Chapter 18
Joe
Anne was standing under the lit overhang of the hotel, flowery dress, red hair, suitcase at her feet. Easy to spot.
Joe’s jaw relaxed for the first time since he got her text twenty minutes ago. He pulled up to the entrance. Before he could get out of the truck, a valet had opened the passenger door and was escorting Anne tenderly inside.
“Thank you, Ray,” she said with a wobbly smile. Charming him, the way she had the cherry farmer.
“No problem, miss.” He lifted her suitcase in behind her.
“Oh.” She fumbled in her purse.
Joe passed a folded bill over the seat. Ray pocketed it smoothly.
“Take care of yourself,” she said. “And tell Mr. Garcia I’m so sorry.”
“I will, miss. You have a good evening.”
Her face crumpled before she got control of it again. “You, too!”
Her eyes were pink-rimmed and swollen. She’d been crying, then. He thought of the way she’d marched into the hotel a couple of hours ago, all smiles and resolution, and wanted to comfort her. Or punch somebody. He put the truck in drive.
She was clutching something in her lap. A handkerchief. “Thanks so much for coming.”
“No problem.” He didn’t ask the obvious question—why wasn’t she staying with her boyfriend?—in case it triggered more tears. Her text had not been clear. Can you come get me? He’d responded instinctively, the way he would if Hailey had messaged him out of the blue.
“What’s with the apology? Who’s Mr. Garcia?” he asked instead.
“He’s the…manager, I guess? I had kind of a…moment in the lobby when I couldn’t find anyplace to stay, and he gave me his handkerchief.” She waved it around like a flag of surrender. Blew her nose in it, hard. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to impose on you. Or your friend.”
“They won’t mind.”
She blotted her eyes. “I don’t want to make things weird.”
“It’s fine. You’re fine.”
But she was not fine. She stared silently out the window at the orange glow of the sodium-vapor lights, her fingers fretting the handkerchief in her lap, her knee bouncing up and down.
It felt wrong. Anne wasn’t the silent type.
He parked the truck on the street and wrestled her bag away from her.
“I live near here,” she said as they walked along the cracked sidewalk. “I sublet the apartment for the summer to this really nice graduate student. Otherwise, I could have—”
“It’s okay,” he said, relieved that she was talking. “Kelsey doesn’t mind. She turned in an hour ago.”
Anne winced. “I’m sorry it’s so late.”
It was just after ten. “Not late. We have an early start tomorrow, that’s all.”
They climbed the stairs to the third-floor walk-up.
Kelsey had a tendency to bring her work home, which meant there were vintage tools and salvage items everywhere.
A tin lunch pail, a box of rusty hinges, some old picture frames stacked against a wall.
He’d stashed his duffel neatly under a table, but the sofa bed stood open in the middle of the room, taking up most of the available floor space.
He’d rolled out of bed as soon as he got Anne’s message. He could hardly suggest she fall into it the minute she walked through the door.
“Want anything?”
“Well, I was drinking cosmos. I’d never had one before. Tart, pink, pairs well with rejection.” A half-formed smile. “I think that’s the cranberry juice. Because it’s bitter? But it might be the vodka.”
“How about tea?”
“Tea is good. Also, I should probably stop with the alcohol before I become a drunk, weepy cliché of a woman scorned.”
Joking. That was a good sign.
He rustled around in a cupboard, glad to have something to do. Put a cup of water in the microwave. Anne perched on one of the dinette’s two chairs, checking her phone, twisting her handkerchief, checking her phone again.
After Britt left him on Christmas Eve with a pile of unopened presents and a shitty sense of failure, Joe hadn’t felt much like talking.
His mom had tried. “You need to process your feelings,” Nicole had said.
“So you can move forward.” Personally, he’d rather smash his thumb with a hammer, but if that’s what Anne needed…
He searched for something to say. Fixing a broken heart wasn’t like mending a chair or patching a rotten step. “So, I guess you’re not going to Atlanta now,” he tried.
Her eyes brimmed with tears.
Hell. Should have kept his mouth shut. He plunked the tea in front of her. Pushed the sugar bowl silently across the table.
“Thanks.” He watched as she dumped four spoonfuls into her mug. “I should have stayed home.”
He waited, the way Rob would have. Nothing. “I don’t know what to say here,” he confessed.
“You don’t have to say anything.” She ran a finger delicately under her eyes. “You came. You showed up. That’s enough.”
