cow didn’t want to stay in Alex’s vicinity.
Noah’s shaky inhale sounded deafening. And then he turned and walked out the door. For a moment, Alex stood still, not quite able to believe all of it had really just happened. And because he was a masochist, he stalked after Noah.
Alex stood by the open door of the barn and watched as Noah made his way to his car, fumbled with the key before he pulled the door open. He dashed his arm over his face and got in, before leaning his forehead against the steering wheel. Everything in Alex screamed for him to go to Noah. He even took a step toward the parking lot before he remembered Noah didn’t want him.
Movies and books always gave an impression that an epic love ended with a bang. That when feelings ran so deep that another person felt like a part of you, the only remotely possible thing to keep them apart was death.
Well, Alex was alive, and the end had been anything but cataclysmic. Maybe it would have been easier if they had been torn apart by tragedy or if the end had been inevitable, their relationship being destroyed by outside forces, instead of the neat break-up Noah had staged for them.
It was almost insulting how ordinary it all was. The engine started quietly, and Noah backed out of the parking lot.
In the end, it only took Noah about thirty seconds to drive out of Alex’s life for good.
Part II
12
Ten years later…September, 2019
“What are you still doing here?”
Noah Price lifted his head from the paperwork he was going through and winced.
Busted.
“You were supposed to leave at seven. We compromised.” Hannah stepped into the office, arms crossed over her chest, glaring at Noah.
“I did leave at seven,” Noah defended himself.
“Uh-huh.” Hannah lifted one eyebrow in an impressive arch.
“I went to the grocery store and everything,” Noah continued, avoiding eye contact at all cost.
“Oh?” Hannah’s voice was deceptively sweet as she stalked further into the office. “Did you buy something nice for dinner?”
Frozen burritos.
“You know, healthy stuff. Leafy greens and other vegetables.”
“Sounds delicious. What did you make?”
“A salad.” The burrito had had stuff in it that could be considered ingredients of a salad with a little imagination.
“And then what?” Hannah prodded.
The answer should have been easy. Noah had perfected the art of lying over the course of the last ten years.
I’m fine.
I like my life the way it is.
I’m happy.
But Hannah had really lost out on her calling when she decided not to become an interrogation specialist.
“And then I came back here,” Noah admitted reluctantly.
“Aha!” The victorious shout was a bit anticlimactic since it was obvious Noah had come back, so it wasn’t like it was a big revelation.
“Did you decide Karoshi is something you’d like to give a try?”
“I’m not that bad,” Noah protested. He might have been working late more often than not, but he was a long way from dying at his desk like those overworked Japanese people.
“When was the last time you went home at a normal hour?” Hannah asked.
“Define normal.”
“Six.”
Noah tried to think of an example. No matter what Hannah said, Noah could totally figure out when the last time was he’d left work around the closing hour that was written on the clinic’s front door. He really had to concentrate, but finally he hit the jackpot. He smiled smugly. “Twenty-fifth of August. I was home by four o’clock.”
Hannah didn’t seem impressed. “The twenty-fifth of August you went to get your wisdom teeth removed and came back here pumped full of painkillers?”
“Don’t be a sore loser. What matters is that I was home at an appropriate hour, so I’ll now enjoy my moral high ground, thank you very much.”
“Please,” Hannah scoffed. “That one time was a fluke.” She pulled out her phone. “You are a workaholic, and you have a problem. Consider this your intervention. Allow me to present my case.” She pushed the screen into Noah’s face. “I’ve taken the liberty to organize the data about your work hours into a handy pie chart. That massive purple area reflects the days you were gone by ten. The slightly smaller slice of green shows us the times you were still here when the new day dawned, aka those are the days you left after twelve o’clock. And now see that tiny, itty-bitty black sliver? That’s the left-before-seven section. Most of those are courtesy of your mother because she’s the one who insists on taking you to dinner every month.