“Just do it in a whisper.” Laura reached for her purse and fished around. Her bladder announced its presence and she stood, hips clicking and left leg screaming in pain.
“Maury, Maury, Maury,” Josie obliged, looking particularly pleased with herself.
“I’m suffering from sciatica and you’re chanting baby daddy cultural references.”
“And you still love me.”
Laura flashed her a middle finger as she waddled off to the bathroom. “You’re totally not my type!” she called back.
Madge happened to walk past. “Not my type either,” she said, frowning at Josie.
Josie sighed. “I get that a lot.”
“I’ll bet you do.”
He wasn’t a stalker. Really. No—really.
Mike kept finding creative—and not so creative— reasons for driving past Laura’s apartment building and Jeddy’s. If he had to meet with the resort’s tax accountant on some issue that went beyond what his onsite CPA could handle, he just routed himself through Somerville, because—why not? And sometimes he found himself really craving those fried green tomatoes and a toffee caramel peppermint sundae from Jeddy’s, so no harm, no foul if he stopped by—right?
Right?
The past three months had nearly killed him. So finding himself on the road right in front of Jeddy’s stuck at a traffic light, neck craned to the left to stare in the restaurant’s main window wasn’t out of the norm. He made this drive once a week or so.
What was out of the norm was the sight of Laura and Josie in a booth, eating and laughing. All the air in his lungs froze in place, the red light now the only entity keeping him here so he could gaze upon Laura’s face. Glowing. She literally glowed. The restaurant’s facade was a split set-up, the bottom half of the outer wall wood, the top half glass, so he could only see her and Josie through the window, her chest and arms and face animated as she threw a balled-up napkin at her friend, her mouth open and head tipped back in giggles and fun.
Relaxing, his entire body went liquid, the first time in months he felt grounded, the incongruity of keeping the Jeep running, foot on the brake, and counting out the seconds before the light changed somehow ignored by his nervous system.
All he wanted to do was to stare at her from afar. She looked so, so happy. Being apart from him and Dylan seemed to have done wonders for her, red cheeks and dimpled smile deeper and fuller. His own face stretched into a loopy grin, the first in far too long.#p#分页标题#e#
Beep! Shaken out of his moment of joy, he realized the light had turned green. With great reluctance he took the left turn, watching for as long as was safe, her face a beacon of hope.
Then gone.
That day at home three months ago, after leaving Josie’s apartment, after Laura had screamed—screamed— that they should buy the building if they wanted in had been the coldest, hardest day of his life, like watching his own death in slow motion, his heart torn out and thrown to the wolves. What had they done to her? How had he and Dylan taken such an open, gentle soul and turned her into a screaming banshee? What evil lurked in them that this could happen?
His run home had been fruitless, his need to escape Dylan at all costs greater than the desire to pound it out. All he could think of when he’d arrived home was a great red wall of anger within, and destruction made more sense than trying to be good. Everything he had worked for went to shit that day—everything —so shattering the glass in the room was like shattering his bond with Dylan.
It made sense through the pure hatred he felt for himself at hurting Laura so deeply.
Now? Not so much. For four months he’d lived apart from Dylan, his cabin a refuge that slowly had turned into a prison. An entire adulthood spent living with Dylan could not be undone so easily; in his rage, he’d missed that point. He felt as if he were missing a limb, the phantom remains of a leg or an arm feeling real and visceral, yet truly gone. Mike had banished himself from Dylan’s life, ignoring the text messages and voice mails that had been plentiful that first week, then tapered off in the second, finally ending with a plaintive, “When you’re ready, I’ll be here.”
Mike hadn’t been ready. Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
Seeing Laura like that, though—a gut punch. Flooding memories of her, of Dylan, of the three of them—and most of all, of the great promise they’d represented, of a lifetime together. Double gut punch. He maneuvered the car into a parking spot at the skyscraper where the tax adviser’s office resided and put his forehead on the steering wheel, taking time.