30 Days

by Christine d'Abo

  The clicking of the door and the shuffling of his steps moving away from me increased the sick feeling in my stomach. Ignoring the movie and my glass, I picked up my bottle of wine and headed straight for the bedroom.

  21

  The downside to being a grumpy bitch was that even I was getting tired of dealing with me. I tried talking to Nikki, but that devolved into a bickering match that would have been impressive if we were still in high school, but was simply sad given our approaching middle-age status. I could have called Mom, but she’d be all sympathy and kind words, when what I really wanted was someone to fight with. The last thing I wanted to do was pick on her.

  I should have gone for a run, but that didn’t work out so well last time.

  Instead I decided to treat myself to a movie. It had been ages since I’d gone and it was out of the norm for me. There was one of those loud summer blockbuster things playing—it didn’t actually matter what it was about—and I took myself there to lose myself in the noise.

  I didn’t realize until too late that Harrison Ford was in it.

  Of course he was.

  Toronto’s streets were busy and the air humid as I made my way home. It wasn’t chaotic, but it certainly wasn’t the calming influence I’d hoped for. Our street is off the main avenues, and normally doesn’t have a high volume of traffic. So when I turned onto it, I was shocked to see a fire truck at the end and a small group of people milling around.

  Wait a minute. They’re in front of my building.

  Oh no.

  I picked up the pace until I was running full tilt. The crowd was being held back by a police officer. I pushed my way to the front and reached out to tug on his arm. “This is my building. What’s going on?”

  The young man kept his face expressionless. “I’m sorry, ma’am, you’ll have to wait for the all clear before we can let you back in.”

  “What happened?” My heart was in my throat. These weren’t strangers, they were my friends. Even the ones I didn’t know as well as I might have liked, they were all a part of my comings and goings. My life.

  “There was a kitchen fire in one of the units.” The muscle in the officer’s jaw jumped. “That’s all I can say.”

  Shit, that was beyond useless.

  There were a number of people from the building milling around, but no one seemed to know any more than I did. It wasn’t until Pierce came out onto the front steps of the building that everyone perked up.

  “What’s going on?” someone called out.

  “When can we get back in?” another joined in.

  Pierce came down, ignoring the looks the officer was shooting him. “Everyone, please. Let’s let these people do their jobs. Go out for a coffee, or to the mall. You’ll be able to get back in in about an hour. Maybe two.”

  That sent several people wandering away. Others set up camp on the sidewalks a short distance away. I did neither, choosing to stand there until Pierce came closer. I’d been too shocked to move when I realized that he’d been crying.

  Pierce, stone-cold former high school principal who’d terrorized more students with the threat of detention and homeowners with the threat of the association’s ill will, had been crying.

  “Pierce?” My voice shook and I had to clear it. He paused long enough for me to squeeze his arm. “Are you okay?”

  His smile was feeble at best. “I’ll survive.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “No, my dear.” Then the strangest thing happened. He turned and hugged me. “Just pray.”

  “What?”

  The paramedics chose that moment to emerge from the building, a stretcher between them. My mind didn’t want to accept what I was seeing. My body stiffened beneath Pierce’s grasp. “No.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said as he pulled back.

  Mrs. Le Page looked so tiny cocooned in the stark white hospital blankets. Her pallor was gray and her lids looked sunken. This couldn’t be the woman, so full of life and teasing, who just the other day tried to intervene in my relationship troubles. This woman was old, frail looking, deathly.

  And yet there was her husband, crying and fighting to stay by her side as they loaded her into the back of the ambulance. They helped him up, banged the doors closed, and took off, lights flashing but the siren silent.

  My world bottomed out on me. “God.”

  “They couldn’t tell me anything.” Pierce clacked his teeth together. “Foolish privacy laws. But I overheard them mention a heart attack. She must have taken a spill when she was cooking, which started the fire.”

  “She’ll be okay.” I don’t know who I was trying to convince with my statement. “She’s tough.”

