I was hiding in my bedroom, buried deep under the covers, when the doorbell rang.
I ignored it, instead reaching for the nightstand and pulling the drawer open. I needed to remind myself why I couldn’t do this. Not tonight. Not ever.
Unwilling to lift my head from my soft, comfortable pillow and actually look through the now-open drawer, I searched blindly, nails scrabbling on the smoothly polished wood until I found what I was looking for. My fingers finally closed around the well-worn envelope, but instead of the sigh of relief you might expect, the sound I made was weary. So very weary.
Opening this drawer and extracting this envelope had become a sad, fruitless routine, and I was tired of it. I wasn’t sure why I continued to do it every day, and several times a day at that. I didn’t actually want to read the letter that I knew was neatly tucked inside the envelope. I didn’t want to know what it said, what truths it imparted. I already knew, without even having to glance at them, that the pages would ruin me.
Well, as much as anyone already broken beyond repair could be ruined.
So the motions I repeated time and time again had become a bizarre ritual, equal parts comfort and torture. Torture, because I desperately needed to know what was in the envelope, even as I knew I’d never open it. Comfort, because even just holding it, just running my fingertips over the familiar handwriting spelling out my name, connected me to the man who’d given it to me. A connection I both craved and - when the guilt ran too swift and deep to ford - hated.
I stared at the envelope, silently urging myself to just fucking open it already. Just get it over with. Things couldn’t get much worse, could they?
The doorbell rang again, but I continued to ignore it.
Meanwhile, my roommate Taylor was in the bathroom down the hall, singing as she applied her makeup. Her melodious voice wafted throughout the house and nearly drowned out all other sound. I groaned when I recognized the song she was belting: the latest chart-topping hit from the trendiest pop princess. Which meant she was feeling pretty good tonight. Generally speaking, the better her mood, the more cloying her internal soundtrack became.
I frowned. These days, my internal soundtrack was more of a never-ending loop of songs in minor keys.
The doorbell rang yet again, and this time Taylor’s singing stopped.
“Larkin!” she trilled. “Can you get the door?”
I sighed as I pulled the drawer out again, carefully placing the envelope in the back, behind the never-used remote control and a dust-covered shadow box. I squeezed my eyes shut as I slowly closed the drawer again, letting out a sigh. The internal debate was over; the envelope would remain unopened. For now.
“Larkin?” Taylor called in that same sweet, unruffled tone. A normal person would be impatient at my non-response, but not my best friend. Impatience was not in her emotional vocabulary. She was the human equivalent of sunshine and rainbows.
I grunted out an indistinct reply as I flipped the blankets off and heaved myself to my feet. Could I get the door? Sure. But did I want to? Hell no. Really, the last thing I wanted to do was comply with her request. I could barely get myself to leave the house for anything except work, and even then it had been a long, long time. Come to think of it, I couldn’t actually remember the last time I’d been to the shop.
At least, that’s what I kept telling myself.
And anyway, tonight’s outing was about the farthest thing from work I could think of. So much so that I’d been filled with dread ever since Taylor ambushed me with her plans this morning.
Excuse me, our plans.
Still, I got up, because doing so gave me an odd kind of advantage. If I answered the door, I could intercept the man on the other side of it and convince him to go home before this whole shit-fest even started.
Once out of bed, I put my shoes on and headed down the hallway. I frowned as I passed the opened bathroom door, where Taylor was applying what I knew was probably her fourth coat of lip gloss. On top of two coats of moisturizing lipstick in some fresh and winsome shade of pink, of course. In fact, Taylor had plastered her naturally stunning face with what looked like half the contents of a Sephora, and my eyes watered as her perfume assaulted my sinuses.
I waved a hand in front of my face to try to disperse the scent as I took in her outfit. Her little hot pink dress (because Taylor did not wear black) was well, little. It was tight, sleeveless, and its hem was shorter than the cheerleading uniforms she used to wear in high school, leaving her mile-long, tanned legs on full display. She was dressed for July in Ibiza when it was October in New York.
She looked like a runway model on cotton candy-flavored steroids. Which made me even more irritable, of course. If she’d put this much effort into her ensemble, she must really be excited. And excitement of any kind was not in my emotional vocabulary. Not anymore.
