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I had the sneaking suspicion that maybe Leah was right… Steve might be interested in more than just a drink and slice. I hadn’t thought of him like that before. It wasn’t that he was unattractive. He was nice enough looking. It was that he was one of the family’s oldest friends and I always felt more like a kid sister to him than a potential girlfriend.
The fact he was transferring to Columbia was a shock. I almost asked him about it during shift, but I didn’t want to get into a long discussion at that moment. I was exhausted and so I waved at him and left the bar.
I walked the mile or so to the house and let myself in. The house was quiet, the lights low in the entry. I checked my watch – just after midnight. Scott and Jeanne would be in bed and so I tiptoed around, not wanting to wake them up.
“You back home, Mira?” came Jeanne’s sleepy voice when I went down the hallway to the bedrooms.
“Sorry if I woke you,” I said and made a face, standing in the hallway outside their room, which was just down the hall from mine.
“No, that’s all right,” she said and I could hear her yawn. “We just went to bed. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” I said and went into my room, closing the door softly behind me.
Jeanne was a light sleeper and always seemed to wake up when I got home, like she was waiting for me before she could go to sleep. Even if I wanted to, how could I possibly ever stay out really late with some new man for a hookup?
CHAPTER FIVE
Beckett
Going to North Carolina was a big mistake.
I knew it somewhere in the back of my mind, but since Graham’s death, I hadn’t really been thinking straight.
I went with the best of intentions, but as the saying goes, that road leads to hell. My personal hell started the moment I walked into Oceanside and saw her standing at the bar pouring drinks. When I recognized her, I should have handed over the letters and told her everything. At the least, I should have backed out, taken my bike and rode straight back to Manhattan, but there was no explanation for my behavior except I needed to get to know her.
Mira with the pretty hair and freckles on her nose.
Mira of the love letters to her new husband telling him how much she missed him – in her life, in her arms, in her bed.
I should have found out where the Lewis’s lived, left the letters and gone back home. Instead, I got myself mired in it and now, even though I knew what I was doing was wrong, I wasn’t willing or able to dig myself out.
The next morning, I rode back to Manhattan. It was the hardest thing I’d done in a long time. Every mile marker I passed, I fought with myself not to turn back and go to her, try to explain my deception. Could she forgive me for not telling her the truth from the start? I’d have to explain how I came to possess the letters, and what could I say?
Sorry but your husband died a horrible death to save my life. I can’t really tell you any other details because it’s classified, black, off the books and I could get in big trouble…
That sounded like a coward’s way out.
So I kept driving, regret growing inside of me that I hadn’t played it right at the start, introduced myself, told her who I was and handed the letters over.
I arrived back in town much later that night, hot and dusty from a long day on the road. After showering and eating something I heated up from the freezer, I sat on my couch and stared at the blank face of my flatscreen TV.
I thought I’d get settled back into the routine of my life, but I was wrong.
Try as I might, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. For the first few days after I returned, I was busy enough, but my mind kept turning to her when I had a moment of distraction. I remembered her pretty eyes, her lush curves, her smile. I remembered her kiss and the cheeky look in her eyes when she joked with me.
I had to forget her. Nothing helped you forget like alcohol and new people.
So, later that week, I stood at a bar somewhere in Hell’s Kitchen and tried to remember the name of the pretty young woman I was supposedly talking to. The truth was every woman I met faded into nothing in my mind when compared to Miranda. While the young woman spoke to me, my mind was occupied thinking about Miranda and wishing she was with me instead of what’s her name with the bottle-blonde hair and push-up bra.
So my evening with Brandon spent with the intention of blotting it all out in a booze-filled night of dancing and drinking was not going nearly as well as planned.
Blanc was not my usual choice of Friday night after-work clubs. Brandon was my best friend from Stanford, who joined the Marines with me, and was one of my business partners. He dragged me to Blanc after a day from hell. I would rather have gone home and straight to bed, but Brandon was looking for a second wife and so he guilted me into going out.
Unlike Brandon, I didn’t make long-term plans when it came to women. I learned my lesson a few years earlier when Sue was taken from me.
Don’t plan on love. If it happens, great, but don’t go looking for it. Don’t expect it.
Life had a way of fucking up those plans so it was better to assume you’d be alone than plan on marriage and family and end up broken-hearted. I didn’t plan on getting married but if I did, I would never set out to find a wife. You fell in love or you didn’t. Being so mercenary about it was wrong, to my way of thinking. But since I wasn’t ever going to get married, it really didn’t matter. I never promised women anything I couldn’t deliver. No strings and no demands.
