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I had another feeling, this one not so strange. Covering my mouth, I yawned. It had been a long, emotionally exhausting two weeks, and for the first time since that day at the bridal shop, I felt capable of actual, uninterrupted, non-alcohol-induced sleep. “Did you mean what you said about taking a nap?” I asked as another yawn escaped.
“If I had to guess, it’ll be at least another two hours before we get to Midtown,” he said. “May as well close your eyes and rest.”
Rest. What a lovely word. I’d been neck-deep in the trenches for two weeks now, no other soldiers at my flank. But suddenly there was a man at my side offering to shoulder my burden, telling me the hard work of grieving was on hiatus. I could stop fighting for a few hours, because he was going to take care of me.
On any other day, under any other circumstances, I would have been reluctant to fall asleep at the side of a relative stranger. But for whatever reason, I trusted Ian. Maybe it was the gentle tenor of his voice or the softness in his expression, but I believed the only motive behind his kindness was compassion. He wasn’t faking being nice in hopes of getting laid.
He was, however, some kind of hypnotist, because before I knew it, I lapsed into a deep, peaceful, and welcome sleep.
CHAPTER 20
Ian
Whatever had been holding up the traffic subsided, and I was finally driving at a full sixty miles an hour on the southbound Cross Bronx Expressway toward Manhattan. But despite the speed, I kept glancing over at Clara. I couldn’t help it. If she was pretty when she was awake, she was enchanting when asleep. The word that kept popping into my head was “cuddlable.” I kept imagining her long hair spilling over a pillow, a blanket pulled up just high enough to cover her breasts but reveal her bare shoulders. It was a down pillow, it was a blue blanket. It was my bed back home in Connecticut. And it was the night after she received the breakup text. I wished I’d known her then.
Not because I wished I could have been the lucky recipient of an easy rebound lay. I just wished I could have been there for her. I remembered that first night after Greta left, how incredibly painful it had been to sleep in the bed alone. I had never craved a woman’s body so badly in my whole life, but the craving had nothing to do with sex. For the first time, I had understood why long-married people referred to their partners as their “other half.” Greta leaving felt like an amputation, like half of me was missing. And the only thing that could make me whole again was the warm body of a loving woman tangled up with mine.
I ended up sleeping on the couch for the next two months. I even moved the dresser into the hallway so I wouldn’t have to step foot in the bedroom. I eventually moved the mattress into the living room, and then finally threw out the old mattress and bought a new one. When four full months had passed and the pain still hadn’t subsided, I sold my condo and everything in it and moved to my weekend house in Connecticut. It ended up being the cure I needed. Five months after the breakup, I was finally on the road to recovery.
But only because I had the financial means to leave it all behind. Clara, on the other hand, probably couldn’t have afforded a cheap hotel room after Tyler dumped her. But if she had known me then, she could have called and said,Come find me, I can’t survive this on my own. And I could have hurried to her side and been the warm body to comfort her that night, and the night after that, and the night after that, and for as many nights as it took for her to accept the end and move on.
Any doubt that I was developing a crush on Clara was erased as soon as she handed me theUR Sweetcake. I had to be careful. I had a long history of falling head over heels the minute I felt even the tiniest bit of camaraderie with a woman, and every time, it ended with me realizing that the person I’d fallen madly in love with felt not a genuine ounce of real love for me in return.
But there was one big difference between Clara and Megan/Ilsa/Greta: Clara still had no idea who I was. Our initial meeting had been the product of pure—albeit bizarre—serendipity. The other three women had known exactly who I was, and our “accidental” first meetings were anything but. Megan took out a loan so she could rent an apartment in my building. Ilsa crashed into my parked car so she could leave her name and phone number on my windshield. And Greta? She took the cake. After the breakup, her estranged stepbrother—who made no secret of hating her guts—confided in me that she’d not only been targeting me for years before we met, she’d run for the Special Ed counsel for the specific purpose of getting herself invited to my family’s charity banquets. She knew my habits, she tracked my movements. Our ‘accidental’ meeting was years in the making.
Clara, on the other hand? I felt confident that breaking into my car, ripping her stockings, smearing lipstick all over her face and passing out stinking drunk in my driver’s seat wasn’t a meticulously planned scheme to make me fall in love with her. Furthermore, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be sayingYou had me at ‘monumental dick’to her anytime soon. If all this was part of her giant plan to seduce me, her seduction skills sucked ass.
And yet here I was, unmistakably smitten. And about two heartbeats away from killing us both in a distracted driving incident.
With great effort, I removed my eyes from Clara and refocused on the road. The Cross Bronx Expressway was no place for daydreaming. Every minute was rush hour, every merge lane and off-ramp a fatal crash waiting to happen. So it was probably a terrible idea to drive it with the world’s most beautiful twenty-eight-year-old ornithologist sleeping in the seat beside me.
At last, I reached 63rdStreet. About halfway down the block, I saw my car. In a stroke of improbable luck, the very same space Clara had vacated at six o’clock was empty. And in a stroke of astronomical luck, I parallel parked her car without dinging or damaging any other cars. Or storefronts. Or passersby.
When I turned off the engine, Clara shifted. Rubbing her eyes, she looked over at me, confused.
“Why are we stopping?” she said in a sleepy voice.
“We’re back,” I said.
She propped herself up on her elbows and looked out the front window.
“Is this the same parking spot from this morning?”
“The very same.”
She stretched, then rubbed her eyes again. “Well,” she said as she returned her seat to the upright position, “I guess this is it.”
I felt a pang.This is it. As ingoodbye. I had figured we would spend a little time together after we got to Manhattan, maybe have a real lunch or at least go for a coffee. But apparently not. She was ready to move on.
“Yep,” I said, feigning cheerfulness. “This is it. You finally get me out of your life.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re the one who should rejoice,” she said. “If I recall correctly, I was the one who got you into this mess in the first place.”
“As messes go,” I said, “it was a fun one. Kind of like playing in the mud when you’re a little kid.” God, what a sorry attempt to draw out a conversation.Spending time with you is like rolling around in the mud like a pig. “Like kids playing outside, I mean. Carefree or whatever. I didn’t literally mean playing in the—”
“Ian?” she interrupted.
“Yeah?”
