Madly (New York 2)

“He was really hurt, at first, just, like, shocked there was any problem at all. And then super defensive and angry, especially when I told him I want the dogs back. Even though he would keep circling around to how much trouble they are, and how much downtime he loses walking them, and stuff.” She dropped her hand and laid her head on the pillow. “I kind of feel like shit now.”

“You were very brave.”

“Thanks. We’ll see if it changes anything.”

“What else did he say about your dogs? Will you for certain be able to get them back?”

“Yes. I mean, he said yes, but the gist of it was more like, you know, ‘Fine, if you’re going to be like that,’ so it’s hard to feel like it was much of a victory.”

“It will feel like a victory when you’re home again with your dogs by your feet.”

He’d meant to paint her a pleasant picture, but the thought of her home gave him a pang of…something. Regret.

He wouldn’t be there when that moment came, to see Allie reunited with her dogs, and he found that he wanted to be. If someone were to be driving the car while she sat in the back, her dogs in her lap, he wanted that person to be him.

He wanted to bring her a drink on her sofa, settle in to watch a film with her, scratching behind the ears of Donnie the Dachshund.

He’d had a dachshund as a boy. He liked them and their ridiculous puffed-out chests. He liked Allie.

Allie let out a long sigh. “Tomorrow, I’m going to have to call

my property manager and my tenant to make sure they aren’t upset and they know I didn’t authorize him to speak for me, and send an email to Elvira to thank her for the heads-up. Plus, I need to check the guest list for the party and decide whether to postpone or if it can wait a little longer, and I have to talk to the party planning place, Scheels, so they’re on standby for the possibility I’ll need to change the date.” Her forehead furrowed. “Oh, and also I got a text from Ben. He wants to talk to me. So I wrote back and said fine, and now that’s kind of looming and scary.”

“He wants to talk to you because of what happened with your sister?”

“Yeah, I think so. It was kind of epic, Win.”

Win. He hadn’t ever had a nickname. He felt his chest puff out, dachshundlike. “Tell me.”

She propped herself up against the headboard, sitting cross-legged, and told him as he lay beside her, stroking her knee, watching her face.

He’d only known this woman a short while, but already she’d told him many stories, and looked a lot of different ways. Tonight, her hands worried with the hem of her top, her wrists winding in the space between her thighs. In the light of the television, her skin looked fragile, bruised beneath her eyes. The bit of collarbone revealed by her top was so bare, it made him feel frustrated that she wasn’t larger, that she didn’t have more resources to deal with all of the things she was trying to manage.

Allie took care of so many people and worked so hard to make everything okay.

Tonight, she’d bravely made a phone call she didn’t want to have to make—a hard thing, and one that resulted in her having to cope with Matt’s overwhelming responses.

This morning she’d sat across the table from the sister she desperately loved and told her the truth at last, only to receive in return her sister’s pain and harsh words.

She seemed to him a person who tried very hard to be brave and do right. Even as she made mistakes, or followed impulses that turned out not to be helpful, she tried, and that was a rare and important quality.

But she didn’t see what was most admirable in herself.

“So, yeah,” she said. “Tomorrow I’m going to go back to Ben’s apartment and talk to him, and then we’ll see if he can broker some kind of peace talks or something.”

“Would you like me to come along?”

She wrinkled her nose. “No, that’s okay. Ben’s kind of…I don’t know. It’s better if it’s just me, I think, and anyway you have all your stuff to do, with your brother here. I’m sorry I ruined your thing tonight, by the way.”

“You didn’t ruin anything.”

She put her hand over his. “I did, though, kind of. Not on purpose, but I did. I’m sorry. I think it’s probably better, anyway, if I deal with my shit tomorrow and you deal with yours.”

That was the shape of it. Allie in New York for her own reasons, with her own life to live, and Winston in New York for his own, with his own. Within a few days she would be gone.

He moved to sit beside her, offering her his arm. She tucked in to his side, resting her head in the crook of his neck.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.