20
SHARI HAD NEVER BEEN soangry in her life. The worst thing emotionally she’d ever dealt with before this was when B.J. stole her boyfriend and she went around baring her misery for all to see. Next to Luke’s betrayal, the B.J. caper was a minorfelony.
In variations of pain, losing Randy was a hangnail compared to this feeling that her heart had shattered into jagged shards, each one scraping and slicing at her tenderinnards.
Groaning at her own hyperbole, she decided she was in a lot ofpain.
Even though her health improved, her energy level hadn’t pick up. At least she’d grown up enough to not broadcast her pain to all and sundry. They probably put her heavy red eyes and lack of energy down to her recent bout with the flu. Only Therese knew thetruth.
She dragged herself home Friday and, just remembering how she and Luke had spent every Friday since the day the book fell out of the envelope, had her alternately blushing with embarrassment and fuming withoutrage.
She ought to go out, but she didn’t want to go out. She could manage to fake it through the day, but socializing with adults would be toopainful.
Therese had invitedher to go along with her and her new “friend” Brad to a movie, but Shari couldn’t imagine anything more depressing than being caught in the middle of that blossoming romance. It was the only bright spot in her miserable existence. Brad had embraced her suggestion that he only try to be friends with Therese. Now Therese was complaining that she couldn’t seem to seducehim.
Shari thought it was great that they were getting to know each other again before jumping into bed, and if she weren’t so miserable she’d be secretly smiling at how eager Therese was to get back to intimacy with that Olympic-gold-medaltongue.
But then she’d recall her own recent experience with superb sex and cringed withhumiliation.
No. She was better off alone. She might as well get used to it, she thought dismally. She should probably think about getting a cat so she’d have something warm to cuddle up to now that she’d sworn offmen.
She got home and checked her answering machine. Nomessages.
Fine. It was a good thing Luke hadn’t left a message. He’d understood that her goodbye was final. Still, the fact that he’d done no groveling at all, and hadn’t once left a message or tried to contact her in two days only proved she was right and he hadn’t loved her atall.
She hoped his book was keeping him warm at nights. Or perhaps he already had a new woman on his hook. Teaching him to be a better lover.Ha!
She tossed her bag onto the couch with all her strength and opened the freezer. All those neat little single-girl packets of frozen home-cooked food depressed her somehow. She wasn’t hungryanyway.
She thought about watching a movie on Netflix. But what was the point? She’d choose a chick flick that ended up at happily-ever-after and she’d spend a sleepless night rewriting the ending in her head, killing off the movie starhero.
Perhaps she’d watch a war movie…where a lot of men died in the end. She’d grab dinner out somewhere. Sitting alone on a Friday was nothealthy.
She grabbed her bag and headed for the door. She’d already opened it and was in the hallway when she noticed Luke standingthere.
Damn her rotten timing. If she’d waited, he’d have knocked and she could have squinted at him through the peephole then ignoredhim.
Why did it have to hurt so much to see him? And why did she want to throw herself into his arms at the same time she wanted to knee him hard in thegroin?
“Hi,” hesaid.
“I’m on my way out.” She pulled herself up to her full five feet seven inches and glared down her nose athim.
“I brought you somemail.”
He held out a sheaf of papers, and she took them automatically, too busy trying not to notice how painful it was to look at him to spare any attention for the mail. He looked tired and his eyes were bloodshot, as though he hadn’t been sleeping well. Good. Neither hadshe.
When her fingers encountered papers, she glanced down, not sure what she was lookingat.
Puzzlement pulled her brows together.“What isthis?”
“It’sPrisons of the Mind.I changed theending.”
They’d argued heatedly one night over Luke’s insistence that Jenkins and the psychiatrist couldn’t end up together. It wouldn’t be realistic, he’d said, and she remembered feeling it was somehow vital to make him understand that love was the one thing that could cure Jenkins. She’d been able to see that, and she figured that psychiatrist was smart enough to see it, too. But Luke wouldn’t haveit.
“Why did you changeit?”
Luke glanced up and down the corridor and asked if they could discuss itinside.
