He stepped back into the open doorway and started to close it. He paused and May’s foolish heart leapt, as if there was anything he could say that would change their circumstances. As if he’d look back into her home and say a string of magic words that would somehow make it so easy for them to be together.
“Like I said, I’ll be by to say goodbye to Ricks.” He paused. “And after that… I’m probably gonna need some time to get my head back on straight.” He cleared his throat. “So, you might not see me for a while.”
She nodded, still unable to look at him. “I understand.”
He stood there, looking like he wanted to say more, but after a moment he turned and pulled the door closed behind him. She listened to his footsteps recede.
She stood for a stunned moment with her forehead on the door. “He didn’t tell me to lock up after him,” she whispered into the sudden stillness of her house.
Tears filled her eyes and she didn’t stop them from falling. She knew that nothing would stop them from falling.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Seeing Rook the next day was hellish in a way that May could only have previously imagined. Right after their divorce, every time she’d had to see him had been awkward and charged and sometimes downright incendiary. But Rook came by in his SUV, loaded all of Ricky’s things into the back and gave the three of them a ride to the bus station where all the campers were convening to wait for the bus. And he wasn’t just polite, he was downright cordial.
May sat in the backseat while Rook and Ricky joked and strategized about field hockey camp. They laughed at a bumper sticker on the BQE. May listened dimly while Rook talked Ricky through a new kind of field hockey offense that he’d apparently been studying and figured she’d be good at.
It would have been better if he’d been ignoring May. That, at least, would have given her something petty to cling to. But it wasn’t so. He’d greeted her kindly and then made attempts to include her in the conversation.
It was… almost as if what had happened last night hadn’t affected him in the least. It was almost as if they’d rewound by two months and gone back to the time before they’d reopened any doors in their divorce.
It was really pissing May off.
She didn’t want Rook to be in pain. But she wouldn’t have minded dark circles under his eyes to match her own. She wouldn’t have minded a sullen tone to indicate that the conversation from last night had bothered him as much as it had bothered her. She didn’t want him to be wrecked, but she was wrecked and wondering why he wasn’t.
May had laid awake almost the entire night, asking herself if she’d done the right thing. She’d seen his hurt expression and heard his defeated voice over and over again.
Passion, she’d reminded herself. She was turning him away because all the two of them had going for them was shared history and passion. All they did was either fight or fuck. The end. There was nothing in-between on which to build the kind of relationship she longed for.
She took a deep breath as Rook pulled up to the bus station and went around to start unloading Ricky’s trunk.
She needed to put on a brave face for her daughter and then she had ten whole days where she could spiral off into whatever mood this was that she was currently dealing with.
She climbed out of the car and watched as Ricky and Rook dragged her things over to where the bus driver was loading it into the bottom of the bus. Ricky shouted to some of her friends and May couldn’t help but smile as they slammed into one another in athletic, coltish hugs. May’s field hockey coach, looking as awkward and competitive as ever, was already blowing a whistle at one end of the parking lot, attempting to corral the girls.
May continued her scan of the lot and saw that there was a clump of parents at one end, specifically a clump of mothers. She sighed, she’d never gotten along with the other mothers. When Ricky had been a baby, they’d been critical of May for being a teen-aged mother. When Rook had been in the military, they’d been critical of May for not being more supportive of his service. And now, they were critical of May for still being young and hot, for running her own business, for having divorced a man like Rook. She sighed and held her chin up.
Then her eyes narrowed. A group of at least five of them had their heads together as they snuck periodic glances up at Rook.
May frowned. Rook just so happened to be laughing at something the bus driver said as he helped hoist bags of athletic equipment into the belly of the bus. He wore a black T-shirt and a pair of nice jeans that, of course, hugged that perfect ass of his.
May looked back at the group of women who were whispering and giggling as they watched him.
A few of them happened to look over at May, who did not even attempt to look friendly. She raised her eyebrows confrontationally and crossed her arms over her chest. Most of the women looked away from her immediately and obviously tried to pretend they hadn’t just been imagining her ex-husband naked.
One of them, though, raised her eyebrows back at May.
May suppressed a groan. It was Michelle Masters. This woman was a ninth degree blackbelt when it came to girl-war. May had seen her single-handedly destroy another mother’s reputation last year when that other mother had pissed Michelle off by taking her seat in the PTSO.
May sucked her teeth as she watched Michelle push her way through the group of women toward Rook.
Something primal and dangerous rose up in May. Her fingers twitched, like they couldn’t wait to claw some eyes out and rip out some earrings.
Rook is not yours! she attempted to remind herself. The two of you are too much passion and not enough stability!
Rook turned at something that Michelle said to him. Apparently she wasn’t speaking loud enough because he had to lean down to hear her better. May rolled her eyes. Oldest trick in the book.
Michelle laid a hand on Rook’s shoulder and May scoffed.
A traitorous thought entered her head. Why couldn’t she and Rook be stable and low-drama? May narrowed her eyes as she watched another woman flirt with Rook. Was it just some chemical thing? Flames sparked when their two souls clacked together and, by nature, that meant that they could never be calm and rational and… normal?
