A beat passed, and neither of us moved. Then she let her head drop down, her hair trailing against the pavement. The moment broken. My chance gone.
I lifted her back to her feet and released her. Her smile was only slightly reduced.
“Thanks,” she muttered, brushing back her red hair. “I needed that after the fucking day I’ve had.”
“No problem. It was fun.”
“It was, wasn’t it?”
“Well, you probably have to get back to your party.”
Annie sighed heavily and leaned her body back against her car. She tilted her head up to the sky, lifting her arms, as if she could reach out and touch it. Head off into the heavens and find real adventure.
“I never really wanted to go to the party.”
“Then don’t go,” I said with a shrug.
She snorted. “It’s not that easy. The professor who is retiring is a big deal. All the other professors will be there. It’s my last semester, and those relationships mean something.”
“It’s one party. It can’t mean the end of your career as a doctor.”
“No. Just whether or not this semester is abysmal.”
“One party shouldn’t decide that.”
Her eyes finally found mine again. “No, it shouldn’t, but that doesn’t mean anything is as fair as it should be.”
The words hung between us. She wasn’t talking entirely about medical school or even business. She was talking about us. Nothing had ever been fair when it came to Annie. Not when she’d captured me wholly that one night or the three years of fuckery afterward.
“No, I suppose it isn’t.”
“Cézanne is probably waiting for me.”
“Yeah,” I said, barely holding back my sigh.
She pushed off from the car and went to turn it off. I removed the cables and passed them to her. She tucked them into her trunk, slamming it shut behind her with such force that I knew she was irritated again.
“Well…thanks,” she said.
And she actually stuck her hand out in front of her as if I were some stranger who would shake hands with her.
“Anytime,” I told her, taking her hand anyway. Because maybe I wasn’t a stranger, but we were strained enough for it not to matter.
Her fingers were freezing as we shook, and she barely met my gaze.
I should let her go. Watch her drive off into the night and never look back. But I didn’t let her go, and I didn’t release her hand.
“I guess I owe you.” She didn’t pull back either.
“Nah, didn’t you hear Cézanne? I might never be out of your debt.”
She grinned, a flush coming to her cheeks. “You don’t have to listen to her. She’s ridiculous.”
“But right.”
Annie finally must have seen sense because she withdrew her hand and rubbed it down her jacket. Then crossed her arms. I didn’t know what she was thinking. How could I? If I had a way to tap into that beautiful brain, maybe I wouldn’t have wrecked us already. But I did know that she was shutting herself off from me because I was getting too close. Maybe that should have made me want to walk away, to give her all the space she wanted. I just didn’t want that. I didn’t want space. Not when this was as close as we’d been in years.
“What if I have a better offer?” I blurted out.
She arched an eyebrow. “A better offer than what?”
“Than the party.”
She shot me a skeptical look. “What’s the offer?”
I tipped my head toward my truck and pulled down the tailgate.
She peered inside and then immediately started laughing. “Did you steal a case of wine?”
“Steal? No, of course not,” I said, affronted. “Sophia gave it to me when I was loading them up. She told me to try a few bottles before our next meeting.”
“Ah,” she said, her voice frosting over.
“So, do you want to?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Do I want to…what?”
“Try out a few bottles?”
“What?”
“Forget the party, Annie. Forget your obligations for one night. You’ve had a shitty day. You don’t need to spend another night schmoozing at a medical school party when everything else has gone wrong. Do you really think any good is going to come from you going there? After the day you’ve had?”
She bit her lip. “No. Not really. Bad luck is kind of clinging to me. I’ll probably trip and take the whole tent down. Or hit an outdoor heater and catch the woods on fire.”
I snorted. “Trip on the way to the drinks and crash down all of the wine we carted over there.”
She covered her face. “Oh God! Pour wine down a professor’s white dress.”
“Pour wine down your dress,” I added.
She broke into a fit of giggles at our worst-case scenario-ing. “I could see it all happening. Today has been a real shitshow.”
“So, any interest in popping open a lot of expensive wine I got for free and taste-testing the bottles?”
“I don’t know.”