Thief (Love Me With Lies #3)(61)

I stood up and walked to the sliding glass doors that led to my balcony. Stepping out, I walked lightly to the edge of the railing.

I could do this. I kind of had to. Right? Exercise the ghosts. Take a stand. This was my life, damn it! The penny wasn’t my life. It had to go. I lifted my fisted hand and felt the wind wrap around it. All I had to do was open my fist. That was it. So easy and so hard. I wasn’t the type of girl to back away from a challenge. I closed my eyes and opened my fist.

For a second my heart seized. I heard my voice, but the wind quickly took it away. There. It was gone.

I stepped back and away from the railing, suddenly cold. Backwards I walked to my bedroom, one step, two steps … then I lurched forward, throwing myself against the railing to peer over into the space between me and the ground.

Oh my god. Had I really done that?

I had, and my heart was aching for a goddamn penny. You’re an idiot, I told myself. Until tonight you didn’t even know he still had the penny. But, that wasn’t really true. I’d seen inside his Trojan horse when I’d broken into his house. He’d kept it all those years. But, he had a baby, and babies had a way of making people throw out the past and start new. I walked back to my bedroom and shut the door. I walked back into my bedroom and shut the door, and climbed into bed, and climbed into my life, and cried, cried, cried. Like a baby.



The next morning I took my coffee out there. I was dragging, and I told myself the fresh air would be good. What I really wanted was to stand at the site of where I murdered my penny. God, would I ever stop being so melodramatic? I was halfway to the balcony with my coffee clutched in my hands, when my foot passed over something cold. I backed up a step, looked down, and saw my penny.

Gah!

The wind. It must have blown it back toward me when I threw it. I didn’t pick it up until I was through drinking my coffee. I just sort of stood there and stared at it. When I finally crouched down to retrieve it, I knew. You couldn’t get rid of the past. You couldn’t ignore it, or bury it, or throw it over the balcony. You just had to learn to live beside it. It had to peacefully co-exist with your present. If I could figure out how to do that, I could be okay. I took the penny inside and pulled my copy of Great Expectations off the bookshelf. I taped the penny to the title page and slid the book back in. There. Right where it belonged.





I kiss her as I slide my hand up her skirt. She pants into my mouth and her legs tense as she waits for my fingers to push past her panties. I let my hand linger at the place where the material meets her skin. I enjoy the chase. I don’t have sex with easy women. She says my name, and I tug at the material. I’m going to have sex with her. She’s beautiful. She’s funny. She’s intelligent.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I can’t do this.”

I pull away from her and drop my head in my hands. God.

“What is it?” She scoots closer to me on the couch and puts an arm around my shoulders. She’s nice. That makes it worse.

“I’m in love with someone,” I say. “She’s not mine, but this still feels like I’m cheating on her.”

She starts to giggle. My head jerks up to look at her.

“I’m sorry,” she says, covering her mouth. “That’s pathetic and a bit romantic, yeah?”

I smile.

“She in America, this girl?”

“Can we not talk about her?”

She rubs my back and pulls her dress down.

“It’s okay. You’re not really my type. I’ve just always wanted to bang an American. Like in the movies.”

She gets up and wanders over to my fridge. “This is a nice flat. You should buy some furniture.” She takes out two beers and carries one over to me. I look around the room guiltily. I’ve been here for two months and the only thing in the room is a couch the last owner left behind and a bed I purchased the day I got here. I need to make some purchases.

”We can be friends,” she says, sitting down next to me. “Now, tell me her name so I can Facebook stalk the girl who cockblocked me.”

I run a hand across my face. “She doesn’t have a Facebook. I don’t want to say her name.”

“Caleb…” she whines.

“Sara.”

“All right,” she says, standing up. “I’ll see you at the gym then. Call me if you want to get drinks. No sex attached.”

I nod and walk her to the door. She’s a nice girl. Even nicer to take that whole situation with such good humor.

When she’s gone, I pull out my computer. I order a kitchen table, a bed, and a living room set. Then I go through my emails. Almost everything in my inbox is work related. My mother emails me daily, but I’ve yet to respond to any of them. When I see my father’s name, I start. My mother must have told him I was back in London. I click on his name.



Caleb,

Heard you were back in town. Let’s get together for dinner. Call me.



That’s all he wrote to the son he hasn’t seen in five years. Eh. Why not? I pull out my phone and text the number in the email. Might as well get the reunion over with. Maybe he’d surprise me and be less of an * than the last time I had dinner with him and he spent the entire two hours texting on his Blackberry.



He texts back almost immediately and says he’ll meet me at a local pub tomorrow night. I wander over to my bed and fall into it, still dressed.