Page 37 of Love Walked In

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Leo

“Here we are,” Becca said with false cheer as Paul and Mari walked out onto the wet grass.

I rubbed my neck, feeling like there was a blade hovering over it. “Here we are.”

“How have you been?” she asked. “Vinay said at dinner last week that he’d seen you.”

“I think you know the answer, then,” I snapped, throwing up a wall as quick as I could against the hurt that had surged up.

She’d been my best friend, and losing her had been the beginning of the rock bottom of my life.

Just under two years ago I’d been staring at spreadsheets, trying to make the numbers add up with the Covent Garden branch and the main shop, when she’d whispered, then said, then yelled my name.

When I finally looked up and snapped, “What?” she’d burst into tears and told me she wanted a divorce.

We hadn’t been to bed together in months, and dinner conversation had been reduced to platitudes and politeness.

But she’d met someone else, this big man with his ridiculous dog and easy smile, she loved him to distraction, and it made her realize everything we’d been missing.

Everything I hadn’t been able to give her.

It felt like the universe had grabbed my hair and insisted on rubbing my face in every way that I was a failure.

“You told me you would be all right,” she said now, accusingly. “That this was what you wanted.”

“It was . I’m fine,” I said through gritted teeth. No wonder Mari said it so often. “Fine” was easy, a quick plaster over any hurt.

Becca threw up her hands. “Then why the fuck don’t you reply to my messages?”

I gawped at her. The Becca I’d known wouldn’t have been that direct in a thousand years. Wouldn’t have said “fuck,” either.

She waved her hand at me. “Oh, don’t be like that. I didn’t break your heart. You loved me, of course you did, as your friend . But you wanted more because Alexander thought it was a good idea, not because you were really attracted to me. Tell me I’m wrong.”

The blunt shock of her words surged through me.

“I can’t,” I finally answered, the last wall of defense coming down under her sledgehammer.

What had been between us wasn’t great passion, or love for the ages.

It was something easy, comfortable, familiar.

That same warmth that I’d seen between Graham and Mari, that was Becca and me.

But we’d been too young to keep it that way, I’d been too young not to listen to Alexander’s prodding, and I’d ruined everything.

“You didn’t ruin anything,” Becca said adamantly, and I blinked, not realizing that I’d spoken those last words aloud.

“Or at least, we ruined it together, because we weren’t brave enough to talk about what was happening in bed.

” She took a step closer. “But Leo, that’s the past. It’s done .

We’re here now.” Her face softened. “And I missed my friend. I miss you so much.”

I stared at her, the wild swirl of emotions suddenly freezing to make a clear picture.

Becca was as beautiful as ever, but I realized with a jolt that my pleasure in looking at her was fundamentally an aesthetic one.

I appreciated how the curve of her jaw became the point of her chin, but I didn’t have any urge to run my fingers along it.

The line of her neck was elegant, but it didn’t feel like it was made for me to kiss.

Her body had never called to mine the way Mari’s did.

All at once, I let myself remember wild races down Parliament Hill, eating enormous cones of gelato from our favorite shop in Kentish Town, even just sitting at the kitchen table while she helped me with my maths homework.

She reminded me that I’d been light once, carefree.

Maybe I could be again, if I let her back in.

“Hi, mate,” I finally said, and a little part of me relaxed that I hadn’t realized was tense.

Becca’s smile lit up her face. “Hi, pal,” she said back.

Together, without speaking, we turned and slowly followed Paul and Mari and the dog. The monstrous animal was capering, waiting for Mari to chuck his tennis ball across the grass.

“Are you two living near the Fields, then? We’ve not seen you around before,” Becca said, watching Mari.

I shook my head. “Oh, no. I’m still in Hampstead with my parents and the twins, and Mari’s living over the shop while she’s here for a few months.”

She started. “In that old garret we used to play in? She must be freezing.”

I snorted. “She almost did.” I told her the story of Mari falling ill right after she got to England.

Becca listened closely, the way she always had.

“She makes you happy, I can tell,” she finally said with a laugh.

“Of course you’d fall for a really stubborn woman.

You’re so intent on looking after everyone all the time and someone refusing would drive you around the bend. But I’m glad you’ve found her.”

I resisted the urge to touch the smile on my lips and shook my head instead. “It’s not a long-term thing. She’s going home to California in April, and she’s not all lovey-dovey, anyway.” I hadn’t meant to say the last part, but Becca’s innocent face had always been truth serum.

She gasped and clapped her hands. “Not lovey-dovey? Leo Ross, are you just shagging her?”

My blush must have been the color of strawberries from how strong it was. “Yes.”

“A regular Don Juan, you are,” Becca said, resting her hand on her chest, as fake-scandalized as a Victorian matron. “I’m utterly shocked. Tell me everything.”

I snorted. “Not a chance.”

Becca was quiet for a moment, and I realized she was watching Mari, who was playing tug-of-war with the dog, her giggles filling the air as she struggled to keep her feet.

My ex raised an elegant brown eyebrow at me. “I’m not sure she isn’t. Lovey-dovey, I mean. She’s certainly a dog person, but luring Paul away so you and I could talk shows that she reads you. And one person can’t read the other unless they’re really paying attention.”

I thought of how concentrated Mari and I were on each other when we were in bed, how she’d treated my body like a book where she wanted to memorize every page.

I’d tried to have a one-night stand a few months after Becca left me, but the woman’s touch, her kiss, it had felt all wrong.

That was when I discovered that I wasn’t capable of having sex for sex’s sake.

I had to make love with a person. Someone I knew.

