“I’m at work but I’m about to go home.”
“Do you need me to pick you up?” she asked.
“No. I’m okay to drive. I’m in my car now.”
“I’ll be at your apartment in twenty minutes,” she replied without hesitation.
My eyes filled with tears. “Don’t rush. I don’t want you to have a wreck or something on the way.”
“I was just thinking the same thing about you but I’m not far from there anyway,” she responded. “I was out running errands.” Lucy paused before she asked, “Should I bring wine or extra tissues?”
I laughed, the sound escaping my tight throat. “Wine would be good.”
“I’ll see you soon,” she promised.
After she disconnected, I set my phone in the console and sighed again. The urge to cry had faded for now. I took one more fortifying breath and buckled my seatbelt before I put the car in gear.
Once I got home, I could release all the emotions roiling inside. But first I had to get there in one piece.
I’d just gottenhome and changed into a pair of shorts and a faded, soft grey tee when the doorbell rang. I checked the peephole and nearly smiled when I saw Lucy standing in the hall, a bottle of wine in each hand.
When I threw open the door, she took one look at me and said, “Landen fucked up, didn’t he?”
I couldn’t suppress the laugh that bubbled up in my throat. The outraged expression on her face was both cute and a little scary.
“Definitely,” I replied.
She came inside and put her arms around me in a hug, the bottles bumping my back as she did. “Then we’ll drink wine and talk about what idiot assholes men are.”
I laughed again. “Says the woman who’s still glowing from her honeymoon.”
Lucy pulled back and kicked the door shut. “Hey, just because I’m happily married now doesn’t mean that Chris suddenly became smart.”
Gratitude toward my friend and her husband, my boss, filled me. “He’s the one who told me to take the afternoon off and call you, so I’d say that makes him pretty smart.”
Lucy scowled at me. “Stop talking sense. I need to know you’ll listen the next time Chris does something that annoys me and I need to bitch about him.”
“Duly noted.”
She lifted the bottles. “Now, let’s get some glasses and you can tell me what happened.”
I took the wine from her, a smile curving my mouth when I saw the lids. “Screw top. We’re going high-class today.”
Lucy rolled her eyes. “Good wine comes in all kinds of bottles,” she groused, following me into the kitchen. I didn’t argue because she was right. I liked giving her a hard time.
As I put one bottle in the fridge and twisted the top off the other, she got two glasses out of the cabinet.
Once we each had a glass of wine and were settled on my couch, she asked, “So what happened that made your eyes so sad?”
I took a deep drink of the sweet white wine before I answered her question with another. “Did you know Landen was married before?”
Lucy’s eyes widened and I knew she hadn’t. “What?”
I took another sip and nodded. “Yeah, I found out this morning. He was married before.”
“When?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. We didn’t get that far.”
