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“That was a fun trip,” I finished quietly, looking into her beautiful face.
The silence between us was unbearable. I hated it. It had never been like this before. It had been so easy. I’d taken it for granted then, but I knew better now.
Still, I leaned back on my elbows, took a deep breath, and pressed my eyes closed, letting the silence fill me up because it was all I had now.
After a while, I noticed the sun setting even from behind my closed eyelids, so I sat up, grabbed my Dr Pepper from the ground, and stood. I leaned over her, equal parts sad and relieved my time was up.
“I hate visiting you like this, Annie. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Not for us.” I brought the pads of my pointer and middle fingers to my mouth and kissed them softly before leaning down and touching the marble headstone with them. “I miss you,” I whispered to my wife’s photo engraved into the hard granite. “I miss you so, so much.”
Sometimes you just wake up on the wrong side of the bed. Well, today it felt like maybe I woke up on a different planet. It was my day off from work. I should have been elated because my feet were killing me from the day before.
Yes, I’d finally gotten a job and it had only taken me a month. Which I guess wasn’t bad, but whatwasbad was not making your own hours as a hairstylist and standing on your feet twelve hours a day doing cuts for twenty bucks when you were used to working eight hours a day and making triple that.
But I would endure until I could get my clientele up. Until then, I’d be slumming it at the local Hair Cuttery.
I should have been elated to have the day off. But instead, I found myself dreading the day ahead. I woke up cranky and decided against a shower or hair wash and instead threw on Andy’s old Atlanta Braves hat. It was old and filthy, and it had long lost the smell of him, but I still wore it when I had hard days. And for some reason today felt hard.
Something felt…off. Parker had a friend pick her up for school early, so I didn’t even get to say goodbye to her and that made me even crankier. I was happy she was making friends, but I loved taking her to school. And I realized I only had a couple more years left of that. Lately, I felt like even those were being robbed from me. If anyone knew how precious time was, it was me.
I’d told myself that maybe I’d go shopping somewhere, maybe out to lunch, get a pedicure. Treat myself, but I didn’t. Instead, I found myself at home, sitting on the couch, staring at nothing in front of me.
Before I knew what I was doing, I was up and my sneakers were on my feet and my keys were in my hand. I got in the truck and took off.
I didn’t know what the hell I was doing here. I only knew that I had to go somewhere and after driving around for hours I’d finally ended up here. The fact that I’d found the place was a miracle or maybe a curse. I couldn’t decide as I stared at the small ranch in the light of day for the first time.
This seemed like an epically bad idea. Yet, here I was, ready to make all the bad decisions. Oh, God, what the hell was I doing here? This wasn’t me. Showing up at some random stranger’s house. Some random stranger who’d made me feel good. So, so good.
I looked at the house in front of me. The white ranch with the black front door. Excitement sent vibrations across my skin as I took a deep breath.
Maybe he wasn’t home. It was the middle of the day, after all.
But the garage door told a different story. It was wide-open and I could see his bike parked at the front of it.
That meant he was home.
That meant I should get back in my truck and get the hell out of here.
But did I do that?
Nah.
Instead, I opened my truck door, pushed my ball cap down on my head, and walked up the driveway. I knew I looked like shit in my black leggings and tank top, and I pulled on the hem of my shirt, embarrassed but not enough to stop from doing what I was about to do.
I was so caught up in the task of trying to pull my shirt down over my legging-covered ass, I almost missed him stepping out of the garage into the driveway as I was making a turn to his sidewalk to hit up the front door.
“Babe?”
I turned to see him standing there, big and intimidating, in a white T-shirt that fit him more like a second skin than it did an article of clothing and a pair of jeans that looked like they were covered in oil.
It was the first time I’d seen him in the light of day. And man, it wasn’t disappointing. He had a little salt and pepper in his head of thick dark hair. He had wrinkles at the corners of that kissable mouth and even smaller ones at the edges of his eyes like maybe at one point in his life he’d smiled a lot.
I bet that was a sight to behold, this man grinning big.
He was attempting to wipe his practically black hands clean on what looked like an already dirty rag. His stubble was out to play across that hard jaw and he had a streak of oil across his forehead that for some strange reason I wanted to lick off.
Fuck.
I was screwed. The man looked so damn good.
