reply.

“Julianna?”

Her eyes had fallen closed and her body was heavier against his, fingers trailed away from his face to drop against her stomach[/align].

“Julianna!”[/spoiler]