Page 27 of Heart of the Race

Part of me was angry. How dare he pop back into my life again and pull the rug out from under me? I deserved my place, my home, my life. I wouldn’t be homeless again. I couldn’t be. It would break me.

The other half, the half that had spent a lifetime in love with my best friend, was in heaven.

I had to think.

I breathed in the smell of the ocean and coming rain. I focused on the sounds of people rushing by on the sidewalk and the wind kicking around the leaves on my front lawn. All the normal helped me slowly pull back all the pieces of my heart that had exploded like shrapnel. When I felt the stillness settle in me, I called Graham to give him my apologies.

“Okay, no lunch,” he said, chuckling. “So, dinner, then?”

“I don’t think so,” I replied honestly. “Varro is actually in town and⁠—”

“Wait.”

“What?”

“You’re saying the guy you said last night that you weren’t sure if you’d ever see again, ever, he’s suddenly in town?” he asked and sounded just a bit snide. “Do I have that right?”

“You do.” I laughed because, really, and always, Varro’s timing was for shit.

“That’s very interesting.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean I’m getting conflicting messages here, Brian.”

“In what way?”

“Are you kidding? What is this guy to you?”

“Exactly what I told you. He used to be my best friend, and really, he still is.”

“How do things just change overnight?”

“They just do with Varro,” I groaned and then added, “He’s the worst.” But even I could hear how fondly the words came out.

“It sounds like that’s all right with you.”

“It was for a long time and then it wasn’t.”

“And now?”

“Now I don’t know,” I confessed because my life was in free fall at the moment. No telling where I was going to land.

“So everything you said last night was a lie.”

“No,” I explained. “It was all true then. I thought he was gone. Today he’s not, he’s here, and everything’s different.”

“So he never actually said that he was out of your life.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“And now what? He says jump and you say how high?”

“It’s not like that. I wanna see him.”

“You want to?”

“Of course. Always.”