She glared at the woman who was playing with her hair while she laughed at something Rook had said. She knew Rook well enough to know that the confused look on his face meant that he hadn’t said anything funny and was wondering why the hell Michelle was laughing. Oh, the games we play.
“I’m gonna get on the bus, Mom.” May blinked and looked down at her daughter. They were both surprised when May’s eyes immediately filled with tears. “It’s only ten days—oof!”
Ricky’s words were nearly stuffed back into her mouth when May grabbed her into a hard, almost unforgiving hug. “You’re gonna have so much fun,” May said, almost fiercely.
“I know I will!” Ricky attempted to extricate herself from the nearly life-ending hug. “It’s not like I’ve never left home before, Mom.”
“But never for ten days at a time,” May said and cleared her throat. There was no need to make this hard on her daughter just because May was a whacko and losing her mind in a parking lot surrounded by casual acquaintances.
Suddenly there was a strong, familiar arm around May’s shoulders and a tight squeeze. And because they knew one another so well, and had for so long, May knew exactly what Rook was communicating to her with that squeeze. Unhand the kid, May. Let her get on the bus and live her life.
May took a deep breath, embarrassingly relieved that Rook was standing next to her and not flirting with Michelle anymore.
She wouldn’t make her insane feelings-rollercoaster become her daughter’s problem. She unhanded Ricky and was more than pleased to see that her daughter was still hanging on to her. Looking down, May saw that Ricky had one arm around May and one around Rook.
“Love you guys. And if I haven’t already said it, thank you so much for letting me do this.”
“You’re the
one who made the team, kid,” Rook reminded her, smiling fondly down at his daughter. He dropped his arm from May’s shoulder and hugged Ricky.
“Yeah, but you two are the ones who are paying for this thing. I know it can’t be cheap.”
“You’re a kid,” Rook told her. “Don’t think about that stuff yet.”
“Yeah,” May cut in. “Would it kill you to be a little more self-involved and ungrateful? You’re a teenager, for god sakes.”
Ricky laughed and stepped back. The second she did, Rook put a few inches of space between his body and May’s. She tried not to let that bother her.
“I love you guys.”
“Have such a good time,” May said, her eyes filling again.
“Work hard and knock em dead, kid.”
Ricky nodded and turned to jog to the bus where the other girls were just starting to file on. May watched her daughter get on the bus. She waved as all the girls piled onto one side to wave goodbye at their parents. She stood still and watched as the bus pulled away. She stared at the emptying parking lot.
“You ready?” Rook asked quietly. He was her ride home after all.
May shook herself out of her reverie. “Are you?”
His eyebrows pinched together. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe you wanna run over and get Miss PTSO’s number? Secure a brunch date?”
Rook’s gaze hardened as he looked down at May. He didn’t acknowledge May’s words. He simply unlocked the SUV from a distance and waited for May to stalk off toward it.
She strode toward the car, hoping every mother in that parking lot was watching her climb into his passenger seat.
She slammed the door closed and watched him round the hood. He slid into the driver’s seat and said absolutely nothing as he pulled smoothly into traffic. She waited.
Still nothing.
Ah. She finally understood. In front of Ricky, he was going to be cordial and polite. But on their own, the iciness set in.
“Are you ignoring me?” she demanded.
“You are literally impossible to ignore,” he muttered after a second.
“So did she give you her number or not?”
He pulled to a stop at a red light and shot her an annoyed look. “I’m not going to indulge your jealousy, May. Especially not now.”
“I'm not jealous,” she insisted, completely jealously. “I just think it’s annoying to watch you pick up women in front of our daughter.”
“Jesus Christ,” Rook muttered, raising his eyes to the heavens as if he were praying for calm.
“What?” she demanded. She was watching herself, almost from a distance, and May knew exactly how ridiculous she was being. She knew this was unfair and rude and problematic. Yet… she couldn’t stop herself. She either wanted Rook to confirm that nothing had happened, or she wanted to know every single detail so she could torture herself with it.
“May, can I please remind you that you’re the one who doesn’t want to be together?” His words were calm and pained and struck her cleanly through the heart.
Her outrage dissolved. Her jealousy eeked out of her, leaving behind a wretched, tarry regret. They were silent for the next five minutes of the car ride. Until she couldn’t hold in her thought a second longer. Until she might die if she didn’t say it.
“How come we can never be normal? I want normal. I want reliable.”
He glanced at her as he merged onto the highway. “What are you talking about, normal? We were married. It doesn’t get much more normal than that.”
“No,” she shook her head. “We were never normal. We were always fighting or tearing each other’s clothes off in passion. There was no constancy. No calm.”
He was quiet, but she knew it was because he was considering her words. She knew she should consider herself lucky that he was having this conversation with her after the bratty, jealous act she’d just pulled.
