“That’s kind of my point. I should be in their lives. I want it.” He waved a hand at the stands. “They want it. I hoped if you saw how much, then you’d want it, too.”
He reached toward her, but she backed away, putting as much distance as she could without having to raise her voice and draw more attention to them. “No. You shouldn’t be in their lives, because of the simple fact that I said no and you agreed. You hid this from me, Marshall. You lied to me. How can I trust you after that?”
“I never lied. I was keeping my friendship with Brendan separate from us because that’s what you said you wanted. I was trying to respect your boundaries without abandoning a kid who came to me. How the hell does that make me the bad guy here?”
In another life, maybe it wouldn’t. But this was everything she’d feared when she got involved with him. He was young, impulsive. He’d teach that to the boys and ruin everything she was instilling in them. She wanted Marshall, but not as much as she wanted to avoid that. “It doesn’t make you a bad person. But it does make you the wrong person for me.”
“Bullshit. You enjoyed every damn moment we were together.”
“Yes, I did. But I should have stopped. I should have known better. And you know me well enough to realize we could never work. Besides, you want kids of your own—you said so—and that ship has sailed with me. I can’t be what you want, and you aren’t what I need.” Saying the words hurt more than she could have imagined, but it was an awful necessity. Now they could both move on. “I’m sure Brendan saw you, but just in case I’m wrong, I’ll let him know you were here. It’s for the best if we don’t see each other anymore.”
She’d only made it a few yards away when he called after her, “So that’s it then? My twenty minutes are up?”
His words pulled her up short. Twenty minutes. Let him stay for just twenty minutes…for Brendan. But she couldn’t back down. If she did, she’d never get on track again. “I’m pretty sure it should have been up a long time ago.”
Chapter Seventeen
In less than forty-eight hours, Marshall managed to hire a barista to work afternoons. Not ideal, but it had to be done or the rush on Monday would have been a disaster.
As it was, things were still a colossal mess. He and the new girl kept running into each other as she tried to take on the role Alexa had filled just a few days before. To make matters worse, Marshall called her the wrong name more than once, and every time, it was like a knife in his gut.
By the time he made it to his office at four thirty, his head was pounding and his heart felt like it had stopped. Alexa was gone. Well and truly gone. He’d held out some vain hope that she’d show up to get coffee if nothing else, but Claudette confirmed that she hadn’t come in all morning.
The woman always had a plan, and now her plan involved avoiding him completely. He didn’t know what the hell to do with himself. In only a couple short months, she’d become a fixture in his life—the thing he most looked forward to every day. Even on the weekends, she texted or called when she had a moment.
But he’d wanted more. He could admit that to himself now. He didn’t want her and her damn twenty-minute intervals—he wanted her full time. He wanted her and all the stuff that came with loving a single mom. He wanted quiet nights at home and being dragged to stuffy dinner parties. He wanted to wake up to her in the morning and fall asleep next to her at night.
Was that so fucking wrong? To want a real relationship?
He’d spent so long living life as it came that it was only now he recognized that he’d been thinking about a future with her and her boys. He’d been planning for one. The next Marvel movie. The Star Wars exhibit coming to the museum. A ball game the next time the Rockies came to town. And her, always her. Maybe it hadn’t been a great plan. Barely a concept as his favorite anthropomorphic raccoon would say. But it had been something, and he’d finally seen the value in her way of thinking.
Now, that plan was shattered, and he was adrift. Sure, he had the Bean Counter, but a life of nothing but work? That wasn’t enough. And after having a taste of something longer-term with her, flings weren’t going to cut it. They’d be like putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound. He’d slowly bleed to death.
A knock came at the office door. “Come in.”
Claudette poked her head inside. “Sorry to bug you, but there’s a woman here asking for you.” He sat up straighter, and she shook her head. “It’s not Alexa. Blonde, legs that go on forever. She’s in here a lot.”
Chastity. He sat for a moment, curious how his libido would respond. Maybe he’d been overreacting. After all, Chastity was the kind of conventionally hot woman most men would trip over themselves to get close to.
But there was nothing. In fact, the idea of being with her after Alexa made him feel dirty. “Tell her I’m unavailable. I don’t care what excuse you have to give. If she pushes, come back and get me, but I really don’t want to deal with her today.”
“You got it, boss.” She paused before closing the door and poked her head back in. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I thought you guys were the real deal. I was waiting to do some sort of congratulatory latte for you.”
Marshall snorted a laugh. “Thanks, Claudette. I thought we were, too, but I guess I was wrong.”
When the door clicked shut, he leaned back in his chair. This whole thing sucked dirty, hairy monkey balls. She didn’t want him, and he didn’t want anyone but her. How the hell did someone plan for that?
Because if this was the kind of crap life was going to throw at him, he wasn’t sure he wanted to go back to just winging everything.
…
The first couple of days after the game, Alexa’d been too angry to even leave the house for coffee. She’d been so certain they could figure things out, figure a way to work their relationship around her life. But she’d been wrong. He’d barged in and tried to prove his way was the right way. Prove she was wrong about everything, rather than maybe just being wrong about him.
