Deep (Pagano Family #4)(35)
After her shift, Donnie followed Bev down the street to Cover to Cover Books. She had no idea what to expect when she faced Chris inside. In the more than ten years of their friendship, he’d never iced her out like this before. But the last thing he’d said to her was that he loved her, so she knew—she was sure—that they’d make up. She balanced the pink pie box on one hand and reached for the doorknob. As the bell over the door tinkled, she turned back to Donnie.
“Can you stay out here? Or maybe go for my car and wait in it?” She lived not much more than a mile from the diner, and she usually walked to work. But with her sore ribs, she’d decided a walk, then a full shift on her feet, then another walk would be a bad idea. But Donnie had insisted on driving—and then, for all the five minutes of the drive, had complained about her Prius.
Donnie shook his head emphatically. “Forget about it, Bev. I’m staying with you. You keep trying to get me in trouble. I’ll give you some space, but I’m going in. When we’re out, I want you where I can see you.”
“It’s a bookshop, Donnie. Lots of nooks and crannies. It’ll be impossible to give me space and also see me.”
Color actually drained from his face. “Then maybe you shouldn’t go in there. Fuck! I don’t know about this.”
“I do. I’m going in. Keep your distance. I have private things to say to my friend.” Without brooking further discussion, she pushed the door all the way open and went in.
“Chris?” Silence answered her call. Then she heard a meow, and Lady Catterley, Chris’s bookshop cat, pure white, with long fur and regal blue eyes, sashayed up from the back. “Hey, Catty.” She bent down, wincing at the pinch in her ribs, and let the cat rub herself on her hand. Lady Catterley did not deign to be petted. She would, however, allow a human subject to serve as a rubbing post. When Bev’s function was fulfilled, the cat turned and sauntered off with a flick of her upright tail.
“Pretty cat.” Donnie looked around the shop as if he’d never been in here before.
“Yeah.” She pointed to a reading nook near the door that had a decent view of the wider areas of the small shop. “You can sit there. I won’t be too long.” Donnie nodded and went where she’d indicated. And Bev went toward the back, the direction the cat had come from.
She found Chris sitting on the floor at the ‘transition’ stacks, where he put newly-acquired inventory that needed to be logged, as well as books he’d pulled off the sales floor for various reasons. He was unpacking a wooden fruit crate, one of several stacked nearby. “Estate sale?”
He answered without looking up. “Yeah. In Newport on Sunday. Some really great finds. What’s up?”
His tone was uninterested, at best. Bev decided not to be hurt by that. She chose the weight of her problems, and this little awkwardness between her and Chris was an air bubble. They had too much history, too much knowledge to be out of sync for long. “Pie of the day today is peach. I brought you one. Oven fresh.” Peach pie was Chris’s all-time favorite. Bruce baked nutmeg into the pie crust—it was a freaking fantastic pie.
He looked up at that. She smiled back at his frown. He always looked glum. Even when he smiled, it seemed to be hurting him to do so. She loved his mopey face.
“You brought me a whole pie?”
“What, you’re telling me you won’t eat it all? Today?”
Finally, he cracked a little smile. “Maybe. If you don’t hog it all.”
“I will if you don’t get your ass up and come have some with me.”
He stood, brushing his pants off, and nodded. “C’mon. I have some plates and plastic forks behind the sales desk. From that book-signing party a few months back.”
They went to the sales desk and, after he got out the necessary implements and served up some pie, they sat together behind it, on the two simple, wooden stools he kept back there.
Chris took a big bite from his slice of pie, and his eyes rolled back. He didn’t bother to swallow before extolling its praises. “Damn, this pie is so good. Grandmothers all over New England weep at the thought that some dumb, balding dude with a blurry mermaid tattooed on his arm outbakes the crap out of them.”
Bev laughed, and when Chris grinned at her, she decided to just get to it. “You’ve been ducking me. We need to talk it out.”
He shook his head. “Sometimes, it’s better to just let the past die and move on. Not everything can be talked out.”
“But I don’t know why you’ve been mad. I can’t move on from something I don’t understand.”
Before he answered, he took another big bite of pie. Most of his slice was gone, in only three bites. “C’mon, Bevvie. You know exactly why I’m mad. Or you would if you’d open your eyes.”
She hated when he called her Bevvie. He only did it when he was being condescending. Normally, she would stay calm and try to see the love in his words. It made life easier to believe people meant well. To believe otherwise was to live in siege, always expecting to be hurt. She’d been like that once. Her mother was certainly like that. It was miserable.
But right now, today, with her body sore from working a full shift on her feet with bruised ribs, her head a swirl from all the ways acting on her attraction to Nick was now messing with her life, and maybe the lives of her friends, Bev felt defensive and impatient. “Don’t be an evasive jerk, Chris. Just say it.”