Lies are comforting. Soft blankets we wrap around our hearts. We roll around in them like fat, happy pigs. Gorging on their decadence. We prefer lies, though we claim otherwise. Trust me. If ignorance is bliss, believing lies is orgasmic.

I should know. I’d subsisted on a steady diet of lies and orgasms while Houston and I were together. And now that he was standing before me, five and a half years after the breakup, six-foot-four inches of solid muscle and caramel-brown hair, offering me my first dose of reality, part of me wondered whether my body would reject it.

Houston sighs as he looks me in the eye. “Rory, I came here because I told you I would tell you the truth and I intend to keep my word.”

“The truth about what?” I spit back, imbuing my words with caustic venom, hoping he’ll feel just a fraction of the agony he’s inflicted on me. “It’s over Houston. There is no truth that needs to be spoken anymore.”

He shakes his head, his blue eyes filled with regret. “I wish that were true.”

He reaches into his back pocket and my stomach drops out. My limbs become heavy as I watch him retrieve a white envelope. I think part of me knows what’s inside that envelope. Has always known. But lies are powerful. And it seems Houston’s lies had the power to make me stop looking for answers when they were right in front of me, tucked away in the warmth of his back pocket.

“She left a note.”

My eyes are locked on the envelope as memories swirl in my vision. The first night Houston and I slept together. The hours that came before. I begin ticking off the lies one by one, but when I move past our first night together, the lies mount up too quickly. A mountain of fiction too high for me to see over.

“Not Tessa. Hallie,” he says, mistaking my horror for confusion.

The anger sets my blood on fire. I land a hard shove in the center of his chest. “I hate you!”

“I didn’t want you to read it until you were strong enough.”

Skippy barks as I pound on Houston’s chest, half-expecting to hear a hollow thump where his heart should be. He drops the letter and grabs my wrists to stop the onslaught of violence.

“That’s not for you to decide!” I shout, my voice strangled by the force of this truth. “How could you keep that from me?”

“I was just trying to protect you.”

A primal roar issues from deep in my throat. “I wish you would stop protecting me! If it weren’t for your stupid protection, I wouldn’t be picking up the pieces of my life again.”

His jaw tenses at my accusation, the muscle twitching furiously. “I need you to read it while I’m here. I… I won’t leave until you’ve read the whole thing. Then you’ll understand why.”

Yanking my wrists out of his grasp, I shoo Skippy away so I can grab the letter off the floor. But he follows me as I sink down onto the sofa, hopping onto the cushion next to me, his sixty-pound black Labrador body pressed against my side. As if he can sense that I’m going to need him there.

Houston sits on the edge of the coffee table facing me, our knees inches apart, his gaze locked on the letter in my hands. I try to read his expression, try to see beyond the hardened grief and obvious regret for any indication as to what I’m about to read. What did Hallie confess in this letter that would make him think he had to lie to me for more than five years? But I see nothing.

He looks up from the envelope and our eyes meet. My heart thumps loudly, a riotous drum heightening the sense of foreboding that grips me. The anticipation crackles in the air and Houston’s blue eyes narrow as he hardens himself against the intensity of the moment.

I let my gaze fall to the name scrawled on the outside of the envelope: Houston. The shaking begins suddenly, my hands trembling as if the letter I’m holding is as heavy as the Earth. But it’s not heavy, it’s just real. It’s his name in her handwriting. In her final moments, she turned to him, not me.

I clutch the letter to my chest as tears burn hot streaks down my face, my throat a hard painful mass of anguish. Carefully, I slide the folded letter out of the envelope. The moment I see the words Dear Houston, the room seems to tilt on its side, throwing me off balance. But I swallow my nausea and keep reading, ripping my way through five pages, front and back, the sentences feeding into my heart like a never-ending news ticker, getting bleaker and more vile with each passing moment. Until I finally reach Hallie’s parting words and magma explodes in my belly, searing my throat.

I leap off the sofa, racing for the bathroom, slamming the door behind me. The meager half-cup of oatmeal I ate this morning launches from my mouth as I grip the porcelain. More retching as milky liquid spews forth, my arms shaking as sweat sprouts over my neck, sending a chill through me.

A knock at the door, followed by more retching until I’m empty of everything. All the warm, comforting lies replaced by a single cold, empty truth.

Another knock at the door.

“Go away!” I wail, my voice a shrieking rasp.

The click of the knob turning. The tick of Skippy’s nails against the tile floor as he comes to me. My diaphragm compresses angrily in my chest, attempting to rid my body of the truth. A few deep breaths and the dry heaving finally stops. I fall back, my shoulder blades pressed against the hard bathtub as I try to catch my breath.

Skippy is gone, but Houston is still there, as solid and real as the aching truth gnawing at my insides. He looks down at me, his eyes filled with regret so fiercely tangible, I could probably use it to carve out my heart. If I hadn’t already given it to him thirteen years ago.