Her lashes stuck together in spiky clumps. His heart gave a tug. “So did you.”
“He didn’t want me there.”
“Then he’s a dick.” She made a sound, half laugh, half sob. Encouraged, he added, “Not to criticize your taste in guys or anything.”
“No, that’s okay. It’s very…”
He narrowed his eyes. “Don’t say sweet.”
“Very supportive.” She took a sip of tea. Did not gag on all the sugar. “Chris isn’t really a dick,” she said. “He just…”
Another wait. “What? Plays one on TV? Dr. Dick. Has kind of a ring to it.”
Another puff of breath that could have been anything. “He’s moved on.”
“Total dick move.”
“With another resident.” Her throat moved as she swallowed. “She was there tonight. With him. At the hotel.”
He winced a little in sympathy. Nothing he could say about that. Nothing that would help, anyway.
“And his parents like her!” Anne wailed.
That was easier. “I bet they like you, too.” Everybody liked Anne.
She snorted. “His mother hates me. I don’t fit in with them. Like, at all. And she…You should have seen them together, sitting with his parents, like this perfect couple, Dr. and Dr. and Dr. Harris and friends. She’s even blond!” she said in a tone of despair.
“So are you.” Or she used to be.
She set down her mug. Tugged on a hank of her scarlet hair.
“The point is, I’m different. I like being different, most of the time.
He said that’s why he loved me. The old ‘you’re not like those other girls.
’ And I fell for it. I felt so special. So lucky he loved me.
And the whole time, he was bonding with his hospital soulmate. ”
“Bonding,” Joe repeated. That was one word for it.
“She says she’s his work wife. They were going out together after the party tonight. He didn’t want me to stay at the hotel with him. He didn’t want me. I can put two and two together. I’m not stupid.”
“Not stupid. Trusting. Hopeful.”
“Blind. The thing is, I never suspected. She told me she doesn’t do long-distance relationships. I could have quit my job and moved to Atlanta to be with him, and I never would have known.”
“The way I see it, you’ve had a narrow escape.”
Anne sniffled.
“Once a cheater, always a cheater,” Joe said. Look at his dad. Or Hailey’s. “You’re better off without him.”
“I wish I could believe you. He was so…And I was so…It’s not like I was looking to settle down.
I always thought I would have adventures, go to Thailand or Paris or Colorado.
It’s just that Daanis got married, and my best friends were hooking up, and you…
Chris filled the gap, you know? Someone to be with.
I applied to Ravenscrest because we were going to move in together.
And then Covid happened, and everything shut down.
Everything changed. Everything I’d dreamed of and worked for… It was all on hold.”
Joe remembered. “You came home.”
Not that he’d seen her much. His wife had just left him. As long as he kept his head down, he could ignore how much that hurt. He’d been too busy focusing on the job, picking up the pieces, to look around.
“I felt so helpless,” Anne confessed. “Nothing was working out the way I’d planned. But Chris…He was a hero.” She wrapped her hands around her tea mug, holding on. “I couldn’t picture my future, but I could still see us. I could imagine our lives together.”
“In Chicago.”
“Yeah. I mean, maybe? I had this whole idea that I could support him. That we would share things, even when they got bad. I was frustrated, teaching on Zoom. But then I’d look at Chris, putting his life on the line every day, and I’d tell myself, I can do this.
We can be partners, making the world better, one kid at a time.
But I couldn’t really understand what he was going through.
I wasn’t ‘in the trenches’ with him.” She hooked air quotes around the words.
“And now it’s too late. I lost two years of my life. And I’ll never get them back.”
“You’re twenty-four,” Joe said. “Your life is hardly over.”
“Twenty-five.” She blew her nose. “Anyway, it’s not about age. Nothing’s guaranteed, is it? Look at Dad.”
And there it was.
When her dad died, she’d lost her anchor. No wonder she was having trouble finding her bearings. His heart gave another tug. Maybe that’s why she pushed so hard. Because nothing was certain. Not a boyfriend. Not a wife. Not a life. Not even tomorrow.
Rob’s death had changed Joe’s plans, too. But at least he’d had his work to keep him grounded. He’d had Mom and Hailey, even Maddie.
He took Anne’s empty mug and rinsed it in the sink. It was something to do. “You must miss him,” he said, his voice gruff.
Stupid understatement.
“I do. I mean, I’m sure I will. I don’t mind being alone. But I feel like my life has been derailed. We made all these plans…But he doesn’t want what I want at all.” She swallowed. “Maybe he never did.”
