Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Do you really think he’ll count them?” David asked, receiving said Starburst, placing it into one of the five blue gallon freezer bags they had collected for Jared Sparks’s ridiculous request.
Evelyn stopped counting. “Obviously not,” she said, blowing her hair out of her eyes.
Having run all over Manhattan trying to find enough bags of candy to fill the requirements, she was hot and sweaty.
Plus, she was getting a migraine. “Instead, he’ll commune with the spirits of the universe and the number will be told to him. ”
David laughed. “He is quite a character, isn’t he?”
“I just want one,” she said, shaking her head. “One major celebrity I work with to not be a giant pain in the ass.”
She returned to counting, the game beginning again.
“How’s your head doing, by the way?” David asked.
“Terrible,” she confirmed.
“You should take one of your Maxalt.”
She stopped counting. He lifted both hands in mock surrender. “Right, right,” he said. “I forgot you’re hoarding your meds for broadcast.”
She returned to counting. “Don’t worry. I’m drinking water.”
“How did you know I was going to suggest that?”
She could feel another smile working its way to her face.
Stop that. It was bad enough she was feeling as comfortable as she was with David.
It was actually completely terrible that this sudden and newfound friendship between them was going so well.
She wasn’t sure what to do with all the positive feelings swirling around her regarding her ex-husband.
“I’m gonna kill him,” Evelyn grumbled.
“You can’t kill him,” David reminded her.
“You need him for the show. Plus, he’s really excellent at what he does.
The most you can do is hope he chokes on a yellow Starburst or a blue M&M.
Albeit momentarily. Just a good, but totally survivable, coughing fit.
Like I said, you need him for the show.”
Evelyn laughed. David could always make her feel better.
“What kind of person likes yellow Starbursts, anyway?” she asked.
“I know, right?” he said, angling his body closer.
“Everybody knows you eat the red first, followed by the pink. And then, only if you’re some sort of candy degenerate .
. . orange. Yellow should only be eaten in times of severe necessity.
We’re talking bunker candy, you know? Meant for consumption in the end times only.
Up there with using the last little sliver of soap. ”
A beat floated between them. “You remember that?”
“Apocalypse soap?” He wrapped one arm around a knee. “I still think of it every time I take a shower.”
A flash of heat ran through her body. She lost track of herself.
The thought of him showering while thinking about her, remembering her, sent a strong surge of sexual desire coursing through her body.
Yet almost as soon as those feelings arose inside her, she squelched them.
They were divorced. David had left her. There was no second-chance romance between them that would ever be possible.
She bit back those tender feelings, buried them .
. . returning her attention to the candy.
“You had your quirks, too,” she said, and fondled the edge of one yellow Starburst.
“Like what?” he said in mock disbelief.
“Like never putting the cap back on the toothpaste after using it.”
“I plead the Fifth.”
“Like leaving empty water glasses all over our apartment.”
“Ouch,” he said, touching his heart.
“Like letting the laundry in the bedroom overflow into the hallway.”
“At least I did the laundry.”
He raised both eyebrows in her direction.
She stopped and thought about it. She had always hated laundry.
Aside from the fact that it was often too heavy to carry, thanks in part to David’s avoidance, it meant going down to the subbasement level of their building to do it, which was dark and creepy.
She was certain if she was ever going to be murdered by a serial killer, it would happen down there.
“I’ll give you that one,” she said.
David laughed. And that charged silence that seemed to follow every one of their conversations returned to bear witness once again. She was beginning to hate all the silence between them. It left too much space for . . . well, thoughts.
“Must be an angel,” David said quietly.
“Hmm?” Evelyn didn’t understand.
“You’ve never heard that?” he asked, curiously.
“What?”
“That every time there’s a pause or a break in a conversation, it means an angel flew overhead.”
She considered the statement. “We must have a lot of angels in our life.”
“Must.” He smiled softly.
She caught on his gaze when, freaking hell, another beat of silence appeared. Quickly, she returned her attention to the candy.
“I can’t remember what number I was on,” she said.
