CHAPTER17
Texts had been chiming in at fairly steady intervals since Britt got home from work.
Britt please we need to talk.
Britt, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bail just like that. I had to get her out of there. Please text me back.
Tell the mountain lion I said hi.
Tell the azalea I said hi.
Britt... please don’t shut me out...
Where had he found an image of a beseeching man?
That onealmostmade her smile.
“J. T. says hi,” she told Phillip. Who stretched and yawned, showing the entire pink inside of his mouth, then walked over and flopped into her lap as if he’d been walking hundreds of miles to get to her. She buried her hand in his fur.
It was darkening in the house. And yet she couldn’t find the will to get up and turn on a light.
She hadn’t moved from the couch since she arrived home from work. She literally felt as though she had the flu. Or like something essential had been scooped out of her, leaving her hollow and uncertain how to walk now.
How had she not been prepared for this feeling?
She finally listened to the voice mails.
“Britt, I swear on everything I hold sacred I didn’t know she was coming or how she even knew I was here. Call me back. I’m sorry I left like that. I just... my reflex was to get her out of there as fast as possible. Rebecca sews mayhem.”
She punched it over to the next message.
“Britt, I don’t blame you if you’re mad. I fucked up. I can see that now. Let me at least explain. Please call me back.”
She couldn’t move. He certainlysoundedsincere. He sounded, in fact, as though he were in actual physical pain.
He was an actor, of course.
So was the world-famous beautiful woman with whom he’d disappeared with this afternoon. Whose giant head and giant sparkly lips were out on the highway.
Britt looked around. Her house, formerly her sanctuary, seemed irrevocably changed now, because she saw J. T. everywhere in it: nude, his lovely little pale butt as he reached up for cups in the cupboard. The new porch railing. In her bedroom, where she had watched him sleep for a little while, his back dappled by the shadowed pattern of leaves and where they had all but set the sheets on fire.
And every inch of her body, of course.
She closed her eyes, but whoop! He was there, too.
In all likelihood he would be in her dreams, too.
She had only herself to blame, of course.
There must be some sort of romance law, like those rules you used to solve geometry proofs. It would read:the devastation is precisely equivalent to the bliss.
The joke was on her, she guessed. She’d outsmarted herself. She’d wanted to get back on the horse with J. T. and she’d been wearing lust blinders. She’d reasoned herself into a fling and she hadn’t expected to feel much more than sated and triumphant when it was over.
And now... now she couldn’t isolate one dominant emotion from the great knot of them pulsing in the center of her.
Pain radiated through her whole body.
Her phone was finally quiet.
