Michael stood up and walked to the window, edging the curtain aside to look out into the night. A young couple were walking together in front of the house, hand in hand, teenagers from down the street. He watched them walk into the field beside his house, watched the girl stand back as the boy spread a blanket amongst the tall grasses. He let the curtain fall away as the two sank to the blanket together, and turned away.“No, I didn’t tell her I was fine. I told her I would be, though.”
“You can’t possibly think she believes that.”
“She has to,” Michael said quietly. It was then, as he said the words, that he realized how much it meant to him to be okay again, not only for his own sake, but for Renee’s,too. But he wasn’t sure he was okay, and wasn’t sure he could be– especially if all it took to throw him backward was an unexpected sighting. Would this happen every time? Or would he ever reach a day when he could see her and wish her well without catching himself missing her, wishing things hadn’t fallen apart?“I know why she left me,” he said.
“Oh? How?” Eva’s voice was quiet, with a soft tone of sympathy that made him uncomfortable. He didn’t want pity; he didn’t want to be the guy who couldn’t get over the past, who couldn’t move on.
“She, uh… she left me a letter. Here, in the house,” he said.“She said she had been to the doctor, that she was told she couldn’t have kids. That she left me because she didn’t want meto not have kids. But… Mom, when I saw her today… she’s– she’s pregnant.”
“Oh dear.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think she lied?”
“I don’t even know. I don’t know what to think. But I was walking with Renee, searching for shirtsfor the wedding stuff coming up, and she needed a dress, and… she was just there. Walking out of the maternity shop that’s over by the carousel. And she’s… she’s all big, with the baby.”
“Was she alright?”
Michael smiled, listening to the arc of concern in Eva’s voice. His mother was like a collector of people, the way some people collected tea pitchers or rocks or old toys. She collected people, took them in and made them her own– and she had done it with Nicolette, too.“She was alright,” he said quietly.“She was… she was beautiful. Glowing, like she should be.”
“Married?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Hmm.” She groaned, and Michael heard her rustling around.“Oh, I hate this boot. I want my leg back! But what’s she doing having babies without a husband? That’s not like her.”
“Apparently I make women behave in ways that aren’t‘like them,’” Michael said, laughing as he rememberedhis mother’s earlier comment about Renee. He laughed again as Eva snorted, but said,“I know. She seemed alright though, and it’s not my business anymore. She was on my mind though, Mom. All day.” He neglected to tell his mother that he’d come home to drown his sorrows in rum, instead heading upstairs to gather his pajamas. It was getting late, and if he was going to have a sexless night, he was going to take advantage of the time and get some sleep.
“Well, you just need to let it go, Michael. What’s in the past is in the past. And don’t you roll your eyes at your mother,” she said, just as Michael rolled his eyes heavenward. He smiled, snatching his favorite lounge pants from the edge of his bed as his mother went on.“But I think if Renee was angry with you, it had nothing to do with Nicolette, and everything to do with you shutting her out. I know you’re a private person, Michael, and that you like to keep things to yourself. And she’s used to that, but she’s been your friend for so long. And you’ve been hers. Don’t shut her out and stop being her friend just because you’ve started being more.”
More.The word echoed in the recesses of Michael’s mind throughout the remainder of his conversation with his mother, echoed through the bathroom as he muttered it in the shower. More. It was such a simple word really, but his conversation with Sherry had changed that word forever. When she had rejected the idea of there being something morethan sex between them, it had made him realize how much he wanted something more, in a way that hadn’t been clear to him even ashe had made the suggestion. And then to reach out to Renee so soon after that, to touch her in a way that he’d never touched her, to feel her mouth moving against his, to finally see her as more …
But was his mother right about Renee? Of course she was; Michael knew even as the question arose in his mind that she was. In stepping over the line that divided the space between friends and more, Michael had changed everything in a way that could not be undone. But had he stopped being her friend only because he had kissed the tiny freckle over her hip bone? Had he stopped being her friend when he had brought their bodies together? More importantly, had the look of sadness in her eyes that night meant that it would be too late for him to start again?
It was true that he had talked to Renee about Nicolette; Michael and Renee had talked about his divorce many times, and he had always been honest with her about his feelings on the matter. He had been honest in the moments when he hated Nicolette for leaving, when he resented her for not trusting in their love, and when he missed her so terribly that it made him ache. He had always been honest with her– so what had stopped him from being honest earlier that day?
That was an easy question to answer. He hadn’t told her because he couldn’t imagine telling the woman he’d just gotten out of bed with that his body had still responded instantly to a woman he hadn’t seen in years; he couldn’t tell the woman whose hand he held that his heart had still leapt in his chest at the sight of his ex-wife walking toward them.
He had, in the periphery of his notice, seen how Renee had watched him over dinner. He could remember now, in hindsight, the way she had seemed to be waiting for something. But how could he tell Renee that even though they had begun to build something more, in that moment, he had seen only Nicolette? Would she understand? No… surely she wouldn’t. She couldn’t! How could any woman hear that and understand?