This is not the way the story of us is supposed to go.

“Even when we want to forget, our scars have a way of reminding us where we’ve been.”

My name is Aurora Charles, but everyone calls me Rory. Rory Charles. It’s the kind of name that conjures up scuffed knees and messy ponytails pulled through the back of a dirty baseball cap, but I could not have been further from a tomboy. In fact, when I was a child, the neighbors would sometimes come check on me because they hadn’t seen me playing outside in days. With a book or pencil and paper in hand, I could spend weeks indoors by myself, crafting stories or getting lost in my favorite authors’ fictional worlds. I always preferred the comfort of armchair adventures over the outdoor variety. Then, five years ago, everything changed.

I’ve spent most of those years trying to make sense of the most beautiful and miserable time of my life. But now I have Skippy to help me put it all behind me. Skippy’s always there waiting for me when I get home, ready with a sloppy kiss and all. And he never disappoints me or rejects me. He’s my new best friend and soul mate.

I open the door of the dog crate and Skippy prances inside, quickly settling himself down on the plush green dog pillow. His furry black tail wags behind him, splashing in the bowl of water sitting on the floor at the back of the crate. I slip my hand into the wire enclosure and he gently licks the liver treat off my palm.

“Good boy, Skip,” I coo, scratching him behind the ears as he looks up at me with those wide chocolate-brown eyes that almost seem hazel against his black fur.

Skippy is my two-year-old black Labrador retriever, adopted from a local shelter when he was five months old and still small enough to fit in my backpack. Nowadays, Skip is a hefty sixty-eight pounds and he prefers riding in my car to riding on my back. When I’m not working, Skip and I do everything together. We frequent all the dog-friendly cafés in Goose Hollow and downtown Portland. We go to the dog park where he plays with his best friend, a four-year-old boxer named Greenland, and his girlfriend Nema, a two-year-old Portuguese water dog.

“I’ll be back in a few hours. Love you.”

His tongue laps at my palm in what I deem a show of affection or appreciation, but in reality he’s probably just trying to get the crumbs left behind by the liver treat. It’s easy to anthropomorphize our pets. We love them. We tend to assign human characteristics to almost anything we love. We name our pets, our cars, even our body parts, as if they have a life of their own. So what does it mean when we have trouble naming something? That we don’t love it? How about when you’re trying to name a piece of art?

This is one of the few topics that was never covered in college when I studied creative writing. How do you come up with a title for a book, a poem, a play? Is it the same way you name a baby or a pet? Do you pick your favorite title and stick with it? Or do you assign it a title that has a special meaning?

My mother likes to brag that she named me Aurora because I was conceived in Alaska under the northern lights. It’s a good story, whether or not it’s true. But it doesn’t help me one bit. I began writing my book five years ago on an uneventful day, under a cloudless summer sky while riding the train home from the University of Oregon.

Maybe I should name my book Uneventful Day. Yes, I’m sure readers would clamor to bookstores for that one.

Of course, that day was only uneventful because my life had blown up a week before and there was nothing good left to salvage from the wreckage. I had no choice but to head home for the summer with my head slung low and my tail between my legs.

I grab my bike helmet off the dining table, ignoring the car keys sitting in the glazed blue dish on the kitchen counter. A hacking sound gets my attention and I sigh when I see Skippy has vomited his morning meal onto the green doggy bed. I let him out of the crate and work as fast as I can to scrub most of the vomit off in the kitchen sink. Then I grab the old dog bed I keep in my closet as a spare and lay it down inside the crate.

After I call my mom and ask her to come check on Skippy while I’m gone, I head out the front door of my one-bedroom apartment in Goose Hollow, a small community in Southwest Portland with a spirited car-free culture. I get in the elevator and press the button for the lower terrace level. When the stainless steel doors slide open, I slip the helmet over my head and buckle it tightly under my chin, wincing as I pull one of my auburn hairs out of the clasp. It’s a beautiful August day in Portland, Oregon. Perfect day to ride to work.

I reach the bike storage room near the gym and laundry facilities, and enter my code on the digital padlock securing my bike to the wall rack. Pulling the bike off the wall, I double-check that the straps on my backpack are nice and tight. Then I hop on and set off toward the bridge. The vomiting incident has made me ten minutes late. I need to ride my ass off today.

I hit some gridlock on the way, so I arrive at Zucker’s grocery store on Belmont twenty-three minutes late for my five-hour shift. After hastily locking up my bike in the employee rack behind the store, I enter through the back door. The refrigerated air blasts me in the face and my heated skin bristles at the change in temperature. The warehouse is always freezing and smells of stale lettuce. Edwin, the warehouse supervisor, waves at me from behind the window looking into his office where he’s speaking to Minnie, the inventory-slash-payroll clerk.

