She flaps her hands wildly. “Play house? Cook and screw and pretend we’re a couple?”
For a long time, I want to reply, but tears spill from her eyes, and I’m thoroughly confused. I don’t know what to say or how to say it or if now is the time.
“I like cooking for you.” As soon as that comes out, I’m positive it isn’t what she needs to hear. But I’m also certain I’ve no clue what to say to fix a damn thing. I try again. “How long do you want to do this?”
She swipes a hand across her cheek then takes a deep breath. “We agreed to do this till the contest. Get it out of our systems. But we’re acting like a couple.”
Wait. I’m wrong. This is the time. This is my entrée to wedge my way into her heart. “We are. That’s true.”
That’s a start, right?
She frowns. “But we’re not. You know that?”
“I do know that,” I say tentatively, trying to figure out how to keep moving the conversation forward.
She points at me. “You made it clear from the start. You said no relationships. You said you didn’t want anything. And now we’re living together, and we can’t just keep going on indefinitely. You’re my roommate, I’m your landlord, and the more we keep doing this, the stupider we get.”
I blink, trying to process why we’re dumb.
She sucks in a breath, and her voice catches again as it rises. “And it’s distracting. It’s totally distracting.”
“It is?”
She flings up her hands, her eyes shining with tears. “Obviously it’s distracting. I didn’t get the job, and that means I’m not focusing on work enough. All I think about is you. Seeing you and being with you and kissing you and talking to you.” She snaps her gaze away, covering her face with her hands. “And it’s stupid. It’s so stupid because we made a deal.”
Carefully, I step forward, peeling her fingers from her face. “You think you lost your focus?”
She swallows roughly, nodding. “I’ve been laser-focused on this forever, but then you showed up and look what happened. I missed the biggest chance of my career.”
I hardly know what to say.
I barely know what she needs.
I don’t know how to make this right.
But if she were an emergency call, I’d have to figure it out.
Once I apply my work problem-solving skills, the answer flashes before me.
Brilliantly and awfully.
She needs an out. She needs an end.
I have to give it to her, as much as it hurts.
I’m not simply ripping off the Band-Aid. I’m tearing away a piece of my heart that she inextricably owns.
But that’s the only way to fix her emergency. I look her in the eyes, staying strong, treating her like a patient who needs help, who needs a calm and competent guiding hand. “Maybe we should cool things off. What if we go back to being housemates? Like we agreed. Does that sound good to you?”
She closes her eyes like everything hurts.
And everything does hurt.
Every damn piece of my heart and soul screams at me. But I have to give her—and us—the treatment we need. “We can also call off the contest if you think that’s best.”
Her eyes snap open, and I expect a fiery answer. Something like No way, we’re going to nail it, and then we’ll go back to being roomies. Instead, she shrugs. “I don’t know anything anymore.”
My fingers itch to soothe her, my arms to wrap around and comfort her. But I remain unyielding as a statue. “Sleep on it, Perri.”
She seems to flinch when I say her name. Maybe because she’s used to being kitten. Maybe because I can’t call her that anymore.
“I’ll sleep on it. But you’re right about everything else. Housemates—that’s all we can be.”
The pain radiates through me, but I know she’s hurting too. I add, just to be sure, just so I give the patient exactly what she needs, “We’ll go back to how it was.”
“Yes. There’s no other choice.”
I want to tell her there are a million other choices. There is being together, there is falling in love, there is taking care of each other.
But she’s not in this the way I am.
And I’m not in it now either.
She leaves for her room, and I finish cooking, but when I take a bite, the food tastes like dust. I clean the dishes, grab Devon’s present, and carry the hat for my niece upstairs, wishing it didn’t feel like a parting gift.
32
Perri
I punish myself with Pilates on Saturday morning. It’s fitting, since I have to twist myself into a pretzel and abuse my core to no end.
But it’s worth it. Need to stay in tip-top shape for my job.
Wait.
I should revise that philosophy. I need to get in better shape for the job. Physically, mentally, emotionally. I’m too soft. That’s the problem. I have to erase all my emotions. I’ll dive deeper into work, spend more time on cases, take some classes. I’ll work endlessly on improving all my skills. I need to be the best, and then, since I work in a male-dominated area, I simply must be better than the best.
That’s the only way for a woman to succeed in a balls-deep field—by going above and beyond, and then beyond even that.
I crunch, bend, and contort myself through the rest of the class. The workout ends, and still breathless, I turn to Vanessa and Arden. “I think I’ll stay for a second class.”
Arden’s eyes widen in confusion, then shock, then misery. “Seriously?”
I pat her shoulder. “You don’t have to hang around.”
Arden flicks her gaze to Vanessa, and they exchange a knowing glance and a couple of nods.
Arden stretches her neck. “Oh, I do have to stay, and I hate morning exercise.”
“I’m fine,” I say. “I can totally handle a second class solo. I know you’re a grumbly Garfield in the morning.”
“I’ll stay too,” Vanessa offers like she’s volunteered to be a tribute in the Hunger Games.
