“No.” I shake my head. “I don’t want you to do that.”
“All right. We’ll talk tomorrow, then. You just tell me where and when, and I’ll be there.”
“I don’t think you understand,” I tell him, gently, because I want there to be no mistaking what I’m saying. “I don’t want to see you anymore, Daniel. Not at my house. Not anywhere. You and I are over.”
“Mel.”
I step around him without answering. My feet carry me unhalting to the waiting Volvo where Evelyn and Paige wait for me.
“Let’s get out of here,” I murmur, sliding into the open backseat.
The weight of Daniel’s stare follows me as my friends get into the car with me, then we merge into the river of traffic and drive away.
18
MELANIE
“Honey, are you sure you’re feeling okay?” My mom eyes me with concern as I set our emptied picnic cooler down on the kitchen floor the next evening. “You haven’t seemed like yourself all day.”
“I’m fine.” I give her a mild shrug and an equally vague wave of my hand. “I just needed some time with you and Katie, that’s all. The park was nice today, wasn’t it?”
“I loved it!” My niece grins at me from her perch on one of the four chairs surrounding our little dining table in the kitchen. “When can we do go again, Aunt Mellie?”
“Soon, I hope.” I can’t resist dropping a kiss on the top of her blond head as I hand her a juice box from the fridge.
The three of us spent the whole day on a blanket under a shade tree in our favorite neighborhood green space. Mom napped and read a book off and on, while Katie and I talked and fed a group of nearly tame chipmunks that sniffed out our lunch and came to beg for treats.
“It was a beautiful day.” Mom eases herself onto another of the chairs. She blots her forehead with a wadded-up tissue that seems to materialize from somewhere on her person the way a magician would pull a rabbit out of his hat. “Whoo, it’s a warm one, though.”
I don’t like the paleness of her face, or how easily she seemed to tire today. I asked her more than once if the sun was too much for her, but she insisted she was fine. In fact, she seemed more focused on how I was feeling, obviously homed in on my general state of distraction, even now.
“I’ll get you some water, Mom.”
I grab a glass from the cupboard and fill it from the filtered tap. She nods as she takes it from me, her hands a little shaky. The sight of her unsteady fingers brings my thoughts back to Jared and his jarring outburst just before he sent me away.
If I’m being honest with myself, it hasn’t been more than a minute since the last time he took up space in my head today.
He’ll be expecting me at Lenox Hill tomorrow morning to return to his studio for our next session. I’ll be there, but only to tell him in person that I’m breaking our agreement.
Now that I’ve had time to process my feelings after our kiss—and the startling way it ended—I’ve decided the best thing for me is to keep my distance from Jared Rush. I can’t deny I was moved to hear about his past. His hardship as a child, his drive to rise above it, struck a chord in me. I gained a new understanding of him, a compassion that makes it hard for me to turn my back on the fact that he’s a troubled, tormented man.
But I’ve already watched one explosive drunk destroy himself and nearly everyone else around him. I didn’t survive my father only to get entangled with a man who triggers every alarm bell in my system. No matter how much he intrigues me. No matter how intensely attracted I am to him.
Too bad I didn’t have this same clarity when it came to dating Daniel.
My phone chimes inside my purse, which I hung on the back of the chair across from my mom. While she finishes her glass of water, I reach into my bag and silence the cheery ringtone I’d assigned to Daniel soon after we started seeing each other.
“Don’t you want to answer that?” Mom asks. “Your phone’s been ringing most of the day. It could be important.”
“Not more important than spending time with you and Katie.”
As for Daniel, he’s left one message after another on my phone. The first few were filled with pleas for me to give him another chance to make things right again. Then he left another, awkwardly asking what our breakup might mean to the agreement we have with Jared and his half of the money I’m due to receive.
I haven’t listened to any of his messages since. I don’t want to think about Daniel or the agreement or anything else, except the pleasant day I’ve enjoyed with my family. The truth is, I needed the uninterrupted time together with my mom and my niece more than they could possibly know. I needed to remind myself what matters.
I glance at six-year-old Katie, who looks so much like my sister Jen it breaks my heart sometimes. “You promised to start on your homework before dinner, remember?”
She rolls her eyes at me and slides off the chair with a dramatic sigh. “Okaaay.”
Drink in hand, she shuffles out of the kitchen, then her footsteps lightly thump up the stairs toward her bedroom.
I slowly shake my head. “She may gripe about studying, but her teacher told me at our last conference that Katie’s one of the top students in her entire grade.”
“She’s a smart one, like you.” Mom smiles at me, letting go of a wistful sigh. “Jen’d be real proud of her, wouldn’t she?”
“Yeah, she would.” My sister was no slouch when it came to her studies, either, but as the situation at home spiraled downward with my father’s drinking and violence, her schoolwork suffered. Eventually,
