“The sex lights.”
“There was no sex. But there was a kiss.” Was there ever. Hours later and my lips were still asking me what the hell happened. “And he answered the door wearing a towel.”
“Get out.” She crossed her legs and started bobbing her foot. “You are such a lucky bitch.”
“I know. I don't even know what I did to deserve it.” How did it feel to suddenly talk about a secret as if it had always been public knowledge? Whatever it was, that was what talking to Amy felt like. Eamon had gone from hiding in the recesses of my mind to being fully out in the open.
“A kiss? On the lips? How was it?”
“Yes, on the lips. I wouldn't call it a kiss if it was on the forehead. I'd call it a peck or I wouldn't even mention it.”
“If he kissed me on the forehead, I'd call it a kiss. I'd tell all of my friends that Eamon MacWard kissed me on the face.”
“Nobody says that. The cheek, yes. The forehead, the nose. Nobody says ‘the face’.”
“You're stalling. Just tell me.”
I sucked in a deep breath. Of course I was stalling. So I told her everything…the towel…the room…and although I didn't tell her every last word he'd said, I did tell her some things.
“Why didn't he ever look for you?” she asked.
“He said he was waiting for fate to bring me back.”
Amy closed her eyes and flopped back on the couch. “Oh, my God. I'm going to die of romanticism. He said that? I would literally pass out.”
The detail of the letter was still bothering me. It was impossible not to wonder how things would've been different if he'd seen it. And that left me with one indisputable fact: I'd reached out to him and he had not done the same for me. “He did. He said that. So, anyway, he, um…” I took a gulp of my wine, not the way you're supposed to drink it. It not only didn't have time to wash over my palate, I'm pretty sure I skipped the tasting part altogether. “Do you want some?”
“Yes. I can’t believe you waited this long to offer it to me.” She hopped up from the couch, plucked a glass from the rack above the kitchen peninsula, and was back in three seconds flat. She finished off the bottle with a generous pour. “He what? He went down on you? You said there were no sex lights.”
“You need to get your brain out of the gutter.”
“Hey. I've been practicing law all day. Just tell me.” She rounded the coffee table and sat again, tucking one leg under the other.
“He said that he wanted to try again.”
“Katherine…” Amy's face was frozen in this bizarre state of poetic wonderment, like we were in a Hallmark commercial. She was completely silent, she didn't move at all, as if she'd decided we should mark this moment with entirely too much stillness. “That's so amazing.”
“Is it though? Is it really? Maybe it's better if we let sleeping dogs lie. What if it's a big disaster? There was something nice about the way we parted the first time. Nobody was mad. Nobody was throwing things or slamming doors. We were just sad.”
“Just profoundly sad?”
I nodded as if I thought that was a good thing, even knowing I’d ended up with an emotional hangover for years. Eamon had left his mark on me. There was no undoing that. “Yeah. It was.”
“I don't know how you could be happier with sad than with angry.”
“I wasn't. I'm not.” Was I? Was I happier with unhappiness? Or had it become my default setting, so that was the comfortable place?
“Where did you two leave it today?”
“He said the ball is in my court. He's going to wait for me to call him. He doesn't want to do it if I'm not serious about it.”
“Wow.”
“I know. It's such a guy thing to say.”
She shook her head and blew a disgruntled exhale from her lips. “I swear, sometimes you are so dumb I want to have you tested.”
“What? It feels like he's putting it off on me and I don't know how I feel about that. Like how serious can I commit to being? All that time apart from each other and now we've spent a grand total of an hour together. Does that mean anything?”