On Wednesday, Peyton showed up at the door. “Shower. Now.”
“I don’t want a shower.”
“And we don’t care what you want.” She grabbed Alexa by the arm and dragged her upstairs to the master bathroom. “You have choices in life, Alex, but wallowing in your own filth isn’t one of them.”
Alexa barely did more than stand there as her best friend started stripping her out of the clothes she’d slept in. “Who cares? I don’t have any meetings to attend.”
“I care. Your children care.” Peyton threw the pajamas out the door. “Brendan stopped over this morning to make sure I knew you hadn’t left the house since Saturday afternoon, and Beau was kind enough to inform me that you also smell bad. He wasn’t wrong.”
The kids. In all this, she’d been so busy moping she’d forgotten about them. She needed to get her shit together. This wasn’t only about her. “Fine. I’ll take a shower.”
“And then we’re going out.” Alexa opened her mouth to protest, and Peyton slapped a hand over it. “Nothing major, but you need to get out of the house. Though I do stand corrected, you will brush your teeth before we leave, too.”
Once she was cleaned up, Peyton led the way to Alexa’s car.
“I don’t want to drive.”
The exasperated sigh belied her patient words. “You need to get back to living your life. You have three kids. You have to be able to drive.”
Begrudgingly, Alexa climbed behind the wheel, started the engine, and pulled out of her garage. She froze at the end of the drive, unsure where to go.
Peyton pointed to the right. “Out of the neighborhood is a good first step. We can go get lunch or something.”
Yes. Lunch. She could manage lunch, even if food didn’t sound appetizing at all.
She drove while Peyton talked. It was small talk, just enough to fill the air, to keep her mind occupied. In the midst of hearing a story about Peyton’s eldest, Layla, learning all the lyrics to Kesha’s “Woman,” Alex
a threw the car into park.
Then she looked through the windshield and her breath caught.
She’d driven on autopilot, going through the motions of a life she didn’t have anymore, and she’d taken them straight to the parking lot of the Bean Counter.
Her hands started to shake, and tears welled in her eyes. “Peyton…”
“Shit.”
Then she made the mistake of looking at her friend and out the passenger side window. She’d parked right next to Marshall’s Bel Air.
She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Tears fell, but she didn’t move to wipe them away.
When faced with all the choices in the world, she’d come here.
How was she supposed to move on when all her subconscious wanted to do was move backward?
Peyton held her and let her cry for the longest time, but she barely felt her friend’s arms around her. All she felt was the phantom pain of what she was missing, the part of her she could never get back.
Eventually, the driver’s door popped open. “Scoot over. I’ll take you home.”
She hadn’t even realized that Peyton had let her go, much less gotten out of the car.
…
Friday night, after a week of pulling double shifts, Marshall was ready to drop. But he knew the moment he closed his eyes, all he would see was Alexa. It had happened every night so far. He’d replay everything from their time together, focusing on the most perfect details of her. The way she looked in the black gown at dinner. The depth in her eyes when she clung to him that first night at Deckard’s. The brilliance of her true smile when he made her laugh. The bliss on her face when they made love.
She was everywhere and nowhere.
Before heading to his apartment, he drove toward her house. He’d done the same thing every night. It wasn’t on the way home, but he did it anyway.
He sat at the light, waiting to turn into her subdivision.
This is stalking, dumbass. It goes against that whole separation thing. Do you really want to piss her off more?
No. He just wanted to see her, talk to her. Anything.
But that wasn’t what she wanted. Like it or not, there was nothing he could do to change her mind. She’d made her decision about not having him as a real part of her life crystal clear, which meant her home was off-limits.
She had his number, knew where he worked, knew where he lived. If she still wanted him, she would find him.
But she hadn’t all week.
Hell, she never really had.
She’d told him from the beginning they’d never work. He’d just been too stubborn, too sure, to believe her. So he’d refused to give up. Then he’d pushed for more.
And look where all that had gotten him.
She wasn’t coming back. Ever.
If she hadn’t come in or even sent Peyton for her coffee fix, she had 5000 percent moved on. The sooner he got that through his thick head, the better.
The light changed, and for the first time all week, he didn’t pull into her neighborhood. Instead, he took the first opportunity to turn around and go home. Being in his apartment wouldn’t make anything better, but at least he wouldn’t be making things worse.
The minute the door shut behind him, though, he regretted the decision. He should have gone out. Done anything other than sit home alone.
But he didn’t have to be alone, did he?
After grabbing a beer from the fridge, he stalked to his bedroom and grabbed the stack of phone numbers he’d accumulated over the week.
Not Chastity.
No, not Julia, either.
No.
No.
No.
He went through every name, each one garnering a rejection because none of them made him feel anything. If he called someone, she would just end up being a body, a thing. The thought made him sick.
He’d been so close to something real with Alexa. Even now, he believed it. But he couldn’t see a path to getting it back. Not without breaking her rules again. And that was how he’d fucked up in the first place.