  “My dear.” His voice cracked and he had to clear it. “My dear. They . . . I . . . she didn’t make it.”

  No. No, no, no, I couldn’t lose someone else. I wasn’t ready.

  This wasn’t fair! They were the perfect sweet couple that was still so very much in love. They were everyone’s surrogate grandparents, teasing us all and making sure we didn’t take ourselves too seriously.

  She was my friend and I was going to miss her.

  Pierce pulled away, giving me one final squeeze before he stepped back. “I’m going to head to the hospital to see if there is anything I can do to help Mr. Le Page. I believe they have a son he can stay with. He’ll need to be contacted. The insurance company as well. Excuse me.”

  The crowd around Pierce parted as he marched off toward the parking spots. He might be a stickler for the rules, but he really did care about us and our homes. If there was anything to be done, Pierce would see to it.

  As I stood staring up at the building, I tried to calm my breathing and keep my tears from falling. I wished Rob were here. He’d be just as stunned, but the feel of warm arms around me, a solid chest that I could lean against, to cry on, was what I needed more than anything. He would have given me that.

  But Rob wasn’t here.

  I was alone.

  “Alyssa?”

  I turned and saw Harrison standing there looking dumbstruck. Sliding past the others he came up to me and pulled me into a hug. The moment his arms wrapped around me, the dam inside me broke and I began to cry.

  “It’s okay.” He ran his fingers through my hair. “I’m here.”

  Harrison led me away to his car, helping me slide into the passenger’s seat. He shut the door and I was surrounded by wonderful silence. Without a word, he got behind the wheel and started the car.

  “Where are we going?” I sounded like I’d been crying for a year.

  “I don’t know. Just not here.”

  “You don’t even know what happened?”

  He placed his hand on my thigh, giving it a soft squeeze. “I don’t need to know to see that you’re upset.” He looked over, his frown marring his good looks. “Would you rather stay?”

  “God no. Anywhere is good.”

  Fighting through Toronto traffic, he pulled into the Westin parking lot and led me down to the lakeshore. It felt good to get out and breathe the air. There was a breeze coming off the water, cooling the sun’s rays as it hit my skin. Harrison didn’t say anything, he didn’t fill the silence the way Rob would have. Instead he hooked his finger with mine and strolled beside me.

  We stopped by a bench and sat. The lake was beautiful. The sky was full blue with barely a cloud anywhere in sight. I took a deep breath, picked a point far out on the horizon, and finally said the words: “Mrs. Le Page had a heart attack. She didn’t make it.”

  I should have told him immediately what had happened. While he hadn’t known Mrs. Le Page as well, he’d clearly formed a fast friendship with her. He stiffened, his grip tightening. “That’s . . . fuck. The poor thing.”

  “Mr. Le Page went to the hospital with her in the ambulance. I . . . I know how hard that will be for him.” While Rob hadn’t gone to the hospital in an ambulance, that final car ride had been nothing but tears and heartache.

  �
�Is he alone?”

  “Pierce went to be with him. They have a son, too. I think Pierce was going to call him or something.”

  “That’s good.” He pulled my hand closer to his thigh. “Are you okay?”

  “Not really. It brings back a lot of bad memories.” The breeze tickled my face and sent my hair blowing. “It also reminded me of something.”

  “What?”

  I turned, took his face in my hands, and kissed him. “That life is far too short.”

  He looked at me for several long moments before taking me in his arms and pressing my back to the park bench. His lips were soft as he deepened the kiss. His body was a hard mass of muscles, blood, and bone. His heart pounded in his chest and beat against my hand that I’d pressed to the skin above it. It somehow seemed wrong, taking pleasure when I felt nothing but pain. But I took it. And I’d keep taking it because life was too short. I didn’t need love from him. Hell, I wasn’t certain I needed honesty at this point.