Still talking about the boyfriend, he realized. “Sure.”
“Do you still miss your wife?”
“Ex-wife,” he said automatically.
He missed…not Britt. But there was a hollow inside him in the space she’d left behind, a longing for the kind of home his mom had created and his father hadn’t stuck around for.
He’d had this image of himself as being like…
like Rob, he supposed. When Britt told him she was pregnant, he reckoned that was it for him.
But it was only a false alarm. His mother had tried to warn him, but he’d been so damn determined to do the right thing, he hadn’t listened.
“I guess I miss…” The life I thought we would have. He cleared his throat. “I figured I’d have a house by now. Kids.”
“Well, that’s one good thing about being a man. You can have children when you’re eighty.”
He laughed, surprised. “What about you?”
“I want a house with a yard and a dog. Eventually. Someplace to come home to. Kids…” She raised her gaze to his.
“Chris didn’t want children. Not his own.
He takes care of so many sick children already.
He never said, but I think he’s afraid if he had children—if we had children—he’d have to watch them die, like the kids at the hospital. ”
Hell.
Anne’s teeth scraped her lip. “Sometimes, after dealing with teenagers all day, I’d think, fine, no kids, I’m okay with that.
Obviously, I never planned on backpacking through Europe with a baby.
But the kids are the very best part of teaching.
I guess I hoped he might change his mind.
Someday. Not with me now, obviously. But I should have realized everything always came down to his work.
I built this big, elaborate dream of what our future would be like, but that’s all it was.
A dream.” Her eyes were sad. “He never let me in. There’s no space for me in his life.
We only fit together as long as I didn’t take up too much room. ”
The idea of Anne—animated, generous, expansive Anne—trying to squeeze herself into the corners of somebody else’s life made his chest cramp.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you to bed. Things will look better in the morning.”
She stood obediently, swaying a little from the cocktails or fatigue. He put a hand under her elbow to steady her.
“Thanks. You’ve been wonderful. Sorry I ruined your evening.” Her gaze focused on the open sofa bed. “Is that where we’re sleeping?”
He should have thought this through. “Unless that’s a problem.”
“It’s the only-one-bed trope!”
“What?”
“It’s a rom-com staple.”
He had no idea what she was talking about.
“It Happened One Night?” she offered. “Leap Year? The Proposal? Two people who aren’t in a relationship are forced to sleep together, leading to embarrassment and unresolved sexual tension.”
He bit the inside of his cheek. “Tension, huh?”
“Unresolved.” A smile curled her mouth. “Usually one of them sleeps on the floor.”
“You want me to sleep on the floor.”
“No, I’m just saying, that’s one scenario.”
“Because I can. Or there’s a chair.” A lumpy recliner. Not where he wanted to spend the night, especially with work in the morning.
But she shook her head. “You’re too tall. Anyway, I’m the one crashing at your place. Your friend’s place. If anybody takes the floor, it should be me.”
“Not happening.”
She gave him a lopsided smile. “Then I guess we’re sharing.”
They took turns in the bathroom. After a moment’s thought, he filled a glass with water and shook two ibuprofen into his palm.
When he came out, she was sprawled across the mattress wearing nothing but skimpy sleep shorts and a T-shirt, her hair and her legs sticking out every which way. For some reason, this made him smile.
What had she said about Dr. Dick? “There’s no space for me in his life. We only fit together as long as I didn’t take up too much room.”
“Take all the room you want,” he murmured.
But she only mumbled, already out.
He set the glass on the table next to the couch, eased in beside her, and pulled the covers over them both.
The way she was hugging the mattress, hogging the bed, he couldn’t avoid touching her, so he didn’t try.
It had been a long time—two years—since he’d slept with anybody.
She smelled good. Sweet, like fruit juice.
Her body was warm beside his. Her breath puffed in and out.
Her naked feet brushed his. She rolled toward his weight, nuzzling his arm.
Pest. He kissed her forehead, and she made this little noise and threw her bare leg over his hairy one.
His lungs stopped. Her hair tickled his neck. She was almost sober. If he touched her, if he woke her, it wouldn’t be taking advantage.
Except she was heartbroken and on the rebound and didn’t have anyplace else to go.
He lay stiff and still on his back, the hard bar of the foldout couch pressing into his spine, his erection tenting the covers, and willed himself to sleep.