I wave back and power walk to the time clock to punch in before Edwin can come outside to make small talk and realize I’m late. I tuck my green T-shirt bearing the grocery store logo—a beige Z in the middle of a circle—into my black skinny jeans and head straight for Jamie’s office.

Jamie Zucker is the great-granddaughter of Winifred Zucker, the woman who opened the first Zucker’s market in 1948 at the ripe age of forty-three. Their family suffered greatly through the Depression. Then Winifred lost her husband, Jacob Zucker, in World War II, leaving her to care for the twins, Jeffrey and John, by herself. Winifred, known to most as “Winnie,” worked day and night for four years as a seamstress to save enough money to open her own shop. When the twins were old enough, they took over the market and turned it into a small chain of natural foods stores. Winnie insisted they would never sell the mass-produced junk she saw on the shelves of the big-box supermarkets. They struggled through the ’80s and ’90s when America experienced a cheap junk food explosion, but the organic food movement of the 21^st century breathed new life into their business. And they were now opening their fifth location in East Portland, which Jamie would be running mostly by herself.

Jamie was only twenty-six, but she’d been working at Zucker’s for ten years. Her grandfather, John Zucker, still came in once in a while to see how Jamie was doing. He was really there to check how she was running the store. Though it appeared on the outside that he had little faith in her, you could see by the way his eyes lit up in her presence that there was no one he adored more than Jamie. I sometimes wondered what it would feel like to have a grandfather, or even a father, who looked at me like that.

I stride purposefully past the displays of organic Braeburn apples on my left and the dairy case on my right into the rear-right corner of the store. Reaching the office, I knock three times and hear an Oh, my God! before Jamie yanks the door open.

“Oh, my God! I can’t believe I didn’t think of this,” she says, her freckled cheeks flushed red and her blue eyes wide with horror. “I need you to pretend to be me.”

“What?” I chuckle as she pulls me behind her desk toward the black leather office chair.

“Sit,” she commands. “Just hear me out.”

She takes a seat in one of the visitor chairs on the other side of the desk, where I normally sit. She pushes her hand through her thin blonde hair as she stares at me, biting her lip as she contemplates what she’s going to say. I can’t help staring at her one crooked tooth, the top-left pointy cuspid that hangs slightly over her bottom lip.

“Jamie, what’s going on? You’re sort of freaking me out.”

“Rory, I need you to do something for me. As a friend.”

A friend? Jamie and I are not enemies, but we’re far from friends. We’re only two years apart in age, but we’re from two different worlds. I graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in English—with a minor in creative writing—and she dropped out of high school to manage a grocery store. She’s engaged to her high school sweetheart. I’m not dating anyone and I never had a high school sweetheart, unless you count the hopeless unrequited crush I had on my best friend’s older brother.

Still, even if Jamie’s tossing the word friend around to get me to do something for her, it does feel good to be needed.

“What do you need?”

She sighs with relief. “I have a meeting with a supplier today. He’s coming in to pitch, but Grandpa John’s coming. I don’t want him to see the guy.”

“Why? Isn’t he the one who said you needed to keep the selections fresh, or something like that?”

“It’s the guy from the beer company coming to discuss the joint venture for the wine bar. Grandpa is dead set against it, but the board is pushing for it.”

My heart thumps painfully as I realize what she’s asking me.

Management at Zucker’s markets has spent the past two years discussing a project to turn some of their in-store espresso cafés into bars that sell wine, beer, and coffee. They’ll do wine and beer tastings on Friday and Saturday nights. The bars are being opened only in the locations with a high walk score. A walk score is a rating given to a city based on how easy it is to get around without a car. Goose Hollow has a walk score of 90, which is higher even than New York City. All the board members agreed that the uptown shopping center in Goose Hollow is the perfect area to implement the wine bar idea. Then someone suggested they implement it across all their Portland stores and suddenly our store has been seeing a flurry of meetings over the past few weeks. Apparently, Grandpa John is not supposed to know about these meetings.

I want to get up from Jamie’s chair and leave. I didn’t realize how safe I felt in my cashier position until now.

“Jamie, I can’t pretend to be you. I don’t know anything about this wine bar deal.”

She holds out her hands to stop me when I attempt to stand. “You don’t have to know anything. And you don’t really have to pretend to be me. Just thank him for coming and ask him to take a seat. Then you can just sit there and nod and look pretty while he pitches you his beer. I’ll try to get Grandpa out of here as quickly as possible. As soon as he’s gone, I’ll come in and take over.”

My entire body tenses with nervous energy just imagining this scenario, but I can’t leave her hanging. She’s my boss. And it does seem like a fairly simple favor to grant.

I draw in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Sure. I think I can handle that.”

“Thank you!” she shrieks as she leaps out of the chair. “You stay here. I’ll go out front and wait until the guy gets here, and hope he doesn’t get here at the same time as Grandpa.”

