But when I jog by the carousel in search of the food trucks, a long line snakes around the mint-green Luna’s Sweet’s vehicle. Despite my sour mood, I smile. I’m proud of my friend. I’m glad her business is thriving. And I won’t disturb her with my sorry story.
I turn around, lower my shades, and make my way out of the park, wandering past packs of cyclists speeding by and families out for Sunday afternoon picnics.
I’m half tempted to stop someone, anyone, and ask for help. Ask the harried mom wiping melted ice cream from her toddler’s hand what a note like this means.
“Thanks for being my teacher.”
I open the text once more, hunting for a hidden meaning as I walk down Sixth Avenue, weaving among the Sunday afternoon pedestrians.
This is like a note that says: Thank you for not smoking. Of course I'm not smoking, and of course I was happy to be her teacher. But I don’t feel like a teacher. I don’t think of her as my student. She’s the woman who has my heart. And I know we could be so much more. We could be everything.
But there’s no business book to tell me what the hell to do when you’ve fallen in love with your dead best friend’s sister who asked you to spend seven days seducing her. There’s no Forbes article on how to navigate that thorny situation.
Nor is there anyone in this city of millions I want to ask.
As I turn the corner on Fifty-Fifth Street, a familiar place draws me.
The St. Regis.
I blink, almost surprised I’m here.
But not entirely.
This is one of my places.
This is an anchor, and maybe that’s what I need right now.
As I head into the lobby, I picture the night with CJ. Only I’m not thinking of the stripping, though that was fantastic. I’m thinking of how we left together—as a team. How we found her brother’s cat. How we packed and returned to my place and fell asleep without screwing.
My mind jumps to the next night, to dinner, when I told her I was glad I could show her what she’d been missing, and she said two simple words in reply—me, too.
But it wasn’t the words. It was the way she said them. How she looked at me like there was more between us than just sex.
Like how it’s been for me, too.
I furrow my brow as I stand in the lobby, memories from the last week crashing into me, words I didn’t pay enough attention to at the time.
Before we made love. “I’m so glad it’s you.”
At the rink. “I do trust you.”
In the town car. “I’ll miss this.”
But more than the words, I linger on the look in her eyes. Was there more hidden there all along?
I don’t know the answer, but there’s one person I need to talk to. I call Luna’s wife.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
CJ
I find what I’m looking for at the bottom of a shoebox of cards from Sean’s funeral. The church had been full of gorgeous flower arrangements, and every one of them had been accompanied by a card. I saved them all—touched by the evidence of how many people loved my brother and would miss the light he brought to the world—but I’ve never gone back and reread them.
It still hurts too much.
Maybe it will always hurt too much.
In my experience with grief, the weight becomes easier to carry, but I’m always aware of it, slung over my shoulder. Losing my mother so young, I’d made Death’s acquaintance before I lost Sean, but never so intimately. Never with an adult’s knowledge that forever without one of your special someones can be a very long time.