  What I wanted, what I needed was someone who saw me and gave a damn. I needed to feel alive and to chase the specter of death away.

  When the kiss broke and he looked down at me, I knew despite his faults, Harrison was the one I wanted. I licked my lips, knowing that what I was about to say would change things between us once more. “We’re only on Day Ten.”

  “I thought you were done with me.” He placed a kiss on the end of my nose.

  “I was.” I gently pushed him up until we were both sitting once more. “I’d mistakenly gotten it in my head that we had a chance to have a relationship.”

  “I told you—”

  “I know.” I chuckled. “You were my rebound fling and I got carried away. I had this whole plan developing in my head. How our relationship would develop no matter how we both said it wouldn’t. So when I found out about your ex, I overreacted.”

  “I should have told you.” Harrison hung his head. “I’m sorry.”

  “I know. I do like you, like spending time with you. I want nothing more than to continue our fun. I think we could both use a bit more fun in our lives.”

  “Agreed.”

  He held out his hand and I took it. Unlike before, this time when our hands entwined, I felt grounded. As though this was the beginning of something fresh and exciting. It encouraged me in a way I wasn’t expecting.

  “One thing.” I sucked on my bottom lip for a moment as I tried to figure out how to word things properly. “I think we need to be a bit more flexible in regard to the cards.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Rather than do them in order, let’s just see where things take us.”

  The sadness in Harrison’s gaze was tempered with a spark of something else. It might not make things better, it might not chase away the pain of losing a dear friend, but it was a start. If nothing else we’d have each other in the short term. Beyond that, well, I’d figure things out when I got there.

  Harrison nodded. “I’m still leaving in a month and a half.”

  “I know. But for now, I’ll take what I can get.”

  Hopefully, it would be enough.

  Part 3

  The Realities of Self

  22

  “I swear to God you’re becoming the sous chef of sex.” Nikki sat on my desk chair watching as I reorganized my sex survival bag.

  “There’s nothing wrong with being prepared.” Shit, I really did have a lot of lube here. Maybe I should take a few out? Naw.

  “Of course not. As long as you finally get to screw him.”

  I stopped my rummaging to frown at her. “What are you talking about? We’ve had sex.”

  “No, you and hot-pants have gotten each other off, but there’s been no actual penetration to this point. Penis must go into vagina.” She held up her hands to demonstrate.

  “You’re an ass.”

  “And you’re apparently doing it wrong. I need to hear about some actual fucking.”

  “Really, Nikki?”

  “Don’t Nikki me. I’m right and you know it.”

  Unfortunately, she was. Harrison and I had done a lot, but we hadn’t partaken in the one thing I was anxious about. Now that we’d talked things out and were both clear on how far things were going to go between us, all I had to do was get through Mrs. Le Page’s funeral and then Harrison and I were going to have a long weekend of marathon sex.

  Three whole days to take my mind off the realities of life.

  “So where are you going?” Nikki fingered the handle of the gym bag. “Some place nice I hope.”

  “He wouldn’t tell me. Said it would ruin the surprise.” I wasn’t going to get my hopes up for a five-star hotel or anything, but I wouldn’t be upset if that’s what he had in mind.

  “A funeral and then a getaway.” Nikki flopped back on my bed with a sigh. “You do seem to have all the luck. Good and bad.”

  Mrs. Le Page would have appreciated and even approved of the fact I was bringing my sex survival bag to her funeral. It would be safely tucked away in the trunk of Harrison’s car, ready for action once we got to the hotel, or wherever he was planning to take me. I’m sure she was smiling down somewhere on us, happy that something good had come from her passing.

  Even if that good was only temporary.

  The service was held on Saturday morning at the Le Pages’ Anglican church. It had been years since I’d been to a mass of any sort and was pleasantly surprised when I didn’t burst into flames the moment I’d crossed the threshold. Not really sure of where to go and what to do, I sat down in a seat toward the back of the church.

