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“Except for maybe yourselves,” Bear said.
For once, Parvo didn’t have anything to add.
Her legs finally gave out, and she plunked down into the closest chair, dropping her head into her hands. “Shit.”
She sat like that, fighting back sniffles and tears with the whole of her life without Cal spread out before her. There was travel and books and shows and movies and adventure and food and new experiences. And a few months ago, it would have been enough. But now she wanted more. She wanted Cal. And she’d lost him.
“He said he had to drop off a check at the Flying Sow,” Bear said. “Did you try there?”
The idea hadn’t even occurred to her, but it made sense. He’d have to pay his last month’s rent for breaking the lease, right? And just like that, stubborn hope pushed its way up to the forefront again, and she was running out the door before she could second-guess herself.
Fighting the commuter traffic going to the Breakwaters neighborhood in the back of a taxi that just might use the sidewalk as a fifth lane, she reached out to anyone on the team or their apartment building who might know where Cal was. They all had the same answer. No one had seen him. By the time the cab dropped her off outside of the pub, she was out of people to ask.
She walked into the pub just as the sun was setting. Uncle Mikey and Uncle Paul were sitting at the bar with full pints in front of them. She pursed her lips together to hold back the tears making her chest tight and blocking her throat. Still, she had to bite the inside of her cheek as she took one last look around the pub. Except for the jukebox being pushed several feet away from the wall, everything looked the same as it had before Cal walked through the door in hopes of getting a cheeseburger from the kitchen that had closed two years ago.
Astrid let out a shaky breath and sniffled on the inhale and started to turn toward the door. She was just thinking she could fall apart in her hopefully Mrs. Duffy–free apartment when the back office door opened up. That hope that just wouldn’t die bloomed in her chest, but it wasn’t Cal who sauntered out. It was Andy, carrying a box stuffed full of all of his crap.
And this was why she didn’t get involved. It’s why she kept to her rules. This was why she promised herself she wouldn’t fall in love ever again because the only way it ended was with a person standing there feeling like their insides had been scraped out with a rusty ice cream scooper. Mrs. Duffy might be the meanest woman in their building, but she wasn’t wrong—Astrid needed to get used to being her own bitch on her own.
Andy shook his head when he saw her but didn’t slow down as he approached.
“I know you’ll miss me, but don’t worry, I negotiated coming back for bingo nights,” he said and then walked past her and toward the door. “The caller cannot be denied.”
She swiped away the tear that escaped with the back of her hand, pivoting to follow him out the door. “What are you talking about?”
Andy jerked his chin toward something behind her. “Ask your boyfriend.”
Astrid turned right as Cal stepped out from behind the jukebox, holding a screwdriver and his phone. He wore a Flying Sow Pub T-shirt and looked like he belonged exactly where he was. And when he spotted her? His smile was so immediate and full a stranger would have sworn he had to be the kind of guy who grinned all the time.
But Astrid knew better. Cal was kind, he wasn’t nice, and he saved his smiles for the people who mattered to him, and he was smiling right at her.
And that fucking hope, more resilient than it had a right to be, reappeared like a can’t-be-killed zombie in a horror movie. “What are you doing here?”
Cal strode over to her. “Changing the playlist.”
“Why?” she asked, barely able to get the word out.
“The woman I love hates this one song.” He cupped the side of her face with one hand and looked down at her with so much love in his eyes.
His words and the look on his face stole her breath away and froze her—silent—to the spot. Andy could walk back in, jump up on the bar, and start talking hockey while playing that damn song on his phone, and she wouldn’t be able to react.
“Plus,” Cal went on, “do you know how much it costs to replace one of the machine’s special-order plug-ins after it’s been yanked out of the wall one too many times? The short answer is a lot more than taking the time to delete a particular song.” He wiped away a tear rolling down her cheek with the pad of his thumb. “But why are you here, Astrid?”
She really should have been able to come up with something as she’d run all over the city trying to find the man who’d been here in the pub all along, but she didn’t have any rules made up for how to handle this. She’d already broken them all for Cal, and now she found herself in the one situation she promised herself she’d never be in again—and it had never felt so right.
“I know I told you to go,” she said, the words coming out without any sort of plan. “But I looked at that can of Diet Coke on my counter—the one I haven’t been able to drink because it was the last one you gave me—and I realized that I didn’t give a shit about the stupid soda. I never did.”
“Really?” Cal asked, a V of confusion forming between his eyes. “I thought you liked Diet Coke.”
“No.” She shook her head and pushed forward to say she had no idea what. “I liked—like—you. Oh my God, why is this so hard? I’ve been trying to figure out what I was going to say to you since Mrs. Duffy barged into my apartment and said she was self-appointing herself as my Be Your Own Bitch mentor.”
“What does that even mean?” he asked as he stepped back.
“I don’t know.” She took a deep inhale, fighting to find the right words she hadn’t found yet. “But I do know I don’t want the last time to be the last time.” Something shifted in her chest, and she knew this was it. She’d finally figured out her big want. “I want you and me, together. I want an overgrown cat. I want to wake up in the middle of the night freezing because you’re a blanket hog. I want to laugh with you about whatever shenanigans your sisters are getting up to. I want to curl up on the couch and watch surgical documentaries or movies or hockey or whatever. I want to go on a road trip with your family just to see how many miles there actually are between pit stops. I want to have Dad and Bear and Parvo over to our place for fire escape BBQ. I want you to be the last person I talk to at night and first person I say hello to in the morning. I want to stop running away from the possibility of being hurt and stay with you.” She sucked in a quick breath, needing to get it all out before it was too late. “I’m not gonna ask you to turn down the Yeti job. Hockey is your dream. It’s everything you’ve ever wanted, I just—”
“It was everything I ever wanted,” he said, cutting her off. “It’s not now.”
Instead of her stomach doing the thing and dropping down below her feet, it floated and filled up her chest until there wasn’t any room left for her to take in a breath.
