“Why would you ask that?” Addie stared up at her from her cocoon of blankets. “I have a few hours until I need to be on set. It’s cold, and I don’t want coffee. You can go early, or grab one at the airport.”
“If I do that, I could stay a little longer,” Toni mused. She leaned down to kiss Addie again. Maybe they had time to—
“I need sleep, Toni. We said goodbye last night,” Addie interrupted the thought before rolling away from Toni. She waved half-heartedly over her shoulder. “Go to the airport.”
Toni was out of ideas. She couldn’t force a conversation, and there was no mistaking Addie’s actions. Toni was being dismissed.She rolled her bag to the door, paused, and looked back, and then she headed to the waiting car. They’d been intimate all weekend, and they’d talked a lot. Toni made sure to hold Addie as long as she wanted, even when they hadn’t just had sex. She pondered every detail as she headed to the airport.
She texted Addie:
It was great to see you. Next time, D.C.?
After a moment, Addie’s reply came in:
I’ll check my schedule.
Toni read it, reread it, and scowled. She wasdefinitelybeing dismissed, and she had no idea why. Finally, she looked at the clock. It was an hour later in New York, and Emily was a disgustingly early-morning person.
Toni texted Em:
Are you awake? What does it mean when a woman rolls over and
ignores you? And then says “I’ll check my schedule” when you try
to plan to see her?
Emily called. “What did you do?”
“Nothing.” Toni stared out the window. “We had a great weekend. That asshole showed up at her door drunk, so I flew down and—”
“I’m on that, by the way. Continue.” Emily sounded businesslike. “What went wrong?”
“I have no idea. I thought we were doing great,” Toni muttered. “She didn’t want to get coffee today. And when I texted, she said she’d check her schedule. That’s not normal.”
“Was she… content? Did you ignore her? Fail to get her off?”
“Obviouslynot, Em.” Toni thought back to the weekend, to Addie’s very obvious pleasure. “I don’t fail in that area.”
“So you said or did something wrong,” Emily surmised. “Did you give her the ‘we’re friends with benefits’ talk?”
“No.” Toni squirmed as she admitted the next bit. “I actually referred to this asdating.”
Emily laughed. “Sweetie, you don’t need to say it like it’s a vulgar word.”
“I like her, and I told her I had missed her, and I suggested that she come to DC to visit me.” Toni thought back over the weekend. Since their awkward conversation about Toni’s parents and her hang-ups on Friday, everything had been great. She told Em as much, including Addie’s suggestion that she could visit Lil.
Em stopped her there. “She wanted to meet Lil?”
“I told her no. Who knows what would happen? Do you remember the nurse with the Betty Boop figure?” Toni thought back to the way her mother had launched herself at that poor woman. It had been terrifying. There was no way Toni was going to subject Addie to that sort of risk. “Speaking of Lil, I missed my visit this weekend because I was out of town. I need to stop on the way to campus. It’s early but…” She wondered if it was too early. “Maybe I should go this evening, but I was hoping to talk to Addie tonight. Find out what has her acting so weird.”
“You know, if you didn’t care about Addie, you wouldn’t be so worried that she was upset.” Emily had slipped into her dealing-with-difficult-people tone. “Do you think maybe we should discussthat?”
“No.” Toni felt panic curdle her stomach. It felt that way every time she thought about what it could mean that she missed Addie, that she was making excuses to extend their friendship-dating-situationship. Abruptly, she said, “I’m almost at the end of the book. I’ll probably be done by the end of November.”
“You have December if you need it,” Emily reminded her. “Probably early January. Everything in publishing shuts down in December anyhow.”
“I’ll be done before winter break.Mybreak, that is. At the college.” Toni watched the driver take the exit for the airport. “Hey, I’m almost here. Thank you for talking. I’ll call you this week, okay?”
“I wanted to ask you about your TA,” Emily said.
