“It’s fine.” The yawn had made her eyes water, and she blotted away the stray wetness with her button-down’s sleeve. “I’m used to it.”
Her last good night’s sleep had been... a decade ago, maybe? Sometime around her engagement. Once Rob had slid a ring on her finger, insomnia had crept up on her and made a restful eight hours of unconsciousness impossible. After the wedding, things hadonly gotten worse. And since—despite her most fervent hopes—divorce hadn’t returned her sleep schedule to normal, she’d begun suspecting this was it. This was her life from now on, spent steeped in hazy exhaustion as her blood pressure rose and rose again.
“You look tired too,” she told Karl, in a vast understatement.
Those bags beneath his eyes were huge and dark enough to resemble shiners. But when she’d suggested they skip their weekend exercise to give him time to relax, he’d refused loudly and profanely enough that one of his bakery customers had startled and dropped a cherry Danish on her preschooler’s head, filling side down.
“Motherfucker,” the little girl had lisped, and her mom had glared even harder at Karl.
He’d heaved a sigh, apologized gruffly to the mother—June? Junessa?—and led them back to the bathroom to get the kid cleaned up, while Bez put another cherry Danish in a bag.
Which was all very entertaining, obviously, but didn’t change the fact that the man clearly needed a nap even more than Molly did.
“If you’d like to rest instead of—” she began, already knowing his answer.
“Nope.” His expression had turned intractable. “We have an activity to complete.”
No point in further argument. Karl was even more stubborn than he’d been twenty years ago. Instead of saying anything, then, she simply gave him a disapproving headshake. Which he blithely, irritatingly ignored as he got to his feet with a rumbling groan and shuffled away to dump their trash in a discreet barrel receptable nearby.
In his absence, she plucked a bottle of sunscreen from her bag.When he sat again, she began dabbing it onto his face and exposed forearms. He remained very still under her touch, his breath hitching at the stroke of her thumbs over his cream-slick cheeks.
The sunscreen should have hissed upon contact with his hot skin. His entire body was flushed, maybe from too much sun exposure, or from discomfort at being tended to, or... other reasons. The same reasons she felt a bit overheated too.
Once he was protected, he nodded in thanks and turned away to dig around in his duffel again. Two small notepads appeared in his fist, alongside two ballpoint pens.
“There it is.” Looking triumphant, he plucked a small plastic baggie from the duffel too. One filled with what appeared to be old-fashioned index cards, of the type she hadn’t seen since she’d last crammed for college exams. “Just to be clear: This activity’s not my idea. Matthew and Athena browbeat me into it.”
“Ooooh-kay.” Truthfully, she suspected her temporary neighbors were better suited to brainstorming trust-building exercises than Karl. “Hopefully they didn’t get their ideas from a business magazine too.”
“Fuck you, Dearborn.” He was glaring at her now. “My blindfolded food activity wasawesome.”
“It was,” she told him soothingly. “A real triumph of corporate synergy.”
He flipped her the bird. Since he was clearly fighting back a grin too, she considered that a double victory.
“Anyway.” Maintaining meaningful eye contact, he scratched his nose with his extended middle finger. “Three games for today, starting with Winner or Loser. Instructions...” His attention dropped to the baggie, and he flipped through the cards. “Here they are. Read ’em and weep, Dearborn.”
He handed her a neatly printed card. Matthew’s handwriting, if she had to guess, in contradiction to doctor-related stereotypes.
“Winner or Loser,” she read aloud. “How to play: The first person discusses an unpleasant event that happened to them, adding as much detail as they’re willing to share. After they’re done, the second person repeats the story, but emphasizes any positive aspects of or favorable results from the incident. Then the two participants switch tasks.”
A notebook and pen plopped beside her on the quilt.
“For note-taking. If needed.” Karl settled back against the weeping willow’s trunk. “You good with this, Dearborn?”
Truth be told? Not especially. If at all possible, she avoided discussing her hurt feelings and failures with... anyone, really. But if playing Winner or Loser meant Karl “Grunts and Illogical Threats of Violence Are My Love Language” Dean would actually tell her more about hisownhistory and emotions?
Game freakingon.
Shoulders squared, she braced herself to dredge up unpleasant memories. “I’m good.”
“Then you go first.” Karl flipped open his own notebook. His meaty fist gripped his pen, and his entire attention turned to her. “Tell your story.”
Like anyone, she’d had plenty of little defeats, both personal and professional, and she could easily pick any of those incidents. But if she wanted to share something meaningful—if she was actually willing to expose her heart—there were only two “unpleasant events” to choose from. Only two that truly mattered, either then or now.
Fine. She’d tell him. If everything went to shit between them, itwas far too late to avoid getting hurt, right? So what did one more revelation matter?
Suddenly tired again, she fiddled with the ends of her hair. “You already heard most of it last weekend. Rob, my partner of seventeen years, used my income and savings to put himself through medical school. Then he dumped me and told me our divorce was entirely my fault, because I was such a terrible, cold wife.”
