Page 72 of My Sweetest Agony

“I may have…climbed him like a tree, gotten off on his hand, and made him come in his jeans.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

This time, her screech carries through the greenhouse, and I quickly whirl to check on the customers. Several sets of eyes below raised brows land on us in the corner.

I plaster on a smile and wave. “Do you need help with anything?” They quickly return to whatever they were looking at, and I whirl to face Marlo again. “Will you keep it down?”

She places a hand over her chest, like she’s trying to regain control of her breathing. “I’m sorry. I’m just a little shocked here. I mean, whoa.” Her wide-eyed gaze locks on mine. “I. Mean. Whoa!”

“I know.”

Whoa.

It’s somehow the right word and the wrong one at the same time.

Because it was so much more than just whoa.

It was somehow the single moment in my life when something felt completely right and completely wrong equally.

Marlo rolls her hand in front of her, urging me to keep going. “So, what happened after?”

I cringe again, because the after was sheer agony. “We both cried, and I ended up falling asleep on him on the couch.”

Her shoulders slump. “Well…that’s depressing.”

A resigned sigh falls from my lips. “No shit.”

“What about when you woke up?”

Lifting my head from the throw pillow to find myself alone in the house and that note on the table isn’t an experience I ever want to repeat. It felt like that gaping hole in my chest was ripped wider, like I had lost something else, even though it was never really mine to begin with. Something I never should have craved or touched.

“He was gone.” I reach into my apron pocket and pull out the tiny piece of paper. “But he left a note.”

She snatches it from my hands and examines it. “You’ve been carrying this around with you?”

I nod and try not to look at the two words scrawled across it.

I’m sorry.

But I don’t need to be looking at it now to see it in my head.

It’s seared into my mind, embedded so deeply that I won’t ever forget it.

“Wow.” Marlo leans against one of the counters, waving the note back and forth in her hand. “This is heavy, Ivy. Like, heavy heavy.”

“I know.” I tug at my loose hair, practically ripping it out at the root with the need to feel something right now besides this spiraling confusion. “I don’t know what to do…”

“Has he been back since then?”

I shake my head. “No, but there’s been a food delivery at six thirty on the dot every night.”

“He’s still sending you dinner?” She practically swoons, pressing the note over her heart. “My God, Ivy. What have you gotten yourself into?”

“It’s bad, right?”

Marlo tries to offer what I think is supposed to be a reassuring smile but comes across as more of a wince. “I wouldn’t say bad but…complicated?”

Complicated.