“I’m fine, I swear. You don’t have to stay.” I stand to grab my water bottle and down a thirsty sip.
“But we do,” Vanessa chimes in, adjusting her ponytail. “Because if you’re staying, it means you’re mad at yourself.”
I scoff as we shuffle toward the studio door. “Please. That’s not the case.”
Vanessa grabs my arm. “It is precisely the case. This is what you did in eleventh grade when you didn’t get into AP History. You decided you weren’t tough enough, so you started practicing more for soccer. It didn’t even make sense.”
“I thought if I was in better physical shape, I’d be in better mental shape. It made perfect sense,” I say, defending my sixteen-year-old logic.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Vanessa says firmly, “and you know it.”
Arden nods vigorously. “It’s your weird, twisted punishment brain at work.”
“I don’t have a punishment brain,” I whisper furtively as I close the top to my water bottle and step into the hallway as the class files out.
“You do,” Vanessa says. “When something doesn’t go your way, you whip yourself to go faster or work longer.”
Arden squeezes my arm. “You did something similar a few months later when you were convinced your SAT scores sucked. You buried yourself in SAT-test prep books for days on end.”
I squint, cycling back more than a decade. If memory serves, my strategy failed. I didn’t raise my score at all on the second sitting of the test.
“But that’s not what I’m doing now,” I protest. “I’m simply trying to . . .”
I don’t finish the thought because a messy stew of emotion wells up in my chest. Regret tinged with disappointment, mixed with a deep longing for that man—feelings that brew and simmer and threaten to boil over.
I can’t contain them much longer. I point to the studio, like I’m going to head back in. “I’m just going to . . .”
But the words come out choked, as if the
re are pebbles in my mouth.
“Perri,” Arden says softly, grabbing my wrist. “Are we really doing this? I hate morning exercise, but I love you more. I will stay if that’s what you want. But we can also go somewhere and talk. You know, talk.” Her eyes hook with mine, and hers are soft, full of compassion. “Talk is that thing you do with your best friends.”
She looks at me with such love, such unconditional loyalty, that I can’t keep it together anymore. I burst into tears in the studio.
All I want is to talk to them.
All I want is to share my feelings.
And because they’re the best friends I’ve ever known—the best friends anyone has had in the entire history of the world—they usher me out of there before I make a complete fool of myself in front of the ladies in the class.
33
Derek
It just motherfucking figures that after the last twenty-four hours I’d draw another shitty hand for the overnight shift
First, we’re dispatched shortly after midnight to a rural area after a house fire. The fire department is already on scene.
We arrive too late, and I feel so goddamn helpless. A candle left burning caused the fire, and the man is dead. Next, a motor vehicle collision twenty miles away steals our attention. Hunter and I turn on the sirens, and when we arrive, the cars are tangled together in a metal mess. We hightail it to the hospital and arrive in the nick of time, rushing the most critical patient into the ER.
Please let us help this one.
“I hope we got him there fast enough,” I mutter as we head to the van after handing off to the docs and nurses. “I’d like to do some good rather than keep coming up short.”
“I hear you, bro. I couldn’t drive much faster. I’ll say a prayer that it was fast enough.”
But will it be?
That’s the question that hangs over me today. Is anything enough? Is there anything I could have done differently with Perri? Anything I could have said the other night to change the course of that wretched conversation? Our talk was like a plane running out of fuel, sputtering from the sky and crash-landing in a charred heap.
I’ve no clue if there was a different button I could have pressed, a different route I could have taken.
As we continue through the night, I hit replay for the fiftieth time on our talk. But still I have no answer.
With darkness still blanketing the sky, we respond to a call from a well-to-do home. A woman’s boyfriend rings 911, saying he fears she’s having a heart attack. She’s young and healthy. Thirty-six. Jodie’s age. “Most likely a panic attack,” I say as we drive, hoping desperately that’s all it is.
“Definitely. That’s what it usually is,” Hunter says, staying chipper. God knows I need it.
We arrive with the fire department not far behind.
But we don’t stay long.
Because she’s not suffering from anxiety. This is the real deal.
We rush her to the ER, and I hope and I pray and I plead for someone, anyone to look out for this woman who could be my sister.
She’s too young to go. Too healthy—on the surface—to be heading to meet her maker.
Anxiety claws at me for the next few hours, and I do my best to keep it at bay as we tend to other calls. I need blinders something fierce today.
“You okay?” Hunter asks at one point.
“Just thinking about my sister. She’s the same age.”
He sighs sympathetically then claps my shoulder. “She’s in the best hands possible, that woman.”
I nod, trying to believe she’ll come through. “She is.”
“Let’s just keep doing what we can, okay?”
“Definitely.”
But an hour later, when we’re back at the hospital, dropping off a skinny dude who had a bad fall at work, one of the nurses tells me the thirty-six-year-old didn’t make it.
My throat squeezes. “For real?”
“Yes.”
I wince, wishing fervently she was delivering some other sentence. This cruel news winds its way through me, tightening every muscle, squeezing every organ.
