End of Story(65)

Then I switched my phone to silent for a couple of hours and took flowers to Aunt Susan’s grave. It gave me a chance to fill her in on everything that had been happening. Whether she was any more present at the cemetery than she had been in the house, I had no idea. But it made me feel better just the same. The cemetery was peaceful and green and reasonably close to home. I think it’s what Aunt Susan would have chosen. And the bouquet of wildflowers I bought would have delighted her. She loved bright colorful things.

Life had changed a lot since the day I helped carry her coffin out to the hearse. It had been raining, the sky a dark, sea gray. While I’d given up on having a relationship with my father years before, I’d held out hope for some sort of friendship with my brother. But he’d put that dream to rest at the funeral. Aunt Susan raised me to be resilient. Self-reliant. Somewhere along the line, I’d set those lessons aside and started chasing crappy relationships with men who reminded me of my father. Of all the obvious damn mistakes to make. Lars at least was nothing like him. Not even a little.

It was odd how much had changed in the half a year since I’d lost Aunt Susan. How I saw myself and the world. My grief seemed to be settling into more of an ongoing ache. Less sharp-edged than it had been. But then grief was weird, the way it played with your mind. The last time I thought I was doing okay, I wound up crying in the candy aisle at a grocery store. Seeing her favorite brand of chocolate had set me off for some reason. It sucked that in life you only had some people with you for a short time. Guess it was why we needed to live and love with conviction. Like she’d done. To be colorful and wild and free of spirit. To stop being so fucking afraid.

On the way home, I picked up some soft tacos liberally topped with cilantro. Lars hated cilantro. But it didn’t matter what he liked because he wasn’t there and they were just for me. And I didn’t put my shoes away when I got back to the house either. Grown ass women could leave their stuff where they liked in their own homes. I was the queen of this castle. Which made it time for a Gilmore Girls binge. Lars would have hated it. He liked shows full of action and adventure where characters most definitely did not discuss their emotions or what book they were currently reading. Though he had recently become a Romance reader so who knows. I also took up all of the space on the sofa. Just me. So there.

I didn’t need a man in my life. That was the God’s honest truth. But did I want one?

When the show failed to hold my interest, I wandered from room to room. In search of something. I don’t know what. Kat was not impressed with my restlessness. All of the kitchen cupboards and drawers were firmly closed. My snack stash was low, but oh well. It’s not like I was hungry after all the tacos. I retrieved the mysterious divorce certificate and laid it out on the bed. No further messages had appeared. Not from the past or the future. In the bathroom, I attempted to smooth out the strangled tube of toothpaste. Easier said than done. Next I strewed my skincare and makeup back across the entirety of the bathroom counter. Spread that stuff around like it was my job. Then I stood back and stared at the mess. It was an apt metaphor. This was my life. My normal state of being.

“Hey,” said Lars, appearing at the bathroom door. There was a smudge of dirt on his forehead and a general air of tired and sweaty to him. He took in the disaster atop the bathroom counter and smiled. “Hope you don’t mind I let myself in. How’s your day been?”

“Fine. Did you get the condo sorted out?”

“Everything I don’t need is in storage and the rest is either here or easy enough to pack up at the end of the week.”

“I would have helped, you know.”

“You deserved to sleep in,” he said. “Did you know you snore when you’re drunk?”

“You’re awful lucky you’re so pretty. It makes up for the petty lies you tell.”

“They’re not loud snores, but still.” His smile was there and gone in a moment. “I went and checked on Aaron.”

“How is he?”

“Over the worst of it, I think.”

“It’s never easy getting dumped.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Lars stretched his neck. “It’s never happened to me.”

“Seriously?” My brows rose. “You say that like it’s a good thing. Thirty-five years old and you’ve always been the first to give up.”

“Not necessarily. Sometimes it was a mutual decision.”

“Hmm. Ask yourself this, have you ever actually been invested in a single romantic relationship you’ve been a part of? I mean really?”

He opened his mouth and shut it again. Then he turned his gaze back to the bathroom counter. “After today you’ll have all of your space back again.”

“No more stubble in the sink,” I agreed, letting him change the topic of conversation.

“I’m going to miss your bed. You have a really good mattress.”

“Is that all you’re going to miss?”

“No,” he said, his expression grave. “It’s not.”

I sighed. This man...what the hell was I going to do with him?

“You said you wanted to talk last night. What’s on your mind, Susie?”

I perched on the edge of the old claw-foot tub and thought deep thoughts. The same ones that had been spinning around inside my head all day. “I, um, I...”