“It was probably because I was gone so much of the time. We never really had the chance to fall into a routine. Whenever we were together, everything was heightened. Like we had to cram an entire marriage into the few weeks when I was home.” He looked so sad as he leaned back, his hand draped over the wheel, that May internally crumpled.
“So,” he said after a minute, rolling his head to one side. “That’s what you want, huh? You want normal? Regular? Routine?”
She mutely nodded her head.
He put his eyes back on the road. “That’s what you want from your next guy?”
She was quiet, staring at his profile. And again, she spoke because her body literally couldn’t keep it inside anymore.
“No,” she whispered. “That’s what I want from you.”
His eyes snapped to hers and the car swerved a little. He swore and looked back at the road. “What? What are you saying?”
“I… want normal with you. I want to flirt with you in a parking lot. I want to go out to dinner. After a few weeks of dating I want to sleep with you. I want to tell my friends about you. I want… to talk with you about your business. I want your feedback on mine. I want to fall asleep in front of the TV on a Friday night with you.” She felt him exiting the highway, toward her house, and she covered her eyes with her hands. “I want you to pick up my dry cleaning on the way home from work. I want to buy your mom a Christmas present.” She realized that her hands were wet before she even realized she was crying.
“May,” he whispered as he pulled into a parking spot in front of her townhouse.
She pulled her hands away. “I don’t want to feel like I’m going to die when you leave for weeks at a time. I don’t want to feel scared and alone anytime you’re not there. It’s not sustainable. I don’t want to feel burned alive by our passion for one another and then frostbitten whenever you take it away. I want a slow burn, Javi. I want to be warmed by our love for one another. I don’t want it to destroy me anymore. I want you to make me stronger, not weaker.”
She heard his seatbelt unbuckle and waited for him to do hers next. She fully expected herself to be pulled across the console and planted in his lap.
She looked up in shocked surprise when it was him sliding over the center console. His humongous, heavy body was coming at her all at once. She laughed in shocked surprise when his ass plunked down into her lap, nearly crushing her. He was halfway across her body and the car, his arms around her, squeezing her to him.
“Finally,” he muttered, scraping his stubbly cheeks against her teary ones. “Fucking finally.”
“What?” she asked him. “What do you mean?” There were tears in her voice, a hitch in her breath.
Rook reared back from her and took her face in his two rough hands. “You are finally asking me for something that I can give you.”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand, Javi. We are incapable of giving one another that. We love too hard. All we ever do is fight or fuck. Don’t you get it? I’m not asking you for anything, I’m mourning us.”
He shocked the hell out of her by laughing. “May, you crazy woman. We can absolutely give this to each other. We’ve just never tried. Let’s try. Let’s try the hell out of it. What do we have to lose? We’re both already heartbroken. We’re both single already. We’ve done been divorced. Let’s try.”
She sniffed. “But Ricky…”
“Is at field hockey camp for ten days and never has to know if we try and fail.”
The truth of that opened up inside May like a flower. “You’re serious.”
“Dead ass,” he promised her. “May, let’s give it a shot. Let me take you out on a date. We won’t rehash the past. We’ll get to know one another again. If I’m lucky, I’ll get a goodnight kiss. If I’m really fucking lucky, I’ll get a second date. We’ll see if we can do it. What other people do. Let’s try.”
“You’re crushing me,” she said eventually, attempting to shift his weight off of her.
He immediately shoved himself back into the driver’s seat and out of his side of
the SUV. He jogged around the car and opened her door.
“Can I get your number?” he asked.
She furrowed her brow at him. “What are you talking about? You’ve had my number for—”
He put one finger over her lips. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen this much hope in his eyes. Wait, yes she could. It had been on their wedding day. When they’d exchanged vows with their mouths just three inches apart, like they couldn’t stand to be apart from one another.
“I’ve really liked talking to you,” he said. “I think there might be something here. Can I have your number?”
He was treating her like he didn’t know her. He was asking her out. Something hot and thrilling streaked through May’s gut. Apparently she liked this game.
“What would you do with it?” she asked him.
“Text you. Call you. Ask you out to dinner with me.” He grinned and she was a goner. She’d always been such a sucker for the way the corner of his eyes went all wrinkly when he smiled like that.
“I guess that would be all right.”
He grinned more and pulled out his phone, typing something in. Ten seconds later, her phone buzzed in her pocket. He’d texted her something.
She pulled her phone out and couldn’t help but laugh.
This is so freaking fun.
Her phone buzzed in her hand again.
Dinner tonight? Pick you up at 7:30?
She chewed her lip. She couldn’t barely believe this was all happening. She could feel the hope and excitement radiating off of Rook. She knew, instinctually, that if she rejected him now, if she said no again, that would be it. There’d be no more trying. They’d eventually move on with their lives. And that’s what she wanted. Wasn’t it?
Does the restaurant have a dress code?
She sealed her fate with a single text.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
He was nervous. No way around it. Besides that first date with May, when they’d both been dressed for prom, he’d never really been on a date before. Not one that had so much riding on it, at least.
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