Cara #3
“It just didn’t work out,” I said, which was true and complete and as much as I intended to give him.
The gory details—the cheating, the lying, the six months I’d spent convincing myself I was imagining things before I finally stopped and accepted reality—were for my sisters to hear, not for Eric Michaelson over a steak dinner in Willowmist Falls.
He nodded slowly, like he was filing it away. “And you’re not looking,” he repeated, but his tone made it sound less like he was accepting the information and more like he was noting an obstacle.
“Not really, no.”
He smiled then, easy and warm, and picked up his wine glass. “Well,” he said, “the best things usually show up when you’re not.”
It was almost innocent. Delivered lightly, without weight, things you would say to anyone over dinner and mean nothing particular by it.
I smiled back because that was what the moment called for, and reached for my water, and turned it over quietly in my head—the way he’d looked at me when he said it, the small emphasis on show up, the fact that he’d repeated not looking back to me before he said it—and couldn’t quite decide if I was reading into something that wasn’t there or if I was, for once, reading it exactly right.
I looked at my plate. There was still steak left, and I was going to finish every bite of it.
The check appeared and vanished before I’d registered it.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I said.
“I wanted to.” He was already on his feet, lifting my coat from the back of my chair, holding it open. I slid my arms in, and he settled it onto my shoulders, his hands resting there a half-second longer than necessary. I moved toward the door and told myself it was just because we were leaving.
Outside, the air had cooled, and the street was quiet, just the glow of The Hearthstone’s sign behind us and the sound of our footsteps on the sidewalk. Eric walked with his hands in his pockets, unhurried, like a man with nowhere better to be.
“It’s a nice night,” he said.
“It is,” I agreed.
“We should do this again.” He said it not as a question, not quite as a statement, somewhere in the middle where it was harder to argue with. “There’s that place in Sweetbriar I mentioned. I really think you’d like it.”
“It was really lovely to catch up,” I said, which was but carefully vague. “But, as I said before, I’m not—”
“Shh, it’s okay.” He smiled as if I’d agreed.
We reached my car, and I got my keys out, and he stood close enough that I was aware of the distance between us in a way I didn’t want to be.
He reached out and tucked a strand of hair back from my face, easy and familiar, like he’d done it before, like he had the right to.
I went very still for a half-second, and then I smiled because I didn’t know what else to do with my face. “I had a really good time,” he said.
“It was really nice,” I said, which was the path of least resistance and also partially true because the steak had been excellent. “You’ve always been a good friend, Eric,” I added, hoping he’d take a freaking hint.
He pulled me into a hug before I’d quite registered it was happening—arms around me, warm and certain, his chin briefly at my temple. I put my hands on his waist and pushed back gently. He didn’t get the hint. The hug went on a beat longer than friendly. Two beats. I stepped back first.
“I’ll call you,” he said.
“Goodnight, Eric,” I said.
I got in the car.
I went back through the evening, looking for the moments when I might have been unfair to him.
He’d been attentive. He’d been mostly pleasant, and I’d spent two hours feeling like I was one step behind a conversation that had already decided where it was going without me.
Maybe I was too guarded. Maybe all the time being on my own had made me so accustomed to my own company that anyone showing straightforward interest registered as a problem to be managed.
I tried on that version of events and held it up to the light.
It almost worked.
Then I thought about his eyes moving over me in the doorway, and his hands at my shoulders by the door, and the easy laugh about Jasper needing to be tutored—and the low, persistent unease that had been sitting in my chest all evening sharpened into something I couldn’t reason away, and I stopped trying.
I started the car.
The drive back felt longer than fifteen minutes.
Honeybrook Hollow came into view—porch lights and dark shopfronts and the settled peace of a town that went to bed at a reasonable hour and felt good about it.
I rolled down the window a little to let the cool air in and thought about meeting my sisters at Twilight Tavern.
I turned onto Sycamore, found a spot to park, and checked my reflection—better now, something having quietly settled back into place. I grabbed my bag.
Somewhere between cutting the engine and reaching for the door handle, without any permission from me whatsoever, my mind drifted to whether Jasper would be working tonight.
I caught the thought, looked at it for exactly one second, and put it down.
You’re here for sister night. That’s it.