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“Seriously, back the fuck off, May.”
“Why, because I’m telling you something you don’t want to hear?”
Yes. Yes. “I didn’t ask you to psychoanalyze me.”
“I’m not. All I’m doing is telling you what you told me. You’re a beekeeper and a gardener, not a chef. You say you want to be a chef, but from what I’ve seen, you hate it. You like to cook, but not the chef part. That’s all I’m saying. And I keep waiting to hear you say I’m wrong—that you don’t hate it. But you’re not saying that. You’re just snapping at me for no reason.”
“I can’t do it right now, okay? I’ve got no real job, nowhere to live, at least a year before I can open another place, and no idea if I’ll actually be able to hack it when the time comes. You might want to rethink what you’re doing spending all this time with me, because I’m really not your type, honey.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What’s that mean?”
“It means I’m a loser, and your last boyfriend was an NFL quarterback. It seems safe to assume you go for guys who are ambitious, loaded, and boring.”
“Really?” She stepped closer until they were nose to nose, and her flashing eyes pinned him down. “What’s your type?”
You. When you’re like this, you.
He didn’t like the thought. Didn’t want to be having the conversation. He didn’t want to think about the fact that she was right. He only had one plan—had only ever had one plan—and he couldn’t even talk about it without feeling his control slipping away.
He was trapped.
And he didn’t know how to get out of it, so he said the ugliest thing he could think of. “I’ll take just about any stray who comes along. Hadn’t you figured that out?”
She stepped back as though he’d struck her. Her whole face crumpled with the sting of what he’d implied.
“Don’t look so crushed,” he said. “You’re the best distraction I’ve found in weeks.”
She walked away. Head high, shoulders back, boots clipping along on the concrete, she receded with every step, and he thought when she got to the corner that she was actually going to choose a new direction and leave him.
For a second, he couldn’t get enough air. Spots danced in the edges of his vision, and he started after her, because he couldn’t let her go. Not like this. He would sprint after her, apologize, beg if he had to, but he wouldn’t let her leave.
She stopped in front of a bodega. Crossing her arms, she stared at the window display as though she might be able to decode her next move in the colorful ads for junk food and cheap cell phone plans.
Ben stayed where he was, shoving his hands in his pockets so he could ignore the way they were shaking.
He berated himself. Get over it. Get on with it.
The trouble was, he didn’t know how.
His phone buzzed. For a few seconds he ignored it, and then he remembered it might be for May and fumbled it from his sweatshirt pocket.
Missed call. The number had a Wisconsin area code.
Jittery, sick to his stomach, he approached her and held up the phone. “That was for you.”
She lifted her hand.
He wanted to tell her he was sorry, but he couldn’t, so he stared at the passing traffic and left her alone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The sound that came from the bench beside her was horrible. Like jazzed-up elevator music, unfamiliar and blaring in the otherwise quiet park.
Allie jumped. Her hand shot out to clasp the phone but missed, and it ended up in the flat patch of dirt beneath her feet—the oblong where no grass ever grew, and the soil wasn’t soil at all but that soft, fine, pulverized dirt that would work its way into the cracks of the casing, and she’d never get it out.
She snatched it up, unsure why strange music had possessed her phone—had Matt changed it?—but so pleased it was ringing, she didn’t care. The wavy, excited ribbons of blue snaking around the IM notice matched her mood.
Allie stabbed at the screen until the message came up.
