“Are you avoiding me?” I say slowly.
He snorts at this, but not with his usual levity. “We rarely see each other anyway,” he says, and I move out of his way as he steps down onto the porch, closing the front door behind him. “There’s not much to avoid.”
“But you’re not denying it.”
Silence, accompanied by a neutral expression. He looks the same as he always does, handsome and casual, at ease, but this time his eyes don’t match. They’re guarded. Shuttered.
“You are,” I say, straightening up. “You’re leaving so you don’t have to see me.”
And finally the veil over his eyes drops, his lips quirking into a sardonic smile. “What do you want me to say, Aurora?” The words are calm and rational, even quiet, but as he goes on, they still hurt. “I like you; you don’t feel the same. Why on earth would I stick around and make things worse for myself?” He shrugs. “Better to cut my losses, you know?”
I swallow the emotions trying to clog my throat and push a question out instead. “That easy, huh?”
He doesn’t meet my eye, doesn’t answer. He just shuffles past me, giving me a wide berth, and says, “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to.”
His logic is sound, and I can’t fault him for his reasoning. It makes total sense to separate yourself from a situation where you might get hurt. I would do the same. I’vetriedto do the same.
It’s simply not working anymore.
I open my mouth to ask him…what? What do I want to ask him? I don’t know, but I begin anyway?—
Until another car pulls up in front of the house, loud and clanking, turning into the driveway and parking next to Roman’s car.
It’s a familiar little sedan, I see as I squint my eyes. But because I’m not expecting it here, of all places, it takes a second for me to identify exactly where I’ve seen that car before…
Tyler.
That’s Tyler’s car. Isn’t it?
No. I frown, my attention completely diverted now as someone emerges from the driver side—scruffy beard, receding hairline, faded good looks.
My head swings back to Roman, whose expression has fallen. He sighs and puts his hands on his hips, watching Tyler approach.
“What—I—what?”
I am the picture of eloquence.
“As it happened,” Roman says with the air of someone resigned to an inevitable outcome, “Tyler was in need of a job”—Tyler’s gaze jumps back and forth as he trails down the sidewalk toward us—“and I was in need of some yard work.”
“Yard work?” I say faintly, my mind whirring.
Roman shrugs as Tyler shifts uncomfortably, keeping his distance when he comes to a stop.
“Lawn care,” Roman says. “Paint touch ups. Grout. That sort of thing.”
“Grout.”
“Grout,” he repeats, nodding.
Storm clouds roll in behind my sternum, lightning that cracks until the air buzzes with defeat—as once again the modicum of control I thought I’d earned turns out to be an illusion.
“So—even when Tyler paid me,” I say, “it really would just have been you paying me.”
Roman hums as Tyler backs further away.
“You could look at it like that,” he admits with another nod. His keys jingle as he folds his arms. “But I would have hired someone to do this job anyway. I didn’t do it for you specifically. I just saw a way to kill two birds with one stone, as it were.”
And although he doesn’t look repentant in the least, his eyes on me are careful and steady.
