There was a time when I wanted this ring and everything it represented so badly that I turned my entire life upside down just to get it.
It’s funny how things change.
On second thought, it’s not funny at all.
As if to mock me further, laughter – her laughter – trickles through the air, rings like bells in the deepest narrows of my ears. Though it might as well be fingernails scraping down a chalkboard for all the effect it has on me. The muscles along my back pull as my shoulders stiffen, tightening inward. I shut my eyes and crack my neck, swallowing the banshee-like scream rising in my throat. When I open them again, it’s just in time to see him press a kiss to her forehead.
Okay. I can’t watch this anymore.
Still, I don’t want to let them chase me away, because even if they don’t know it, we’re playing a game, and I intend to win. So I casually sip my latte and return my attention to my book, squinting as I read, every now and then allowing a small smile to curve my lips, as if by appreciating the author’s cleverness, I’m proving my own.
More laughter snakes its way to my little spot in the corner, but I don’t look up. I stay bent over my book, ignoring everyone and everything around me, even the growing need to use the restroom. My bladder pinches, throbs, and the words blur together, run together, seem to drip right off the damn page. I can’t concentrate; the roar in my head and the twisting sentences are too much, too sinuous, too accusing. After nearly half an hour of this shit, of faking nonchalance when I’m anything but, I hear more than see them rise from their table. From my hunched position, I watch from the corner of my eye as they head for the door. When he rests his hand on the small of her back to guide her through, I clamp my teeth together so hard a sharp pain shoots up into my check, flares across my jaw. Then, just as the bell above the exit jingles, signaling their departure, my shoulders finally sag, and the breath I didn’t even realize I was holding erupts from my throat in a strangled sigh.
The shop’s air conditioning is blasting full force, a valiant attempt at keeping summer’s stifling heat and humidity at bay. But it’s like there’s an invisible forcefield around my table, one the chilled air can’t penetrate. Because I’m hot, clammy. My blouse sticks to my skin, the light chiffon clinging to the small of my back. Sweat beads my brow, gathers under my arms, pools between my breasts.
Closing the book, I trace my fingers over the cover, lingering on the author’s name. I bought the book a month ago, but already the raised, blocky letters are worn from my touch.
Hollis Thatcher.
The only man I’ve ever loved.
And probably ever will.
The question I’ve been asking myself lately is: What the hell am I going to do about it?
Swallowing hard, I take off my glasses and press the pads of my fingers to the corners of my eyes. I’d cry, but I’m too mad to cry, too angry to cry, too betrayed to cry…when, really, I have absolutely no right to feel any of those things. I gave Hollis up years ago, walked away from the life we’d made, the future we’d planned, crushing his heart and breaking every single promise I’d ever made to him in the process. I didn’t just end our relationship, I pummeled it, beat it to a pulp, ground it to a dust beneath the heel of my cheap pleather boot as I walked out the door of our shitty apartment and never looked back.
Until now.
A body slides into a seat at the table next to mine, a large presence that draws my attention, despite the Hollis-sized blinders I’ve been donning this past week. I turn my head, some magnetism I can’t pinpoint pulling my awareness, and am met with a pair of dark eyes that are annoyingly kind. Which is irritating, because I don’t want kind. I want intensity. I want passion and burning indignation. I want to look into eyes that carry in their depths a tumultuous storm railing on my behalf.
I want someone to match my fury, to rage with me. To mirror my pain so I don’t have to bear it alone.
He nods in my direction, flashing a crooked smile as he does. “Great minds.”
I frown, wondering if I heard him wrong, wondering why the hell he’s even talking to me in the first place…wondering why…why…why he reminds me so much of Hollis.
It’s the build. The broad shoulders slanting down to a narrow waist. It’s the black jeans and black t-shirt and leather boots, despite the fact that it’s summer in the Midwest and humid as fuck outside. It’s the messy hair, tousled like he’s only just pulled himself from bed. It’s the long fingers, thick enough to avoid appearing feminine, attached to hands that are perfect for creating.
He’s an artist. Some kind of artist. Any kind of artist.
His smile doesn’t waver while he waits for my answer, just kicks up a notch, as if I amuse him. As if he knows something I don’t, like why life turns out the way that it does or the secret of why it is that we become what we become, when, in the end, neither of those things matter because Fate’s a bitch with an itchy trigger finger.
I huff lightly, just enough to show that I’m unimpressed with him and his kind eyes and his adorably crooked smile. “Excuse me?”
He nods to my book, to Hollis’s book, the book that is still clutched in my hands. With a self-deprecating sigh, he holds up a matching copy and wiggles it in the air. “Great minds?” He repeats himself, turning the words into a question this time.
I nod mechanically, and he chuckles, eyes scrunching at the corners as he does, and something in me wants to stay, wants to see what those eyes look like in another setting, a dimmer light. They’re brown, but so dark they look black. So different from Hollis’s light gaze, his angel gaze, though there’s a touch of something in their depths that reminds me of my ex-boyfriend.
It’s freedom. Uninhibited freedom with a dose of double dare.
I dare you, Becca. I double dare you…
Hollis’s voice is a distant echo, a cheap taunt, and I push it from my head as I push up from my seat, leaving this man, this stranger, as easily as I left Hollis all those years ago.
Because inside, I’m utter destruction, a wasteland of bad decisions and even worse desires. And the serenity this man exudes only serves to magnify that ruin. Darkness can’t survive in the light, and this man is like the sun to my shadow.
And I can’t have that. Because I need my shadow.
I need it to survive.
On my way out, a fashion magazine catches my eye. Left on a table just inside the door, like whoever brought it didn’t have the guts to bring it all the way in and, after seeing the customers with their noses pushed into far more intellectual reads, discarded it out of embarrassment. The glossy cover boasts superficial gratification along with the image of a famous actress who, according to the text overlapping her svelte figure, is touting her new skin care line. Alarmingly beautiful, she stares up at me, moody in her indifference, her strawberry blonde hair brushing her shoulders in contrived, messy waves.
Without caring who’s watching, I snatch the rag and carry it with me out of the shop.
“Nicholas Crane. Leave a message.”
I shoulder through the front door of our lake house, my phone pressed to my ear and a bottle of Hendrick’s under my arm. Kicking off my sandals, I pad into the kitchen, the phantom taste of gin already on my lips. “Hey, babe. Just checking in. I’ll try you again later.” Swiping end, I toss the phone on the counter, trading it for a glass tumbler from the cupboard, which I top off with three ice cubes and a generous pour. Then, pulling my sticky blouse over my head, I drop it right on the kitchen floor before shrugging out of my bra. My shorts and underpants follow, and then, grabbing my drink in one hand and the bottle in my other, I leave the whole mess behind and make my way across the living room.