A honk sounded behind Reese, echoing through the underpass.
They turned around to find the bus driver waving her on impatiently. “I have to go.”
“No, you don’t,” he said raggedly, catching her wrist in mid-air when she reached for her suitcase. “You can believe me when I say living with you would make me the happiest man alive, Reese. It’s what I’ve wanted all along. You there, never leaving. You can come home with me and let me make this better.”
“I’m the only one who can do that,” she whispered, going up on her toes to kiss his cheek. “And I’m out of fuel. I’m sorry.”
There was nothing he could do. That sick realization paralyzed Leo. All he could do was stand there and watch Reese place her baggage in the bus compartment and climb on, pausing to look back at him one last time. Then disappearing from his life in a cloud of exhaust.
Chapter 20
Reese sat in the driver’s seat of her mother’s car in the driveway, hands in her lap, heat blasting out from the vents. “For You Too” by Yo La Tengo was playing for the third time since she’d left Cedar-Boogie. She couldn’t blame the cold for the numbness stealing through her fingertips. They’d been like this for the three weeks since she’d left New York.
She’d taken over half of her mother’s class load at the school and enrolled in night school at the local community college for the upcoming spring semester—and those things, those irons she’d stuck into the fire of her new existence, had stolen the meager energy she had left. Every movement, every thought and response, required acting skills. Pretending she felt normal when she felt anything but, her heart still beating on the floor of a bus terminal back in Manhattan.
Sending the command to her hand to move, she turned off the ignition and climbed out of the car, holding her coat tight to her neck to beat the last dregs of winter. Walked to the house, opened the door and went inside, the scent of her mother’s chicken tortilla soup causing her to half smile despite the constant pain she was living with.
She was desperately in love with a man and he was a thousand miles away.
She’d lost track of the number of times Leo had called her, starting as soon as she was on the bus ride. Not once had she picked up, as much as it hurt. There were no answers to give him. No satisfying ones, anyway. And the functioning part of Reese’s brain knew she was punishing them both because her dreams had been snuffed out, but that was pride for you. That was pride and she had only a little of it left, so she needed to hang on to it.
Her pride didn’t make it any easier to think of what could have been. If she’d just stayed. If she’d let Leo take her home, soothe her wounds and carry her. It probably would have been so easy, because he would have made it that way. But one person relying on the other is no way to have a relationship. They’d already started off on the wrong foot and she couldn’t do them that disservice. No matter how tempting.
Reese paused outside of the kitchen, toeing off the ankle boots she’d put on after class, requiring a moment before facing her mother. With a smile glued to her face, she walked into the kitchen a moment later, finding her mother stirring a pot at the stove.
“Hey, Reese’s Pieces. How was jazz?”
“Good. Full attendance. Little Maxine Weaver is showing some early signs of excelling. We might want to talk to her mother about private classes.”
“I surely will. How exciting.” Her mother made an absent gesture with the spoon. “Something came for you today.”
“Oh.” Reese’s step faltered when she saw the big cardboard box siting on the kitchen table. “What is it?”
“I don’t have X-ray vision,” laughed Lorna. “Open it.”
When she saw the sender, her heart shot up into her throat.
Leo Bexley c/o The Cookie Jar.
Those words blurred her vision. The person, the place, the magic had all been real. There were a few times over the course of the last three weeks where Reese wondered if the whole experience had been a dream.
She circled the box once, chewing on her thumbnail, then went to retrieve a pair of scissors from the junk drawer. After only a slight hesitation, she slit the tape open and peeled back the sides, her pulse spiking at the chance to be close to Leo again in some way.
Cake pops.
Dozens of them, wrapped in cellophane and red bows, carefully packaged with insulated foam and dry ice. Reese pulled out the first one, holding it up to the light. A white outline of a dancer with green frosting making up the background, Bryant Park written in black script. The next one was a pigeon. Representing the afternoon they’d spent on the roof of the Bexley Theater? Another one was a bed with a trail of yellow Z’s sloping and looping around the small edible globe. A nap date cake pop. A furry purple coat, too. And on and on they went, pops commemorating their moments together, the final one simply saying “I love you. I’m sorry.”