Damn.
“Hello,” answered a low, sexy voice she’d missed so much. She remembered that voice saying her name into her ear while he—
“Owen,” she said, forcing herself to break away from dangerous thoughts. “Hi.”
“Marci. Your number came up on the caller I.D., but I still didn’t expect…I don’t know what I expected, actually.”
Me neither, was on the tip of her tongue, but instead, she said, “What are you up to?”
“Just out with Kristin,” he said. “I ducked into a pizza place to answer the call,” he added hurriedly.
She winced. Of course he was with his fiancé. But had he wanted her to know that he wanted privacy for their call? No, she couldn’t think that way. Thinking that way would only cause trouble. “I just wanted to wish you well and say goodbye the right way,” she said. And just like that, she punked out. “Because I don’t think I ever handled any of this the right way.”
“Handled what the right way?” Owen questioned.
Marci closed her eyes and shook her head. “Just, goodbye, Owen. I hope she makes you as happy as you deserve to be. She’d better. You’re such a good guy. One of the best. I’ve never met anyone so genuinely…you almost…” Made me believe some guys can be worth the trouble of a relationship. “I just mean you deserve everything you want in this life. And she’s what you always wanted, right?”
There was a long pause on the other end during which she could hear voices she presumed belonged to the customers in the pizza place. Owen cleared his throat. “Yeah,” he said finally.
She didn’t know why—she didn’t know why because Tyler was wrong, she wasn’t in love with him, she couldn’t have been stupid enough to let herself fall in love—but she felt a stab in her heart at his answer to that question. She opened her mouth but didn’t know what to say.
“Are you sure that’s all you want to say?” Owen asked.
“Yeah.” She wanted to keep hearing his voice, but at some point she had to let him go. She banged her fist against her thigh a few times and struggled with the words that wanted out of her mouth so badly. “Goodbye,” was the word she finally settled on. “Good luck. To both of you.”
“Yeah. You, too.” Owen disconnected after that, but she continued to hold her phone to her ear.
When she finally pulled it away, she shook her head. “Enough of this.” She marched over to her closet in search of her shortest skirt and her new blood red pumps.
Ronnie and Sadie dragged Marci to a club they liked downtown. Marci danced for a while, but she wasn’t feeling it. Eventually, she made her way over to the bar under the pretense of ordering shots for everyone. Her real agenda was getting a moment to herself to collect her thoughts.
Of course she hadn’t told either of them about her moment of weakness during which she’d called Owen. She was still trying to figure out why she’d done it. She racked her brain, but she couldn’t come up with an explanation. She’d been tempted to call ever since whatever they had had crashed and burned in New Jersey, sure, but she’d always been able to resist that temptation. Until tonight.
“Two Patron shots,” said a familiar voice.
She whipped her head around to the right. The moment she looked over and saw an uncomfortably familiar face, her heart dropped to her feet as she worried Owen wouldn’t be too far behind him.
“Dante,” she said.
He squinted over at her. “Marci.” He was clearly surprised to see her as well. “You like this place, too?”
“My friends do.” She gestured toward the dance floor. “Are you with your…friends tonight?” she asked hesitantly, dreading the answer.
He chuckled. “If you’re asking if Owen is here with me, no. He and Kristin are in New York this weekend. Better that than her at the apartment. I never really liked that girl.”
Marci nodded, and an awkward silence spread between them. Dante and Marci had never really been friends. In fact, she’d gotten the vibe that he didn’t like her whenever she’d come over to se Owen even though she’d never done anything to him that she knew of.
“You know, I was skeptical of you at first,” Dante said. “But he always seemed to be in a good mood when he was around you. He’s hardly ever in a good mood now.”
“Oh.” Marci wasn’t sure what to say to that one.
“I guess I don’t need to understand what y’all two had, I guess it’s none of my business.” Dante thanked the bartender for his shots, dragged them across the counter, and paid and tipped generously. He looked over at Marci again with a slow smile. “I guess you made him happy, though, didn’t you?”
Made. Past tense. So, so past tense. “I don’t know.”
Dante nodded. “You’re all right with me.”
“Thanks I guess,” Marci said, bewildered at whatever it was that’d just happened.
“What you drinking? I got it.”
“Jameson shots,” Marci said. “Three.” She held up three fingers. And man could she use a drink. Everywhere she went tonight, stifling thoughts and reminders of Owen seemed to follow. Dante signaled the bartender. And Jameson was the beginning of the end of Marci’s night.
Marci crawled into Sadie’s car around two in the morning and collapsed onto the backseat. Ronnie got into the passenger seat. Sadie, who was D.D., climbed into the driver’s side stone cold sober.
“I must be drunk if I’m willingly let Sadie drive me anywhere,” Marci called from the backseat. Sadie was probably the worst driver Marci had ever known.
“Psht. I’m a good driver,” Sadie said.
“It’s a good thing you’re sober. ‘Cause some cop is bound to pull us over and give you a breathalyzer when he sees you weaving all over the road like you know you do at ninety miles an hour.”
Ronnie snickered from the passenger seat and chimed in with her own commentary on Sadie’s driving skills—or lack thereof.
