“Great,” he said, “I appreciate it.” And he smiled. That smile ran down Leah’s spine and kicked her square in the butt and took her back what seemed like a lifetime.
She started walking. Michael was right beside her, his hands in his pockets. “You did good today,” he said as they walked toward the commissary, “I had forgotten how athletic you are.”
Ridiculous. He was complimenting her on the tuck and roll. He had obviously forgotten that he once told her that when she jogged, she looked like she was bouncing up and down on a pogo stick. “You’re just saying that because I did it right, and half of them can’t.”
“You’re right,” he said with a laugh. “After yesterday, I was worried about you. That was a pretty spectacular fall.”
It had been a spectacular fall, and Leah couldn’t help but smile a little. “Pretty flashy, huh?”
“Very.”
She smiled a little more.
“It’s great to see you smile. Have I told you how great you look?” he asked, touching the small of her back.
He might as well have burned her—it was an old, familiar gesture, one that used to make her feel so safe and wanted. She had a memory of it raining in New York one night, and Michael hailing a cab. When one pulled up, he put his hand on the small of her back, firmly but gently ushering her into the cab so that she wouldn’t get wet, and him getting soaked in the process.
Now, she moved a little to her right, so that there was some distance between them and looked straight ahead. “I hope they have tuna.”
I hope they have tuna. Sometimes, Leah wondered what alternate universe she was passing through. God, this was a dumb idea. She was already reliving everything in her mind, and they hadn’t even begun to talk. He seemed to sense her reluctance—he had always had a strange way of being able to read what was going on with her—because he said, “I just wanted the chance to explain a couple of things.”
“There’s nothing to explain,” she said instantly. “It was a long time ago. Like I said, water under the bridge. We’ve both moved on, and there really isn’t any point in going back to it now, is there?”
“But there is a point,” he said. “The point is, for better or worse, you don’t know the whole truth about me. You never have.”
Oh, great, here came the grand confession. I was doing an Austrian woman while I was doing you, or, a real gut-kicker, I was going to leave my wife, but she got pregnant. Right, like she hadn’t thought of those possibilities a million times over. Why were men so dumb? “Really, Michael, I don’t need to know the truth,” she said as they reached the commissary.
“But I need to tell you.”
“Okay,” Leah said, sighing. “But I’ve probably surmised more than you think, and I already know the truth, but I really don’t feel the need to know any more,” she said, as Michael got them trays and put one in front of her. She could feel his body at her back. It felt familiar. And so good. And she hated him for it.
He leaned into her, close enough she could smell his cologne and said, “But you don’t know the truth. You couldn’t possibly know the truth.” They moved in line behind an actor dressed like a street bum, and Michael straightened up. “What are you having?”
Oh, right, like she could eat now. She chose a tuna sandwich, but had no appetite for it. What did he think she could possibly not know? She’d known where he worked, what he did for a living. What else was there?
“There’s a table over there,” Michael said, nodding toward the back of the tent. He led the way, as far away from the other soccer moms and actors and everyone else as he could get. He put his tray down and held out a chair for her. “You don’t have to do that,” she said, but put her tray down, taking the seat he offered, sliding past him, her body brushing against his clothes and feeling that odd jolt of awareness.
He sat across from her, poured some salad dressing on the salad he’d picked up, and forked a mouthful.
Leah, on the other hand, could only sit there looking at him, gripping her sandwich in two hands. After a moment of watching him eat, she put the sandwich down. “Okay, the suspense is killing me,” she said, trying to make light of it. “Tell me what I don’t know. No, wait,” she said, holding up a hand. “Let me start. What I know is that you were not ready to commit. So I guess the only question is why you didn’t want to commit to me, and I think we both know it was another woman, but hey, whatever. It’s over and done with.”
He looked up from his plate, his brown eyes wide. “What?” he asked, incredulous. “You think there was another woman?”
Leah snorted. “Well, it’s better than another man,” she said, and picked up her tuna and took an enormous bite of it. “That would have really bugged me.”