I lean forward in the leather swivel chair as I watch her leave. She closes the door behind her and my heart races at the thought of what will happen the next time that door opens. Will it be Jamie? Will it be the beer guy? Will it be Grandpa? How will I explain sitting on this side of the desk if it is Grandpa John?

Too many questions for too small of a task. This is nothing. It will be over in a few minutes and I’ll be able to get to work.

Leaning back in the chair, I close my eyes and take another deep breath. The knock at the door startles me. I almost trip and fall in my haste to get out of the chair and answer the door. I manage to catch myself by grabbing on to the edge of the desk, but the damage is done. My nerves are ratcheting up again.

I shake out my arms like a prizefighter getting ready to enter the ring. Reaching for the door handle, I force my lips into a smile, then I open the office door.

I’m frozen at the sight of him.

Houston Cavanaugh.

The first boy I ever loved. And boy, did I love him a long time. I loved him until he was a man. I loved him until he loved me back. At least, I thought he loved me.

His eyes narrow and he appears confused for a moment. “Jamie?”

My heart drops to my feet.

He doesn’t even remember me.

“No,” I say with far too much emotion.

“Oh, my God. I’m sorry. I… I know you.”

I clutch my chest, unable to breathe. Then his eyes widen with what can only be described as pure terror.

“Rory? Aurora?”

I let out a sharp puff of air. “Yeah.”

His lips are still moving. I want to hear what he’s saying, but my thoughts are pounding in time with my heart. Images flash in my mind: our bodies tangled in his sheets; the breakfast bar littered with sticky shot glasses and empty beer bottles; my empty dorm.

“Rory?”

I blink a few times to focus on his face and he looks at the floor, as if the weight of our history is pulling his head down.

“I’m sorry. Maybe I should come back later.”

“What? No!”

He looks up, startled by my outburst.

“I mean, you came to talk about the contract, so… let’s talk. I’m…” I nod toward the chair for him to sit down, then I close the office door behind him. “I’m sorry for spacing out. I was just a little surprised to see you.” I take a seat in Jamie’s chair and yelp as it begins to tip backward. “Shit!”

Houston laughs as I scoot forward and lean my elbows on the desk, hoping he doesn’t notice how the sound of his laughter makes the hairs on my arms stand up.

“Sorry. Obviously, I don’t sit on this side of the desk very often, but Jamie didn’t want to reschedule this appointment. She should be here shortly.”

“You don’t need to apologize.” The left corner of his mouth pulls up in his signature half smile and I grit my teeth against the surge of emotions welling up inside me. “I’m actually kind of glad we ran into each other.”

“Really? You hardly remembered me a minute ago.”

He chuckles again. “Yeah, sorry about that. I was just surprised.”

I can’t argue with this when I just used the same excuse. But it’s no more true coming from his lips than it is from mine. We’re not surprised to see each other. We’re terrified.

All the times I’ve imagined running into Houston, I never once imagined he wouldn’t recognize me. I haven’t changed much. I still have the same long auburn hair he used to bury his face in and twist around his fingers. I’m still carrying the extra ten pounds I put on my freshman year at UO, my softness, he used to call it. I still don’t wear a lot of makeup, though back then I avoided makeup because I never knew when I was going to burst into tears. Now I avoid it because I’m comfortable in my skin. This is who I am. If someone doesn’t like me—or recognize me—that’s their problem.

I swallow the lump in my throat and force a smile. “So, Houston—would you rather I call you Hugh?”

He flashes me an uncomfortable smile, but it takes him a moment to respond. “Houston is fine.”

His family always called him Hugh, but he hated it. I always made it a point to call him Houston. Every time I said his name it was like a promise to be true to him. The real Houston. I wish I had known then that you can’t promise to be true to a ghost. Ghosts aren’t real.

“So… you’re the beer guy?” I say, trying to break the awkward silence.

“The beer guy? Is that how I’m referred to around here?”

Houston’s gaze is focused on the desk so he doesn’t have to look me in the eye. His elbows rest on the arms of the chair and his hands are clasped in front of him. That’s when I notice the wedding ring.

“You’re married,” I blurt out before I can stop myself.

He looks up, his eyes locking on mine, then nods just enough for me to notice.

My eyes and sinuses sting and I blink a few times. “What’s her name? I mean, that’s… that’s great.”

Shit. What is wrong with me?

He stares at the desk again, unsure how to respond to this. “Yeah, I guess. Um… Are you married?”

For some reason, I glance down at my hands where they rest on top of a stack of invoices on Jamie’s desk, as if I’ll suddenly find a wedding ring on my finger, too.

“No, I’m not married.” I draw in another breath and let it out slowly as I try to think of a new topic. “You’re still making beer?”

