“Stop right there. Go back,” she said. “Let’s watch this. An Officer and a Gentleman.”
His brow arched. “Is this a chick flick?”
“There’s tons of male-grade violence. It’s Richard Alpha Male Gere in his alpha male costume, getting all alpha male-y.”
“Alpha male costume?”
“His military outfit,” she clarified.
Groaning, he tossed her the remote. They nestled against each other, Walker using her as a pillow, and Leonard using her pillow as his bed.
At the end of the movie, she sighed wistfully. “I love how he rescues Debra Winger from her shitty factory job. Will you do that for me? Rescue me from my shitty advertising job?”
“Only if you do the same for me. Think you can carry me like that?”
“I’ll get a wheelchair and roll you out.”
“Or I could just walk.”
“The theme song is the tits too.”
He sang a mock version in a deep gravely voice.
She swooned and fluttered her lashes. “My hero.”
“Can you play that on the ukulele?”
“Only if you sing a duet with me.”
“Done.”
At that, she tossed back the covers and headed for the bathroom. He serenaded her on the way. “Blah, blah, blah where we belong.”
She closed the door and squeezed her eyes shut. There it was—the pregnancy test—lying unopened on the counter. Officially, her period was late.
Bile rose in the back of her throat as she peed on the stick. When she got up to flush, she stared down at the toilet in shock.
She’d gotten her period.
Holding her breath, she stripped off her clothes and climbed in the shower. Then she let go and sobbed.
No more storybook fantasies of being married to Walker. She wasn’t having his blue-eyed baby with vision problems. Now he’d leave the agency, leave New York, and leave her.
Walker pushed back the shower curtain, holding the pregnancy test. “I can’t understand this thing. What does the line mean? Are you pregnant?”
“I peed on that.”
He dropped it like it was hot.
“Well?” he asked.
“I just got my period.”
He pumped his clasped hands over his head as if he’d just won an Olympic medal for not knocking her up. “Thank Christ in heaven. Whew.” He was absolutely beaming.
Only if a puppeteer pulled the strings to her mouth would she be able to smile back. “You’re free,” she said.
His brows gathered. “What do you mean I’m free?”
“Nothing to tie you down now.” Pain barbed her voice.
“Blue—”
She turned off the water and buried her face in a towel.
“Hey—” He sat on the toilet. “I don’t understand. Are you upset you’re not pregnant?”
“No,” she said. Yes. Maybe? She didn’t know. She just wanted to be with him. God, she was pathetic—like a woman from another era—wanting to be pregnant so she could stay with the man she loved.
He cupped her chin. “Just because I don’t want kids right now, doesn’t mean I don’t want them later. That’s what this is about right? You’re afraid I don’t want kids?”
True, a man who didn’t want kids wasn’t the man for her. But that wasn’t everything.
“I love you, Blue. I know it’s probably too soon to say it, but I don’t care. I love you.”
She stared at a rusty spot on the bathtub drain. “Love,” she repeated. That didn’t change a thing. No matter which way she spun it the result was the same. If she held him back, he’d resent her. Then at the very least, he’d cheat on her like Daniel had. Or worse, he’d end up like her mother—a cruel empty shell.
The throbbing ache of guilt had hovered over her like a rain cloud her whole life. She didn’t want to live like that anymore. Not with Walker. She loved him too much to be the source of his misery, and too much to have him be the source of hers.
“I’m sorry, Walker, but love’s not enough.”
He jerked back like she’d shot him.
“Love isn’t going to make this work. You’re leaving. What do you want to me to do? Have a long distance relationship with you? That won’t work and you know it.”
Sad peacock eyes pierced her. “Come with me.”
She covered her face, blocking the view of her misery. “I gave up everything for the last man who told me he loved me. And look where that got me. Love is a word, not a solution.”
“I’m not asking you to give up your life—”
“Let’s say I go with you. What am I gonna do? Follow you around like Leonard while you take pictures? What happens if I chase you and we don’t work out? Am I gonna be shit out of luck and have to start all over again?”
“You don’t have to chase me. You could write. You could freelance. I don’t have to quit right now. I can stay in New York.”
“No, I won’t let you. I won’t let you give up your dreams for me. I’m not going to be the person you resent for the rest of your life.”
He continued his plea. “I’m not gonna resent you. Stop, Callie. Please don’t do this. Please don’t throw us away. You’re predicting the end before it’s even happened.”
But it had happened. The trip was over and so were they. They’d driven for months only to reach dead end. “We had a nice fling, but outside the RV fantasyland, we simply don’t work. Our relationship doesn’t translate to real life.”
Anguish contorted his face. She could almost taste the blood from the wound she’d inflicted. Breaking his heart, so he wouldn’t break hers. How sickeningly ironic.
“You ever gonna get tired of running away from your problems?” he asked.
“I’m not running. Don’t you get it? I’m staying. I need my own path, Walker, not yours.”
Anger barged in and hardened his expression to stone. Using his forearm as a bat, he swept all the hotel toiletries off the sink, sending them crashing to the floor.
