“But—” Cameron began to argue, but I put my hand on his knee to stop him.
“I have a life in LA. I have a career that’s over two thousand miles away from here. I... I find the whole idea of living as a threesome weird, and my parents would never accept us. I’m sorry, but I can’t see a future here at all, so it’s best we end things now before they’ve begun.”
“Oh,” Cameron said, and all three of us fell silent.
I stared at my book without reading it, and thinking about how I could have avoided getting us into this awkward situation if I’d used my brain instead of my... well, the opposite end of my body.
“Excuse me.” I grabbed my book and headed into my bedroom, shutting the door behind me. I needed privacy, partly because I didn’t want to hear any bright ideas they might have about how to make this work, but also because I was on the verge of tears, and Muriel Tennyson cried for no man. Or men. Even perfect men. Nobody.
I angrily swiped a tear from my cheek and lay on top of my bed. That rescue vehicle couldn’t get here soon enough.
Chapter Seven
Cameron Moore
Hugh pulled me back onto the couch when I tried to follow Muriel out of the living room.
“We need to talk to her,” I insisted.
“She needs space,” he replied calmly. “She’s already trapped in here with us, and she probably has complicated feelings about last night. Forcing her to talk to us about it isn’t going to help our case.”
I sighed bitterly, knowing he was right. “The three of us could be happy together. It’s so frustrating that she can’t see it.”
“I think she can see it. She wants us. If she didn’t, she’d have brushed off last night as just a bit of fun.” Hugh’s rare glimmer of optimism almost shocked me out of my bad mood. “But she wants other things too, things that we can’t give her. Bright lights, big city, a glamorous career; that kind of thing.”
“That’s shallow stuff. Muriel isn’t going to let her job rule her life, surely?”
He shrugged. “I wouldn’t have thought so, but she needs to reach her own conclusions. Let’s give her some space and see what happens.”
“Fine.”
Even I could hear that I suddenly sounded like a spoiled child. Everything I ever wanted was so tantalizingly close to being mine; she had been mine, actually, for a blissful but all-too-short time.
Hugh always ragged on me for being perpetually too sunny, but my outlook saw me through hard times. If you think positive thoughts you get positive results. If that makes me sound like a hippy, then so be it. But I was struggling to accept leaving life to chance when it came to Muriel.
It was starting to feel like getting what you want and then losing it was so much worse than never having it, because you know what you’re going to miss out on. What’s that old cliche? Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? Bullshit.
I gave myself a mental slap and pulled my mental socks up. No good would come from falling down a rabbit hole of Hugh-like thinking.
I lifted my head up from the pillow I’d dramatically made with my arms and clicked my fingers in the air. “How about we figure out a nice lunch from the stuff that guy brought in the basket? She can take it to her room if she wants, but it’ll be presented by us, with love.”
Hugh wrinkled up his nose. “I mean, it’s a bit sappy,” he complained. “But I think she’d like it, so fine.”
All it took was one good idea to brush away my lousy mood. We emptied the basket and found the plastic boxes contained a variety of fresh and vibrant salads: potato, pasta, beets and walnut salad, tuna with corn, coleslaw, and so on. Even though we weren’t going to be serving anything worthy of a Michelin-starred restaurant, and we hadn’t chopped it with our own bare hands, I hoped she’d appreciate the gesture as we worked on laying out an appetizing spread.
We laid out a tablecloth we’d found in the back of a kitchen cupboard and placed the fine bone chinaware and silver cutlery on top, so it all looked pretty good even though the salads had to remain in their plastic containers on the table.
I’d pressured Muriel enough for the day, so I let Hugh go and knock on her bedroom door. I heard him shout out that we’d made her lunch and she was under no obligation to talk to us if she didn’t want to, but she should eat something.
Eventually, her feet padded to the door and then into the hallway with Hugh.
“Ta-da,” I said as she entered the room.