I tell myself she’s just a patient, just a call, just another day.
But this one hits closer to home. Maybe I’m raw already from last night with Perri. Or maybe it’s the pile-on. Whatever it is, my heart is leaden. My feet are heavy, and all I have left to hope for is that the car accident patients from earlier are okay.
The nurse says they’re stable, and that gives me some glimmer that I’m not a grim reaper, spending a day collecting souls.
When I find Hunter at the ambulance, his face is tense. “What’s the 411?”
“She’s gone,” I say, gritting my teeth.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Me too.”
Even though she has nothing to do with me. I don’t know her from Eve. But this loss is shoving its way under my ribs and setting up camp in my chest.
Battered and bruised when I leave at the end of the shift, I mutter a toneless good night to Hunter before I hop on my bike and head home as the sun rises.
Only, I don’t want to go home. It doesn’t feel like home anymore.
All I want is to see Perri, talk to her, tell her about my day, and then get lost in each other and forget what went down for me and what went down for her. Just be there for each other through the shitty times.
Curl up with my woman, get close to her, and reconnect to the living, to everything that makes us keep going in these jobs that can drain us dry.
I want to smell her hair, kiss her skin, and feel like she’s my reason.
But there’s a big fat problem. She’s not my woman. She doesn’t want me to be her man.
I drive past her house. It’s hers, not mine. I head to see Jodie.
34
Perri
“You’re going to get another shot at another promotion,” Arden says, encouraging me in the way only she and Vanessa can. “I know it.”
We’re sequestered in the back booth of Helen’s Diner, away from the handful of others here at this early hour. “You’re right,” I admit, wiping away the last tear I’m going to let fall.
“It sucks that this one didn’t happen. But there might be politics or who knows what involved,” Vanessa adds. “Look, I run my own business. So does Arden. The reality is there are a million things that go into these decisions, and sometimes we make the right ones as bosses and sometimes we make the wrong ones. And sometimes things just happen in their own time.”
I nod, my heart rate settling, my self-loathing dissipating. Vanessa makes a good point. The reality is, I’m good at my job. I simply didn’t get this promotion because—I didn’t get it. Not because of Derek, and not because I was distracted. I wasn’t distracted at work. Someone else earned the job. I take a deep breath. “It’s silly to get so worked up. I should be happy for Elias.”
Arden tucks a strand of blonde hair over her ear. “You can be happy for him and be disappointed for yourself. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”
“Exactly. You’re not required to operate your emotions like you administer the law. Emotions aren’t black or white, right or wrong. Sometimes we feel twenty-one emotions all at once,” Vanessa says, laughing as she spreads her napkin on her lap.
I manage a small laugh too. “I think I’m feeling twenty-five emotions.”
“Sounds about right,” Arden says as the server swings by, bringing us our breakfast.
We thank her, and as I dive into my eggs, Arden clears her throat. “But I don’t think it’s the disappointment over the job that’s the main reason you’re upset.”
I meet her gaze head-on. “It’s not?”
When we arrived at the diner, I told them everything that went down last night—the promotion, how I felt awful for not being happy for Elias, how my missing out on the advancement was clearly related to Derek, and how Derek and I decided it was time to end our silly little roomies-with-benefits deal. A deal that always had an
expiration date.
Vanessa shakes her head, drinking her coffee. “Maybe the reason for one of those twenty-five emotions—sadness—is that you don’t merely like Derek.” She takes a beat. “You love him.”
I wince and struggle once more with the astonishing sharpness of that truth. How do people live with these pesky feelings wreaking havoc with plans all the damn time? “I did fall in love with him, but it’s not going to work out. I’ll be fine. I’m always fine.”
Vanessa presses. “But why do you have to be fine?”
“Because nothing is going to happen with him.” The words taste like gravel, and it hurts to say them. I don’t know how much longer I can keep up the everything is all good here routine.
“How do you know for sure?” Arden asks.
“He doesn’t want anything,” I say tightly, keeping my tone as neutral as I can, as if this fact doesn’t rip apart my heart.
Vanessa taps her finger on the table. “Who cares about him? What do you want?”
I heave a sigh and scoop up another forkful of eggs. “Right now, I want to stop feeling sorry for myself.”
My brunette friend stares sharply at me. “You’re a strong, independent woman, but you don’t have to be so independent all the time.”
“Lean on us,” Arden adds.
“Let us be here for you,” Vanessa seconds.
Just like that, awareness clobbers me.
Sometimes it takes your girlfriends—no, your best friends—to help you see what’s surrounding you. Supporting you.
They are.
They’re my people.
They’re my family, my sisters. Whether I have Derek in my life or not, these women will always be here.
And lately, I haven’t let them completely be who they want to be—my best friends. It’s time I let them be my best friends in word and deed. I’m going to lean on them like they want, and like I want.
I crack open my chest and let out the truth. “I do love him. I did fall in love with him. And you two were right all along, warning me, looking out for me, and being here for me, even when I wasn’t leaning on you.”
The Lucky in Love Collection Page 36