She got the wine out and poured some into a glass, resisting the urge to empty the contents into one of her big-bowled red wine goblets and drink it all in one sitting. She stared at the glass as the coolness of the liquid made condensation fan out over the surface.
Who drank cold red wine?
She did the dishes, leaving the full glass untouched.
Do this and you can have it.
An hour later the wine had warmed to room temperature. Alice had cleaned the kitchen, dumping out the rotten produce that had accumulated during the week. She threw in a load of laundry and made the bed in Kevin’s bedroom, smoothing out the sheets and fluffing the pillows to give the space a welcoming quality when he came back.
When all that remained was the vacuuming, which would wake Liv, she sat back at the table with the tepid wine in hand.
Now.
Instead she pulled out her phone and called Alex. She hadn’t thought about doing it until the phone was already in her hand. His name, so thoughtful in its alphabetical orientation, was among the first to greet her in the contact list. The line was ringing before she had a chance to hesitate or second-guess the gesture.
Only when he answered did she take her first sip from the glass. “I’m home,” she informed him.
“I’m on my way.”
It had begun to rain by the time Alex pulled into her driveway, the early evening made darker from the presence of the looming clouds. Though the blue Sierra truck was unfamiliar, she knew it had to be him.
Waiting in the doorway, she watched as he ran from the driver’s side through the sheets of cold rain and up her front steps. In spite of the short distance, he was still soaked by the time he came through the front door.
Something about him being there, coming so quickly, and the way his skin and hair glistened in the dim hallway light, made Alice keenly aware of him. The smell that made him distinctly Alex was lost in the rain, but he seemed much bigger and more real than she remembered him.
He was the kind of thing that could keep someone anchored.
She reached out and touched him. The gesture wasn’t meant to be a come-on. She only wanted to know if he was real, like any moment he might vanish into the ether, leaving her in the deathly quiet of the house, alone with her miserable thoughts.
Her first instinct when he proved to be tangible was to start crying. Yet the tears wouldn’t come. It was possible the trials of the last several days had bled her dry, leaving her with nothing more to come out.
“You’re here,” she said instead.
“Of course.”
“You’re really, really here?” Her hand was still on his chest, the dampness of his shirt under her palm creating a bizarre adhesive that wouldn’t let her release him.
“Did you think I wouldn’t come?”
She shook her head, not sure what she’d expected at all. It was hard for her to believe he was standing in her hallway again, when he was supposed to be on the opposite side of the country. They were never meant to be back in such close quarters like this. She’d written him off, told herself nothing would come of it and not to waste foolish hope on a guy like him.
A guy like him.
After two days with Matt, remembering what had soured her against ballplayers in the first place, she’d steadily begun to realize there were no guys like Alex. Just because he had the same job as Matt didn’t mean he was the same person.
Matt had bought Olivia off with a tablet. Alex had given her a day at the ballpark. Being a baseball player wasn’t what made Matt an asshole, that was just his natural state of being. Alex would still be Alex if he was a car salesman or a professor. For ten years Alice had told herself anyone who played baseball for a living was, by default, a schmuck.
Now she knew she’d been the stupid one for her prejudice.
And knowing she almost threw everything away with Alex because of her stupid notions? She was all the more surprised to find him standing in front of her now.
“I’m glad you’re here.” Instead of crying, she tried something she hadn’t done in a while. She gazed up at him and smiled.
His brown eyes, previously wary and full of concern, now shone with warmth and a twinkle of that mischievousness Alice had come to understand was a part of him at all times.
He pulled her close, and the bulk of his arms and chest surprised her. He was built like a linebacker, a solid wall of muscle wrapped around her in a crushing hug. Beneath his wet T-shirt his back was corded with the same muscle, and she wondered what had happened to the nearly chubby man she’d been introduced to a year earlier.
How much focus and energy had been required to transform him into this? Or had this man been lurking in there the entire time and she hadn’t known it because of his stature? He didn’t look muscular at a glance. He still retained the same stocky frame as before. But there was nothing fat about him.