In college, Houston made his own line of homemade ale, which he called Barley Legal, since barely anyone who drank it was over twenty-one. It was very popular with the frats. I still remember the way our apartment would smell like yeast and alcohol after his weekend “tasting” parties. I’m surprised I still remember the name of the beer and the smell, considering I was pretty wasted through the last six months of my freshman year, the months we were together.

“Yep. And it’s still Barley Legal.”

“You kept the name?”

“Couldn’t let it go.”

My breath hitches at these words. They’re so similar to the last words he whispered in my ear five years ago as I lay in bed pretending to sleep. I love you, but we need to let it go.

He doesn’t seem to catch the similarity. Maybe he doesn’t even remember the last words he spoke to me. How can he be so different when he looks exactly the same? The shock of caramel-brown hair on his head still has the natural ribbons of sandy blond running through it. His blue eyes still sparkle when he talks about his homemade creations, though they’re probably not homemade anymore. He still looks like the guy who took my mind and body to places they’d never been. But there’s something very different about him. He seems subdued. Defeated.

“Rory,” he says, just loud enough to break through my thoughts. “How have you been?”

I don’t know why he’s asking this question ten minutes into our conversation, so I shrug. “Fine. I graduated two years ago. I changed my major after… Anyway, I got my degree in English—minor in creative writing. I’ve been working on a book in my spare time.”

His face lights up at this news. “A book? That’s awesome. You were always a great writer.”

“Well, probably not great, but I graduated.”

He smiles at my modesty. “You were great. I’m sure you’re even better now.”

My smile fades. Is it okay to accept praise from him now that he’s married? Is it okay to want his praise when I’ve lived without it for five years?

My phone vibrates in my pocket and I pull it out to see who it is. My mom’s cell number flashes on the screen. I usually send her calls to voicemail while I’m at work and check them on my lunch break, but I did ask her to check on Skippy today.

I contemplate answering her call, if only to escape the awkwardness of my conversation with Houston, but I hit the reject button. If it’s an emergency, she’ll send me a text. I’ve told her multiple times to text me in the case of an emergency, since I’m almost always with a customer when she gets the urge to call.

I look up and Houston’s jaw is clenched as he stares at the food-handling certificates hanging on the wall of the office.

“It was my mom,” I say, not sure why I feel the need to mention this. “Probably just wants to tell me I’m out of coffee or something.”

“You still live with your mom and dad?”

“No. God, no. My parents divorced two weeks after… we broke up. My mom and I moved to Portland two years ago. She has her own apartment now, but she checks on my dog while I’m at work.”

He smiles at my reaction and my stomach flutters. Then, I find myself wondering what shifted between us in the last minute or two, because I’m beginning to wish we could sit here talking like this forever. But any minute now Jamie is going to walk through that office door and relieve me of this meeting.

“How long have you worked here?” Houston asks as he leans back in his chair, getting a bit more comfortable.

He’s dressed in jeans and a brown T-shirt bearing the logo of his company. The shirt clings to his biceps and pectoral muscles. I try not to think of the nights I fell asleep with his arms around me and my cheek pressed against his solid chest. The fact that he wore a T-shirt and jeans to a pitch meeting proves he hasn’t changed. He’s still the laid-back guy everyone wants to share a beer with. And if he hasn’t changed, I should stop letting my mind wander to our past.

“I’ve worked here a little more than a year,” I reply. “I interned at the Oregonian for a while after graduation, but I got tired of living with my mom and never having money. I applied for this job on a whim, but it ended up working out. I’m union, so I make enough to live in a one-bedroom nearby and still feed myself and Skippy.”

“Skippy?”

“My dog.”

“Oh.”

The desk phone rings and I contemplate not answering it, but it could be Jamie calling me from somewhere else in the store. “Jamie Zucker’s office. How may I help you?”

“Rory! Skip passed out and I can’t wake him up.” My mom is frantic and I can tell by the thickness in her throat that she’s crying. My mom never cries, and the mere sound of it makes my heart race.

“What? What’s going on? What happened?” I stand suddenly and Houston’s smile disappears as he stands, too.

“I don’t know. The apartment was pretty warm when I came inside. I don’t think your air conditioner’s working. He was just lying there in the crate, so I put some ice in his water bowl and put it next to his face so he could drink. He drank the whole bowl, then he passed out! Oh, my God. Did I do something wrong? I was just trying to cool him down. I swear, I didn’t mean to do anything. I’m sorry, Rory. I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, no. How long has he been out?”

“About twelve minutes now.”

“Is he breathing?”

“I don’t know. I think so.”

“I’ll be right there.”

I hang up the desk phone and grab my cell off the stack of invoices. Then I scroll through my contacts searching for the number to Skip’s vet as Houston follows me out of the office.

“Shit! I rode my bike today. It will take me at least twenty-five minutes to get there.”

“I can take you,” Houston immediately volunteers.