“I need food!” Marci shouted from the backseat. “Where are we going to eat?”
“Eat?” Sadie asked. “You’re going to eat a real meal at midnight?”
“Two in the morning. Come on now. I’m the drunk one, and I can tell time,” Marci said. “Yes, I’m going to eat a real meal at two in the A.M. Ever hear of a little place called Taco Bell? Or IHOP? Or Waffle House? Should I go on?”
Ronnie started shouting her vote for pizza.
“Drunk food!” Marci chanted over Ronnie’s shouts.
“At least y’all made it to the car on your own.” Sadie laughed as she said it. Shaking her head, she put the car into reverse. After jerking backward out of her parking space, she shifted to drive and tore out of the parking lot so quickly she nearly tossed Marci to the floor.
“See what I mean about the driving?” Marci laughed as she braced a hand against the floor. “You’re gonna kill me. I’m not even wearing a seatbelt back here.”
“Whose fault is that?”
“I’m not the one who can’t drive.”
“Right now you are.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“What am I going to do with you two?” Sadie asked.
“You know you love us,” Marci said.
“That’s why I put up with you.”
Marci grinned. What else did she need? She had good friends. And soon she was going to have a belly full of pancakes. Or pizza maybe. Something hot and delicious in any case. Her life was good. No need for complications.
#
Later that night, after drunk food had been procured, Sadie dropped Marci and Ronnie off at their apartment. Marci crashed onto the couch with a greasy, white paper bag, and Ronnie sprawled out on the floor in front of it, a similar bag held loosely in one of her outstretched hands.
“You know,” Marci said. “I have made a damned fool out of myself in the past for so-called love.”
Ronnie pulled herself to a sitting position and peered up at Marci. “Oh yeah?” Ronnie asked. The surprised look on Ronnie’s face was to be expected. Marci didn’t often g
o into stories about her past boyfriends—all two of them.
“Well, high school is one thing. You can chalk that up to not knowing any better. But I should’ve known better the second time around,” Marci said.
“Shoulda known better about what?” Ronnie said.
“I had this boyfriend in college. Loved the hell out of him. Long story short, he fed me a bunch of lies I believed. And then he left me for someone else. I basically tried everything short of camping out on his doorstep to get him back. It was pathetic. Clearly he had moved on, and I just couldn’t wrap my mind around that. I was determined I could get him back if I just tried harder—like getting him to come back to me was some test I could study for.” Marci shook her head, disgusted with herself all over again. “I hate that feeling. The hopeless feeling of knowing there’s nothing you can do to get That One back. I never want to risk being in that place again.” Not even with Owen. Especially with Owen. She sensed that if she let herself go completely where he was concerned, and he left her, she’d never recover.
“You know, everyone gets burned. You’re only hurting yourself by holding on to this anger. That jackass who didn’t deserve you ain’t being hurt by it. He’s off somewhere obliviously and happily still being a jackass I’m thinking.”
“Ronnie. I paid a psychic obscene amounts of money to lie to me about how I was going to get him back. My hair started falling out from the stress for crying out loud. I got a ‘C’ that semester we broke up.”
Ronnie clutched her chest and dragged in an exaggerated gasp of horror.
“Yeah, yeah. That was my first and only C. Actually it was a C minus. Big deal for me.”
Ronnie shifted on the floor and grinned.
“What?”
“I just remember coming home early from work one day last semester, and you were so blind to everything but Owen you didn’t notice me standing there at first. Owen was sitting close to you on the couch and murmuring something to you that had you laughing so hard you couldn’t breathe.” Ronnie smiled a lazy-drunk-smile and leaned back on her hands. “Then you caught sight of me and slid away from him and started acting like nothing was any big deal.”
Marci fiddled with her greasy paper bag. “What does that have to do with anything?”
Before you saw me, you looked happier, freer, than I’ve ever seen you look. I guess what I can’t figure out is why you would willingly—recklessly—throw away something that made you so friggin’ happy.”
“You just made a whole lot of assumptions right there.”
“Okay. So torture yourself and punish Owen for something neither of you can control—for the sins of some long gone asshole.”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“Oh? Then what is it you think you’re doing?”
“These things always fall apart in the end. I’m just saving us both the trouble.” And myself one hell of a heartache. I don’t even want to think about how hard he would be to get over. If it’s even possible to get over a guy like Owen leaving you.
Ronnie shrugged. “You know, usually you go your own way, go for what you want, and everybody else be damned. This ex of yours musta done a serious number on you.”
“What makes you think this isn’t exactly what I want?”
“I got eyes. I was at the hospital every single time you were—when Jeremy tried to get himself killed with alcohol, when my uncle tried to get himself killed with his gambling addiction, and when Jeremy tried to go for the final prize a second time with that damned car. And each time, watching you and Owen together was like watching a story unfold. Beginning, middle, and heartbreaking end.”
“I’m hungry. Time to eat.” Marci ripped open her bag and grabbed her fried chicken sandwich.
Chuckling to herself, Ronnie opened her own bag and pulled out a paper plate with a huge slice of pepperoni pizza on it. She murmured something that sounded suspiciously like, “You know I’m right,” before shoving pizza in her mouth.
