Frenemies(36)

For the first few hours I rationalized, which I was clearly getting good at. I figured he was mid-breakup with Helen (her confusing laughter notwithstanding) and that as soon as he could get away, he’d call or come over and explain everything. Because otherwise, nothing made sense. He couldn’t call me seven times in a row, say the things he’d said, hint the things he’d hinted, and then wake up the next morning feeling … nothing. That wasn’t possible. That wasn’t even within the realm of possible. Was it?

As the day wore on, though, other thoughts crept in. This was the guy who’d cheated on me, after all. Why was I so eager to forget that? Why did I hold it against Helen instead? As if she were more responsible for betraying me? Was it because deep down, I’d suspected that of course a guy would leave me for her? Particularly a guy like Nate, whom everyone wanted? Was I really that self-loathing?

When the phone rang with Nate’s home ID, I practically burst into tears of relief.

He hadn’t played me (again). It was all okay. It was going to be all right.

“Hey, Gus,” Henry said.

“Oh.” I was crestfallen. Then I recollected myself and tried to rally. “Hey.”

It wasn’t much, but it was all I had.

“Listen,” he said after a small sigh, “I wanted to call and apologize for my behavior this morning.”

“You did? Why?”

“Because I ran out of there, and I’m not proud of it,” he said. For all the world as if nothing had precipitated his leaving, and he was the crazy person who might at any moment fling electronic equipment around. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, well.” I didn’t know what to say. “I mean, I would have done the same thing.”

“I shouldn’t have.”

There was a long silence.

“Anyway,” I said. “I appreciate your call.”

“You can tell me why you were so upset,” Henry offered. I remembered that tender expression on his face and shook it off. “I kept you from committing a felony against Helen last night. I feel like I can be trusted.”

“Thanks,” I told him, oddly touched. “But I’m okay.”

We didn’t talk about what had happened between us. This time, I noticed, he didn’t even ask. He just mouthed a few pleasantries and then hung up. It was all very civilized. Very calm.

I didn’t realize I was crying until a tear splashed down on my hand, and it took me a long moment to realize what it was.

I had to stay away from Henry, I told myself fiercely. I had enough on my plate without all these confusing and scary emotions to fend off. I didn’t even like him.

Who was I kidding—like him or not, there was obviously enough of a something between us if I kept ending up naked with the guy. As long as it never happened again, and neither Nate nor Georgia ever found out it had happened at all, everything would be fine.

Fine.

I shuddered.

I slipped off to sleep sometime later, still waiting for the phone to ring.

But Nate never called.

If I hadn’t saved all of his messages, I might have thought I’d dreamed them. But no—I listened to them again and again, parsing them for nuance and meaning. He had really called me. He just hadn’t called me back. I spent all weekend with my cell phone clamped to my ear, listening to Nate, tracing his movements in my head, making myself sick over the fact I’d missed out on what might very well have been my one chance to get Nate back.

Missed out because I was doing something—again—I shouldn’t have done in the first place. It was going to be difficult to make Nate pay for Helen after our inevitable reunion when I’d been up to the same thing with Henry, after all.

As far as Henry went, however, I’d decided that I had dreamed it. I decided, in fact, that I had no option but to believe that it had been a particularly graphic creation inside my head. Because let’s face it—there really wasn’t any other possible explanation for my behavior.

Henry had actually just dropped me off after the party, I told myself, probably not even bothering to put the car into park. I’d had to leap and roll to make it out of the passenger seat. If I concentrated, I could hear the sound of his tires squealing as he peeled off, leaving me at the curb, all alone in the dark, with no tender moments that made zero sense. To say nothing of the sizzling moments that made even less sense than that.

Anyway, I had other things to obsess about.


Georgia called on Tuesday to announce that she was currently in Naples, Florida.

“What are you talking about?’ I asked lazily, sitting back in my chair so I could peer up at the ceiling. It was afternoon in the empty Museum, and I’d spent the entire morning cataloguing a new shipment of reference books Minerva had found somewhere and wanted included in the library immediately. Because of the high volume of researchers we fielded daily, no doubt. I gazed around the empty Museum hall and sighed.

“I’m talking about my geographic location,” Georgia retorted. “I’m like Where’s Waldo? but with much better clothes.”

“You were at brunch on Sunday, is what I’m saying,” I replied, ignoring her tone. Her very bitchy tone.

“Well, now I am in Naples, Florida, and not in any fun, bikini-wearing, holiday-in-the-tropics way,” she hastened to add. “Although no one told Chris Starling that. He just announced he’s spending the afternoon by the pool, and who cares what the clients think.”