my dream, and on a silver platter. Not a coffee shop, but a family. Someone I could lean on. He had done all of that just for the chance of a shot with me, for me. He was in love with me, and that knowledge threatened to pull the rug out from beneath my feet.
He was in love with me.
Then again, I already knew that. I’d seen it in his beautiful blue eyes, day after day. I knew the exact moment, that first time I’d seen it, seen the possibility of us: in that dark hospital room when he had crawled in bed with me. That was the first night I’d thought, You know what, Rose, maybe he actually likes you. Despite all his prickliness and, at times, arrogance, despite all the scowling looks, maybe he really cares about you.
Feeling dizzy, I slid down the wall and let my head rest against it. I didn’t know how many minutes passed, but when I felt okay enough to move again, I glanced around the corner, making sure I wasn’t visible to him just in case he was still standing there.
He was.
We had ended as we begun.
I watched him from the safety of the kitchen’s doorway, the book I’d picked forgotten on the floor beside me. I must have fallen asleep sometime after four AM and jumped up in a panic when Owen walked through the door with a confused look on his face.
“What the hell are you doing on the floor?”
My mouth was dry, my eyes burning, and my voice came out all scratchy when I tried to speak. “Good morning to you too, sunshine. Just getting some shut-eye, as you can see.”
“Right, because that’s what you do on the floor. What was Jack doing outside?”
After a few attempts at getting up, I gave up and got on my knees so I could hold on to the edge of the island and pull myself up. “What are you talking about?”
Owen offered me his hand and helped me.
“He was right outside, half frozen from the looks of him. He said good morning and then left. Is this your version of spicing up your marriage, or did you guys have a fight or something?”
I pushed my hair away from my face. “Or something,” I mumbled.
As Owen walked past me, shaking his head, I carefully looked out from the doorway, my eyes searching for him. When I couldn’t find what I was looking for, I fully stepped out of the kitchen and walked through the tables until I was standing right in front of the window, looking outside.
Just like Owen had said, he was gone.
The next night, I stayed at Sally’s place, swapping the comfort of the coffee shop’s kitchen island and the lined-up chairs for a couch. I spent hours with my phone in my hand as I debated texting him. Eventually I fell asleep with my phone on my chest and never messaged him. I thought I slept for about three hours in total, and he kept me company in my dreams the rest of the time, which was even worse than not getting any sleep because when I woke up, I lost him all over again.
Sally had seen the two suitcases I owned stacked in the little office room in the back and had already guessed that something was seriously wrong. Since I thought I’d lose my ever-loving mind if I didn’t tell at least one person what was going on, I told her everything. I rushed through admitting our whole marriage was nothing but a business deal and that we’d been wrong to assume otherwise. Then I’d caught her up on the rest of it.
She was as appalled as I had been the first time I’d heard everything from him, but then she decided she found the whole thing romantic.
“So what’s going to happen now? Has he called you?”
“It’s over,” I repeated, probably for the hundredth time. “He has no reason to call me.”
I left out the fact that I’d waited for him to do exactly that the night before.
“What about this place? What will happen to the coffee shop?”
“I don’t know,” I mumbled.
I truly didn’t know.
The lunch rush started, and we didn’t have time to do anything but work our asses off the rest of the day. It was around six PM when she approached me with a weird look on her face.
“Uh, Rose, did you say Jack waited for you that first night outside?”