Page 79 of Triplet Babies for my Ex's Best Friend

In daylight.

Like we didn’t almost destroy the boundaries of this entire arrangement over wine and pasta and one look too many.

I flop backward onto the bed and stare at the ceiling again.

“This,” I tell the universe, “is why people should never live with men who look good with their sleeves rolled up.”

The universe, as usual, offers no useful feedback.

Captain sighs in my lap.

And I lie there in the darkening room, heart slowly settling, knowing one thing with absolute certainty: I cannot let that happen again.

Which, unfortunately, would be a much more convincing promise if I believed it myself.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Ethan

Running has always been lessabout enjoyment than utility.

There are people who claim to love it. People who talk about endorphins, clarity, transcendence, all the vague spiritual nonsense that tends to follow prolonged cardiovascular exertion. I’m not one of them.

I run because it keeps the noise in order.

Because it gives the body something to do while the mind works through problems it’d otherwise keep carrying from room to room as an unpaid debt.

Because some mornings, movement's the difference between functional restraint and becoming intolerable to everyone within a twenty-foot radius.

This morning falls firmly into that last category.

Millennium Park is cold enough to sharpen thought without quite punishing skin, and the city is still in that transitional state between dawn and full wakefulness. The skyline catches the early light in fractured glass and steel, traffic beginning its crawl around the edges of the park. Joggers pass in measured rhythms. Cyclists cut through the paths with the usual reckless confidence of people who believe reflective gear makes themimmortal. Somewhere behind me, a dog barks at absolutely nothing.

Chicago, in other words, is functioning normally.

I keep my pace even as I circle the edge of the lawn, breath controlled, shoulders loose, the repetitive impact of my shoes against the path settling me into focus.

It should be enough.

It usually is.

This morning, unfortunately, my brain appears to have decided that instead of thinking about the Zurich review, the revised demo architecture, or the fact that I still need to rewrite my remarks for the investor dinner, it’d prefer to replay the kitchen from last night in unreasonable detail.

A terrible instinct.

The wine.

The low light.

Addy sitting across from me with her hair slightly undone and her guard lowered just enough to become dangerous.

The silence after she mentioned the line we’d already crossed.

The way she said it can’t happen again, as though she were trying to convince herself more than me.

The moment, brief, stupid, avoidable, in which I nearly kissed her.

I lengthen my stride.