Page 73 of Chasing the Other Woman

My chest pinches hard enough that I set the rag down.

“You okay?” Petra asks from beside the register.

“No.”

"Well, at least you're not pretending."

I open my mouth to say something, then clamp it shut.

The door opens behind me, bringing in heat, dust, and the low murmur of new voices.

Then the room changes.

No one stops talking all at once. There’s no dramatic hush, no record scratch, no big movie moment.

But I feel him before I turn.

My body does the recognizing before my brain catches up. The old, stupid instinct. Brooks is in the room.

I look over my shoulder.

He stands just inside the door, one hand still on it, as if he forgot the next step after entering a building. His hair is windblown. His shirt is wrinkled from travel. His jaw is rough with stubble, and exhaustion sits beneath his eyes.

His gaze finds mine immediately.

For a few seconds, I don’t breathe right.

The bar keeps moving around us. Someone laughs. Ice drops into a glass. A chair scrapes against the floor.

Brooks looks at me like none of it exists. And maybe, for both of us, it doesn't.

Then he breaks eye contact.

The loss of it is so sharp I feel ridiculous for reacting at all.

He walks away.

For one ugly second, I think that’s it. He came back. He saw me. He remembered his promise to let me choose, and now he’s going to leave me alone so thoroughly I’ll have no choice but to respect him for it.

Then he stops at the jukebox.

My stomach drops.

“Brooks,” I whisper, but there’s no way he hears me.

He feeds in a quarter.

The first notes of Randy Travis’s “Forever and Ever, Amen” fill The Funnel Cloud.

I go still.

Petra’s head snaps toward me. Hershel looks up from his table. Someone near the pool cues says, “Well, that’s a choice.”

It's more than a choice.

It's our wedding reception in a rented hall with bad lighting and Brooks’s tie already loosened. It's his hand warm at the small of my back. It's him singing softly against my ear, slightly off-key and completely unashamed. It's me laughing into his chest because I thought I’d gotten everything I ever wanted.

I shove away from the bar.