His mouth twisted wryly as he turned off the water and scraped his palms over his hair. Well, she was just going to have to understand; he was going to have to try to explain. And if they were going to have a deeper relationship, if they were going to be something more than friends, he was going to have to trust her to be there for him.
Michael stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around his hips, staring down at his phone. It seemed to stare back, the black screen reflecting his own face back at him. He snatched it up, swiped his finger over the screen to unlock it, and checked the time. Just after ten. She would be home, but would she be in bed yet?
He didn’t want to call and risk waking her in case she was already in bed, but he knew exactly what to say in a text so that she wouldn’t be able to resist answering if she was awake to see it.“Hey,” he wrote.“I think I have words now. Still want to listen?” He sent the text as a jolt of nervousness settled in his stomach, and rested the phone on the bathroom counter while he brushed his teeth, with the screen facing upward so that he could watch for her reply.
Chapter Forty-One
As it happened, Michael and Renee didn’t find time to do more than text each other in passing over the course of the next two days. Renee’s yoga studio was flooded by a broken water main, her business partner was out of town, and she was left to handle the cleanup and damages on her own, and at Michael’s auto repair shop, a new maintenance contract with a local taxi service had added a new measure of stress to his deadlines. Michael spent that Wednesday morning under one hood or another in a steady stream of tune-ups, while Ben worked one oil change after another in the bay beside him. The shop itself was closed to new jobs, Michael had switched his non-corporate clients to an appointment-only schedule, and business was booming.
It was three-thirty in the afternoon when they looked at each other across the garage, sighed, and dropped the hoods of the cars they’d just finished.“Dude, I’m starving,” Ben groaned.“And bored.When we get some down time, you need to teach me more st
uff.”
Michael turned and walked to the tool bench that ran along the back wall of the garage, glancing over his shoulder as Ben followed, lowering his face to hide a smile as Ben echoed his movements.“Alright then,” he said as they emptied their pockets and began to clean the tools they’d been using.“Let’s do this. We’ll order something for lunch, you can run and pick it up if you want, and I’ll see what I can get done here before you get back.” Shrugging, he swiped the worst of the engine grease from his hands and dropped his now-soiled rag on the counter.“Maybe I’ll see how many tire rotations I can swing in twenty minutes or something. Break the monotony. Pizza good for you? Or do you want sandwiches? I haven’t had a good BLT in a while.”
Dropping the last wrench into the appropriate drawer, Ben nodded and bent to pull a clean rag from the basket beneath the counter. Opening one hand, he glanced down to examine the filth that coated his fingernails and darkened the creases of his knuckles; his lip curled in distaste, and he used the rag to scrub hard around the edges of his fingernails.“Subs are fine,” he muttered,“as long as I can get this crap off my hands to eat. Beth says my hands are disgusting.”
Laughing, Michael turned to reach for the phone.“I bet she doesn’t say that about the raise you got, though.”
“No, she likes the raise. She’s been girlying our apartment like crazy.” Examining his hands again, Ben threw the soiled rag on the counter and reached for another.“She bought a damned art print the other day and put it over the couch. Now every time I sit down I brain myself on the stupid frame.”
“Oh yeah, that must be awful, your woman playing Susie Homemaker,” Michael answered, mocking.“I’m sure glad I don’t have to worry about shit like that anymore. It must be damned near unbearable when you get home and your dinner’s waiting. Man am I glad I don’t have that problem.”
Ben laughed.“Liar.”
“No, I’m serious. And I bet it’s even worse if she didn’t make dinner because she planned on skipping right to dessert.”
“Shut up and order the food, Mike.” Shaking his head, Ben tossed a second rag onto the counter and turned toward the door to the lobby.“BLT, double bacon, extra mayo, add cheese, onions and pickles. I’ll be back, I gotta go get my keys.”
Michael was still grinning when the clerk at the local sub shop answered the call. He placed the orders for his food and Ben’s, had the total added to his monthly tab, and turned back to his work. They were still behind on jobs and likely to miss the next deadline if he couldn’t get them caught up.“Just gonna have to stay late again, that’s all,” he muttered to himself, reaching for the stereo.
Thirty minutes later, Michael heard someone stepping into the open bay next to him and tightened the last lug nut on the second tire rotation with a sigh.“I only got two done, dammit. It’s been twenty minutes already?”
“I have no idea,” Renee said amusedly from the other side of the car.“When did the timer start?”
Straightening in surprise, Michael forgot about the time entirely and made his way around the car, smiling.“Hey, how’s it going?”
“It’s going,” she answered.“I’ve got all the water pumped out, got plumbers in there to check everything out. Fans going constantly to help dry everything out. And appointments with contractors for construction repair in the next few days if all goes well. Got permission to hold two classes a day at the park until the studio can reopen, called all the customers to offer a free month’s membership. Oh, and this morning I managed to take a real shower without being in a rush to get somewhere or a panic over what might happen next.”
“That’s always good.”
“Yeah I was pretty happy about it.” She dropped her eyes to her hands, clutching her purse in front of her, and fiddled with the zipper nervously before she looked up again.“Look, Michael, I know we haven’t had a chance to talk, but, I just–“ Renee sighed, taking a deep breath.“This is what women mean when they say they’re afraid to be more than friends, when they… when we say that we don’t want to risk losing the friendship. Michael, I don’t want us to stop being friends. And if we aren’t friends anymore and we can’t be honest with each other because we were together, then how will we be able to stay friends if it’s over?”
