Chapter 37
Graham
It was strange taking walks without B. I found myself looking down for her or catching myself starting to warn her about big steps coming up or tree roots growing through the pavement. Near the end, she’d started to stumble over these things and now I always watched out for them.
It took two weeks of walking alone to work up the nerve to walk by Lior’s house. I had no idea if it had sold and the quick glimpses of her social media page had shed no light on where she was, or what she was doing. It was as though she’d disappeared. I hated it.
My phone buzzed in my pocket and I pulled it free, smiling when I saw Cooper’s name lighting up the screen, followed by his text.
“I can feel your indecision from here,” he texted. “Just walk by already!”
I laughed.
When I’d called my old friend a few weeks ago, I’d been terrified thinking he either wouldn’t answer, or would – and would rip me a new one before hanging up and never speaking to me again. But what I got instead was:
“I understand why you stopped talking to me. That girl had issues and you were standing by your woman like any good man would,” he’d started. “What I don’t understand is, you’ve been free of her for over a year and you’re just now calling me? Dude. That’s fucked up.”
I’d grinned at the amusement in his voice, my shoulders relaxing.
“Coop,” I’d said. “What can I say? I’m sorry. I was embarrassed for disappearing like I did.”
“As you should be, man. We could’ve had some epic nights out drinking.”
I laughed. “Goddammit. I’ve missed you. Hollywood still treating you okay?”
“You don’t read the news either anymore?”
I covered my face with my hands and groaned.
“Tell me everything I’ve missed.”
We’d talked for hours, taking a break so I could have dinner, then reconvening an hour or so later.
By midnight my time, we were all caught up.
He knew how Marley was doing, that she was in school in Seattle, how the folks were and all about Lior, my therapy, and the possible move in my future to the Pacific Northwest. In turn, he told me about the movies he was producing, as well as the one he’d co-written that was currently in production, the woman he was dating, and what his two brothers were up to.
“I needed this, Coop,” I’d said as we said goodbye for the day. “Thanks for picking up.”
“You think I would’ve missed the chance to give you shit?”
We’d talked or texted every day since, which was why he knew about my burning desire to walk by Lior’s house.
I looked down at the text again and typed back, “Shouldn’t you still be sleeping?”
He sent a laughing emoji ahead of his response.
“What is this sleep you speak of? I’m up by five, sometimes four-thirty every day these days. Stop distracting from the assignment. Just do it.”
“FINE.”
He then sent a dozen thumbs up emojis and one of a hand flipping the bird. I grinned and tucked my phone back in my pocket.
“Here goes nothing,” I mumbled under my breath, looking down out of habit for Bronte. It would’ve been so much easier if she were with me. At least we could commiserate over whatever we’d found later at Joe’s. Now I’d have to go it alone, with no good girl to talk to about it after.
I walked the three blocks slowly, trying to distract myself by taking in the scenery.
A preschool class wandered by in adorable chaos.
An old woman sat on her stoop, giving the stink eye to any who dared cross her path.
A young family with one baby in a stroller, and a slightly older child in the dad’s arms, laughed as they walked by.
And then I was there, standing across the street from Lior’s home.
My eyes immediately went to the third floor where her bedroom was, then moved down slowly until they landed on the for sale sign…
and the bold “SOLD” notice that had been tacked across the top of it.
“Well,” I said to the ghost of Bronte. “I guess that’s that.”
I headed to Joe’s next – a dull ache in my chest as I entered the café – gave him a halfhearted wave as he helped a customer with something from the pastry case, ordered my usual, and took a seat inside by the window.
The man himself delivered my coffee, taking a seat across from me as a light snow began to fall outside, the first of the season.
“Still strange seeing you here without the old girl,” he said and I nodded and took a sip of my coffee.
“I find myself looking down to talk to her constantly when I walk.”
“I remember that after our last dog passed. I swore sometimes I still heard her bark even years later.”
I gave him a sad smile.
“Ya know,” Joe said. “I haven’t wanted to ask but today it seems I’ve left my filter at home.” He grinned mischievously and I laughed.
“Go ahead,” I said. “I can take it.”
“Whatever happened to the lovely Lior?”
I sighed and sat back in my chair.
“It’s a long story. I wouldn’t even know where to begin,” I said and then shook my head. “Except it’s really not. I had trust issues I hadn’t resolved, and she was trying to figure out what she wanted to do next with her life and—”
“That didn’t include you?”
“We never even got to that conversation. And to be honest, I wasn’t being very fair to her.
I hated the attention she got from her job and being so famous.
It scared me. And that made her think I was trying to change her.
Which, I swear I wasn’t. I just… I’ve been with people before who liked the drama.
It created so many issues and put me in uncomfortable and awful situations. ”
“Well Graham, I do think you have had enough drama for a lifetime.”
“I have. So it was hard to trust what she was telling me because trusting women has only brought me misery.”
“I’m sure you know this, but not all women are as self-absorbed as that last one was. My wife sure isn’t. And Lior? I could tell immediately that she was a good one. The way she looked at you…” He sighed. “Nita used to look at me like that. Now she just rolls her eyes at me.”
He chuckled and I smiled.
“Also,” I said. “She’s moved.”
“And they don’t have phones where she’s gone?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Maybe.”
“Bet you could find out. If you really wanted to.”
I shook my head. “I messed up.”
“You had things to figure out,” he said, waving a hand.
The front door opened and a group of women came noisily inside, shaking the snow from their hair and coats as they made their way to the counter. Joe stood and put a hand on my shoulder.
“Lior didn’t strike me as the kind of woman who wouldn’t give a second chance to someone she cares about. And Graham, that woman cares about you.”
I sighed. “I care about her too.”
“Feelings like the ones I saw between the two of you don’t just disappear, my friend. Not even when someone dies. Give her a call.”
“I don’t think it’s that simple, Joe.”
He tapped the table with his knuckle,
“But it could be,” he said, and then spun around to help his customers pick out pastries.
I took the rest of my cappuccino in a to-go cup and walked slowly home, enjoying the way the snow tamped down the noise of the city and made everything look clean and bright.
I thought about Joe’s words. About Marley’s. Even Coop had encouraged me to reach out.
And then I erased all of them and thought about the only two people that really mattered in all this.
Me and Lior.
“Screw it,” I said, startling the young man I was passing on the sidewalk.
As I climbed the stairs to my front door, I pulled out my phone and immediately tripped on something on my front porch.
A rolled-up newspaper. Ever since returning from my vacation, I’d avoided the newspapers piling up and the plants desperately in need of water.
It almost looked like an abandoned house. I’m sure my neighbors were pleased.
Pocketing my phone, I knelt down and gathered up an armful of old newspapers.
I unlocked the front door and hurried inside to deliver them to the small blue receptacle in my pantry, then filled a watering can and returned to the porch.
As I watered and rearranged the pots, I stopped and stared in confusion at the shiny item tucked beneath the leaf of the furthest plant.
“What…?” I said, reaching out a tentative hand. As soon as I touched it, I knew.
I smiled as I lifted the little metal Space Needle statue that had sat on Lior’s bookshelf, and then frowned when I noticed it seemed to be caught on some sort of string.
But as I pulled it higher, I realized it wasn’t caught.
It was tied. To one half of Lior’s favorite pair of sneakers.
The half I’d once cleaned for her after she’d had the misfortune of stepping in B’s droppings and had yelled her pretty head off at me.
“Maybe it is that simple,” I said.