Heartless Hunk - Ann Omasta Page 0,22

that rumor,” I muttered sarcastically, not adding that, for some reason, he seemed to feel the need to treat my heart with kid-gloves.

Evidently writing Oliver off as a player, Molly focused her full attention on me. “Did you hear the news about Claire Biggs? Isn’t it terrible?”

I nodded my head, still not quite able to comprehend that beautiful, sweet Claire was truly missing.

Molly leaned in as if she was sharing a great secret. “You know, they’re investigating Alex.”

“There’s no way he did it.” My voice was filled with confidence because I grew up with Alex and Claire. I knew how much he loved her.

Shrugging, Molly said, “I don’t know. Claire would never willingly leave her daughter behind, and the police don’t seem to have any other suspects.”

We were both quiet for a long moment of reverence for kindhearted Claire. Suddenly, Molly looked at her watch. “Well, I need to get going because I have a yoga class starting soon. It’s so great to see you, Vi. You should come home more often.”

She gave me a quick goodbye hug, then almost as an afterthought she turned toward Oliver and said his name in a flat, dismissive tone.

“Lovely to meet you,” Oliver said, but the half-smile he gave her was obviously fake.

Without responding, Molly darted away.

Oliver leaned across the table to say, “She’s a bit of a gossip queen, huh?”

I nodded, but couldn’t keep from chuckling when, in almost the same breath, Oliver asked, “So, what’s the deal with this Claire person?”

“Now, who is the gossip queen?” I teased him.

Not wanting the rest of my hot dog to get cold, I took another bite before answering. Oliver looked impatient, but dug into his lobster roll.

“Claire and Alex were in my class at school. They were the perfect couple. He was a wrestling star and she was his cheerleader. They got together just before Dylan and I did and seemed to always beat us at everything. I was second to Claire in our class rankings, she and Alex got married before us, and they even had a child before we managed to make it happen.”

I pictured the two of them together––always holding hands and appearing madly in love and happy. “They were the ‘it’ couple. Everyone in town wanted to be them––or at least around them. They had it all.”

“But?” Oliver prompted me when I paused to eat some more.

“But Claire walked their daughter to school one day last week and failed to make it into work. No one has seen or heard from her since. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

“Oh, he killed her,” Oliver said confidently.

“No way,” I answered, just as sure of myself. “It just isn’t possible. I refuse to believe it.”

The mental image of Alex harming Claire didn’t ring true in my mind. It was as preposterous as the idea of Dylan hurting me––it simply wouldn’t happen.

I felt the urge to reach out to Alex to offer him some emotional support, but I didn’t know what to say to him. I’d been friends with Claire and Dylan had been close to Alex, but Alex and I never really interacted directly with each other.

Being on this side of the tragedy, it was easy to see why most people avoided talking to me. Nothing they could say would bring Dylan back. It was easier to say nothing about it than to risk saying the wrong thing.

Evidently latching on to a tidbit I’d shared earlier, Oliver asked, “You ranked the second highest in your class?”

“Don’t be too impressed. There were only ten people in our graduating class,” I admitted.

“What?!?” Oliver bugged his eyes out at the small number. He mulled it over for a long moment before saying, “I’m pretty sure there were ten people with my last name in my graduating class. You would think with a surname like Adams, that I would have been one of the first to walk across the stage to get my diploma, but there was a long line in front of me, and many of them were Adamses.”

We stayed silent for a long time, likely both thinking about the huge disparity in our school sizes. I finally weighed in, “It was nice to be able to do pretty much any activities I wanted to in school. I had parts in all of the school plays, I sang in the choir, and I was the entire yearbook staff.”

Oliver scoffed at that, before saying, “That would be great. We had to pick one activity to focus on,