6. Jensen
— ? —
Jensen
I have driven past her building twice, and I’m telling myself I won’t do it a third time.
I do it a third time.
The sensible thing is to stay away. I’m good at staying away.
I’ve done it for years, kept an entire city between us, never once let myself pick up the phone or write the letter or explain the thing I have never been able to explain to anyone, least of all her.
It was the only way I knew. I still can’t say out loud why.
And then she was right there before me, and years of discipline came apart in the space of a handshake.
I’ve had her address down for weeks now, but I tried to stay away for a few days. I can’t anymore.
So here I am, parked outside a grocery store in her neighborhood, telling myself I only need water.
I wander the aisles, picking up items I don’t need.
And then I see her.
She’s in the produce section, holding a bag of apples, frowning at them. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail. She’s wearing jeans and a sweater, no makeup, no professional armor. She looks tired. She looks beautiful.
I walk up behind her and notice every little thing about her. “Those apples are overpriced,” I say, stepping beside her.
She jumps. The bag slips from her fingers. I catch it before it hits the floor.
“Jensen.” She says my name hard and flat. “What are you doing here?”
“Grocery shopping.” I hand her the apples. “I live nearby.”
“You live at the hotel.”
“I have an apartment as well. For when I need space.”
She stares at me. I can see her calculating, trying to determine if this is coincidence or by design.
“The apples at the store on Fifth are better,” I say. “And cheaper.”
“I prefer this store.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s close to my apartment, and I don’t feel like walking farther.”
“Fair enough.” I fall into step beside her as she moves toward the bread aisle. “You look tired.”
“Thank you. That’s exactly what every woman wants to hear.”
“I didn’t say it was a bad thing. You look tired and real. I prefer it to the professional mask you wear at the hotel.”
“The professional mask is necessary.”
“I know. I understand why you wear it. I just prefer seeing you without it.”
She stops walking. Turns to face me. “What are you doing, Jensen?”
“I told you. Grocery shopping.”
“You aren’t grocery shopping. You’re following me around a supermarket, making conversation. That isn’t shopping. That’s stalking.”
“Is it stalking if I announce my presence and make no attempt to hide?”
“It’s stalking if I haven’t invited your company and you insert yourself anyway.”
“Then call security. Have me removed.”
“I might.”
“You won’t.”
Her eyes narrow. “Don’t presume to know what I’ll or won’t do.”
“I’m not presuming. I’m observing. You haven’t walked away. You haven’t asked me to leave. You’re standing here, engaging with me, despite every reason to turn your back.”
“That proves nothing.”
“It proves you want to talk to me. Even if you won’t admit it.”
She holds my gaze a beat too long, then grabs a loaf of bread off the shelf and keeps walking. I follow.
“The Hartwell bride left a review,” I say. “Five stars. She called it the best day of her life. Said the hotel turned a flood into the wedding she’d always dreamed of.”
She doesn’t slow down. “Good for her.”
“You did that.” I watch the side of her face. “It all went well after all. Better than well.”
“It went adequately.” Her jaw’s tight. “Any wedding where the couple actually walks out married counts as a success. The bar is low.”
“That’s a grim way to talk about your own miracle.”
“I don’t believe in miracles. I believe in logistics.”
“You used to believe in more than that.”
She stops. Just for a breath. When she starts moving again, her voice has gone flat and hard, and I know I’ve hit a nerve before she even opens her mouth.
“I believe in what I’ve watched work. And I’ve stood in a lot of ballrooms watching a lot of people promise each other forever.
” A short, ugly laugh. “It’s a little rich, isn’t it.
Asking the woman whose own wedding never made it down the aisle whether she believes in them.
I plan them. I don’t get to have them. I made my peace with the difference a long time ago. ”
And there it is. The pain, sitting right under the flatness, so sharp I feel it land in my own chest. She buries it fast, the way she buries everything now, but I saw it, and she knows I saw it, and neither of us says a word about it.
I want to tell her it wasn’t her. That the aisle she never walked wasn’t hers to carry, that the man who wasn’t standing at the end of it would have crawled there if the world had let him. I can’t.
The words stop where they’ve stopped for years. So I give her the only true thing I’m allowed to.
“Trust me, that’s the biggest regret of my life.”
She flinches like I struck her. “Stop it.”
We reach the checkout. She sets her things on the belt without looking at me. I set mine down behind hers.
Outside, the cold’s come down hard, and she’s got four full bags and a long walk ahead of her.
“I’ll drive you,” I say.
“I can walk.”
“It’s twelve blocks with your arms loaded.”
“I’ve done it a hundred times.”
“I know.” I don’t argue it. I just reach out and lift all four bags out of her hands before she can tighten her grip on them. “And you’re not doing it this time.”
“Jensen.”
I’m already walking to the car. I hear her behind me, furious, telling me to give them back, that she never agreed to this, that I don’t get to decide things for her.
I open the trunk and set the bags inside, careful with the one that’s got eggs in it, and by the time I turn around she’s standing at the curb with empty hands and no groceries left to carry home.
“You’re unbelievable,” she says.
“I’ve been told.”
She could make a scene. She could pull the bags back out and stalk off into the dark.
Instead, she stares at me, and I watch her run the math, watch the exhaustion beat the pride by a single point, and she yanks the passenger door open and drops into the seat like it costs her something.
“You don’t breathe a word of this to anyone,” she says.
“There’s no one I’d tell.”
She’s fumbling with the seatbelt, still rigid with anger, and it’s twisted in the buckle, and before I’ve decided to do it I’ve leaned across her and taken it out of her hands.
“I’ve got it.”
She goes still.
I draw the belt slow across her, my knuckles grazing her hip, and I push it into the buckle until it clicks, and I don’t sit back right away.
I can’t.
I’m close enough to feel the warmth coming off her throat, close enough that if I turned my head one inch our mouths would be level, and God, I want to.
I want to close that inch so badly my hands aren’t steady on the belt. I want to kiss her the way I didn’t in that corridor, when I had her caged against the wall and her fists in my shirt and half a second of her leaning in before a slamming door tore it away from both of us.
I’ve thought about that half second more than I’ve thought about anything else since it happened. I should have kissed her. I think I’ll regret not kissing her for the rest of my life.
I make myself sit back before I do the thing that gets me thrown out of my own car.
“Seatbelt,” I say, like that’s all that just happened between us. My voice isn’t as level as I’d like it.
She stares straight ahead, two spots of color high on her cheeks, and she doesn’t answer me.
I start the engine.