Ever since his partner, Sam, met and married Elizabeth, he’d gained ten pounds and spent an extra day at the gym each week trying to keep from gaining ten more. The fact that she owned and ran two of the best places to eat in the city didn’t hurt. He often ate at both places. Most of the time it was so he could see her and his other friends. They just happened to be Sam’s family, his twin brother Jack, along with Jack’s wife Jenna and their three kids. Cameron Shaw was another friend and part of the group. Jenna was the CEO and Cameron the president of Merrick International. Cameron had recently married Martina Fairchild.
All his buddies were married with children.
Being the odd man out didn’t sit well with him. He wanted what they all had, a family.
The only steady woman in his life was simply a voice over the phone—and strangely, as he believed, in his mind. His psychic ghost. She floated into his life without warning, gave him some clue to a case, and then she disappeared into thin air. Well, not even that, really, because she was just a voice. A really sexy voice. She kept him up nights thinking about her and the sultry tones that haunted his dreams. He didn’t want to analyze too deeply the fact that he sometimes thought he could actually hear her talking to him in his mind. Or admit it to anyone else.
Haunted, like a ghost occupies a house. Somehow a piece of her lived inside of him.
Morgan. God, she was in his head. A chance meeting in a restaurant more than five years ago started him down the road of the longest relationship he’d ever had with a woman. If you could call it that. The fact that he’d only seen her for maybe five minutes and spoken to her in person for less than a minute didn’t really matter. She left an indelible print on him. About five-seven, blond hair down to her waist, and long legs. He could almost feel them wrapped around him, so vivid were some of the fantasies he had about her.
She’d burrowed deep into his psyche. He thought about her all the time. Sometimes she was a blessing, and other times a curse. Mostly he blamed her for things in his life that he couldn’t seem to get right. If he had a bad date, it was because he spent the night with the woman wondering if she was like Morgan. Were they similar or different? If Morgan were there, what would they talk about? What would they do together? Would he kiss her? Take her to his bed?
He thought about her at work. Every case he took, he wondered whether she’d call with a clue. Over the past year, his need to hear her voice grew to a gnawing hunger.
At a low point, in need of someone to comfort him, she’d call out of the blue. It could be late at night, or in the middle of the day, but she’d know he needed a shoulder to lean on and a friend’s ear to bend. She’d listen, and then remind him he wasn’t alone. Every time they spoke she reminded him of that simple fact. She might not be with him physically, but she lurked in the shadows of his mind.
It was a comfort and a curse.
Loneliness grew in his soul like a vine, wrapping itself around everything in his life. Watching his friends and their happy family lives took its toll. He wanted so much to have the kind of life Sam, Jack, and Cameron enjoyed with their wives and children.
Instead, he sat in his beige walled cubicle typing out the latest reports for the case that Morgan had helped them solve. The walls were closing in on him. He stared across the aisle at Sam’s back as he wrote out other reports. The constant clicking of his partner’s fingers on the keyboard drilled into his head and made the splitting headache that had taken hold hours ago pound with every tap of the keys.
He took in his life, sitting in his cramped cubicle next to his partner, eating his partner’s wife’s outstanding food, drinking stale coffee, and wondered why he couldn’t make a relationship with a woman work.
Doo, do, do, dooo—
“You really need to change the ring tone on your phone, man.” Sam smiled.
Tyler frowned at the thing.
“I’m just happy I finally figured out how to get the thing to stop beeping every time I have a message. Why can’t they make a cell phone that’s simple? Punch in the number you want to call and it goes through. What do I care if it can access the Internet or play music? I have a computer and a radio to do those things. It just makes the damn things more expensive and more difficult to use.”
Doo, do, do, dooo—
“Answer the damn phone and make it stop that ridiculous ring.”
“Reed.”
Happy to hear the voice on the line, he tipped his head back and silently swore at himself for forgetting to call her.
“I’m working. I can’t come over now.”
Tyler rolled his shoulders and rubbed two fingers at his temple. He’d been working nonstop for more than two weeks. He hadn’t seen or taken Maria out on a date. He’d missed more than one of her calls. More nights than he could count, he got home too late to return her call.