“I…” I swallow hard. “She was snooping in your business. Taking pictures, I think. I wanted to see her phone.”
“So you jump in front of a moving car?” he shouts. I’ve never seen him this angry. I’ve never seen anyone as angry as he is right now. “What the actual fuck?”
“I’m sorry,” I say immediately. Because that’s what you say to someone who looks like he’s about to lift the parked Audi beside him and hurl it across the road.
“You’re sorry,” he snarls. “You’d be even sorrier if that cab’s brake pads were any worse off than they were.”
“Calm down!” I squeak. I’m already shaking. I don’t need my boyfriend yelling at me in front of the team.
Leo Trevi speaks from somewhere behind me. “Take a breath, Jason. It’s okay now.”
It’s not, though. Nothing is okay. There’s a vein bulging in Jason’s neck. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” I try. “I know you have some bad memories…” My brain is finally catching up with the situation, but there is a giant lump in my throat as I try to make myself clear. “I know you said yes to that meeting. But you didn’t tell me about it.”
“So fucking what?” he snaps. “Don’t change the subject.”
“I’m not,” I insist. “You’re freaked out. I’m sorry. But you’re taking it out on me.”
“Bullshit!”
“No, you are.” This isn’t a great conversation to have on the sidewalk, but he isn’t giving me a choice. “We’re a thing, with no definitions, right? I didn’t mind before. Except now I do. Because a thing is apparently not the kind of relationship where you tell me when you’re upset. A thing means I’m only allowed to guess and try to wait you out and not feel bad.”
“You are way off topic.” His eyes are full of thunder.
“I’m not,” I insist. “And just now I was trying to stop Miranda from writing about you. Because someone has to. You’re welcome. I care about you, even if you’re a mess and you won’t admit it.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Is it? Were you ever going to tell me about that meeting? Did you think I wouldn’t care?”
He shrugs. That’s all I get. A shrug. That’s the gesture of a man who doesn’t care. So it’s time I read the handwriting on the wall. He’s still a sad Romeo who’s in love with his Juliet. And no amount of wishing is going to untie that knot.
“Well,” I choke out. “I guess we just found the limits of our ‘thing.’”
“I guess we did,” he agrees.
The words are a cruel blade slicing through me. But I’m standing in the cold, with half the Bruisers looking on in sympathy. “I see,” I say stiffly. “Good to know. I think you need some space, then. Correct me if I’m wrong.”
“Sounds okay to me,” he grinds out.
“Castro, you idiot,” Silas whispers from a few feet away.
My eyes get hot and my throat is scratchy. I’m not a crier, though. I take a deep breath through my nose and lift my chin. I turn my back to Jason and to the four or five teammates standing there gawking at me.
Georgia is jogging toward me and the group. “Are we going to lunch? Did something happen?”
Why yes it did. My heart got shredded right here on Hudson Street at the corner of York.
Nobody says anything for a beat. And then Georgia’s husband Leo speaks up. “We’re, uh, gonna need to drag Jason off and calm him down. Maybe you and Heidi should have lunch without us.”
Georgia blinks. “Um, okay?”
“I need to talk to you, anyway,” I say, finding my voice. “There was an incident in your office.”
Her eyes widen. “Let’s go. I know just the place.” She hooks her arm in mine and gently leads me down the sidewalk.
Georgia is a very smart woman. A genius, probably. “You should apply for Mensa,” I say, leaning back in the massage chair while someone else rubs lotion into my bare feet. If anything can calm me down, it’s a pedicure.
She smiles from the chair beside me. “Happy to help out. Becca and I get lunchtime pedicures whenever we need a break from the office. None of the men ever come in here, obviously. It’s the only place we ever felt we could talk freely.”
“I don’t know if I want to talk freely,” I grumble. “I don’t have anything nice to say.”
“Ladies!” I look up to see Rebecca hurrying towards us. “What did I miss?” She tosses her jacket onto the last pedicure chair.
“Heidi chased down a journalist who was snooping in my office. And then there was a close call with a taxi making a U-turn,” Georgia says. “Poor Jason has car-accident PTSD and lost his shit. The boys dragged him off to calm him down. Hopefully not with liquor because it’s game night.”
Rebecca blinks. “How close a call?”
“Not that close,” I say. “It probably looked bad, though. And I’m sympathetic to everything that’s going on inside his head. But he won’t talk to me.” Instead, he cut me loose in front of his friends.
That hurt so much.
“Men,” Georgia says, shaking her head. “Leo is not a sharer, either. The bro code pretty much says that you shouldn’t express your feelings.”
“They’re not all bad,” Becca chimes in. “Nate is pretty good at sharing.”
“Really?” Georgia says, shaking a nail polish bottle. “It took that man five years to tell you he loves you.”
“Fine,” she says, and I smile. “But he’s good at it now.”
“So they’re educable,” Georgia agrees. “But you have to be strict with them.”
I try that idea on, and I’m not sure it has merit. Jason either loves me and he needs space to grieve, or he doesn’t love me at all. Either way, I can’t make him share himself, even if he needs to. This morning he bought me some beautiful flowers. I would rather have had two minutes of real talk instead.
“Jason has been through a lot,” Becca says. “He can still recite every word of Romeo and Juliet. One drunken night he told me that he rereads it every year so that he won’t forget. It’s his last connection to her.”
Ouch. I care too much about a man who’s still grieving. It’s nobody’s fault, but it still hurts.
“This is the first time he’s dated anyone,” Georgia says carefully. “He’s come a long way.”
“I know,” I admit. “But maybe he’s come as far as he can.”
They’re nice enough not to agree with me out loud. Instead, Becca reaches past me and grabs the bottle of nail polish out of Georgia’s hand. “Pink again?”
Georgia grabs it back. “I like pink. If you want to experiment on somebody, torture Heidi.”
“Nobody torture Heidi,” I complain. “Like this day isn’t long enough. I have to skate with the Ice Girls tonight, too.”
“No you don’t,” Rebecca says. “You’ve done enough time. I thought you said you were done?”
“I am. And I have one last recording for you. But I still have to show up tonight and skate with the girls. If I don’t show, there won’t be enough people. And Randy will be extra horrible and yell more often.”
“You’re a good person, Heidi Jo,” Becca says.
I’m not feeling like one right now. “I could also use the paycheck.” I need a place of my own, even if it’s terrible. Which reminds me that I have a burning question. “Rebecca?”
“Yes?” She adjusts her massage chair and leans back into its robotic embrace.
“Why does the temp have a Katt phone and photos on her desk? She looks awfully cozy in my chair.”
Rebecca’s eyes fly open. “I hired her permanently.”
“Oh,” I say softly as all my hope drains away.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. It’s not the only job in the organization, Heidi Jo. There are other possibilities…”
“I understand,” I say. Because I really do. Becca is running a business, and that’s hard. I know because I’m running one myself. But it’s occurring to me that I might soon leave the Bruisers with nothing—no job. No boyfriend. I put my whole heart into everything I do.
Sometimes the universe just doesn’t care, though. You can make a wish list as long as you like. And come away with nothing.
I want to bawl, I really do. But not in front of Rebecca.
She reaches over and squeezes my hand. “I know you’re hurting. Have a little patience. Just a little, okay?”