  Harrison refused to come in when I’d met up with him before things began. “I didn’t really know her.”

  “But you did know her.” I shrugged and nodded toward the people going in. “No one would mind.”

  “I don’t do death very well.” He wouldn’t meet my gaze and instead focused on the passing traffic.

  “No one does. It will give you a chance to say good-bye.”

  When he finally looked at me, I could see the unshed tears in his eyes. “The last funeral I went to was my mom’s. I was fifteen and everything about it . . . scared the shit out of me. I’ve tried to go to others since then, but I’m ashamed to say I usually leave with a panic attack. Not very manly, I know. I have my own way of saying good-bye instead.” He gave me a small smile. “Okay?”

  “Yeah, of course.” Strange as it was, I tended to forget that I wasn’t the only one who’d dealt with death before. Losing his mom at such a young age . . . God, I couldn’t imagine how hard that must have been. “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I. I’ll come back in an hour.”

  So instead of having him by my side, I sat alone and listened to the hymns. I was doing fine. Really I was. I learned that her first name was Charlotte, not Mrs. Her favorite thing to do was to travel, the warmer the climate the better. And that she’d worked as a florist for thirty years before retiring.

  I managed to get through the eulogy by her son, someone I’d only ever heard about, but I could see the resemblance between him and his father. I even held back the tears when her three grandchildren got up and sang “Ave Maria.”

  The moment Mr. Le Page got to the pulpit and looked out over the gathering, the tears broke and rolled down my cheeks in steady drips.

  “Thank you for coming.” His voice was surprisingly steady. “My Charlotte was the best woman I knew. She was my confidante. My lover. My best friend. I’m going to miss you, sweetling.”

  I bit my cheek to stop from sobbing outright.

  I left as soon as the service was over, deciding to avoid talking to anyone I knew. I wouldn’t be able to manage anything beyond sobs and sniffles at this point. Harrison was leaning against the trunk of his car just down the street from the church. I walked right up to him and into his waiting arms. God, I really didn’t want to cry anymore.

  He gave me a good five minutes before tipping my chin up. “Want to go?”

  I sniffed. “Yeah. Where are
we headed?”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  I started to relax when I realized he was taking us out of Toronto. It had been a long time since I’d been out of the city and this was perfect timing. It wasn’t until we were off the 401 that Harrison looked my way. “Three days and two nights to get through as many of your cards as we can.”

  “I like the sound of that.” The idea of a whole lot of raunchy sex with him was the perfect cure for my current ills.

  “Excellent. We are going to cross one off of your list in about an hour, so sit back and relax.”

  We chatted about inconsequential stuff and bickered about what songs to play next on the satellite radio. We even shared a bag of chips that he’d brought along, which made it one of my better road trips in recent memory. The gloom from the funeral was blowing away as we sped up the highway toward our destination, to be replaced with the thrill of expectation and hope.

  That was until we pulled into the gravel parking lot of what must have been the cheapest dive of a motel north of Toronto.

  “Dude.” I didn’t even undo my seatbelt. “No way.”

  He grinned so widely I thought his cheeks might split. “Day Eleven.” He then hopped out of the car, whistling.

  A five—no, I’d cut him some slack—four-star hotel with a spa. That’s what I’d been hoping for. Or an upscale B&B at the very least. But no, he was being oh so diligent with my sex list, making sure to tick each box off.

  Rob would approve.

  I have no doubt that the two of them would have gotten along famously. They would have laughed about the look on my face upon my arrival. Rob would have wanted to take a picture for posterity. Thankfully, Harrison didn’t have that particularly annoying habit.

  Clearly, this was where things were going to go down this weekend. I could either suck it up and play along like the adult I supposedly was, or I could stay in the car and pout. My bottom lip crept out for a moment until Harrison slammed the trunk closed. Along with my overnight bag, he had my sex bag slung over his shoulder.

  I was out of the car in a flash. “You better make Day Eleven worth it.”