Carina wilts. She sits on the floor, on her knees. She can’t bear my words any more than they sear me leaving my mouth. “He doesn’t even know me,” Carina whispers.
“He doesn’t,” I say, holding my hands out to the side and then clasping them over my knees. A clock ticks somewhere in the background, and Poppet approaches Carina on the floor, nudging her head into her hand. “And it’s criminal he doesn’t.”
“I love you so much,” she says. “I always will.”
“I agreed and told him to mind his own business. I wasjoking, of course, and then the mortar careened into the housing trailer,” I say. I lay my head down on my knees. “It was the last thing he said to me. He was my best friend.” Cruel reality seeps in and makes everything inside my body ache. It’s wave after wave of grief and regret. “I promised him.”
“You should go,” Carina says. I hear her quiet footsteps as she crosses to me. I hear her stop the tape recorder. She places a hand on my shoulder. “Promise me something,” she says. This gets my attention. I chance a look up to find her pain-seared face grimacing.
“Anything,” I reply.
She sniffles. She closes her eyes as tears fall gratuitously down her face. “Be happy with her. Truly happy. That’s what he wanted. It wasn’t about honor or morals, Smith. It was about your happiness. Her happiness. I don’t even know him, but I could gather that much from your story. Promise me you’ll be happy with her.”
I want to tell her that I could never be as happy with Megan as I could with her, but I don’t. It seems a moot point in this time and place. It wasn’t a favorite promise, it was about honoring my first promise. My engagement to the woman who first stole my heart. Not the one who holds it now and probably will for the rest of time. “I promise,” I lie.
“As the author of the book about your life, thank you for that. As your former girlfriend, I can’t look at yourface anymore. We’ll be in touch.” She walks to the door and opens it as wide as it will go. Carina still has an ice pack in her hand, and she presses it to the side of her face.
I leave without another word, my hollow promise lingering in the air like a rotting body.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Carina
She called me.I didn’t answer, so Megan left a voicemail.
The boot camp class was practically empty today, and it’s a good thing. I was angry. Angry that when I finally tried to move on and had gone a few minutes without thinking of Smith, her call reminded me of everything I try to forget. I’m fooling myself to think anything will take his memory away. The voicemail she left was vague, only that it was important that we meet up to talk. I text her that she can meet me at a café in Gaslamp in ten. There’s no way she’ll meet me on such short notice. It’s my hope anyway.
The drive to the coffee shop I’ve been writing in is a short distance from the gym and from my house. It just opened back up a couple weeks ago, and it’s always quiet. Most people still stay home as much as possible. Those with full-time jobs have returned to them, and sometimes I forget 9/11 happened. It’s only a brief memory lapse, though. So much has changed.
The way society functions is warped completely, and not for the better. There are metaldetectors everywhere, and there are still checkpoints along freeways and state borders. Airlines are so strict that it’s almost quicker to drive wherever you need to travel. Civilian militias have formed in backwoods communities and even in some large cities.
Our borders have been closed since the attack, and families have been separated all this time. The news still plays constantly, but now stories of Americans trapped in other countries trickle into the mainstream. It’s sad, but it’s reality. The television in the café is playing such a story right now. My phone buzzes when I take a seat by the window. It’s a guy I’ve been seeing, confirming our plans for tonight. It’s the fourth date and he’s expecting to get laid.
My friends approve of him, but it’s not quite right. Nothing will ever be just so, though. Smith ruined that. Our relationship clogs everything.
Taking a sip of my iced black coffee, I open my laptop and start writing an outline for the next chapter I’m working on. It’s a thriller, something completely different. I almost didn’t even want to give my heroine a love interest, but Jaz threatened my life, and when it’s all said and done, she knows what’s going to sell.
A blonde approaches in my peripheral vision, and I know who it is before I glance out the window. She still has the it factor. The thing that draws attention from men and women alike. Men want to love her, and women want to be her.
She sees me and waves. It’s a small gesture thatdoesn’t line up with the scowl on her face. She bypasses the counter and heads straight for my table. “If I thought you would actually show up, I would have changed,” I say, wrinkling my nose. “I came from the gym,” I explain.
Her hair is glossy and has grown back in. Makeup can’t hide her scars or the rough, red, uneven skin, but it’s easy to not notice it. “It’s important.”
I eye her bare ring finger.
“Obviously,” I reply, closing my laptop and folding my arms on top of it. “No coffee. This must be really bad.”
“An attorney called the house attempting to schedule a meeting with Smith about your book,” Megan explains.
I feel her staring at my face as she speaks. I keep my gaze focused out of the window.
“He mentioned that you wouldn’t be at the meeting.”
I nod. “It’s for the best if I’m not there. I’m confused. Why are you upset? We live in the same city, and I’m doing everything I can to avoid Smith…and you.” I contemplated moving away, setting up shop in some Pacific Northwestern town. Somewhere I could wear rain boots every day of the year and drink chai tea and do yoga and sleep outside if I felt like it. A place I could start over away from everything in my past. “I’m not ready to move yet. I will, I think. Eventually.” That way Smith won’t haunt every corner and every single favorite place in this city. Living in the house is bad enough, but Ihaven’t been able to return to Balboa Park either.
Megan untucks her hair from behind her ear so it hides the side of her face. I have to look away. “He says I’m supposed to plan the wedding, Carina. He reassures me a million times a day that he’s excited and can’t wait to get married to me. Every single night he stares at the ceiling, oblivious of everything and anyone around him. It’s not bad memories either. It’s you. You live in my house. You live inside him. It doesn’t matter if I marry him. He’s owned by you.”
My breath hitches. This is unexpected. Smith didn’t count on Megan rebelling away from his master moral plan. “Does he know you’re here?”
