My throat goes dry, forcing me to lick my lips before I can speak. I look around and find my coffee and take a sip. “I’d…I’d like that, too. To see what might…happen. Between us.”
This time she smiles, but it’s full of sadness. “Me, too. Except the problem is you’re batshit crazy,and not in a fun or good way. Maybe Declan can help me reel you back in enough you can stand on your own two feet again. Because I think before you had him in your life, you were getting close to teetering over the edge beyond rescue.”
Something deep inside me aches, that this woman, this tie to my past—this tie to Ellen and arguably my best damn friend—doesn’t trust me. “What do I have to doto regain your trust?”
“I don’tknow,” she repeats. “We’ll take it one day at a time, sweetie. I can be your friend, and your employee, and this weird little whatever this is between us right now with Declan holding it together.”
She waves her hand, indicating us. “But before I can give you more than that, I need to know you’re not going to implode. If you break meandDeclan, who’s going tohelphimin the aftermath? And he’smyboy, George. You’re onlyborrowinghim, so don’t forget that. You don’t own him—Ido. I know you think I use men like toilet paper, but you also didn’t know Declan and I were even an item until that first night, so shut up.”
Her tone hardens. “You don’t know as much as you think you do about me. Including my love for that boy. I love my boy every bit asmuch as you loved your girl. Just because I won’t marry him doesn’t mean I don’t love him as much as you loved Ellen.”
I take another sip of my coffee and it strikes me once again that only Ellen and Casey—and now Declan—have ever been able to make coffee the way I like it. I’ll drink it other ways, obviously, but they always make it the perfect strength.
This time when the tears hit, I don’ttry to hold them back. “I’m sorry I didn’t bring her home, Case.” Next thing I know, she’s taking the mug from me again, setting it on the counter, and pulling me into her arms.
She goes with me when I collapse to my knees, sobbing, the grief and pain rolling out of me, everything I’ve struggled to keep back all this time. She’s holding me, rocking me, her face buried in my hair as I scream,and scream, until I ruin my voice and I’m left wordlessly gasping, my breath hitching.
“I…I gave her the window seat,” I sob. “She asked to sit by the window, and I let her. If I’d taken the window like I’d wanted to, so I could take a nap, she’d be alive. But she was my good girl, and she’d had so much fun during the trip. She was so happy. I couldn’t say no to her. If I’d just said no to her,she’d still be alive. It’s all my fault. It’s my fault she’s dead, Case. She’d be alive if I’d just said no.”
“No, George, she wouldn’t, honey. She probably wouldn’t have survived, between losing you and trying to get out of the airplane. She wouldn’t have made it if she lost you. We would’ve lost both of you.”
“I’m so sorry, Case. I promised you I’d take care of her, and I didn’t.”
“It’s okay,sweetie. Thiswasn’tyour fault.”
I finally rip the wound open and let the pus and pain and failure pour out. “I promised to take care of your bestie, and I didn’t. How can you evenstandme now, much less share Declan with me?”
I cry, and I don’t know how long we sit there on my kitchen floor, a kitchen that still feels like Ellen, even two years later. She’s…everywhere.
Everywhere.
Not justaround me, but in my heart, in my soul.
She really was the perfect woman for me. Maybe that’s why this is working with Declan—because it’s harder for me to compare him to Ellen. He’s like a skeleton key—not an exact replica, but hitting all the important parts in the right ways so that he could turn the lock and open it.
“She wasn’t just my bestie. There was something we never told you.”
“What?”I sniffle.
She cups my face in her hands again and makes me look her in the eyes. “Ellen was faithful to you. But you know how when you first started dating her, I used to poke at you and accuse you of stealing my bestie?”
I sniffle again. “Yeah?”
“And you know how she told you she’d fooled around some with others before she met you, but she’d never had intercourse with a guy?”
“Yeah?”
Thesorrow filling her eyes threatens to crush me under its weight.
She sighs. “Honey, I wasn’t completely honest with you that morning in the utility room when you confronted me about what Dec said. You were sort of right about why Declan and Ellen said the same stuff, but not for the reasons you were thinking. Ellen and I weren’t just friends and roommates when you met her. When she met you, shewas my girlfriend and my slave. We were both bi. She was terrified of her family cutting her off if they found out. We’d been together nearly two years when she met you.”
Another weighty sigh escapes her. Her next words crush me. “You didn’t steal my bestie, George. You stole mygirlfriend, myslave, the love of my life. The worst part is, Itriedto hate you and I couldn’t, because you wereso damn…nice. You made her happy. She loved you to the moon and back and then some. You treated her like a princess, you gave her children, youliterallymade every last one of her dreams come true. You did things for her I knew I never could, made her feel things I knew she couldn’t feel for me.
“I always knew she’d meet a guy one day and leave me, because that was the deal between us. She wantedkids, wanted to be a mom, and I didn’t. But I never could move on, no matter how hard I tried.That’swhy I’ve never had a steady boyfriend until I met Declan and got involved with him. I couldn’t find anyone who made me feel the way she made me feel, or anyone who’d put up with me the way he does.”
A sad smile from her this time. “But what does it say about her, that she was so special she hadtwopeople who unconditionally loved her the way you and I did?” She takes a deep breath. “And now it looks like you’ve nearly succeeded in taking away the first person I’ve met since her who I’d finally fallen in love with.”
I stare at her, processing her admission. Guilt slams into me as I see my entire adult life—my marriage, my friendship with Case—in an entirely new perspective. Things Inever really thought about before make perfect sense now.