“It’s like forty degrees out, Tay. You’re going to freeze in that dress,” I grumbled. “And your hair is going to stick to your face. It’s windy tonight.”
“But I look super cute,” she replied, turning this way and that to look at herself in the full-length mirror next to the vanity. “And it’s important to put your best foot forward on a first date.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I thought this was your third date,” I argued, completely ignoring the rest of her comment. Because we both knew I didn’t have a best foot, tonight or any night. Both of mine had been decidedly underwhelming for a long time.
To be precise, it had been sixteen months, twenty-three days, seven hours, and – I checked my watch – thirty-two minutes since I’d bothered to put my best foot forward.
Since I’d bothered with much of anything, really.
And anyway, it was highly unusual for Taylor to go on a second date with someone, let alone a third. She was a serial first dater. She enjoyed the attention and gentlemanly behavior, the effort to impress, that she received on first dates. She thrived on the whole getting-to-know-you pageant. And though she’d never admit it, she liked the lack of expectations. Taylor was all of the romance of dating, with none of the pesky commitment of relationships.
I found it better to skip the whole dog-and-pony show altogether and just stay at home, where I didn’t have to cater to anyone’s expectations of me. No dressing up, no looking my best. No smiling and pretending it was all okay, that I wasn’t dead inside. When I was at home, safely burrowed under the covers, I didn’t have to pretend to care.
Taylor frowned as she caught my eye in the mirror. The expression looked uncomfortable on her face – probably because it so rarely came out to play.
“It’s still important to look your best,” she countered in a patient, upbeat tone, the way one speaks to a toddler.
I stuck my tongue out and made a raspberry in reply, as a toddler does.
She turned to me, her eyes dipping to give me a thorough inspection. Her frown deepened as she took in the stretched-out leggings, beat-up Chuck Taylors, and ragged, oversized sweater that constituted my outfit for tonight.
“It’s something you really should try, too,” she added, and somehow it didn’t sound like a dig. She had a knack for making everything she said sound nice. But then, most everything she said genuinely was nice.
Sometimes I wondered how we were even friends.
“I love this sweater,” I muttered, wrapping my arms around myself. Pretending, yet again, that they were his arms instead.
Her frown softened. “I know you do,” she replied gently. “It was Daniel’s sweater.”
My gut clenched, as it did every time someone said his name. I grunted, but otherwise made no reply.
She sighed. “Look, I get it. It’s comforting. You feel safe in it.”
I nodded, looking down at my feet. She knew the score better than anyone. The three of us had been inseparable since high school, Daniel and Taylor and me. The Three Amigos, taking on the El Guapos of the world together. Until one day, when we were separated against our wills.
She knew what I was going through, how decimated I had been. She was grieving, too.
A small kernel of hope planted itself in my chest as I looked up again. Maybe she wouldn’t make me do this tonight. Maybe, just maybe, she’d have mercy on me.
But then she clapped her hands together, smiling brightly, and my hope withered and died.
“But you can’t wear that on a date, silly,” she sing-songed.
I scowled. “I don’t even want to go on this date, Tay,” I argued, for what felt like the thousandth time today.
Actually, I’d said it thirty-three times. I’d counted, because counting was just what I did.
“I’m not ready,” I added.
I’d never be ready. Not tonight. Not ever.
She put a comforting hand on my shoulder. “It’s been over a year since Daniel died, Lark.”
I huffed, shrugging my shoulder to throw off her hand. Actually, it had been sixteen months, twenty-three days, seven hours, and – I checked my watch – thirty-four minutes.
But who was counting?
“It’s time to move on,” she added, her tone full of pity.
Time to move on?
God, I was so sick of people telling me to move on. I was tired of people telling me I still had my whole life ahead of me. I’d had e-fucking-nough of people who’d never in their lives suffered a loss like this telling me, hey, we get it. You’re sad. But that’s quite enough now, don’t you think?
It made me want to scream. Because what they were really saying was that my grief was making them uncomfortable, that I was bringing them down. And that just would not do.
