Except she was heartbroken and on the rebound and didn’t have anyplace else to go.
He lay stiff and still on his back, the hard bar of the foldout couch pressing into his spine, his erection tenting the covers, and willed himself to sleep.
19
Anne
A hangover lurked behind myeyeballs, waiting to pounce. But lying still in the warm, rumpled bed, flat on my stomach, face glued to the pillow, I was bonelessly relaxed. At peace. After months of no contact, it had felt so good to be held again, even in a nonsexual way, by someone who…
Who was not Chris. Oh.Oh.
My stomach roiled. My brain woke up.Joe.
The night rushed back to me in shards. The hangover came roaring out of its cave. I pried one matted eyelid open. No Joe. I reached out one hand, fumbling across the mattress. The bed was empty. I could still smell him on the sheets, musk and salt. My insides clenched.
I raised my head. “Hello?”
No answer. No movement in the kitchen. No sound from the bathroom.
I rooted around for my phone. A string of text balloons from Hailey, a voicemail from an unknown number. Nothing I could deal with before coffee. Nothing from Chris. Or Joe. The battery was down to thirty percent. I swung my feet to the floor and shuffled to the toilet. Gripping the sink with both hands, I took stock of my reflection. Mascara smudgedbeneath my swollen eyes. My face had a pillow crease. A strand of hair stuck to the dried drool on my cheek.
I flushed all over. Nothing had happened last night. Obviously. I was drunk, but not so drunk I wouldn’t rememberthat. But something had changed.
Joe Miller was not a jerk. Maybe he had never been a jerk.
He hadn’t just come to my rescue. He’d beenniceabout it. He could have made me feel like a pathetic reject. A pest. Instead, he’d made me tea and listened to me talk and shared his bed without making an awkward situation even more uncomfortable.
A memory flashed. Me, snuggling into his warm side, my arm across his chest, my leg drawn up over his thigh. His big feet. His hard, hairy calves. My sleepy protest when he tried to move.
I cringed. At least I hadn’t puked on him before passing out.
My head pounded. I washed my face and then, with a silent apology to my unknown, absent host, squeezed some of her toothpaste onto my finger and rubbed it around in my mouth. Joe had work this morning. An early start, he’d said. So at least I didn’t have to face him until I had clothes on and coffee in my system.
I padded through the living room and into the kitchen, tripping over his duffel, neatly packed at the foot of the bed. A note was propped against a tea mug on the counter.Back by 5. Key by the door if you want to go out.
A warm feeling curled around my heart. He’d been thinking of me.
Me, and the handful of other women he took care of. His mother. My mother. His sister. His ex-wife? I pressed theheels of my palms to my eyes, holding the headache at bay. Tea was not going to cut it this morning. I needed caffeine. Fresh air. Distraction.
So I went out.
—
I wandered DevonAvenue in search of coffee, past an Indian clothing store, a Middle Eastern market, a gated synagogue, and a Nepalese restaurant.
When I first moved into the West Ridge neighborhood, at the height of the pandemic, the foot traffic was almost nonexistent. Plastic had covered the restaurant tables like shrouds, and all the market workers were masked. Some businesses never recovered. But my favorite bakery still occupied the corner, its long glass pastry case full of cakes, bagels, babkas, and cookies.
I smiled at the owner and ordered a sweet roll studded with almonds and the biggest coffee they had.
“Here you go, miss. Have a nice morning.”
Another flashback. Joe, looming over me in the dark, his broad shoulders silhouetted against the dim light, handing me a glass of water and two pills. “Here. You’ll thank me in the morning.”
Had he actually called mebaby? Another full-body flush.
I summoned a smile and dropped a tip in the jar. “Thanks. You, too.”
I carried my breakfast outside, where seating had sprung up on the sidewalks like mushrooms after a rain. I found an empty table and checked my phone again. No message from Chris, no last-minute invitation to lunch. I’d been officiallyghosted. Or worse, forgotten, reduced to stalking him on social media for pics from his graduation. (There weren’t any.)
