The Love Coupon (Stubborn Hearts 2)

“Flicker, are you there?”

“Do you know—” She coughed, cleared her throat, dug her fingers into her thigh. “I’m wearing my favorite skirt and I’m sitting in a gutter in some dirty alley I’ve walked past for years and barely noticed. My favorite skirt.”

“Ah, I’m sorry. I’ve been a coward about telling you. Part of me didn’t ever want to have this conversation, didn’t want you to know, to be sad.”

“You were never a coward.” He’d been a journalist when she met him. She’d interviewed him for the school paper. He lost his job over taking her in when his paper’s owner didn’t like the stink caused by Drew “shacking up” with a woman half his age. He’d been told to marry Flick or he’d be fired. Flick had bought a white dress at the Goodwill but Drew quit, went freelance. He was the first one to teach her the value of principles. To teach her she was worth something. “What happens now?”

“I go home, be with my family for as long as I can.”

“And us?”

“We say goodbye.”

A stomach full of ice and fear and sadness, and she was going to be sick. “When?”

“Now.”

“No, no, no. It’s too soon. I’m not ready. I can’t sit in a gutter in an alley in my favorite skirt and say goodbye to you.”

“Ah, Flicker, it’s just a word. It comes from God be with you. It’s not what defines us. I’ll always be with you.”

He was the part of her that believed she could do work that mattered because she mattered, but she was still a scrappy, sometimes angry, selfish person. “I called Elsie a mercenary bitch this morning.”

He laughed. “She hasn’t changed then.” He sounded like himself.

“I don’t want you to go.” She wanted to hear him laugh again, to live to do that for a long time.

“You don’t need me any longer, Flicker. You haven’t for years. It’s my turn to push you out now. Go on. No more tears. Stand up, straighten that skirt. Jeannie will call you.”

He didn’t say when he was dead, but that’s what he meant. All she could do was sob.

“Keep that up and you’re going to make me cry too.”

Flick knew of nothing more heartbreaking than two people who loved each other and needed to separate, unable to talk through their own tears. Drew recovered first. “Do you have someone you can go lean on?”

“Yes.” A lie, what Drew needed was a lie and that made it all right.

“I love you, Flicker. Then, now. Always. You go and be brilliant and a little piece of me will go with you. Promise me you’ll shine.”

Lips numb, body shaking, she couldn’t. Drew had built her new from promises. He’d used them like challenges. Promise me you’ll stop caring what people say about you. Promise me you’ll focus at school. Promise me you’ll make the most of college. Promise me you’ll choose friends who are true. She’d promised her way from defiant and rebellious, and scared, from bitter and lashing out and lacking choices to everything she was today. He’d taken her in believing she was a victim. He’d shown her she was the one in control.

“You make it happen. Promise me.”

The script on her ribs. The promise of her life. “I make it happen.”

She sat in the gutter in the alley for long enough after Drew hung up that a woman stopped to ask if she was okay.

“I just learned my best friend is dying.”

“Oh, that’s terrible. Can I get you anything?”

She was older, this woman, carrying shopping. She had someplace to be, people waiting on her.

Flick got to her knees, then her feet, a hand to the wall for support. “I’ll be fine, but thank you.”

She went home to Tom’s in a daze. Showered, put her PJs on and lay in bed. Tom came in earlier than he usually did. He called her name and she contemplated not answering. She got up, poked her head out the bedroom door. “I have a bad headache. I’m lying down.”

She d