If the hours and minutes since Daniel had died had taught me anything, it was that people didn’t actually care that you were sad. They just didn’t want you to make them sad, too.
Angry tears filled my eyes, and I blinked them away, trying desperately to swallow the lump in my throat while I was at it. But before I could make what would undoubtedly be a witty, withering reply about the individualized nature of grief, the doorbell rang again. This time, I could almost swear I heard a note of impatience in its chime, and honestly, I couldn’t say I blamed it. Whoever it was had been intermittently ringing the bell for – I checked my watch – six minutes and fifty-four seconds.
Taylor let out a sigh, giving me an apologetic smile. “Hey, I’m sorry, okay? I hate fighting with you.”
I closed my eyes, mumbling an apology of my own. I hated fighting with her, too. She’d been my best friend – my only friend – almost our whole lives. I’d lost so much in the past year-plus. My husband, my happiness. My sanity. I didn’t want to add Taylor to the list.
“It’s just, this is important to me, you know? I want to see you get back out there. I just...” Her blue eyes were huge in her face as she gave me a placating look. “I want you to be happy again, Lark. Like when we were kids. Like you were when Daniel was alive.”
I looked away, not sure what to say to that. I had no idea if I even could be happy anymore. The concept of happiness seemed so alien to me, so abstract. I just wasn’t the same person I’d been all those years ago, not with Daniel gone. I wasn’t sure it was possible to get back there without him.
I heard her sniff, then let out a shaky laugh. I looked back up to see her giving me a rueful smile.
“And besides, I asked these guys to come all the way out here tonight. We can’t cancel on them now.”
I raised my eyebrows. We both knew it was less than twenty minutes from the Southern State, over the causeway, and to my front door, even on a summer weekend. That was a blink of the eye compared to most drives around Long Island. You’d spend longer waiting for your food at All-American on a Friday night, for fuck’s sake.
The fries were worth it, though.
The doorbell rang yet again, and my magnanimity quickly turned back to irritation. I vowed to disconnect the damn thing tomorrow. Maybe even when we got home tonight. The doorbell was now public enemy number one.
“Can you please just go get that?” Taylor asked as she grabbed a brush and swiped it across her not-at-all-shiny nose. “I’m almost done here.”
I gave her a mutinous look, which she returned with her very best ‘pretty please with chocolate sprinkles on top’ face.
“Fine,” I muttered, turning with a huff and trudging to the front door.
“You’re the best friend and roommate ever!” Her reply floated down the hall after me, as sweet and melodious as her singing voice.
“Yeah, yeah,” I grumbled as I approached the door.
The doorbell rang again, and between Taylor’s well-meaning but still unwelcome set-up, the argument we’d just had, and the shrill chime echoing through my house, my nerves were stripped raw. Which, predictably, made my temper boil over.
“Have some fucking patience, would ya?” I shouted. “I’m coming as fast as I ca-”
The words died in my throat when I opened the door and got a good look at the person in front of me.
“Oh.”
I’m pretty sure if I could have seen myself in that instant, I would’ve looked ridiculous. My mouth was hanging open in shock, like I’d never seen a man before in my life.
But really, had I? Not one like this, that was for sure. Not one who stretched to nearly six-and-a-half feet, who had hair the color of coffee, with natural caramel highlights that caught the glow of the street lights. Not one with eyes that weren’t emerald, or mint, or moss, but leaf green. Not one with full, pink lips curved in a smile and framed by a strong jaw, a jaw covered in more-than-stubble-but-not-quite-beard-yet. Not a man who was dressed sharply, in dark slacks, boots, a button-down, and a deep green sweater that brought out his eyes, all topped by a leather jacket to keep out the sharp wind.
The wind that was slapping me in the face, dragging me back to my senses. And not a moment too soon. I was making a damn fool of myself, standing in my open doorway and gaping like a fish.
I cleared my throat. “Hi. Harry?” I asked, my voice laced with nerves and more than a little hope.
Because please universe, let this man be my date, a voice in the back of my mind whispered – a voice I hadn’t heard in a long, long time. My plan of convincing this man to turn around and head right back home was instantly forgotten.
