I nodded as she said good-bye, creating a draft in her wake as she headed out toward the lobby and exit.
I had just settled myself at my desk when my office door opened. I looked up in surprise, my mouth open as I tried to think of an appropriate response between passing out from happiness and pretending to be calm and collected.
“Good morning, Mellie,” Jack said, closing the door behind him with his foot. He held two large coffees from Ruth’s Bakery, one with a tall clear plastic bubble on top to accommodate all of the whipped cream. “I thought you might like some coffee.”
He placed both cups on my desk while he shrugged out of his leather jacket—a gift from me our first Christmas together—before sitting casually in a chair on the other side of my desk.
I quickly closed my mouth, then tried to think of something nonchalant to say without giving away the acceleration of my heart rate or the sudden dryness in my mouth.
“Thank you,” I managed. I picked up my cup and pried off the top, lowering my face to taste the cream if only so I’d stop staring at him like a drowning person might eye a floating stick. When I’d recovered enough of my composure, I straightened and said, “Why are you here?”
He took a sip of his coffee. “Aren’t you meeting with Marc and Rebecca this morning?”
“Yes, but I thought you said you weren’t interested in attending.”
He paused, his eyes drifting to my mouth and making my insides do funny things.
“I did, but then thought better of it. You shouldn’t have to face them on your own. Marc and Rebecca need to see a united front.”
I felt my stomach and heart switch places. “I didn’t think you cared.”
“Of course I care,” he said softly. He leaned back in his chair. “And you have a bad habit of agreeing to things that aren’t in our best interests when left to your own devices.” His gaze remained on my mouth as he lifted his index finger to his lips and wiped at something invisible.
The movement distracted me from absorbing the impact of his words. He flicked at something on his lips again, his gaze moving between my eyes and my mouth. “Mellie,” he said, leaning forward again, his hand outstretched.
Yes, my mind and heart whispered in unison. But, thankfully, not my mouth. Instead, he swiped his finger along the side of my mouth, revealing a glob of whipped cream on the tip of his finger. He immediately wiped it on the napkin wrapped around his cup, erasing the stray thought of me licking it off his finger.
“Oh, thanks,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “For the record, I have never said or done anything with the intent of hurting you.”
“I know. But your intent isn’t the problem. It’s the outcome. You skip right from intent to action without considering the collateral damage. It makes you a very difficult person to be married to and to live with. It’s like I always feel as if I have to sleep with one eye open.”
I heard every word he said, but I couldn’t seem to make them stick together and make sense. Maybe I’d lived alone and independently for too long. I remembered in fifth grade getting a note from my teacher to bring home to my father. Doesn’t play well with others. Maybe that was what Jack meant.
“Is it my labeling gun? I can get rid of it if that would help.”
Jack sighed heavily as he rubbed his hand over the stubble on his chin, the sound of it achingly familiar. “Oh, Mellie . . .”
A sharp rap on the door made him stop. The door opened and Marc and Rebecca stood in the doorway, a flustered Jolly behind them.
“I’m sorry, Melanie—they didn’t want to wait for me to announce them.”
“That’s all right, Jolly . . .” was all I could get out before my words were smothered by Rebecca’s embrace.
My cousin was dressed head to toe in mauve—her new shade to avoid her usual bright pink, which she thought appeared too startling next to Marc’s new hair color—including mauve boots and a matching hair ribbon. The Empire waist of her maternity dress was topped by another mauve bow. Luckily her dog, Pucci, General Lee’s paramour and the mother of Porgy and Bess, wasn’t with her. They usually wore matching outfits and I just didn’t think I could take it this morning.
“How are you?” she said with an exaggerated frown. Simultaneously discovering that she was pregnant and that Marc had a girlfriend hadn’t dimmed her perkiness or her commitment to her marriage. While I might have found that admirable in some people, in this case I found it beyond comprehension.
Jack stood and faced Marc, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Good to see you’re out and about, Matt,” Jack said, deliberately using the wrong name, as he’d been doing since the two adversaries had first met. “Not sure I’m on board with the new hair thing, but we won’t be seeing each other often enough for that to matter.”
This was the first time I’d seen Marc since that night in the cemetery when his hair had inexplicably turned white. Well, maybe not inexplicably. He’d been dragged by unseen hands into a mausoleum, after all. The experience had made him a softer and gentler version of himself, according to Rebecca, but I had a strong suspicion that it wasn’t a permanent transition. The Marc Longo I knew had a piece of coal for a heart and it would take more than a serious fright to turn him into something resembling a human being.
The white hair distracted me for a moment, making me forget that he was about my age and not a feeble old gentleman. He was our enemy, and I had to keep reminding myself that regardless of what he looked like or what Rebecca said about him changing, he was still the same Marc Longo I knew. And that Marc Longo was neither friend nor family.
Marc smirked, although it did seem to have less smarminess than I’d seen in the past. “How’s the writing, Jack?”