“Sounds perfect,” she mutters, wiping at her cheeks. She holds my eyes for a moment, then curls her arm in mine, guiding us toward our cars. “Just think, after I get my footing in this job, months of hotel living under my belt, I’ll be even more accustomed to close quarters by the time I visit your postage stamp again.”
Months. I won’t see Lauren for months.
She stops at my car, then yanks me into a fierce hug. “Miss you already,” she says.
I squeeze her back, hard. “Miss you already, too.”
She pulls away abruptly, putting distance between us as she walks to her car. No gentle, slow extraction. Very Lauren, ripping off the Band-Aid.
I call to her, “Come visit the postage stamp soon, okay?”
Lauren opens her car door and grins. “You know I will, as soon as I can. At which point, between hotel living and our postage-stamp wine nights, if you finally take me up on my offer to kill Ethan, prison will feel spacious!”
“Lauren!” I shriek. “No jokes about homicide!”
Cackling like a gorgeous villainess, she slips into her car and slams the door shut.
I force myself into my car, my hands shaking as I buckle myself in, tears blurring my view out the window as the driver pulls out.
I feel so impossibly sad.
But I feel something else, too, as I stare up into the cloudless night. Inside my heart, my own finally clear sky, glittering with tiny pricks of hopeful light.
Tonight, I told Lauren I’d be okay. And tonight, I finally know I meant it.
CHAPTER 20THEN
September 13, two autumns ago
Fall isn’t here yet, but there’s a tinge of crisp cool in the air that makes me eager for it. It’s been five weeks since the endorphin-soaked almost-kiss, and I can’t stop thinking about it. Every time I see Alex, I find myself staring at his mouth, asking myself,What if?
I have to stop. I just don’t know how to.
I try to line up my hangouts with Alex so that they’re on Mia days. It’s easier to trust I won’t throw myself at him and do something reckless with his daughter around. But even that isn’t helping as much as I’d hoped.
Because watching a man be a good dad—especially when your dad was largely absent and when present didn’t seem particularly happy about it—is deeply attractive.
Today, though, it’s even easier than normal not to think about kissing Alex, to watch him as he pushes Mia in her swing and not feel that sensual tug drawing me toward him. Because today, I’m pathetically sad.
No Fried Food and French Wine Friday with Lauren will happen tonight, not even via FaceTime. Lauren is spending her birthday, and the anniversary of her mother’s passing, without cell service, at an on-site consult for a cutting-edge one-with-nature home design project somewhere in the Southwest. I still sent her a Happy Birthday text followed by what I hoped was a few comforting words about missing her mom today.
The texts haven’t shown as delivered. I keep checking my phone, hoping they will.
“Everything okay?” Alex asks.
I shove my phone back in my jeans pocket. “Yep.”
He’s looking at me closely, still somehow perfectly timing his pushes on Mia’s back to send her soaring up to the sky in the basket swing she crammed herself into. “You sure?” he says.
“It’s Lauren’s birthday today,” I admit. “And the anniversary of her mom’s death.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “Shit.”
“Daddy!” Mia yells. “Bad word!”
“Sorry, honey” he says.
“Gotta give me a pennyyyy!” she yells, the last word stretching out until it morphs into a shriek of delight as he sends her flying upward again.
