11
Living alone in a house stripped clean by another person a year earlier made it very easy to get her house sale-ready. By the end of that week, afor salesign was on her lawn and Brent’s pick-up truck was in her driveway, being loaded with boxes to put in storage for a month.
“You didn’t have to do this,” she said as she watched him sling the last of the cardboard cubes into the bed.
“But you know I wanted to.” He shrugged. “Thanks for letting me. Hop in and buy me a coffee on our way to drop them off.”
She grabbed her purse and locked the front door before jumping into the passenger seat. Another wave of deja vu hit her. Another set of memories that needed to be put properly in a new place—the past.
They hit the Tim’s drive through. She leaned across Brent to tap her debit card for payment, and as she held her arm outstretched, she had another weird moment. Not quite deja vu. Something else.
She compared his scent—still familiar, after all this time, of clean clothes and his shower gel—to Evan’s cologne from the gala night. And she realized Evan hadn’t been wearing it when they had drinks at the start of the week.
“Huh,” she said out loud.
“What?” Brent asked her.
“Nothing.”
“Not nothing,” he said. “You had your big realization voice on.Huh. You only say that when—” He cut himself off as the service window opened again. He took their coffees from the worker and put them in the centre console.
“I only say that when what?”
He put the truck in drive. “You used to say that when you had a breakthrough on a work thing.”
She laughed. “It wasn’t a work thing.”
“Personal thing?”
“None of your business.”
He grinned. “I’ll trade you. Secret for secret.”
She made a face. “No.” Then she thought of better of it. “Wait, is your secret a good one?”
“It’s about going to the gay club downtown.” His cheeks turned pink. “Does that count?”
She groaned. “Okay, but you might not like my secret.”
“I’ll take that risk,” he said quietly. He was looking straight ahead at traffic, but she felt something shift between them. Like they were entering a trust zone, and he was being brave.
Or they were both being stupid and opening themselves up to unnecessary hurt. It could very much be that.
Trust.The thing about trust is that it required a gamble. There was no trust without risk.
She threw her hat in the ring. She didn’t have anything to lose. “The night of the gala, Evan wore a cologne that I liked. He hadn’t worn it before when we met. And when I leaned over to pay, I caught…” She trailed off. “Your smell—there’s no non-weird way to say this! The very normal and good way you smell reminded me that Evan had smelled kind of the same—normal and good—when I saw him earlier this week. He wasn’t wearing that cologne. It was a one-off cologne, and myhuhwas about that, and what it might mean, and now I have shared way too much.”
Brent nodded slowly. “So…”
“No, it’s your turn.”
“Uh huh. After we talk about the fact that you think I smell normal and good.”
“We’re never talking about that.” She grinned. It felt good to tease like this with him. This had never been their dynamic before. He’d always been too square, too uptight. In hindsight, they’d had a miserable marriage.
Maybe they could have a happy divorce, though. That would be amazing.
“Okay, my turn.” He shrugged. “I went to the club. Nervous as anything, but it was…good. It was pretty empty when I got there, because I apparently have no idea what time to arrive to a club. I drank a beer, the bartender pity-flirted with me, which I appreciated, and then it got busier.”
