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“No worries.” At least about waiting for food. There were plenty of other things to worry about. “We’ll take, uh…” It didn’t matter that no one had given us orders; we knew this group well enough to guess. “Ten rolled tacos, four crisp burritos, and a chicken salad.”
“Sounds great. Give me fifteen or twenty.”
I paid and thanked him. There was a pavilion a short distance away, with a single picnic table underneath. Alys and I sat across from each other, listening to the rain hammer on the metal above our heads.
This was so fucked.
“I don’t know what to do. Inside, I mean.” Alys glanced toward the hospital.
“You did more than anyone else. That’s why we’re out here.”
She shrugged. “It won’t change anything.”
“It will. Not the thing everyone wants changed, but it will make a difference.” Was I being comforting? I had no idea. But I was feeling as lost as she was.
Alys tucked dripping wet strands of her hair behind her ear, and wiped the excess water from her face. “ Yesterday I was so stuck in the things Don said to me…”
Wait, what? “When did you talk to Don?” My mind grasped the thing I understood my feelings about.
“…And today… The world puts things in perspective in a cruel way sometimes.”
Now I could feel anger at something besides the concept of heart attack. This was a thing I could react to. “You don’t drop a bomb like that and then keep talking like it’s nothing. When did you talk to Don?” And where can I find him, to beat his face in?
Alys’s smile was flat. “Maddox didn’t tell you.”
“No.”
Maddox knew?
“He—Don—was looking for Aubrey yesterday.” Alys sounded like it was the most natural thing in the world, aside from the hint of tension that cut through her words. “And also… I ran into him a couple of months ago, in Salt Lake.”
Which was why she’d been withdrawing even before the pregnancy scare. “So he’s around. I could go find him and clock him.” My mind skipped ahead to those details.
“Would that make you feel better?”
“Yes. Wouldn’t it make you feel better?”
She glanced up at me with a hooded gaze. “Maybe. Probably. Okay, there would be a lot of satisfaction in seeing you beat him up.”
“You want to do something here. You wish you could help beyond taco run. I get it. I wish I could erase Don from your life. I hate that anyone did to you what he did—what he continues to do.” I struggled to keep my voice even, but fury was slipping in.
That almost-smile of Alys’s was back. “You know, you’re one of the best things that ever happened to me. Maybe the fates decided to introduce me to him at the same time for balance or something.”
That was a shitty concept, but still believable. “Fuck the fates. Fuck balance.”
“Fuck any and all character building moments,” Alys added.
I smiled wryly. “Exactly.”
She rested her hands on the table. “I’m sorry we don’t see each other more.”
“You have a good opportunity. A great job. I’m sorry I’m moving so far away.”
“You have a good opportunity,” Alys mimicked me.
I moved to sit next to her, on her bench, and she leaned against my arm. I covered her fingers on the table between us, letting the chill radiate from her hand through mine.
“You’ll always be my Alys, Bunny.” I needed that to be true.
