He grabbed air, and caught himself just before he toppled from the sofa onto the floor.
He went motionless, surprised. And then he groaned and flung an arm over his eyes as memory and awareness sifted in.
It was the day after a major skirmish and smoke was still rising from the battlefield.
He kicked off the sheet he’d dragged over his body, then swiftly, sloppily folded it up, and padded into the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee. He wanted to get out of here before Rebecca woke up. His body, fit though it was, thought he was nuts to be spending more than one night on his hastily purchased Home Depot sofa, and he stretched and his spine cracked.
He paused to peek in on her, because she’d left the bedroom door ajar. He knew that was an invitation but he quite simply didn’t care. She was sleeping like she always had, with her long limbs flung out like an invasive kudzu vine, trying to grab all she could even in sleep. She was wearing an eye mask, even though it was black dark at night here in the woods. She’d taken the liberty of stripping off his pillowcase and replacing it with a silk one to protect her famous head of hair, lest a single one of the strands break. She had a shampoo contract now, too.
J. T. knew aaaaaaall too well the staggering minutiae that went into maintaining Rebecca Corday. He knew a twinge of sympathy. But that was her trip, not his.
He closed his eyes as if he could make her vanish that way.
Opened them again and damn it, there she was.
He backed away and reflexively reached down to pet Phillip. But he wasn’t at Britt’s house, which was where Phillip was.
And a fresh tide of fury and regret and disbelief washed in. He didn’t want to text Rebecca and run the risk of waking her up. He scrawled a note on the back of the pizza receipt and affixed it to the refrigerator with the bottle-opener magnet.
I have a meeting with the location manager forThe Rush. Back before noon.
And he bolted from the house. Getting back to work was what he needed, because he needed to do something he was good at, and relationships clearly weren’t it.
Two days without sleep combined with righteous indignation and savage hurt paradoxically made Britt feel almost euphoric. It was like anesthesia. Or maybe one of those drugs people took at raves to make themselves really happy and affectionate and carefree.
Not that she’d ever taken one. She’d only heard. Probably Greta over at the New Age store would know.
She breezed into work only a few minutes late and seized her order pad, and Sherrie swooped her into a bosomy hug before Britt could back out of it. She squeezed her for a time while Britt endured it stoically.
Glenn and Giorgio were behind the grill watching this carefully.
“Oh, honey. You look like you didn’t sleep at all, and not in a good way. How did your conversation with J. T. go?”
“Oh, that? Him? Yeah, we decided it’s over,” she said brightly.
A look of alarm ping-ponged between Sherrie and Glenn.
There was a cautious pause. “Are you sure you’re fit for work? You look a little...”
She really must look terrible. It wasveryunlike Sherrie to be diplomatic.
“I’m fine. I mean, the thing reached its natural conclusion. We talked about it. It was just one of those things.” She gave a great shrug with one shoulder. “We had fun, it’s done. Ha ha! Thattotallyrhymed.”
Three parallel lines of concern etched themselves deeply into Sherrie’s forehead. “You are abadliar. Have you looked in a mirror today? Did you sleep atalllast night?”
Britt laughed merrily, and a little too loudly. “I can’t remember, but I’m fine, honestly. I have my health. I have my friends. I really don’t care what he does or who he does it with or where he does it or what he... yeah.”
She’d lost track of her prepositions. And the question. And the sentence.
Shemightactually be a little bit tired.
“Hmm. Where is Rebecca Corday?” Sherrie asked carefully.
“At his house. And on a billboard out on the highway. She took great pains to tell me that, too. ”
Sherrie hissed in a long breath as if someone had stepped hard on a sore toe.
And Britt needed to pivot away from that expression of sympathy lest it cut her in two.