He stormed out, and minutes later, fled the room with his suitcases and Leonard Nimoy in tow.
She couldn’t move. Or breathe. Her lungs had turned to blocks of ice. Shivering painfully, she sat frozen on the edge of the bathtub, chilled blood slugging through her veins.
He didn’t even say goodbye. Or put up a fight. He just walked out and slammed the door.
It was as if he’d slammed the book shut at the end of their story. As if everything had been make-believe. As if the fairytale had ended.
Unhappily ever after.
Soundtrack: Above & Beyond, “Love Is Not Enough”
Walker got the call right after Callie dumped him. He was in the hotel lobby trying to book another room for the night. A faceless voice on the other end robotically fed him the information.
“Mr. Rhodes, your grandmother collapsed yesterday. We’d like your permission to move her to a hospice.”
The statement wrapped around his neck and squeezed his pounding pulse into his ears. “What do you mean collapsed? Where is she? Who the hell are you?” He paced the lobby, yanking Leonard with him.
“Dr. Sen. I’ve been caring for your grandmother at Savannah General. Her chart listed you as the power of attorney.”
“Are you telling me she’s dying?”
“Sorry. I assumed you knew.”
“What on earth’s wrong with you? You tell me my Grandmother’s dying like it’s an item on your to-do list. How about showing some goddamned compassion?”
A woman at the counter sidestepped away from him. He lowered his voice. “Why did she collapse?”
“As you know, she’s had cancer for quite some time. It spread rapidly over the last month.”
“It came back? When?”
The doctor cleared his throat. “She discovered a nodule under her armpit six months ago. With her advanced age, she opted out of treatment.”
“What do you mean she ‘opted out?’ Why the hell would she do that?”
“She stated she’d already been through chemo before and didn’t want to die bald and full of poison.”
Oh, Josephine, you crazy old bat.
Deboned, useless, and utterly destroyed—he crouched on the floor while pain pecked his heart like a black crow.
“Sir? The hospice?”
He stood. “I’m in Seattle. I’ll catch a flight out as soon as I can. Think you can do your damn job and keep her alive until I get there?”
“Sir, I know you’re upset—”
“Upset? Buddy, I’m about two hundred levels above upset.” He hung up the phone, handed Leonard’s leash to the concierge, and weaved toward the restroom.
The mirror was the first to go—he shattered it with his fist. Next, he kicked the shit out of the trashcan. Then he ripped the paper towel dispenser off the wall and threw it against the toilet.
After his meltdown, he went back out and booked a ticket home.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Dyin’
Soundtrack: Télépopmusik, “Breathe”
Dawn crept through the window and brought delirium with it. The ache lodged inside her like an unwanted visitor—probably staying for good this time. She hadn’t eaten nor slept since Walker had left the night before. Her body shook, her throat throbbed, and her mouth tasted like blood.
In her backpack, she dug for a cure—a pill, a salve, a bandage that might fix her pulverized heart. She dumped out the last two months of her life on the floor—the blue dress, the X-rated towels, her love note. On the bottom Walker looked up at her.
She pulled out his junior high picture and examined the nerdy little boy who’d grown into the handsome man she loved. All the sudden, despair punched her in the chest and stole her breath.
Everything went black and she hovered in nothingness, spinning and fighting. Somehow air slipped through the darkness and the lights turned back on.
A storm of dust motes swirled above her in a sunbeam. “Walker! Come see how pretty this filth is!”
Reality crashed through the door. No need to point out beautiful photo ops. No more late-night whispered conversations. No more silly anecdotes.
He was gone.
All the weird thoughts and quirks and faults—all the things he loved—she’d have to lock them back inside her head.
She sat up. How did everything in her room get so beige? Without Walker the world had turned back to bleak.
The day grew lighter, and as it did, her mind cleared. What if somehow they could make it work? What if they could live happily ever after? “‘What if I fall?’” she recited to herself. “‘Oh but, darling, what if you fly?’”
Don’t be such a pussy, Murphy!
Their flight wasn’t until ten. She still had time.
She ran down to the lobby. The attendant was fast asleep with his cheek propped on a fist. She cleared her throat and woke him up with a start. “Remember me?” She waved her fingers.
The guy squinted.
“I checked in yesterday with a man and black puppy? Walker Rhodes?”
He rubbed his eyes and rose to his feet. “The tall guy with glasses?”
She nodded frantically. “Do you have his room number?”
“He checked out last night. Went to the airport.” He reached under the counter and handed her a phone. “The driver dropped this off. Guess he left it in the van—”
“Call me a shuttle.” She snatched the phone and ran upstairs to pack. Their seats were next to each other on the flight home. That’d give her six hours to fix everything.
But he wasn’t at the airport. According to the airline, he’d canceled his flight.
Without his phone, she had no other way to contact him. And the chances of him buying a new one in the next twenty-four hours were nil. Other than checking in with work, his grandma, and Matt, he’d made zero calls on the thing. They hadn’t even exchanged numbers. Why bother? They’d been inseparable.
She emailed him. Three times. Nothing.
