Page 8 of Stay Away from Him

Melissa might have left things like that with Thomas forever—might have left him waiting —had not the very next day, a Monday, been so absolutely terrible, making the prior evening’s flirtations take on an idealized glow, seeming a fairy tale in retrospect.

A storybook place Melissa felt desperate to get back to.

There was, to begin with, Bradley’s first day at a summer daycare whose tuition Melissa couldn’t afford—except you had to spend money to make money, and if Melissa was going to find a job and start paying down all her legal debt from the divorce, she needed to get her son in some childcare first, bridging the gap to kindergarten in the fall.

Bradley was an anxious kid, didn’t like new situations, and as Melissa had feared, he cried and clung to her legs at drop-off.

The staff had to pull him away from her, and then he screamed as she walked away, practically crying herself.

After that, she botched a job interview that Lawrence had helped her set up, a bookkeeping job at a carpeting installation company.

The owner interviewed her, fat and imperious behind his desk in a shabby, cluttered office, and when he demanded to know why she hadn’t had a job in a while, she somehow ended up telling him the whole sordid story: bad marriage, motherhood, expensive divorce.

At the end of it, the man smirked, sat back, and asked her why she wanted this job.

Melissa hated him, knew that he was the kind of boss who belittled his employees, that if she ended up sitting with him in this cramped office, he’d spend the days sniffing around her, finding excuses to put his sweaty hands on her shoulders, her neck, the small of her back.

Before she could stop herself, she blurted out the truth.

“I don’t want it. I need it.”

***

And so, when Melissa unexpectedly ran into Thomas, she experienced the sight of his face as a welcome relief.

She’d come into a coffee shop and ordered the sweetest thing on the menu, an absurd concoction of coffee and milk and caramel, whipped cream and sprinkles, hoping the bomb of sugar on her tongue would somehow erase the events of the morning.

The barista shouted her name when she slid the drink across the counter, and it was as Melissa grabbed it that Thomas came up behind her.

“Melissa?”

She turned, and there he was.

“I thought that was you!” he said, gripping her by both elbows in a sort of half-hug. His blue eyes sparkled, an ice-white smile breaking across his face and dimpling his lightly tanned cheeks.

Melissa was so happy to see Thomas that she found herself wanting to fall against his chest, to close the small remaining space between them and let herself be enveloped by his sinewy arms. All that held her back was the hot cup in her hands, the fear of spilling it.

But not any fear of Thomas , she was surprised to realize—no fear of the things she now knew about him, the things he’d been accused of having done.

The events of the morning had brought her face-to-face with the realities of being divorced, of being single, of being alone: the thousand small humiliations and indignities of protecting and providing for her son without anyone to help her.

No one strong and soft and kind to stand beside her through it, to comfort her in the face of it.

That was precisely what Thomas seemed to be, just then, and in that moment she forgot every reason she had not to want him.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” she blurted, which seemed, as she said it, a colossally dumb thing to say in a way she couldn’t quite pinpoint. “I’m a mess.”

Thomas squinted at her, cocking his head in what looked like genuine confusion. “What are you talking about? You look lovely. Why so dressed up?”

“Oh,” she said, looking down at her interview outfit, a tight black pencil skirt and high heels. “I had a job interview.”

“How did it go?”

“Pretty terrible,” she admitted.

“Oh, no. I’m sorry to hear that. I’m sure it went better than you think.”

“I doubt it,” Melissa said.

At her back, the barista shouted out another name, and an annoyed-looking guy in a baseball cap squeezed by Thomas and Melissa to get his drink.

“Hey, would you like to sit with us?” Thomas asked.

“Us?”

Thomas extended a hand toward a table in the corner, where a woman raised her hand and waggled her fingers in an awkward, unsmiling wave. It took Melissa a beat to recognize her from the night before.

“You remember Amelia, right?” Thomas asked.

Melissa followed Thomas to the table. “Amelia. Of course. You were sitting next to us at dinner.”

Amelia gave a thin smile. She sat on the other side of the table on a pale wooden bench, which ran across the length of the wall.

