I slowly started up my porch steps, still thinking, and stood at the door trying to locate my keys in my bag, when I sensed movement to my left. I barely had time to process the sensation when something brushed my leg. I let out an ear-piercing scream and cocked my arms to swing my purse at whatever—or whoever—was lurking in the shadows of my porch.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hollis! Don’t swing! It’s just Tink!”
It took my brain at least a full minute to make sense of what I was seeing. Standing in front of me, staring expectantly, was Tink. In the shadows of my porch, sitting on the rocking chair, holding out both of his hands in stop pose, was—
“Trace?” I blinked. Then blinked again. “Trace?”
He laughed. “Yeah. It’s me.” In seconds, he had gotten up from the chair and crossed the porch, arms out to envelop me. I stood rooted to the floorboards, disbelieving, as he wrapped me in a hug. Tink licked my knee, then went back to panting.
“Trace?” I asked again, because that was the only word my mind could seem to form. I dropped my purse on the porch, my arms trapped at my sides by his hug, then shrugged him away. “You scared the daylights out of me.”
He laughed again. “I’m sorry. You are a sight for sore eyes, Hollis.” Tink decided this was way too much action for him, and heavily plopped onto the creaky porch floor, instantly sighing himself to snuffly sleep, his wet muzzle on my foot.
“What are you doing here?”
He gazed at me. “Gosh, it feels like it’s been forever.” My cheek had smudged his glasses; he took them off and cleaned them with his shirttail, then pressed them back in place—a habit so familiar to me, I reflexively found it endearing. “You look different. Your hair is longer.”
My hand traveled to my hair. “Well, it’s been a year. You didn’t answer me. Why are you here?”
“You didn’t know? Your mom told me she would warn you that I was coming.”
“She didn’t.”
“No wonder you seem so surprised. Well, I’m here now.” He flung his arms out wide and gave me a smitten smile.
“Yes, you are,” I said. “But you still haven’t told me why.”
“Long story short, I couldn’t make it another day without seeing you.”
I blinked, wondering if I’d heard that correctly. “You’ve gone a year without seeing me.”
He shrugged. “But I’ve thought about you. Every single day. Isn’t that right, Tink?” Tink let one eye flutter open just the slightest, then closed it again, readjusting his chin to a comfier place on the floor next to my foot. “Ah, well. He knows.”
“Surely you weren’t thinking about me every single day that you were dating Sophia Cranberg,” I said, the comment out before I’d even had a chance to register that the anger and disappointment I’d held in for the past year was bubbling to the top.
He seemed taken aback. “You knew about that?”
“My mom knows everything. And what she doesn’t know, Ruta does. And what they know, I hear about. Except you coming here, which was a somewhat major detail they kept to themselves.”
He tilted his head back and gave a merry laugh. “Oh, good old Vida and Ruta. I just love it when I run into them. What a hoot those two are.” He took a breath. “I dated Sophia, yes.”
I held up my hand ticked off the girls my mother had told me about. “Let’s see. You also dated a Pilates teacher who has a Masters in nutritional science. There was the French professor. The pilot. The model who was also a Rhodes Scholar.”
“Wow, your mom really did keep you up to date.”
“It’s a gift. The point is, you haven’t been missing me for a year. You’ve been dating a lot of very impressive girls.” Bearings back, I bent to pick up my purse and resumed digging for my keys. “And speaking of dates, I’m just getting back from one, and I’m tired. It was nice seeing you, but you should probably call first in the future.”
A fleeting look of alarm crossed his face as he glanced the direction Brooks’ car had gone. But he quickly recovered, re-pasted his smile, and bent at the waist, trying to maintain eye contact. “But that is the point. I’ve been dating a lot of very much top-notch girlfriend candidates.”
“I’m so glad to hear it,” I said. I wasn’t, by the way, glad to hear it. I wasn’t even sure why I was hearing it. If I could write a list of things I didn’t want to hear, the lineup of way-more-amazing-than-me girlfriends that Trace had been with over the past year while I was married to my job and spending my evenings with my cat would be in the top three, at the very least. Also, I was hardly the worst dating candidate in the world. I was cute. I was smart. I was professional. I’d done Pilates once.
At the same time, I couldn’t help noticing that the guy I’d been pining over for a year was standing right here on my front porch…and I wasn’t feeling much of anything more than irritation that he was here. Had I gotten completely over him? Something I thought would never happen, and here it was happening right now on my front porch?
“But none of them were you,” he continued. “Every time I was with one of those girls, all I could do was compare them to you. And then I would start missing you all over again.”
“But you’re the one who wouldn’t move to—”
He held out a hand to