But he’d come to the office on Monday and resign in person. He’d say goodbye to his friends, and she’d do the same. Then they’d leave on their next adventure together.
Two days. She just had to get through two days.
Then she’d tell Walker she loved him and get her happy ending.
She would.
Savannah, Georgia
“I dwelt alone, in a world of moan, and my soul was a stagnant tide”—Edgar Allen Poe
Soundtrack: Black Atlass, “Paris”
A super-sized portion of sorrow had been served to Walker in the last twenty-four hours. And you know what? It tasted like a shit.
It was the worst day of his life.
As if Callie dumping him weren’t God-awful enough, he’d flown six hours in a middle seat, between two dudes as tall as him, while Leonard cried and whined under the seat.
Then he’d lost his phone and couldn’t check in on his grandmother.
After that, he’d had to drive four hours from Atlanta to Savannah. Then he’d rushed into the hospice to find a comatose skeleton in Josephine’s place.
The whole way he’d worried about her dying there. He kept thinking she’d want to be at home. But evidently she’d picked out the place months before.
He could almost hear her laughter ringing through the hallway as she toured the building and joked with the nurses. “This place ain’t bad . . . for a cemetery.”
And that’s how it smelled, like death. Sterile death. It was nothing more than a mortuary disguised as a nice hotel. She even had an ocean view. Though she’d never see it.
He thought it would be like a hospital. But the only clue it was a medical facility was the morphine drip that slowly sucked her into delirium.
Only twice she’d woken up. Once, mumbling something that sounded like, “Don’t forget the special brownies in the ice box.” He had a pretty good idea what “special” meant.
The other time, she’d carried on a conversation with Ted Turner.
He begged the nurse to turn off the drugs so she’d know he was there. But his grandma was in horrible pain, the nurse told him, and would suffer greatly without the medication.
Even the non-stop morphine drip couldn’t have calmed the rage he felt after hearing that. While he was out gallivanting around the country with a woman who’d called him “a nice fling,” his grandmother—the woman who’d saved him from foster care and raised him—had been suffering in pain.
It was suffocating, dammit, the dry desolation he felt.
In only a few hours, her health declined rapidly. Again, he begged the nurse for help.
The woman shuffled over to him, her fat polyester-clad thighs swishing as she walked, and said, “She was probably just waiting for you to get here before she let the good Lord take her home.” She placed her plump, brown hand on his shoulder. “I’ll pray to Him and ask for an easy passage.”
He sneered. “While you’re at it, ask the good Lord why he gave her cancer in the first place.”
The nurse just smiled and patted his shoulder.
Josephine moaned. He took her hand—just wrinkled wax paper over bones—and laid his head beside her and wept.
“Aw, Sugar Bear.”
He lifted his gaze and found Josephine awake.
“Don’t be sad,” she said, pushing the words out a gasp at a time. “It’s my time. I’ve had a great life.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, Grandma? I would have been here for you.”
On her once-vibrant, now gaunt face, a strained smile curled up. “Can’t fall in love on a deathbed, can ya? That’s what you did right? On your trip? Fell in love?”
“Yes, you meddlesome old woman. I fell in love.” For both their sakes, he left out the part where Callie had also broken his heart.
His grandmother smiled, closed her eyes, and said her last words. “You owe me forty dollars.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Writin’
Manhattan, New York
“Writing
is the best antidepressant.”—Fierce Dolan
Soundtrack: Miss Li, “I Can’t Get You Off My Mind”
The minute Callie landed in New York, she booked an appointment with Colt, the hairdresser who’d chopped off her hair before. It took him three hours to bleach out the black and return her to blonde.
Then she donated her t-shirts and went shopping. “I’m back,” she said to the dressing room mirror.
Now all she had to do was get Walker back.
Monday came and went, and he never showed. But no one else did either. Skip had taken everyone to the Catskills on a fucking bonding retreat, otherwise known as a big booze fest.
By that point, the amount of emails she’d sent Walker had gone several levels beyond crazy stalker bitch.
Dozens of people called his phone. Mostly women. Who were they? Did they somehow figure out he was available? Had he called them the instant she’d dumped him? Why hadn’t he replaced his phone? None of it made sense.
That day she didn’t eat or sleep.
On Tuesday when he didn’t make it, she developed a sharp pain under her ribs. But he’d come in the next day, for sure.
He didn’t.
Desk-by-desk, she asked everyone, and not a soul had heard from him.
The panic attacks came back with a vengeance on Thursday. Several times she’d almost gone to the emergency room. She booked an appointment with a doctor for the following week. By then though, she’d be well on her way to Savannah.
When Walker didn’t return Friday, she charged up his phone. Given the forty-seven calls he’d missed—including one from Sabrina an hour before—he hadn’t replaced it yet.
She rushed to the account manager’s desk with his phone in hand.
“Oh my Gawd,” Sabrina cried. “I, like, didn’t even recognize you. Is that your natural hair color—”
“Did you just call Walker?”
“Yeah hey, where do I send flowers for his grandmother’s funeral? I know it was yesterday. Is that tacky? Sending flowers after it?” She tossed her hair. “Why aren’t you there?”
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