ChapterTwenty-Nine
Riley
Isensedher before looking up from my coffee and meeting her smiling eyes. I couldn't fight the sensation, but it was different now. Muted. As if the volume had been turned down but the vibrating bass stillremained.
She dropped into the chair across from me and spoke, but I was too busy finding my words tohearhers.
"Thank you for meeting me. I know it's really early." Gesturing feebly at the plate loaded with pastries on the table between us, I said, "I thought you might likethese."
"I do love croissants," she said, reaching for one and tearing it into thirds. "Even if they're consumed before eight on a Saturdaymorning."
She licked the buttery crumbs from her fingers and I braced myself for the pulse of inevitable heat to course throughmybody.
Itdidn'tcome.
Like an ill-mannered masochist, I kept watching while she ate. I didn't look away when she brushed some crumbs from her shirt or tongued a dollop of apricot jam from the corner ofherlips.
I watched it all, digging inside for—for anything. But it was as though I'd stared at the sky too long and now I couldn't see anything but brightblankness.
"Are we talking birthdays?" Lauren asked, snapping me out of this internal inventory. "Because I think we need to talk birthdays. I know Matt, Patrick, and Shannon usually pick one day because they're all within a week or so of each other, but they also blow off the entire affair and never allow proper celebrations. I'd like tochangethat. "
"Birthdays," I said slowly. I reached for my coffee and gulped, choking down the words I'd intendedtosay.
"Isn't that what you wanted to discuss?" she asked, her brows quirking up in question. "That's why you wanted me to ditch Matt,right?"
"Where is he?" I asked, glancing around. "Right now, whereishe?"
"Gym," she replied, her hand over her mouth as she spoke around thecroissant.
"Yeah, right," I said, squeezing myeyesshut.
It'd beenyearsthat I'd been carrying feelings for Lauren. It was a familiar weight, one that left me stumbling, off balance, now that itwasgone.
"Was there something else?" she asked. "Something you wanted to discuss thismorning?"
Her eyes were patient, warm. So damn warm. Like I could tell her any outrageous thing and she wouldn't think any lessofme.
Anyoutrageousthing.
"It's been a—a strange couple of months," I started. "It seems like everything has changed. Like I'm not the same person I used to be." I glanced at her. "Does that makesense?"
She nodded as she wiped her hands on a paper napkin. "Tons of sense. I went through something similar a couple of years ago." She paused, dropping her gaze. "Around the time I met Matthew,actually."
That caught my attention. I leaned forward, laced my hands around my cup, and waited for her tocontinue.
"In a matter of months, the life I'd once known was upended," she continued. "I went from being a classroom teacher to a school principal, my college friends faded away, and then there was Matthew." She reached into her bag for her phone and glanced at the screen, then placed it on the table. "By themselves, one of those things would've qualified as a big life change, butaltogether?"
Her wide eyes and open palms saiditall.
"Shambles?" Ioffered.
Lauren laughed. "Something likethat,yeah."
She tucked her hair over her ears, and my mind went straight to Alex. Her hair, and the way it curled after being tied up in a bun under her scrub cap all day. How it felt between my fingers or tickling my torso, or fanned out on her flowerypillows.
"I saw my college girlfriend last month," I said. "I had to force myself to remember what I'd likedabouther."
Lauren bobbed her head eagerly. "Same with my roommates. We'd been so tight through college and then moving to the city, but then we grew apart. Almost overnight. We just weren't the same people anymore, and we couldn't find our way back to the people we'doncebeen."
