Still The One

“Underpants,” she mumbled, her voice wobbly. “How dumb.” Stupid to make everything so personal.

“Go home.”

“I’m fine.”

“Home,” her mother said again, pointing at the door.

Lainey knew she should argue, insist on staying, but fatigue settled over her. She leaned in and kissed her mother’s cheek. “I’ll be back in the morning.” She traced the corner of Vera’s lopsided mouth.

“Bring polish.”

“What?”

Vera wiggled her fingers in the air. “Upstairs bathroom, bottom drawer. Pink polish, ‘Touch of Love.’”

Despite her jumbled emotions, Lainey smiled. “We’ll have a mini spa day.”

Vera fingered Lainey’s hair. “Julia can cut for you.”

“I like my hair, Mom.” She covered her mother’s hand with hers and pulled it away, straightening from the bed.

“Too long. Julia helps.”

Her back stiffened. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said quickly and turned for the door. Vera never approved of her hair, her clothes, her makeup—or lack thereof.

Why should it be different now?

Her mother had only one definition of beautiful: blond hair, blue-eyed with a Barbie’s unrealistic measurements. Vera had epitomized the look in her day, and Julia was the spitting image of their mother.

Lainey was a chip off the Eastern European block of her father’s family with her unruly hair and olive skin. At least she’d gotten her mother’s button nose, although it looked out of place set between her almond-shaped eyes and too-wide mouth.

She eyed the hospital exit sign like it was the finish line of the Boston Marathon. When the automatic doors slid open, a wave of aggressively humid air hit her square in the face and she slowed. Everything moved at a snail’s pace during a Brevia summer.

“No,” she told herself as she unlocked the Land Cruiser and slid behind the steering wheel. She took a few deep breaths and pulled out of the parking lot, determined to hold herself in check.

The heat did not own her.

This town would not bully her.

Her mother could not control her any more.

She forced herself on a four-mile run when she got back to the house. Better to sweat out her emotions than indulge in another pint of Chubby Hubby.

After a long, cool shower, she slipped into a pair of cotton shorts and a black tank top. She’d spent the previous night awake with Pita, so she now began unpacking her clothes into the same dresser that had once held sets of Garanimals outfits. The shadow of the bed’s ruffled canopy fell over her like a weight.

The walls seemed to hum with long-ago conversations and emotions. She couldn’t watch television without imagining her father asleep in his faded leather recliner and didn’t want to soak in the tub that held the smell of her mother’s perfume.

She finally got in her car and drove until she saw the lights of Piggly Wiggly. She didn’t need groceries but flipped through magazines, studying the layouts and lighting of the photos, until she felt sleepy.

She bought Cosmopolitan, In Style and a box of dog biscuits. As she put the bag into the cargo area, something cold and wet nudged her thigh. She spun around.

“Pita.” Lainey’s heart thudded against her rib cage. She dropped to her knees. “Oh, sweetie. How are you? How did you get here?”

Glancing up, she had a brief glimpse of a dark head before Pita’s front paws slammed into her chest. She went over backward in a tangle of arms, legs and dog limbs.

“Easy, girl.” Ethan’s deep voice cut through the quiet. He grabbed Pita’s collar and hauled the dog off her.

Lainey lay flat on her back, legs splayed across the asphalt. Ethan loomed over her, fingers curled around the dog’s collar. Under the bright parking lot light, one corner of his mouth kicked up and his eyes danced, sending sparks flying in their deep centers.

“I guess she’s better,” Lainey managed to say, wheezing a little as she tried to gather her wits. At least she had the good sense to close her legs.

“Yep,” was his only answer.

“How did you find me?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t think you’d want to wait until morning, so I was driving out to Vera’s when I saw your car. Not a lot of fancy SUVs in Brevia.”

She lifted a hand into the air. “You want to help me up?”

He cocked his head to one side. “I kind of like you down there. I imagine you groveling for forgiveness at my feet.”

“Fine,” she mumbled and looked away. She started to drop her arm, but he released his hold on the dog and grabbed her wrist. He hauled her to her feet so fast she stumbled forward into him. It was like falling against the side of a mountain.

She pushed out her breath, not wanting to inhale his scent, and tried to step away. He held her close.

“I fixed your dog,” he said, his voice rough against her ear. “I guess you owe me an apology and a thank you. How do you want to settle your debt?”

A hundred wicked images flashed across her mind in the space of a second. A shiver of anticipation traveled the length of her body, starting at the top of her head and leaving a trail of goose bumps from the base of her neck to the tips of her toes. She shoved away from him and crossed her arms over her chest, suddenly aware that she wasn’t wearing a bra.

His eyes gleamed black as night as he stared at her shirt.

She dug in her heels and blurted, “I already apologized. I left you the letter. Right after …” Her voice faded as a murderous expression crossed his face. “I thought you would …”

“I burned it.”

The words slammed into her with the force of a hurricane. “Did you even read it?”

He looked away for a few beats then jerked his head. “Before I burned it.”

Her eyes widened. She’d poured her soul onto those pages, hoping he’d come after her. She’d spent days in that hotel room in Charlotte waiting for him, wanting to start over and make a life together. Hope had faded into uncertainty and finally a despair that had left her curled on the floor of the hotel bathroom, the blood vessels in her eyes broken from crying so hard.

“Do you know what it took for me to tell you those things? You never …”

“Do you know what it took,” he shot back, “for me to stand at the front of that church waiting for you? Half the town watched me get dumped on my wedding day.”

Her anger melted away as fresh waves of guilt washed over her, filling her lungs until her entire body ached with it. “I didn’t dump you,” she whispered.

“Pardon me if I don’t get the terminology right. What would you call it? Jilted? Screwed over? Left behind?”

Is that what he thought? That by leaving she’d abandoned him? Maybe he couldn’t understand how it had hurt her to watch the pity in his eyes as he’d said he’d still marry her. She’d been so grief-stricken and ashamed, she couldn’t face him and the letter had seemed her only option.

If he’d burned the letter after what she’d written, she knew without a doubt she’d done the right thing. All these years later there was no comfort in that fact.

“Things happen for a reason,” she said, not believing it. Acid rose in her gut as she forced a smile. “The way I see it now, you should have been relieved. Didn’t I let you off the biggest hook in history?”

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