Her glassy hazel eyes flick to mine for a second before returning to the carpeted floor.
“There’s so much I wish I could tell you … but I can’t,” I say. “And I can’t even tell you why I can’t tell you.” I huff. “But I want you to know, that the parts that mattered? The parts where you felt something? That was real. I felt something too.”
She says nothing, only stands there with her arms tight against her chest, worrying her bottom lip.
“I miss you,” I say. “I think about you every single day.”
I leave it at that because I’ve already said too much, and it seems to be falling on deaf ears anyway.
We stand in silence for a minute, still and unmoving. I’m not going anywhere unless she wants me to.
A moment later, Love finally looks at me again, her full lips parting as she begins to say something.
“Goodbye, Jude.” Pushing past me, she heads back toward the hallway where we collided and I stay put until she disappears.
I thought I’d feel better once I got the chance to see her again and finally apologize. Turns out I was wrong. Seeing Love so guarded, so closed off, so different from the woman I got to know, only adds to my guilt. And knowing she was right in front of me and I couldn’t touch her, couldn’t kiss her, sends a tightness to my chest that threatens to steal the air from my lungs.
I can only hope she heard what she needed to hear tonight and that it’s all she needs to move on and find someone who can make her as happy as she made me.
That’s all I want for her.
Forty-Five
Love
* * *
“Who’s next?” Cameo scans the sheet of paper I gave her this morning when we first arrived at my newly-leased Agenda W building for interviews.
By the time her honeymoon tan faded, Cameo realized that being a stay at home housewife isn’t as glamourous as she thought it would be and promptly booked a flight to the city to help me staff this place. Plus, she thinks I’m falling apart ever since the Jude thing came to light and she said she feels like she needs to be here to get me through this.
But I’m not complaining. Help is help.
“Connie Berger,” I say, reading off the list. “But that’s not until one.”
It’s been a week since I ran into Jude at Lenox Hill Hospital, and now that Agenda W is getting off the ground, I’m going to be spending a lot more time in Brooklyn. I’m bound to run into him again, and every time I step outside this building, I find myself scanning the area, wondering if he’s in the vicinity.
I wanted to tell him off last week. And I was so close. But something stopped me, something held me back. Every time I tried, I couldn’t get the words off my tongue.
Maybe it was softness in his eyes, the remorse in his tone, or the apology I wasn’t expecting … but I found myself speechless.
And then I got the hell out of there.
“Think I’m going to grab some fresh air and an iced coffee. Want anything?” I ask Cameo as she thumbs through honeymoon pictures on her phone and posts one on her Instagram with a “throwback Thursday” hashtag.
“No, thank you.” She grabs her Dean and Deluca cup lifting it to show me.
Only the best for Cam.
Slipping my bag over my shoulder, I head out and walk two blocks to a Starbucks on the corner. It’s late July and literally hot as hell, but the sun feels nice as it warms the top of my head, and the cold coffee is going to be just what I need to get through the rest of the interviews this afternoon.
Heading in once I get there, I find a place in line and peruse the menu even though I already know what I’m getting.
“Love?”
I follow the voice coming from my left until my gaze lands on a raven-haired beauty navigating a double stroller through a sea of tables-for-two.
“Lo,” I say, heart ricocheting as I glance around to ensure it’s just her and the girls. “Hi.”
“How’ve you been?” she asks.
It’s strange that she would ask me that, given the fact that we only met a couple of times and only for the briefest of moments, but she looks at me like she knows me inside and out and the tenderness in her voice suggests her question is genuine.
“Great,” I say, inching forward as the line moves “You?”
Her eyes search mine, though for what, I’m not sure.
“We’re doing well,” she says, biting the corner of her lip.
The line moves again, but Lo is caught behind a display on the other side and a small table prevents her from wedging her way closer.
“He fell in love with you,” she blurts.
“What?” Michael Bublé croons over the speakers, and I’m not sure I heard her right.
“He fell in love with you,” she repeats, this time a little louder. A woman reading on her tablet glances over at us before returning to her book. “I think he still loves you. And I think a part of him always will … for what it’s worth.”
“Excuse me, sorry.” I push my way toward the end of the line, not wanting to have this conversation in this manner, and when I finally reach her, I ask, “If he loved me, why’d he just … leave? Without saying a single word?”
Lo begins to say something and then stops, her shoulders falling. “That’s how it had to be, and that’s all I can say.”
“All right.” I turn back toward the line, taking a new spot at the very back.
“That guy … your ex … he made Jude sign an NDA,” she says. “He can’t tell you anything or he’ll get sued. Believe me, Love, he wanted to explain. He wanted to tell you everything.”
Of course.
“I know I’m his sister and I’m biased, but believe me when I say sometimes good people make bad choices. He made a mistake, Love. A huge mistake. A selfish mistake—honestly the first selfish mistake the man’s ever made in his life.” Lo lifts her hand to her heart, brows lifting beneath her dark bangs. “It cost him dearly, and he still hasn’t forgiven himself. I don’t think he ever will.”
If she’s trying to make me reconsider my stance on forgiving him … it’s working. But only a little. And I keep that to myself.
Ellie begins to squirm in her half of the stroller and Piper tugs at the hem of Lo’s shirt.
“Anyway, I just wanted to tell you he loved you. That’s all,” she says before pushing her stroller toward the door. A hipster in a beanie holds the door for them as she squeezes through, and a second later they’re gone.
I can’t deny how validating it feels to hear those words, but it doesn’t change what he did.
Or the devastating profoundness of his betrayal.
Forty-Six
Jude
* * *
“Guess who I ran into today?” Lo asks when I get home from work.
“Who?” I slide my shoes off and sort through a stack of mail, mostly bills.
“Love.”
Glancing up from the power bill in my hand, I’m surprised to find a wild-eyed grin on my sister’s face, like she’s harboring good news. But I don’t want to get my hopes up. Last week when I ran into Love at the hospital, it didn’t exactly go that well.