I gaze into his eyes, knowing that every second I hesitate could mean the difference between life and death for my best friend.

Suddenly, the memories come flooding back to me from the day my world was turned upside down five and a half years ago. The day I found Houston standing outside my dorm refusing to let me inside. The day Houston became my protector and my downfall.

My finger hovers over the call button, then I grab Houston’s arm as he begins walking straight toward Grandpa John and Jamie, who are both standing at register three talking to Kenny, another cashier.

Houston glances down at his arm where my fingers are curled around his firm bicep. I quickly let it go.

“Sorry, but we can’t go that way. We have to go through the back. Hurry.”

He follows me into the warehouse and out through the back door.

“What about your meeting?” I mention as we skitter like mice along the back wall of the store.

“I’ll work it out,” he replies quickly.

We turn right at the back corner of the building into a small service alley that reeks of trash and stale beer.

“Where are you parked?” I ask.

“Right out front. Don’t you need to tell your boss you’re leaving?”

“I’ll call her after I call the vet.”

We make it to the end of the alley and Houston grabs my arm before I can walk out onto the sidewalk. “Rory, wait.”

I glance down at his fingers, which are curled around my forearm the same way mine were curled around his bicep a minute ago, and I instantly grow impatient. “What?”

He’s silent for a moment, then he lets go of me. “Nothing. Let’s go.”

I follow closely behind him as we approach his shiny, pearl-white SUV. The sight of it makes my stomach curdle. Not because it’s a gas-guzzler, but because his wife probably sat next to him inside this car, holding his hand, stroking his skin. Maybe they’ve even had sex in there.

I know I shouldn’t care. I haven’t seen or heard from Houston in five years and here he is going out of his way to help me—again. As if the past five years never happened.

He opens the passenger door for me and I grit my teeth as I climb inside, holding my breath to block out the heady scent of beige leather.

Shutting the door after me, he rounds the front of the car and smoothly climbs into the driver’s seat. “Where are we going?” he asks, unable to hide the hint of enthusiasm in his voice.

I stare straight ahead and think, I wish I knew.

I stare at the dashboard so I can’t see her face. She looks the same as she did five years ago, and back then that face had the power to knock the breath out of me. The curve of her cheekbones, the fullness of her lips, the softness of her skin. She was the drug that numbed the pain, but only temporarily. I just have to keep reminding myself of that so I don’t do anything stupid, like telling her the truth.

We may only ever have one great, passionate love. If I had one, it would definitely be Rory. But sometimes it’s best to leave that kind of love in the past. Still, there’s so much unfinished business between us. As I watch her from the corner of my eye, I wonder if this chance encounter is the opportunity for absolution I’ve been hoping for the past five years.

“Hold on,” she says as she presses the cell phone to her ear. “Hello? Yes, is Dr. Heinlein in the office today?… My dog is unconscious and I need to bring him in. It’s an emergency… No, not that I know of… Blood type? Um… DEA 6, I think… Yes… Thank you so much. I’ll be there as fast as I can.” She pulls the phone away from her ear and checks something on the screen. “We have to go to my apartment first. I’m in Portland Towers.”

“On 21^st?”

She nods and I sense a bit of tension, like she’s embarrassed to live in a building mostly inhabited by college students. She probably imagines I live in a nice house with my wife and kids and maybe even a few pets. She doesn’t know that Tessa and I live in a generic two-bedroom apartment downtown and we have no children.

We make it to her building in seven minutes and I find myself getting nervous. How far do I take this act of kindness? Do I go inside? Do I help take her dog to the vet? The conversation she had with her mom a few minutes ago implied she has a car of her own, but she opted to ride her bike to work today. Technically, she no longer needs my help, but I have no idea how big her dog is. He could be a teacup poodle or a huge mastiff, in which case she definitely needs my help getting the dog into the car.

I park in a fifteen-minute loading zone right in front of the thirteen-story apartment building and kill the engine. I throw open my car door to follow her inside, but she stops me before she gets out of the car.

“What are you doing?” she asks, her voice still taut with tension. “I have a car. I’m fine. You need to go back to your meeting.”

“I can help you carry the dog down, then I’ll take off.”

She hesitates for a moment, then she nods. “Okay. Thanks.”

Following her into the elevator, I hold my breath as she presses the button for the eighth floor. Just walking behind her, I’ve gotten small whiffs of her hair. But I know the close quarters in the elevator will only amplify that. And I don’t want her to know how crazy that scent is making me.

We stand side by side in total silence as the elevator ascends. The fingers on my right hand tingle, as if my skin can sense she’s near. Then I realize it’s probably because I’m holding my breath. Slowly, I breathe in, catching a strong whiff of vanilla that sends my heart racing. I clench my fist to keep from reaching out to touch her.

She glances down at my hand as she sees the slight movement from the corner of her eye. I relax my hand again so she doesn’t think being this close to her is making me tense, but I don’t believe for a second I can fool her.

