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But why, Saige? It’s a wake. No one is supposed to look happy. Don’t you remember what Mom’s one was like?
No one smiled. Hardly anyone even spoke. And Dad? Dad just drank and drank, no matter what anyone said.
“Why do you ask?” Aden moves closer, but this time I don’t want to move away.
I don’t know why, but since he brought me to his mostly empty apartment, a ten-minute walk from the bar, I don’t want to hide.
“You look sad,” I murmur, my fingers stretching toward the picture before I can stop myself. “All of you. I can see it in your eyes.”
He glances into my face. I feel him do it, but I don’t look away from the picture of these three men that call to me. “We’re smiling. Laughing.”
I think of all the times I would laugh at something Felix said, or Nathan, or any of the others that Rylan gave me to for the night. I don’t know why I would do it. Maybe I thought if I did, I could convince myself that I wasn’t living in a nightmare. “That doesn’t mean anything. Just that they know how to smile and laugh.”
He doesn’t speak for so long that I glance over at him, and I’m not surprised to find him studying me. “Doesn’t it?”
I lower my hand from the picture and form fists, so I’m not tempted to reach out to it again. “No.”
The moment elongates until I’m almost positive he’s going to tell me something important, but then the smile from the grocery store and the bar simmers back to life. That’s when I see it for what it is. A convincing deception, but not real.
What lies beneath the smile?
“Are you hungry? I can call for some takeout.”
I shake my head. “No, I’m okay.”
“You sure?” Amusement creeps into his eyes. “Did you eat enough earlier?”
My mind flashes back to the contents of my bag. One iced coffee. A box of tampons. Three different flavors of cat food. All the Lily’s cat food brand. And a box of cookies.
The iced coffee and the cookies I ate. Everything else went in the trash.
Lily’s cat food.
What the hell was I thinking?
“I’m okay. Did you just move?”
“No, I’ve been here for a year.”
Maybe he’s divorced. He looks old enough to have a marriage fail and have to start all over again from scratch, especially if she got to keep everything.
Still, a year of living in a half-empty apartment with little more than a couch, TV, coffee table, and a bed… do people do that?
Or he’s a workaholic who spends all his time at the bar and is never here. That could be the reason why he hasn’t bothered to fill it with anything personal other than the photograph of the friends who helped him get through his divorce.
Maybeshewas the one who died?
“Oh.”
Lame, Saige. Seriously lame. Is that all you have to say? Just oh?
“If there’s anything you need, I can—”
I watch a hand that looks just like mine close around his shoulder. His mouth snaps shut. The moment I realize what I’ve done, I yank my hand back and take a couple of steps back so I don’t do it again.
“Sorry.” My gaze burns through the wall in front of me as I stare so hard that it feels like I’m straining all the muscles in my eyes. “I didn’t mean to grab you like that.”
But I did.