The only thing he knew for sure is that she’d be proud of him. After realizing he was going to be in his apartment, alone, once again, Marshall made the perfect plan to get through the night. The beer in his hand was only the first of the twelve that were in the fridge. He might not know the exact odds, but there was a pretty solid chance he’d pass out with the last one in his hand tonight.
Maybe that would be enough to forget.
Maybe then he wouldn’t wake up and have his first thought be of her.
He’d welcome the hangover from hell just to not have to fight back that agony for a day.
…
It had been over three weeks since their fight—breakup?—and Alexa still had to remind herself to turn toward Starbucks when she wanted a coffee. The Bean Counter had become such an integral part of her life that not going there—not seeing him—was like losing a part of herself.
After the initial devolution into social isolation and filth, she’d allowed herself a few days to mourn what she’d lost and spent the majority of that time trying to convince herself that it was just sex. But then Peyton had visited and reminded her more than once, “Dick is everywhere. If that’s all you want, go get some.”
Which was Peyton’s way of saying “prove it,” because her friend knew better than she did that what she had with Marshall went beyond the sex. The way he held her when she was tired, the way he treated her during sex—at least when she’d allowed him the time… The man acted as if she were someone to be treasured, cherished.
And he valued her. Even though he owned the business, intellectually, he’d treated her as a partner. He’d made her feel more important in that little coffee shop than a dozen multi-million dollar companies. She saved them money in uncountable buckets’ full. She saved Marshall enough to hire a couple of people and buy doilies.
More than that, though, he treated her volunteering during rush hour as something important, too.
Everything mattered to him.
Now? Outside her life with the boys, nothing mattered. If she disappeared, stopped going to meetings, the big companies would just find another actuarial consultant. No one would bother checking up on her, much less caring. She was a cog in a wheel. Nothing more.
Not to mention that she’d never again find someone who held her the way he had. Or looked at her the way he had, as if she truly were the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
And no plan in the world was going to change that.
But by damn, she tried to come up with one to fix at least part of it.
Unfortunately, all roads led back to the Bean Counter. To a life without the high-walled paths she’d built. To Marshall. And she couldn’t have that, couldn’t have him. Even if she thought it was the best decision, she’d burned that bridge and then set a fire around it, just in case.
So she would do what she’d done since the divorce. She’d power through. A crappy plan was better than no plan at all. Too bad the entirety of her plan so far was to keep her job and find something new that made her happy.
She stared at the napkin she’d written those two things on. The freaking Starbucks mermaid-thing grinned back at her, mocking her. Definitely crappy. Definitely depressing.
And 5000 percent missing Marshall. He’d have a wisecrack about mermaids at the ready that would somehow also be advice in disguise. She could almost hear him now…
“Ariel would tell you to be where your people are.”
“Don’t you mean where the people are?”
“No, because not all people are going to feed your soul. Only your people can do that.”
“Earth to Mom, you alive in there?”
Alexa blinked and shook herself free of the cobwebs in her brain. “Sorry, Bren, what did you say?”
“Play practice starts tomorrow.” He’d gotten a role—a decent-sized one, too, but for the life of her right now, she couldn’t remember what it was. “Are you okay?”<
br />
She tried to force a smile. He didn’t need to deal with her mess or even know there was a mess. If she’d managed to hold it together after the divorce, she could sure as hell hold it together now. “Yeah. Just distracted.”
“By keeping your job or finding something that makes you happy?” He pointed at the napkin.
The urge to stuff it in a pocket was almost impossible to resist, but that would make it seem even more important. “Both?”
He slid onto the barstool next to her and gave her a deep frown—one far too old for a teenager’s face. “You hate your job.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. You like the research, but you hate the people you work with.” It was like hearing the ghost of Marshall, only without the movie references.
She choked down the pain that immediately built a lump in her throat. “But those people pay me a lot of money. I need my job.”
The shrug sent him back to being a teenager, as did the naïveté of his next words. “You make a lot of money, Mom, which is awesome, but not if it makes you miserable. Why not pick the least awful of the big companies and then work at some smaller places? You seemed a lot happier when you were working at the coffee shop more and that big company less.”
And there it was, slammed down on the bar right in front of her. Marshall had made her happy. Working with him. Being with him. “I wish it were that simple.”
“It could be. You just have to stop complicating it.”
Definitely sounding like Marshall. “Where did all this come from?”
Another shrug, and this time he looked away from her as he spoke. “A while back I was having some trouble figuring out how to make my life work the way I wanted. So I asked a really smart guy for advice. The things he told me made me start looking at things differently, and not just for me.”
Marshall. He’s talking about the emails with Marshall that I threw such a fit about.
That finally broke her, and she let herself sob against the narrow shoulders of her teenage son. He wrapped his arms around her and just let her cry. The last thing she’d ever wanted was to put more responsibility on him. He shouldn’t have to be anyone’s rock.
Adventures in Online Dating Page 15