Walk of Shame (Love Unexpectedly 4)

She held up a hand. “You know, all this time I thought our biggest obstacle was our difference in schedules, and if we could just figure out how to fit into each other’s life, we’d be okay. But it’s so much more hopeless than that, isn’t it? Because I’m always going to be the girl who wants the fairy-tale ending, and you’re never going to be the guy to give it to me. Are you?”

Andrew’s chest tightened in panic. He didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how to respond to someone who dealt in emotions, not facts. And the facts were that people rarely rode off into the sunset. The sooner she accepted that, the happier she’d be. They’d be.

“We have a good thing,” he said quietly. “Let’s just keep taking it one day at a time, see where things go.”

She was already shaking her head and moving toward the door. “Not good enough, Andrew.”

“Well, what would be good enough?” he said, voice rising again in frustration. “What the hell do you want from me? From us?”

She spun back around, tears gone, face angry. “I want a man who doesn’t have to ask that. I want a man who knows how to use this”—she pointed at his chest—“as well as that,” she said, pointing at his head. “And that’s not you. We both know it’s not.”

Andrew wanted to contradict her. He wanted to drag her back, beg her to give him a chance.

Instead, he let her go. He did nothing and let Georgiana Watkins walk away, because she was right.

He was not that guy.

Georgie

TUESDAY

EVENING

It takes me a couple of days before I’m ready to face the world, and when I’m finally ready, I start with baby steps.

I open my front door to Marley, who’s holding a box of pizza with two blocks of mozzarella on top.

“Um,” I say.

“Well,” she says, pushing into my apartment, “I ordered a pizza and asked for extra cheese. But then I was like, what if that’s not enough cheese, you know? So I stopped and got some extra, because…cheese.”

I nod approvingly. “This is why we’re best friends.”

She sets the box on the counter, drops her purse, and holds out her arms. “Come to Momma Marley. How are we?”

I gratefully accept the hug. “We’re a wreck.”

“About Mom and Dad, or the boy?”

“Both,” I admit. “Although with the divorce, I’ve more or less managed to pep-talk myself into handling it like an adult. It sucks, but I’ll handle it. Andrew, though…”

“He hurt you.”

I lift a shoulder. “Mostly I just feel like an idiot. That entire time I was falling so hard, practically planning our wedding, and he was busy helping other people figure out how to arrange their assets before they leave their spouse. It makes me a little queasy.”

“Sit,” Marley orders, opening my fridge and pulling out a bottle of wine, and then fetching two glasses. “Have you talked to him since the breakup?”

My stomach clenches at the word breakup, although I don’t know what else you could call it.

“No,” I mutter into the wineglass she sets in front of me.

“And it was a breakup, not just a fight?”

I look up miserably. “I don’t know. I think so. I just want more than he can give, I guess.”

Marley’s not listening to me. She moves toward my kitchen table, where there are three huge bouquets of flowers.

She glances at me, pointing from one arrangement to another as she sips her wine. “Explain.”