Chapter 10
His hands came off me. The cold landed in the same second.
My body was still burning. The air was cold. My hands were still on his chest, where I'd pushed him. I had said stop. Now we were both standing in the alley, breathing through our mouths and trying not to look at each other.
He'd taken half a step back when I'd pushed. He stayed there. His hands were at his sides now. The hand he'd had on the brick over my shoulder had come down.
I let my hands drop from his chest.
I straightened my shirt and tucked back in. I didn't look at him yet.
I steadied my voice. "Beau."
He looked up. "Yeah?"
"This can't — we can't keep doing this."
"Doing what?"
I gestured between us, at the alley, at his mouth, at mine.
"This. I want you. I'm not going to pretend I don't, but I can't have what we are about to have, Beau. I have a kid. The second I let you into it the way you're looking at me right now — I'm going to lose her or myself in you or both. Both is also possible."
He didn't speak.
"There is one version of this I can survive.
" I steadied my hands on the lapels of my jacket.
"No falling in love. No talk of futures.
No bringing my daughter into it more than she already is.
We sleep together. We don't call it a relationship.
You don't call me your girlfriend. I don't meet your friends as anything other than the woman you are seeing casually.
And when it is over — and it will be over, Beau, eventually — no questions, no fights. We walk away clean."
I waited. "That is what I can do."
He looked at me for a long beat.
His hands had gone to his sides. His face had gone still. And then — for one second only, because he covered it fast — his face crumpled like he was in pain.
I hadn't expected the hurt to struck where it did.
I'd been hopeful, in the back of my head, that he was going to say yes, that this might actually work, that he would understand, and we'd both know what we were doing and would somehow figure out how to fit it without crushing each other.
It wasn't going to work. He wanted more than I could give him.
"Sabrina, I can't promise you that."
"Cannot promise me which part?" I asked because I wanted to hear him say it.
"The not-falling-in-love part."
I let out a breath. "Then we can't do this."
"Sabrina — "
"Beau, go home. I can't stand here with you any longer tonight. Please."
He looked at me for a long moment.
He nodded, he didn't push, and he didn't argue.
Just turned, and walked out of the alley toward the sidewalk. The car door opened and closed. The engine started. The sound of it was loud in the small alley because the street outside was empty.
I stood in the alley, watched the taillights turn the corner, and went inside.
It had been almost two weeks since I'd heard from Beau Cross.
Two weeks since the alley. Two weeks since the moment he'd said, "I can't promise you that," and I had said, "Then we can't do this." He had walked out and turned the corner with my hands still cold from the wall and my mouth still wet from his.
Two weeks of nothing.
Under any other circumstances, "I can't promise you I'll not fall in love with you" would have been a sentence a woman could roll her eyes about for a week and read again at three in the morning when nobody was looking and treasure for the rest of her natural life.
But I knew men. Men made promises they couldn't keep. Beau Cross had said, "I can't promise," fluently, sincerely, in the moment, and not when it counted. And besides, I had this conversation with myself on the seventh night of pretending I wasn't waiting for a phone to vibrate.
Beau wasn't meant for me. He'd realize that down the line. There was someone out there for him, richer, prettier, the right woman for the right life, and that woman wasn't me.
Definitely not me.
Pickles was on my chest, staring into my face, until I rolled over and got up. I had given up on the sleep-in. I had also given up on the version of my morning where I wasn't yelled at by a cat before I had touched the floor.
I got out of bed. I fed Pickles. I got Bonnie ready for school.
She brushed her teeth with the timer. Got dressed without being told. Then came to the table for the half cup of orange juice I let her have, and sat with Walter on her lap. Her hair was already in a ponytail, and her water bottle filled.
She poured the syrup on her pancake. "Mom."
"Yeah, baby?"
"Will we see Beau again?"
The pancake was already on her plate. The syrup was making a lake. I didn't turn from the counter right away.
"I'm not sure, baby. He's been busy."
I turned my head halfway. She had the fork in her hand. But was looking down at Walter. She put the fork down on her plate.
For one second, I thought she was going to ask me what I had done.
She didn't.
"Okay." She picked up the fork again. "Okay."
I walked her to school.
The walk was four blocks. She held my hand the whole way. Didn't let go, even at the corner where she usually let go to wave at her friend Mira. She held it across the street, onto the school steps, and at the door of her classroom.
"Bye, Mom."
"Bye, baby. I love you. Be good. Don't argue with anyone over a straw man."
After dropping her at school, I came back home.
The apartment was empty. Pickles was on the couch, licking himself.
I sat at the kitchen table. I had a cup of coffee I'd made and not drunk.
