He turned around completely and leaned against the counter. “Yes. Did you think I was leaving?”
Yes, and I cannot believe myself, but I don’t want you to. Out loud, I said, “I think we passed the bed check.”
“Then you want me to leave?” he insisted.
I couldn’t answer that.
He nodded. “I understand.”
“It’s not that I want you to leave, as much as you have to stay because we still have the interview.”
It was only half-true. If we passed the bed check, and if they knew he was spending part of the time in San Francisco, and we could both answer a lot of their questions now, he didn’thaveto stay here. Except, I wanted him to. After wishing for it for a week, I now felt a void pervading my insides at the thought of him gone and this apartment empty again, as it had been last night. As it had always been.
“Don’t worry; I need us to pass it as much as you do, and I won’t let you go to jail, June. They don’t have organic uniforms and vegan kitchens there.” His lopsided grin contrasted with the softness in his eyes as he looked at me, and another dart perfectly hit its mark in my heart.
At that moment, I knew that in the list of emotions that Angelo had hurricaned into my rational life, there was another that refused to be overlooked or cast away. One that I had tired of searching for and despaired of finding.
Love.
Maybe that was why I didn’t recognize it at first. It had been forever. It had beennever.
When I looked into my heart now, counting inventory in its rooms, I didn’t even need a checklist to know that what I felt for Angelo was just that. I didn’t know, notice, invite, or even consent to it, but it was there.
I was in love with Angelo Marchesi. My husband. The man I couldn’t have.
26
Angelo
Safe from failing a bed check, I spent the night in my apartment in San Francisco. After a visit to the shop to drop off the equipment that I had finished working on and picking up more projects, I joined the sales team—Davey, John, and Gil—for a drink in a favorite local bar. From there, we continued to a club that hosted a cover rock band.
It was the same life I had left just over a week ago, but it felt different.
Ifelt different.
The club we went to was one we sometimes jam sessioned in. I used to frequent it with Amber, but it wasn’t her on my mind when I felt that I had to get out of there.
The urge to drive out of the city and onto the highway signaled that the reason lay elsewhere. It lay alone, in a beautiful, tidy studio apartment above a health shop and was probably glad I wasn’t there, behind her silly accordion.
I was back in my workshop and apartment, but my heart was three hundred miles away. Even from a distance, June consumed me, gripped me, which was ironic because all she ever tried to do was to ward me off.
That thought, and the hope that maybe giving us both some breathing space would help, kept me from getting into my car and driving to her in the middle of the night, or looking through our pictures when I was in my bed and missing the sound of her breaths or the feel of her body against mine.
I wasn’t entirely surprised when she hadn’t come home after our night together or what had transpired between us when she had returned. Conquering her body was one thing, but entirely breaking down the walls she had built around her heart and life was a whole different tune. I had to learn to navigate my way to her.
While she wasn’t easy to read, I could tell by now that three things stood against me: I was the complete opposite of what she wanted, she was maddeningly stubborn, and she was scared shitless of getting hurt. The first two things I had plainly seen on my first two days with her, and the last I had discovered as we’d peeled each other’s layers days before we’d peeled each other’s clothes.
I knew she had feelings for me. I could see it in her eyes, in the way she touched me, whispered my name, held on to me, confided in me. I hung on to it.
Work had me stay the next day, too. But on the following day, I couldn’t stand it anymore and left in time to reach Wayford right before June’s shop closed.
The shop seemed empty when I entered, and the sidewalk stand that announced new products and special promotions was folded and leaning against a rack inside.
I managed to take a few steps in before I heard voices. June’s and a man’s.
Standing in the aisle closest to the entry, I listened.
“After I was here last time, it drove me crazy,” the male voice said. “I talked to Brad. Remember Brad? He reminded me who you were. I forgot all about it. I don’t know how I didn’t recognize you. Good thing Brad remembered, right?”