Marci took a huge bite of her sandwich to avoid taking the conversation any further.
Chapter Thirty-One
Monday night, after work and before heading over to Kristin’s place, Owen took a little detour. It was a route he knew well but hadn’t traveled in a while. But after she called him, shocking the hell out of him, he decided to suck it up and drop by. It didn’t seem to him she’d said everything she wanted to say the other night. He hoped she hadn’t anyway.
Not that he’d ever been able to put Marci completely out of his mind, but after she called Thursday night, she’d consumed his thoughts. He’d lied. To her. To himself. To everybody. Marci might not have been good for him, and maybe they weren’t on the same page about a lot of things, but for better or worse, she was what he wanted.
He’d tried to talk himself out of driving to her place, but it hadn’t worked. So there were a lot of blank spots, and maybe a relationship with her wouldn’t ever work, but he needed to at least have a real conversation with her about what he felt for her. Face to face. He needed to know if her answer had changed.
This was their last chance. Kristin was sending out save-the-date cards in a few days. In fact, he and Kristin had gotten into it over those cards. She wanted to send Marci one, and Owen had told her absolutely not. He knew Marci would have no interest in coming to his wedding, and he knew Kristin was only trying to rub it in her face. He wouldn’t allow that.
Soon, it would be May, and the semester would be over. The wedding would be here before he knew it. Unless.
Well, maybe he was getting ahead of himself. First things first. He needed to see her. Talk to her.
He hadn’t called to make sure she would be home first. That was too much of a commitment. In fact, his first plan had been to simply drive by her building and see if her car was parked in the lot across the street from it or on the street somewhere. He spotted her car parked on the street in front of her building. He pulled into a spot on the opposite side of the street, near the parking lot for her building. He let the jeep idle and stared at her beemer. Was this really what he wanted to do?
He leaned forward until his forearms rested on the steering wheel and looked up at her building. Maybe she really had just wanted to say goodbye to him Thursday night. Maybe he was reading too much into the fact that she’d called him.
And if he was so sure about what he really wanted, why hadn’t he broken things off with Kristin before coming over? Maybe because he knew despite whatever fleeting thought had made him drive over here, Kristin was the right choice for him. She actually wanted to be a wife. They both wanted to start a family. He and Marci had never discussed a family, but he was pretty sure if relationships were out for her, kids definitely were. Way too much of a commitment for that one.
Marci didn’t want to be what he needed. She never would. What was he doing here? She’d never even said she loved him. She’d just asked if he loved her that night at the hospital. No, her calling didn’t mean anything. He didn’t need to go reading anything into it beyond what she’d said: goodbye. She’d been looking for closure, and he needed to look for some of that, too. Things were done, closed, shut off forever where Marci was concerned.
With a heavy heart and a heavy sigh, Owen put the jeep in gear and drove away from the curb.
#
Wednesday afternoon, Owen went over to Kristin’s place after his shift at the Java Time. He was supposed to be helping her with names and addresses for his friends and family for the save-the-date cards. He’d been working all the shifts he could get lately. Between work and school, he barely had a free moment these days. He liked it that way. Less time to think. To second-guess. But he still had too much time on his hands, it seemed. Too much time to do things like sit outside Marci’s apartment like a creeper and think about going up to the door and asking to be buzzed in, asking to destroy the life he’d always wanted and was so close to having. A married life with Kristin.
“Hey.” He dropped his bike helmet onto the floor near the f
ront door and hung his jacket on the coat rack. He walked over to give her a kiss hello. “How’s it going with the cards?”
“Good.” She smiled up at him. “Almost done.” She wrinkled her nose. “We’re so behind. It’s April, and we’re just now sending these out.”
Owen frowned down at his student directory, which was across the table from Kristin and near a small stack of addressed envelopes. “Where’d you get that?” He nodded at the directory.
“Your apartment.”
“Why do you need it?” He’d forgotten he had that thing. If he didn’t get contact info directly from people like he usually did, he used the online student directory.
“I had to…look up Lil.” Kristin busied herself overtime with straightening a stack of save-the-date cards.
“You could have asked me for my password for the online one.” The online student directory was password protected. “Or better yet, I could’ve given you Lil’s address.”
Kristin shrugged. “You were at work. I didn’t want to bother you. It’s no big deal.” She was awfully eager to supply reasons for someone who normally reminded him that she didn’t have to answer to him.
Owen frowned slightly and nodded. “Oh. Okay.” Whatever. He was tired, and every inch of him smelled like coffee. “I need a shower.”
“You know where to find the towels,” she said. “Anybody else you want me to add to the list?” she asked as he started down the hall toward the bathroom. “Last call.”
“Nope,” he called over his shoulder. His suspiciousness of Kristin’s behavior tugged at the back of his mind, but his desire for a shower and a nap was winning out over all else at the moment. He might have gotten twenty hours of sleep total since last Tuesday night—just over a week ago. There was a chance he was pushing himself too hard, but it was either that or…well, he didn’t dare think of the alternative.
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