“Where’s the woman who was staying in this room?”
“She checked out.”
“You sure?”
She’d pulled out her list and showed it to him.“Room three-ten. Vacated.”
From there, he’d tried to anticipate the next logical move: her ride home.
Except, according to Lark, she wasn’t the wheels back to Seattle anymore.
The RV door swung open with a sharp creak. Blondie stepped out with an envelope pinched between her fingers. “She dropped this off with me before she left.”
“Left how?” He took the envelope.
“In a car.”
“Whose car?” God, Zac felt like he’d joined a game of twenty questions without his knowledge or consent.
“She called up a rideshare.” Lark shrugged then peered at one of her fingernails before gnawing delicately on a cuticle.
“Don’t you think it’s kinda shitty forcing her to catch a ride home with a stranger when you drove the two of you over here? Real classy, blondie.”
“Hey! Don’t ‘real classy, blondie’ me, you ass.” She stepped off her little metal stoop and marched up to Zac, still clutching the robe tightly around her waist. “She showed up super early this morning saying she was heading out right away. I told her we could be wheels-up in thirty, but she said she’d already booked a ride. Then I insisted, and she said no, so I insisted again—”
“Ok, I get it,” Zac interrupted.
She’d left. Without saying goodbye. How could she do that to—oh, wait. He’d done the exact same thing to her all those years ago. Was she trying to get back at him? Punish him for safeguarding his feelings back then?
No.
That wasn’t his tabby cat. He was the coward, not her.
“You know,” Lark cut into his internal spiral, “instead of trying to puzzle it out, you could just read her letter. It says it all there.”
“You read it?” Zac said with indignation.
“It wasn’t sealed very well.”
A dry laugh eeked out of his throat. He wasn’t upset at Lark, she was merely the messenger. A nosy messenger, but still.
“Thanks for this,” Zac muttered before turning around and slinking to his van.
“Hey, big guy?” Lark called as she tugged the towel from her head and a mass of chaotic blonde curls swarmed her face. She swiped them back and said gently, “Whatever happened between you two, in the eight or so years I’ve known Tabitha, I’ve never seen her so affected. But she’s cautious. With her heart, I mean.”
“I know.”
“Probably even more than when you first met her back then. She doesn’t let others in very easily. And she didn’t tell me much about yesterday, but from what I gather she’s trying to sort her feelings out. Don’t be mad at her.”
“I’m not mad,” he assured her. And he wasn’t. Sad? Disappointed? Confused as all hell? Sure. But he wasn’t angry with her. Zac thanked Lark and climbed into his driver’s seat. He flipped over the envelope and chuckled at the rips and crinkles where blondie had clearly forced her way in. On the outside of the folded paper the photographer had scrawled a note:
Hey, big guy. Give her time. She’ll come around. X, Lark
P.S. Send me all the shots you took yesterday . . . especially the spicy ones.
P.P.S. Thanks for taking care of her.
Beneath the scrawled note was her work email and Tabitha’s cell number. Zac smiled; tabby cat sure had a solid friend in that chaotic woman. Then he opened the note his lover had written and held his breath.