She steps forward, closer to the elevator doors, putting more distance between us. A soft buzzing noise breaks through the silence just as the elevator doors slide open. She holds the phone to her ear as we exit onto the eighth floor.

“What’s wrong?” she says, her eyebrows furrowed with worry, then her lips curl into an absolutely beautiful smile. “Oh, thank God… Yes, we just got here. I’ll be right in.” Holding the phone to her chest, she lets out a sigh of relief. “He’s awake.”

“That’s great news.”

She stops in front of apartment 811 and looks up at me. “I guess you can go.”

“You’re not still taking him to the vet?”

“Well, it’s not an emergency anymore. I’ll just have my mom take him in my car. She can walk him down now that he’s awake.”

My heart clenches as I realize I’m no longer needed. “Of course. So, you’re okay?”

What a stupid loaded question.

She shrugs as she reaches for the doorknob. “As good as I can be,” she replies, then suddenly she wraps her arms around my waist. “Thanks for the ride.”

The smell of her hair hits me like a knife in the chest and I hold my breath to keep myself from completely inhaling her. I pat her on the back and she chuckles as she lets me go.

“Good luck with your pitch,” she says, never looking back as she disappears into the apartment.

Jesus fucking Christ. I’m in deep shit here. I can’t go back to the store for that meeting. There’s no way I’ll be able to work with Rory on a regular basis. If we open that wine bar, I’ll have to check in at least once a week, probably more like two to three times a week.

I won’t survive seeing her that often. I’ve barely survived the past five years.

But I can’t throw away a multimillion-dollar joint venture contract. There’s too much competition in the craft beer market these days. I need to take whatever bones are thrown my way.

I just wish I knew if Rory were truly okay. I can put myself through the agony of seeing her on a regular basis if I know it won’t affect her. The last thing I want to do is make her work situation unbearable. She doesn’t deserve that after what I did to her.

I managed to avoid bumping into Rory on the way out of the meeting at Zuckers by leaving the shop while she was busy with a customer. The pitch meeting with Jamie went well. When she heard why I stepped out earlier, she was quite impressed with my kindness toward the staff. I considered telling her that Rory is far from just a staff member to me, but I opted against it. If Rory wants her boss to know about our past, she should be the one to tell her.

As I drive away from Zucker’s market, I think of going back to the brewery to see how Dean, our production manager, is coming along with the new winter lager. We’ve been brewing it in small batches in the pilot brewing system since January, and it won a gold medal at the Portland International Beer Festival last week. But today we’re brewing the first large-scale production batch. Scaling up can be a bit tricky, but I’m confident Dean can handle everything on his own.

This batch of winter lager won’t be ready for another twenty-three days. And if this deal with Zucker’s goes through, it will be on tap at the new wine bar just in time for the holidays. I can relax tonight knowing I’ve done all I can today. Right now, I need to get home and see Tessa. I know that once I see her face, I’ll know what I have to do.

I park the truck in the underground lot, then I head for the elevator. I pass the dog grooming station on the way, which Tessa always complains about. She thinks it’s nice that the complex was built with the needs of pet owners in mind, but she thinks the wet-dog smell seeps into the underground parking structure and “infringes” on the other residents. Yet, as I breathe in the barnyard scent of freshly washed canine, all I can think of is what it would be like to help Rory give her dog a bath in there, suds flying everywhere, laughter echoing off the concrete walls.

I shake my head, trying to clear these dangerous thoughts as I enter the elevator. The doors are almost closed when someone sticks their arm through the gap. The doors slide open again and in walks Kendra Gris, our neighbor from across the hall and Tessa’s new best friend. Kendra’s a stay-at-home mom with an eight-month-old baby boy, Trucker. I’m not one to speak ill of a child, but I will say that Kendra and her husband, Aaron, really screwed their kid with a name like Trucker Gris.

“Hey, Kendra,” I mutter, trying not to sound too annoyed.

She flashes me a tight-lipped smile as she pushes the stroller into the elevator then glances at the panel to make sure I’ve pressed the button for the third floor. She sighs as she flips her dark hair over her shoulder.

“Hey, Hugh.”

I think back to the moment in Jamie’s office earlier when Rory asked if she should call me Hugh or Houston. After five years, she still remembered that I prefer Houston, but this woman who sees me almost every day still insists on calling me Hugh.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Kendra remarks as the elevator doors open. “Bad day at the brewery?”

I exit right behind her as she pushes the stroller down the hall. “It’s been a long day.”

“It’s two o’clock,” she sneers when she reaches her door. “Maybe you just need a few cold ones.”

She pushes open the door with her back and pulls the stroller in backward, all the while flashing me a condescending smile. Kendra has told Tessa on more than one occasion that I drink too much. I don’t.

