“I brought pizza.” She lifted the box, offering it like a bribe or a... What had she said the other day? A peace offering.Sorry I fucked your partner. Have a pie. “Bacon and garlic. Your favorite.”
He could smell it, garlic, grease, and tomato sauce, drifting over the diesel-scented water. His stomach rumbled. He wanted dinner out with Lauren and got pizza in with Renee. It had been that kind of fucked-up day.
Renee tilted her head. “You going to make me eat this by myself?”
He should tell her to go. But he was hungry and feeling sorry for himself and too tired to go to the effort of making a meal. She was here. The pizza was here.
He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
So she came aboard.
The habits of marriage died hard. How many times over the years had they come home at the end of the day, too tired to cook, too exhausted for sex, and split a pizza or an order of Chinese from the take-out place around the corner? They slipped without discussion into the familiar division of labor,You get the napkins, I’ll open the wine. Maybe that’s what Renee was counting on, that he would fall without thinking into the old routines.
They carried the glasses out on deck.
The kitten followed, drawn by loneliness or maybe the smell of bacon. He wove around Jack’s ankles when he sat, head-butting his shins for attention.
Renee tucked her feet under her chair. “You got a pet rat. How cute.”
“This is Tiger,” Jack said, reaching down to scratch behind the cat’s ears.
“Jesus, Jack, if I’d known you were this hard up for company, I would have come down sooner.” Renee blotted the grease from her pizza with a napkin. “So, what did you and Pookie fight about?”
“We didn’t fight.”
Fighting involved yelling. He and Renee had fought, simmering resentments exploding into anger and bitter, hurtful words. Renee had always known what buttons to push, how to turn him from a decent guy trying to do his best into an angry asshole. Even when they hadn’t connected emotionally any other way, they’d known how to fight.
Lauren hadn’t yelled. She’d been caring and concerned, patient and dignified. And hurt.
He’d seen her face go white, heard that distressed little hitch in her breath when he went after her.
He’d hurt her. Damn it.
He took a bite of pizza he didn’t want and put the slice down.
Renee looked from his plate to his face and raised her eyebrows. “Want to talk about it?”
He gave her a flat look.
She laughed. “Okay, not our style. But if you want to tell me how she makes you miserable, I’m happy to listen.”
Reluctantly, his lips twitched. “I’m good, thanks.”
“Yeah, you are. Too good for me, everybody always said. Saint Jack, the cool and incorruptible.” She licked her fingers. “Except with me.”
He heard her satisfaction. Was that what she was after? The anger that would turn him back into the man that she remembered, the rage that would give her power over him again.
“I’m no saint.”
“I know that. But it got kind of old, listening to them go on all the time about what a great guy you are.”
“You mean, my mother,” he said dryly.
“Your mother, my mother, all of them. Frank.”
He stilled. “I’m not talking with you about Frank.”
“Suits me.” Renee swallowed. “Bastard dumped me, you know. Couldn’t get over what he did to you.”