She’d draped an arm on the back of the bench and sat with one leg folded casually across the other.

On the table in front of her was a ceramic cup with the foamy remnants of a cappuccino clinging to the sides.

Melissa took the moment to examine Amelia more closely than she could the night before, in the haze of candlelight and wine.

She was red-haired; fair-skinned; a dotting of freckles scattered across her nose and the delicate skin of her upper chest, bare above the low V of a tight-fitting black shirt with long sleeves.

She took her hand off the back of the bench and reached across the table. “It’s good to see you again. Melissa, right?”

Melissa nodded and clasped her hand, feeling intimidated. Amelia was classy, put together, with a vague air of aloofness about her. Melissa couldn’t tell, but she thought Amelia might dislike her a little.

Thomas pulled out a chair for Melissa, then brought another to the table.

“I’m not always so good with names,” Amelia said, a small smirk coming to her face. “But I remember yours because you were the talk of the party last night.”

“Lawrence and Toby’s gorgeous tenant,” Thomas added, then nudged Melissa’s knee with his under the table. “Didn’t I tell you?”

“Lies,” Melissa said. “Stop flattering me.”

“He’s not lying,” Amelia said. “That’s what people were saying.

But then, this is a small neighborhood. We’re hard up for gossip.

Last night, the talk was about you and Thomas, actually.

Practically sitting in each other’s laps down there at the end of the table.

People asked me about it, you know. After you both disappeared downstairs.

” She raised a hand, palm forward in the air like she was taking an oath, closed her eyes, feigning innocent ignorance.

“I told them I didn’t know anything about it. ”

Heat rose to Melissa’s cheeks, but Thomas laughed a booming laugh that filled the coffee shop.

“You jealous, Amelia?”

Amelia only shrugged, giving him a thin and opaque smile, and for a second Melissa thought she might be jealous—that that was where the cold vibe Melissa sensed was coming from.

And actually, Melissa might have been feeling a little tug of jealousy too, as she thought of what was happening here, the scene she’d come upon.

Thomas, the man she met last night, the man she’d given her number to—albeit reluctantly, and later regretfully—out for coffee with a beautiful woman.

A woman wearing a skintight shirt and showing more than a bit of cleavage as she leaned over her empty cappuccino cup and half-eaten pastry, her arm lying on the table and extended toward Thomas like an invitation.

There seemed to be something between them, some friction, some heat, and Melissa would have bet every last penny she had to her name that these two had history .

“Amelia and I have known each other since college,” Thomas said, seeming to read her mind. “We’ve stayed friends since then. She’s my next-door neighbor. We do coffee once a week.”

“Every Monday,” Amelia said. There was the hint of a brag in her tone, of possessiveness, like she was making a point of communicating how much better she knew Thomas than Melissa did. How much more claim she had to him.

Thomas glanced at his watch. “I need to go, actually. I’m needed at the clinic.”

“Saving lives,” Amelia said.

“Hardly,” Thomas said. “It’s mostly bonked heads and strep tests.” He turned to Melissa. “We’ll talk soon about that date?”

Melissa hesitated. She thought it was a little unfair of Thomas to put her on the spot like that, especially after she had asked for more time the night before.

At the moment, though, she was struggling to recall why she was hesitant to say yes to him in the first place.

Struggling to recall everything Lawrence had told her: the dead wife, the murder case, the rumors, the news stories.

None of that seemed real. Thomas couldn’t possibly be a killer. Not the man sitting before her.

“I’d have to get a sitter for Bradley,” Melissa said, deflecting. “I don’t know anyone in town yet.”

“Make Lawrence do it!” Thomas said, then snapped his fingers, getting an idea. “Or my girls! They’re responsible, I promise. It would be perfect.”

Melissa let out a laugh, delighted at his eagerness. “We’ll talk. You go to work.”

Thomas glanced at Amelia, then back to Melissa. “You two will be okay alone?”

“We’re big girls,” Amelia said with a trace of sarcasm in her voice. “I think we can handle ourselves.”