The medical reality landed on me. It landed every time Beau Cross wasn't in the front of my brain — which had been less often than I liked.
The cardiologist's spring window isn't medically defensible.
The cardiologist's contingency planning.
The cardiologist's letter to the foundation, which I'd asked him to write, and hadn't heard back about.
I picked up the phone, and I called the foundation.
The intake coordinator picked up after one ring. She was the same coordinator I'd been getting for fourteen months. I knew her name. She knew mine. We had the relationship of two women who had been through a marriage and a divorce together.
"Sabrina."
"Hi, Margaret."
"I'm so sorry — "
"You don't have her on the schedule?"
"Sabrina, I — the medical review committee is — "
"You don't have her on the schedule?"
A long pause.
"No."
"Did you receive Dr. Reyes's letter?"
"We received it. It is — being processed."
I put my elbow on the table. I put my forehead in my hand.
"Margaret, I've walked my daughter to school four times since Dr. Reyes wrote that letter.
Each of those four mornings, she has held my hand harder than the last. I have a daughter whose cardiologist has put in writing that the spring window isn't medically defensible.
I have a foundation that is processing the letter.
Tell me what you want me to do with that information. "
"I — Sabrina — I'm so sorry — I don't have anything for you today."
"I know." I sighed.
She said politely, "I'll call you the second I do."
I hung up.
My shift at Half Past was slow.
The bar was half-empty. The weeknight regulars were in their corners. The string of overhead bulbs was on the dim setting because someone had told the manager it saved money.
I was working faster than I needed to.
I was making drinks before customers had finished ordering them. I was rotating the bottles on the back shelf for the third time. I needed to keep myself busy. If my hands stopped, my brain started, and my brain had been running the same loop for two weeks.
I hadn't checked my phone all day. I had it buried in the bottom of my purse under the receipts, the lipstick I never used, and the half-empty pack of gum. I had taken to letting it stay buried, and I'd been telling myself this was discipline.
A guy came up to the bar.
Late twenties. Decent shoes. Shoulders up. He sat on the stool in front of me. It felt like he'd been holding something in for hours and had come here to put it down.
"Whiskey, neat."
I poured, slid, and rang.
He stared at the glass. Then looked at me. "Sorry. Can I — can I ask you something?"
"I'm working."
"Yeah, but — bartenders. They're like — "
"Therapists in cheap aprons. Yeah. Go ahead."
He turned the glass on the bar. "My brother's getting married in the spring."
"Mmm…"
"I'm in love with his fiancée."
I poured him a second whiskey because he was going to need it. "Have you told her?"
"No."
"Have you told him?"
He shook his head. "No."
"Are you planning to?"
He turned the glass again. "I — I don't know. Should I?"
I leaned my elbows on the bar, and I looked at him.
I looked at his decent shoes and his decent jaw and the hands he had wrapped around the glass like it was anchoring him to the planet, and I had nothing for him.
"Do whatever you want."
Kit was suddenly behind me.
He had come up the back of the bar quietly. He put his hand on my elbow. "You okay?"
"Yes."
He looked at me. But didn't push. Then turned to the customer.
"I'm going to take this one," he said quietly. "You go work the well."
"Kit."
"I've got it."
I went to the well.
Kit leaned both elbows on the bar in front of the customer and took the conversation off me like a man taking a coat off the back of a chair, and his voice came from behind me — Brother's getting married, you said? — and I tuned out and started cutting limes I didn't need.
The shift ended at one. Kit closed out with me. He counted down the till. He put the cash in the safe. He locked the back room.
"Sabrina, you okay?"
"Yeah. I'm fine."
He held my eyes for one second and nodded.
I took off my apron, put it in the locker, got my jacket from the hook, and went to the back door.
I pushed it open with my hip, and he was there in the alley, leaning against the brick wall.
I stopped.
His hands were in the pockets of his coat. His hair was longer than it had been two weeks ago. The shadows under his eyes were carved by days spent waiting in hospital light.
He pushed off the wall, and walked toward me. Then stopped a foot in front of me.
I held my ground. "Cross."
"Sabrina."
His hands came out of his pockets. Both of them. He raised them. He cupped my face. His thumbs sat at the high points of my cheekbones.
He kissed me.
The kiss was short. It tasted sweet. There was no urgency in it, and there was no question — his mouth pressed on mine evenly and held there for a passionate few seconds before he pulled back. Over in maybe four seconds.
His hands stayed on my face. His forehead came down against mine.
"Fine."
"Fine what?"
"I'll do it. I agree to your terms." He didn't let go of my face. "No strings attached."
My eyes widened in shock.