He jotted down his email address and phone number and handed them over. “Call me when you get home.”
“I don’t want to bother you.”
“Call me. I’ll worry otherwise. And if you don’t get home, and something goes wrong, call me and tell me, and I’ll come pick you up.”
More sensitive-man crap. Apparently if you acted like a nice guy, you turned into one. At least temporarily.
“All right, I will. Thank you.” She hopped off the chair. “I can help with the dishes.”
“No, I’ve got it. You should get going. It might be a hassle at the airport.”
“You sure? I hate to leave you with this mess. I know it’s mostly on my account.”
When she lifted a plate, he said, “Leave it.”
Too harsh. She held up her hands, palms flat. I’m backing off, the gesture said. So you won’t bite me.
She went into the living room and folded the blanket he’d thrown over her last night. After slipping on her shoes, she spent a minute pushing Alec’s couch pillows around into a more attractive arrangement and then pulled her jersey over her head.
Her hair had started to dry at the ends and in wispy little curls around her face. The sun was up now, and it lit those stray pieces of hair so they glowed, golden and bright.
“Thanks for everything,” she said. “Sorry I … you know. Kind of crash-landed in your life last night.”
“Did I not make myself clear about the apologies?”
That won him a fleeting smile.
“You really won’t let me drive you.”
“I really don’t need you to drive me.”
He sighed. “At least tell me how you’re getting back to the subway.”
“Right out the door, left at the first corner, two blocks down.”
He nodded. He couldn’t think what else to say, so he stepped close, leaned in, and brushed his lips over her cheek. She smelled like his soap.
“Travel safe, May-Belle.”
“I’ll do my best.”
When she left, he sat down on the couch and stared at the blank back of the door, trying to figure out why he felt like he’d just been whacked with the blunt end of a karmic stick.
And what it meant that he felt remarkably calm about that.
Empty, but calm.
CHAPTER NINE
It started raining hard soon after May left, and it didn’t let up all morning.
The downpour cut way down on the number of people who came to the Saturday Greenmarket at union Square. He and Amanda—the Figs waitress who ran the restaurant’s booth four days a week—crouched under the tent in their coats, drinking coffee from another booth and exchanging idle predictions of when the weather might clear up.
The people who did venture out to buy produce weren’t interested in standing around and chatting about honey, but they did buy a lot of honey white-bean soup. Ben had made it thick, with chunks of ham, and Amanda kept telling people it made an excellent breakfast food.
She was a hell of a saleswoman.
At ten, his cell phone buzzed in his pocket, and he looked at the screen. New voice mail.
It hadn’t rung. He checked his missed calls and saw two from an unknown number, the first ten minutes ago, the second just now. May.
He put his hand on Amanda’s arm, interrupting her conversation. “I’ll be back in a sec.”
“Okay.”
He ducked behind the tent.
The wind whipped up, and he had to hunch and pull his raincoat hood over his head in order to hear what she was saying in the message.
—sorry to bother you again, but I wasn’t sure—
—police report, and I don’t have it, so I don’t know—
—at a Starbucks, but it’s fine. Sorry to bother you—
—All right. Bye. Thanks again.
He listened to the message a second time, but he didn’t get much more from it than that she’d missed her flight, and he’d missed her.
Goddamn it.
Ben walked away from the booth, his loose fist curling and uncurling. Now how was he going to find her? There were a hundred Starbucks in New York, if she was even in New York. She could still be in Jersey.
Wherever she was, she was alone, and she didn’t even have a coat. She had forty-some dollars and a credit card number written on a menu.
He should’ve given her his own card. Made her wait for him to get cash from the machine, regardless of how little she liked the idea. Something.
He returned to his seat. A customer asked him why the honey from Jamaica Plain had a green tinge, and he said, “How the fuck should I know?”
Amanda gave him a look after the man scurried off.
“Sorry,” he said. “Woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”
“You can go grab lunch, if you want,” she said. “I’ll handle the honey for an hour. Or you could pack it in. It’s miserable out here today.”