I was getting to know Mari, falling for her more and more with every detail I learned… and I was utterly, utterly fucked. “Don’t get me wrong, we like each other a lot. But it’s temporary,” I lied through my teeth, keeping the despair out of my voice.

Becca stopped in the middle of the path. “Why do you keep hurting yourself?”

“I don’t,” I responded instinctively.

“You do .”

“I don’t .”

“Well, if you’re going to be eight years old about it.”

I shoved my fingers into my graying hair, which no eight-year-old would have.

“I’m sorry, Bex, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.

I’m getting my end away with a pretty woman who doesn’t demand anything else from me.

” Though I wanted her to demand things from me.

I would enjoy giving her every single one.

“I don’t just mean Mari, you git. I mean your family, and the shop, too. You don’t know how to make yourself happy. You don’t know how to ask for what you want, or even need.”

“This is just what I have to do!” I said, the truth like a cry of pain. “Alexander’s gone, Dad doesn’t want anything to do with the place, and Judith’s arthritis isn’t going to get any better. It has to be me.”

She took a deep breath. “I know. I’m sorry.” More gently, she said, “But what about before?”

Before. I closed my eyes, remembered our silences and sadnesses. How when we were married, we’d added up to less than the sum of our parts, how the bed we’d shared might as well have been Antarctica for all the coldness and distance.

A small hand rested on my forearm. “Look,” Becca said, “it wasn’t all your fault. I could have spoken up. But we were just children. Barely out of uni, knew absolutely nothing about the world, had been in each other’s pockets since before we could remember.”

“I made you unhappy.” I put layers of meaning into the word, hoping she’d heard them.

She raised her eyebrows. “We made each other unhappy. Your happiness matters, Leo, no matter what Alexander told you.” Her face softened. “I forgave you ages ago. Why don’t you forgive me, and forgive yourself?”

For a moment, I was lost. I’d been handed a deck of cards and told to build a house on a slippery wooden table. The uncertainty of it, the precariousness.

But the past had been certain—certain and shit . I needed to live in the present, to let myself feel the weak sunshine on my face, hear Mari’s excited laugh at the dog’s antics. “I’ll try,” I sighed.

“That’s all I can ask for, I suppose.” She nudged me lightly. “She’s sexy, you know, with all that gorgeous chestnut hair and those curves. Reminds me of those paintings you used to stare at at the National.”

I immediately thought of Rubens’s women, soft and voluptuous and utterly unselfconscious.

“Let yourself be happy, Leo.” Becca reached up and patted my shoulder. “Speaking of happiness, I’d like to see you more. Get to know each other again, as grown-ups this time.”

My life was far too complicated, but maybe this one thing, right now, could be simple. “I’d like that, too.”

We walked over to Paul and Mari and the big shambling dog, who was panting and staring at Mari in adoration, not that I could blame him.

Her cheeks were flushed with exertion, and I wanted to tug her to me and kiss them.

But I knew I needed to explain myself first. Becca and I exchanged another round of hugs, her informing me that I was going to answer her texts on pain of dismemberment, and she and Paul ambled off.

“All good?” Mari asked beside me. “That looked intense.”

“It was. But it was a conversation we needed to have.” My nervous fingers found the back of my neck. “I didn’t mean to spring her on you like that.”

Mari hesitated. “I knew about you guys already.”

I blinked. “You did?”

She bit her lip, cast her eyes down. “Graham told me, when we came in the first morning looking well-fucked.”

My open palm found my forehead. “Fuck. I should have been the one to tell you. I’m sorry.”

She shrugged, her expression easy in a way I knew not to trust. “It’s OK. We can’t have that kind of relationship.”

I stepped back, the words a swift slap of reality. “We can’t?”

“No. This,” she said, gesturing back and forth between us, “needs to be all present tense. The past, the future, they can’t matter here.

” She shoved her hands in her pockets. When we’d first met, I’d thought it was her showing how at ease she was, how carefree.

But now I knew that if she acted like she didn’t care, she couldn’t be hurt.

“But I want you to know me, Mari. The same way I want to know you.” For a wild moment, I thought how easy it would be to say “love” instead of “know,” because to me they were so close together.

The way she liked her coffee, the sweet spot on her shoulder that made her tip her head to the side, how she got so lost while reading that I had to say her name ten times to get her attention.

I hoarded all these pieces of knowledge, took them out and studied them in the middle of the night while Mari slept next to me.

She shook her head now. “But the more we know about each other, the harder it’ll be to end it, right? As long as your secrets won’t make what we’re doing unsafe, I’m OK with you not telling me everything.”

The rejection was a punch in the stomach, but it suddenly transformed into fear. Had she somehow overheard what Vinay and I had been discussing? No, she couldn’t possibly. “What would count as an unsafe secret?” I finally asked, my voice tight.

I died by inches as she thought for several seconds. “Either of us being physical with someone else, since we’ve agreed to be exclusive until I leave.”

“Right,” I exhaled. I ignored the green-eyed monster inside me that roared at the thought of Mari in someone else’s bed. Because she would be, soon enough. “Anything else?”

She examined my face for a long moment. “No. Nothing else.” Then she tugged on my fingers, a little smile curling her lips again. “Can we go get cozy now?”

“Of course we can.” Back to our warm little sex haven. Back to the place where I could pretend I had everything I wanted, that I wasn’t starving for more from her. “I only want you,” I told her, the smallest fragment of my whole truth.

She bit her lip, then nodded. “Ditto,” she said softly, and I pressed a kiss to her cold cheek, ignoring the shiver it sent through me.