“Four ninety-seven.”
“Right,” she said, and began counting again. “Four ninety-eight. Four ninety-nine.”
“Five hundred.”
They said it at the same time. The game was over. David finished bagging up the last of the candy, zipping it closed. Evelyn glanced at her watch. It was nearing midnight. Her ex-husband had done enough.
“Listen,” she said, trying to give the man an out. “I want you to know that, despite my teasing, I really appreciate you helping me tonight. This whole candy thing would have taken forever without you.”
“It was my pleasure.”
“No, it wasn’t,” she said, though she applauded his attempt to be gentlemanly.
“This was a monotonous task and a horrible exercise in patience, but I appreciate it all the same. Which is why . . . you really don’t need to accompany me for this next part.
I can get these bags of candy to Jared Sparks all on my own. You don’t need to come with me.”
It was better for her to do it on her own.
Things were beginning to feel dangerously intense with David, after all.
Just to prove her point, she ignored her worsening headache and began cleaning up, creating a pile of leftover candy to be dealt with later before gathering up her stash for Jared Sparks. Still, David wouldn’t take the hint.
“I want to come with you,” he said.
“It’s not necessary.”
“And I’m not letting you traverse Manhattan at this late hour all alone,” he said, adamant, stepping in front of her. The man was blocking her way. “Besides, we’re friends, right? What kind of friend would just leave you to deal with Jared Sparks alone?”
“I think you’ve done enough as a friend this evening.”
“Great.” He smiled, all cheeky and adorable.
“Because it’s not for you. It’s for Jared.
I’m only coming along to make sure your star talent doesn’t get murdered this evening.
You have, after all, told me multiple times tonight all the ways you want to kill him.
In my professional medical opinion, this has absolutely become a health and safety issue for production. ”
She couldn’t help herself. She laughed. The corner of David’s lip edged upward in response.
He knew he had won. She shook her head, annoyed at her own inability to resist his charms, before waving for him to follow.
And, on the way down to Wraith, she thought about all the identities that David had held throughout her life.
He had been her neighbor, her lover, her husband, her ex, and now, somehow, he was also her friend.
The word gave her pause. Because David was right.
They could be friends without tearing each other’s clothes off.
They could be friends without rehashing the past. They could be friends .
. . as long as she didn’t think about him leaving in the middle of the night, the crib that had never actually been used still in the second bedroom.
Or the way she had to disassemble it, all by herself, dragging it down to the creepy subbasement she had always hated.
They could be friends, in the present and the future, providing she never thought about their past.
It was such a simple thing to be friends with your ex-husband. All she had to do was forget the myriad ways he had broken her heart.
“I’m going to kill him,” Evelyn said, clutching five blue freezer bags worth of candy to her chest. “I swear to everything on Hanukkah, as soon as this production of A Christmas Carol wraps, I’m going to shove every single one of these yellow Starbursts straight up his English—”
David’s gaze drifted over to Evelyn. Judging by the torrent of profanities she was grumbling beneath her breath, his ex-wife was no longer joking. “I don’t blame you,” he said, and watched three young women, in tight bodycon dresses, bypass the line to Wraith that they were both standing in.
He glanced at his watch. It had taken them almost an hour to scour all the drug stores in Manhattan and gather up enough yellow Starbursts and blue M&M’s to fill the freezer bags to satisfy Jared’s requirements.
After which, another hour had been fully devoted to counting and separating them out.
From there, they had rushed back downtown, naively assuming that getting into Wraith and doing a handoff would be an easy endeavor.
Instead, they found a line wrapping around the block.
“We are never getting in here,” Evelyn said.
Evelyn pulled out her cell phone and attempted to text the rock star once again.
Unfortunately, Jared—who had been so quick to call both Evelyn and David when the need for candy arose—was no longer picking up his phone or responding to text messages.
Judging from the sound of heavy techno music coming from the club, David could only surmise that Jared couldn’t hear them.
“Maybe we should try talking to the bouncer,” Evelyn suggested.
David nodded. “I think that’s our best bet here.”