Because I really needed him to be my date. Not Taylor’s date. Not some random person off the street whose car just broke down and whose phone died and who was now knocking on my front door to see if I was one of those Luddites who still has a land line. And not just because I’d disconnected my landline ages ago, when I couldn’t take one more phone call asking how I was “holding up.”
No, I needed him to be my date because I needed a win. I needed one so badly.
Please, if there is anything right and good and fair in this Godforsaken universe, just let him be my date.
But of course, the universe decided to give me yet another middle finger. The man in front of me shook his head slowly, his eyes widening as his smile faded. He looked taken aback, in fact. Like he was feeling as thrown as I was. Probably because I was acting like a mouth-breathing, man-ogling weirdo.
“Um, no,” he said in a ridiculously deep, rumbly voice. “I’m Graham. Graham Morris. I’m here for Taylor.”
Graham Morris. That was a nice name. A really nice name. It was masculine, but not in a stupid way. It wasn’t a name from some insipid rom-com that would make you roll your eyes whenever our heroine sighed dreamily, extolling our hero’s manly virtues.
No, Graham was a name you would whisper in the dark, right before his lips found yours. Right before his hands roamed all over your naked skin, igniting your senses and driving you wild. Right before he slid deep inside you.
I blinked. What. The. Fuck? Where was this coming from? I hadn’t so much as looked at another man in forever. To be precise, for sixteen months, twenty-three days, seven hours, and – I checked my watch – thirty-seven minutes.
Well, and for almost eight years before that, too. (Seven years, nine months, fourteen days, twenty-one hours, and forty-seven minutes, to be precise. Because of course I counted.) Ever since the day Daniel sat next to me in Physics class, I’d been a one-man woman. He’d reached over, tugged a lock of my hair, and asked me to be his study partner and his date to the movies that Friday, all in the same breath.
Unable to speak, I’d simply nodded my head, dazed by his beauty and the situation. No other boy had even so much as looked at me before that fateful science lab. I was a loner with unusual features and a perpetual fuck-off attitude. Taylor was the only person who ever socialized with me, and only because we’d been attached at the hip since kindergarten, when she’d decided I was her best friend.
But Daniel didn’t care about any of that. He’d locked on to me like a heat-seeking missile, not giving a fuck that he was the most popular boy in school and I was less than nobody. He’d simply flashed me that sparkling smile that made all the girls turn into simpering morons, his warm brown eyes almost daring me to fall in love with him.
And I did it. I fell hard for him, and I never looked back. For nearly eight years, I’d felt safe, and loved, and happy, because I had him.
Until sixteen months, twenty-three days, seven hours, and – I checked my watch – thirty-eight minutes ago, when a police officer knocked on my door, gave me a pitying look, and I knew that my life was over.
And no perfectly symmetrical face or leaf-green eyes could change that.
The man standing on my front porch cleared his throat, and I blinked up at him.
“Um, I’m here for Taylor?” he repeated. He looked confused, and he sounded almost like he was trying to convince himself.
“You sure about that?” I challenged, though I could hardly say why I did it, or which answer I wanted to hear. Call it a long-dormant part of myself making a reappearance, if you will. The part that suffered no fools and called everyone out on their bullshit.
Though somehow, I didn’t think this was what Taylor meant when she said she wanted the old Larkin back.
Graham’s eyes met mine, and he looked almost spooked. “Yes,” he replied, sounding not at all sure. He stared at me for a long moment, almost like he was trying to figure something out. Figure me out, maybe.
But then he shook his head and cleared his throat, straightening his broad shoulders and rocking back on his heels. I could practically see the decision settle upon him like armor as he nodded. “Yes. I’m her date.”
I frowned as I opened the door wider. “Figures,” I muttered, feeling dejected.
Because I might not be ready to date this man, or any man, for that matter. I didn’t think I’d ever be ready. But Graham Morris was the first person in a long time to make me feel something. Just the first stirrings of what might, way down the road, turn out to be desire. And I was not at all equipped to deal with that desire, or any other feeling, for that matter. But still, it was something.
And he was Taylor’s date.
I sighed. Seemed I wasn’t going to get that win tonight. Or, most likely, any other night. Ever again.