Inconsolable (Love Triumphs 2)

Her fingers traced behind his ear. “Tell me something else about you.”

He sat upright, then stood. If he told her his sins he’d never see her again and he wasn’t ready to face that. “I’m going to make you a hot drink.”

“You’re going to make me something.” She stood too, so close she was an explosion of rich possibilities. “You frustrating man.” She slapped her hands at her sides, but she was smiling. “Why do I bother with you?”

Her smile was misplaced, he turned away, but her hand stole up his back to his shoulder. “What is this thing between us? You don’t want me to know you, but you’ve stopped pushing me away. I should know better than to put myself in a situation with a complex man like you, but I do it over and over again.”

It was a cloudless night and the stars were backlit pinpricks of brilliance. “We’re just friends.” Her way of styling them. “Two stars amongst billions, trillions. Insignificant.” He would remember that when the time came.

“Look.” She stepped around him, pointing. He followed her arm. The hot white streak of a meteor. “A shooting star.”

“It’s space dust. It’ll burn up to nothing.” Like them, no matter how easy, how miraculous they seemed, this would end, the joy incinerate, and with it a part of him he’d forgotten existed—his humanity.

19: Edge

Nat tossed a salad: tomatoes, mushrooms, lettuce, chickpeas, half an avocado. She’d dumped dried cranberries in there too. “You’re seeing someone.”

Foley picked up a renegade cranberry that’d missed the bowl and ate it. “Nope.”

“So you’re staying home tonight?”

She picked a cranberry from the top of a lettuce leaf and earned a slap on the hand from Nat. “Nope.”

“You’re definitely seeing someone. And since you won’t tell me I can only deduce he’s in your usual mode, wildly inappropriate.” Nat pulled the grill shelf out and used tongs to plate two small pieces of steak. “Married or in jail.”

Foley picked up both the plates. “Yeah, I’m dating a married jailbird.” She put them on the table where she’d poured two classes of wine. “Geez, Nat.”

They sat and Foley dished salad on both their plates. Of course Drum could’ve been married. He could’ve been anything. She’d asked. He’d answered without hesitation. No, not married. He’d preferred being a man-whore, according to what he said. Of course he’d been a player; even in his charity bin clothes and badly in need of a haircut and shave, look at him. But not married. He had no reason to lie to her about that and she already knew he had no obvious police record.

Nat put her knife and folk down. “Please tell me you’re not doing Hugh again.”

Foley’s, “Shit no,” came with a spray of food particles. She used a napkin to wipe them up. “Sorry, but what would make you say t

hat?”

Nat shrugged. “You’re happy.”

“And you’ve been wearing one earring for weeks. Don’t you ever look at yourself in the mirror?” Nat grinned. She knew? “Why would you only wear one earring?”

Nat cut her steak. “Pirates do. Punk rockers. Men.”

“It’s not a fashion statement, or a historical,” Foley rapped the table with her knife end, “geopolitical or gender one, anymore than you being constantly untucked.”

“We’re talking about you being happy, not me wearing one earring.”

Foley pointed her fork. “No, we’re not. This one earring thing has been driving me insane.”

“So why didn’t you say anything?”

“I figured you’d work it out. And now I know you knew the whole time and did it deliberately. Who’d do that?” She twirled her fork. “What is that all about?”

Nat chewed, took her time about it. “I’m having a fling.”

A piece of avocado clogged momentarily in Foley’s throat and when she’d swallowed it, the slimy feeling remained. No way. “When, who?”

“You forgot how, why and what. I’ll make a copygirl of you yet.”

“You forgot to mention this magical event.”