“Thanks, but... No, thanks.”
“Because of him. The Brit.”
Because of Tim. Because I knew now what it felt like to be cherished, even if he’d never said the words. My chest ached. But mostly...
“Because of me,” I said. “Because I don’t have to stay here because it’s convenient. I don’t need to be with someone to feel good about myself, and I don’t need sex to feel validated.”
Our eyes held for a long moment.
Sam’s mouth twisted in a smile. “Ah well, then, I’m no good to you, am I?”
I felt a wave of affection for him. “Don’t believe that for a second. You’ve been so good to me. For me. You and your family.”
“Back at you, Boots.” He reached for the whiskey bottle. Poured us both another drink. “To friends, then.”
“To friends.”
We drank solemnly.
“I’d still sleep with you, mind.” Sam winked. “If you need it to get over him.”
Thirty-two
Tim drove Dee to the airport and then went home and got quietly, thoroughly pissed.
“The sooner, the better,” he’d said when she told him she was leaving, and the weeks since—her upstairs, him downstairs—had, in fact, been hell. Like walking around with a hole in the middle of his chest, an animated corpse.
“I don’t want to impose,” she’d said when he offered to drive her. Her brown eyes—seeking, uncertain—knotted him up inside. “Besides, the drop-off lane is a terrible place for good-byes.”
“No imposition at all,” Tim had replied stiffly. He was desperate for the chance to be of some use to her, dying for another fifteen minutes of her company.
But she was right about the drop-off lane. It wasn’t how he’d pictured their farewell, with airport security looking on and Reeti crying and hugging her.
As if privacy would have made the situation any better. Nothing could make it better. Dee was gone now, leaving him alone in his sterile apartment and empty bed, and it was his own bloodyfault. He’d secured another fifteen minutes with her, the length of the drive, when he could have had another two months.
“I fucked up.”
“Not for the first time,” Charles said.
He’d shown up at Tim’s one hour and a half bottle of whiskey ago, and Tim was miserable enough that even drinking with Charles seemed better than spending another too-quiet evening alone.
He tried to remember the last time he’d felt this bad. In rehab, maybe. But even then, with his knee screaming from the second surgery and the fresh wound of Charles and Laura’s betrayal, he hadn’t felt this lonely. This frustrated. This confused.
The solution with Laura was not to feel at all. The solution with Dee was... He poured another whiskey. “Dee isn’t Laura.”
“Not even close,” Charles said cheerfully. “Bet you pulled your Robot Man routine on her anyway.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tim said.
Dee’s face flashed across his mind. That hopeful, expectant look in her eyes when she’d told him she loved him and he’d said... he’d said, “I care for you.” His jaw clenched. Stingy bastard.
“Uh-huh,” Charles said. “Why do you think you and Laura broke up?”
Tim stared.Because you had sex with her, you wanker.“You can’t be serious.”
“You two were over before I slept with her, mate. After you got blown up, you shut down.Icouldn’t get through to you, and I at least had some idea what you were going through. Laura couldn’t reach you at all.”
“So I wasn’t chatty. I was barely conscious.”