“We were together?” Eyebrows raised, Michael stepped forward to take her hands in his. Her purse strap tangled in their fingers, and he took the bag from her hands, placing it carefully on the bumper of the delivery van he’d been working on.“Renee, what are you saying? Is this over already?” It was hard for him to bring his eyes back up from their joined hands, hard for him to meet her eyes, uncertain of what he would see in them; he had felt his entire body awaken at the realization of her presence, but now his heart plummeted and his stomach twisted nervously.
Her eyes gave nothing away, clouded as they were by her mixed emotions.“If it’s going to cost us our friendship, I think it should be,” she said quietly. She shrugged and glanced away, blinking furiously.“I’m not willing to lose what we have, regardless of what we think it could be.And I don’t like how it feels to have you shut me out like that. We’ve always been able to talk to each other. I don’t want to lose that. I’d rather go back to what we were than lose what we were.”
Panic gripped Michael as he watched her face. He had only ever imagined her as a friend, but now he couldn’t imagine going back. It made his chest ache to think of her with a spouse, with children. He couldn’t imagine standing at her wedding, meeting her first child, shaking hands with her husband, attending her children’s birthday parties. He couldn’t imagine being Uncle Michael to her kids, as he was already to Cameron’s son Logan. He didn’t even want to imagine watching her look lovingly into some other man’s eyes because he had failed to let her in. Stepping forward, he dropped her hands and took her face between his palms instead, tipping her head until she conceded to bring her eyes back to his.“We are not losing anything,” he whispered fiercely.“We don’t have to lose anything, Renee.”
“Maybe we already are,” she whispered back.
The sight of a sparkling film of moisture in her eyes shot a pain directly to Michael’s chest, and he lowered his lips to her forehead.“We’re not.” He was annoyed that she was willing to give up after one short moment of shock, annoyed that she would back away from him out of– what, jealousy? Was it really as petty as that? Or was it fear? Did she think he still wanted Nicolette? “Renee,” he tried, not sure he was taking the right path, but willing to try,“Don’t do this. Look, I’m sorry for shutting you out.”
“I don’t– it’s not that you…” she let her voice trail away, sighing heavily before trying again.“Michael, I just–“
“Don’t worry about it,” he said.“I know that’s what it is, though, right?That I felt like I couldn’t talk about it with you?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know,” Renee said.“I sawyou– I saw your face when you saw her. Nicolette. And I…” Her voice trailed away and she sighed, her fingertips fluttering nervously against his stomach.“Michael, I can’t compete with the past. And I don’t want to.”
Chapter Forty-Two
“You’re not,” Michael breathed, the hurt in her eyes making his chest ache.“You need to understand that that’s not what happened. Renee, I was just surprised.”
Renee stepped away, shaking her head.“When you found that letter in your house. The one she wrote to explain everything… the one you told me about… when did you say you found it?”
Crossing his arms over his chest, Michael tried to ignore the wave of dread that washed over him.“I don’t know,” he said vaguely.“Maybe… a little over two weeks ago? Maybe three weeks? What’s that got to do with you and me?”
"And you said it was where?” Her voice was whisper-soft, her face full of sadness.
In stepping away from him, she had created a gap that felt to Michael like an impassable canyon. He felt the loss of her, not only in his arms, but in his life – the distance between them somehow seemed t
o leave the space around him feeling completely empty and somehow still totally crushing. How could this be happening? It should have been a small thing, the letter from Nicolette, the run-in with her at the mall ... those were things most normal people could handle– weren't they? But it had broken his heart all over again, and he realized now what was really going wrong with Renee. She might actually be the perfect woman for him; she was so perfectly attuned to his moods, his thoughts.
She knew. She could tell that he was hurt, that he was upset. Worse, she apparently believed that if he was upset over Nicolette, then it must be because he still wanted his ex-wife. Because he was stupid enough to have left her room untouched for so long, because he was weak enough to have needed that much time. And because what had happened between them had happened so soon afterward.
"Michael," she said, pulling him from his thoughts. "Where was it exactly? Her letter?"
Knowing the emotion behind her question, Michael wished he had a better answer, any answer other than the truth. He knew as he thought the words, exactly what she would think when he said them. "It was in her room," he said quietly.“Like I told you.” He closed his eyes against the sight of Renee flinching back from his words, forcing himself to keep talking. "It was her space; she liked to do so many different things, you know? She'd get obsessed with reading for a while, then journaling. Then she'd take up scrapbooking, on she'd start sewing something we both knew she'd never finish. I know I told you some of this stuff before." Chancing a glance at Renee, Michael satisfied himself that she was still listening, ignored the wrenching pain in his chest and the weight of dread on his shoulders, and went on. "Eventually, she got sick of the clutter and went crazy through the house, cleaning and organizing everything. She moved most of her hobby stuff up to the attic and then–"
More Than Friends (Kingsley #4) Page 20