I drink two, maybe three, beers a night to unwind after work. Sometimes when we’re testing a new recipe, I’ll drink too much, but I never get so drunk I black out or lose time. Beer is my life. I’m supposed to be a connoisseur. It’s my job.

I enter the apartment and Tessa is sitting at the kitchen table with her computer. Her eyes widen when she looks up and sees me in the doorway. She deftly closes the laptop as she rises from the chair.

“Hey, I didn’t expect you back so soon. Is something wrong?”

I shake my head as I drop my keys into the glass bowl on top of the table constructed out of salvaged Brazilian pine. “Everything’s fine. I think the pitch went well. I’m… optimistic.”

“That’s great!” she replies, pulling her straight blonde hair into a ponytail at her nape as she walks toward me. “Why don’t you look happy?”

“I am happy.” I force a smile as I head for the refrigerator to grab a beer.

“Houston, it’s two o’clock.”

I glance at the beer in my hand then back at her. “Does it matter what time of day it is?”

“I’m not talking about the beer. I was just wondering why you’re home so early on a Wednesday.”

I can’t tell her that I ran into my ex-girlfriend today and how the wall I’d built around my memories of Rory was knocked down in an instant. I can’t tell her that I’m home early today because I didn’t trust myself to be anywhere but here right now. I can’t tell her that I hoped the sight of her would remind me of all the reasons I can’t be with Rory.

Being married means having someone, just one person, who knows everything about you. Someone you can share everything with, even the ugly bits of your soul you’d rather sweep under the carpet and completely forget about. But Tessa doesn’t know anything about Rory. That time of my life is a discussion I hoped I would never need to have with her.

“I told you. The meeting went well, so I just decided to take the rest of the day off. I wanted to see you.”

I set the cold beer on the marble countertop, then I grab her waist and pull her body flush against mine. Gazing into her blue eyes for a moment, I will myself not to compare her to Rory, but it’s difficult. Her sharp hip bones are pressed against me and I can’t help but remember how much I loved the softness of Rory’s body.

Leaning forward, I take her earlobe into my mouth. Her breathing quickens as I trace the tip of my tongue inside the shell of her ear. Her hair smells like the lavender-mint shampoo we share and I inhale deeply to rid myself of the memory of Rory’s hair, the way it smelled like vanilla frosting.

“Houston,” she breathes, her fingers curling tightly around my biceps. “I… I have an appointment.”

She pushes me back and her face is flushed as she opens a drawer and takes out a bottle opener. “I didn’t know you were coming home early. I booked a hair appointment for this afternoon.”

She pops the top off the bottle of beer I set down on the counter a few seconds ago, then she hands it to me.

I wish I could say that this is the first time Tessa has rejected my sexual advances, but that would be a lie. Any married couple will tell you that these kinds of things just don’t always line up. Sometimes she has an appointment. Sometimes I have to get to work for an important meeting. Sometimes one of us is just not in the mood. But it’s not the response I was hoping for. I wanted to lose myself in her today. Maybe even go for an all-nighter.

“You have a good time, baby.”

She laughs nervously. “A good time at the hair salon?”

Before she can say anything else, I kiss her. Hard. Tangling my fingers in her hair, I thrust my tongue inside her mouth. She whimpers as she clutches the front of my T-shirt. We move in unison and I’m reminded of the first time I met Tessa, at a beer festival three years ago.

She was wearing a floral crown on her head and totally blasted on free beer when she showed up at our booth. I probably could have taken her home with me and fucked her once then never called her again. It was what I had done for two years and it had worked just fine. But something she said changed my mind about using her.

She sampled our pale ale, then she looked me in the eye and said, You look like my brother… He’s dead.

She cackled loudly at this proclamation and spilled the rest of the beer sample on her chest. Then she looked up at me again and her eyes swelled with tears. She apologized as her friend pulled her away from our booth, but I knew then that I wanted to know her.

I pull away, placing a soft kiss on her cheekbone before I whisper in her ear. “Hurry home. I don’t think this beer is gonna quench my thirst tonight.”

She nods as she reaches for her purse in a daze. “I’ll be back soon.”

As the door closes behind her, my eyes are drawn to the laptop on the table. Tessa never brings the laptop out here while I’m home. She says she doesn’t like having electronic devices between us. So one of our unofficial wedding vows is to leave all electronic devices, other than cell phones, in the office. That way when we’re home together we give each other our undivided attention.

I guess it’s not a big deal if she brings the laptop out here while I’m at work. I take a seat on the sofa, but my gaze is still drawn to the table. Was it my imagination or was she nervous when I walked in at two o’clock?

No, that’s just my own guilty conscience making me paranoid.

I stare at the laptop and for a brief moment consider opening it up to see what she was doing, but that would be a gross invasion of her privacy. Tessa is allowed to have her own personal space where I don’t intrude.

And so am I.