“I don’t trust anyone else.”
This was true. Hudson had a team of designers and builders, but often said he had to oversee them to make sure they were doing things the right way. It was his company, and everything had to be done to perfection.
“I’m sorry.” I pulled out leftover pasta, hoping Ian hadn’t eaten the last meatball. “Well, I had quite a day. This old lady called to complain about someone throwing garbage over her side of the fence, but it turned out no one lived there! So, she has some kids tossing garbage, which is really too bad. Dumb Wes thought maybe she was littering her own backyard. Who would do that?”
I was still laughing at the incident.
“Uh-huh,” Hudson’s voice sounded far away.
“So, what are you doing later?” I opened some Tupperware and prodded the spaghetti with a fork, looking for meatballs. “Do you want to take the dogs for a walk? Or we could —”
“Listen, we have to talk,” he interrupted.
I was startled by the serious tone of his voice.
“I should probably do this in person, but—”
“Do what? I’m not following you.”
“Here’s the thing,” he started, stopped, then started again. “I just don’t think we’re a match. I don’t see us together in the future.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, dropping the container of dinner food into the sink.
The phone went quiet.
“Are you still there?” I asked, my voice cracking.
“I am,” he said, his voice eerily calm. “There’s a little voice in my head that keeps saying it’s not right, and I’ve got to listen to it.”
I felt the sickness in my stomach rising to my throat.
“What’s not right? I don’t understand.”
“You and me. We aren’t meant for each other.”
“I don’t understand,” I said again.
“All right. When I look into the future, say five years down the line, I don’t see myself with you.”
“But no one can predict the future; there’s no crystal ball,” I said, wiping my eyes with the back of my sleeve. “And who would want one? We just need to take it as it comes. See what happens.”
“I can’t do that, Jessica. You’re not the one for me. There really isn’t anything else to say.”
I slid down to my knees on my kitchen floor.
There was dead silence on the phone. From out the open window, I could hear cars going by and kids laughing and even Penny scratching at the front door to come in. I couldn’t move.
“You still have a hoodie at my house. I’ll leave it on your porch.”
“Don’t come here,” I said, pressing my forehead against the wall.
I didn’t get up off the floor until Eddie got there twenty minutes later.
“He couldn’t get it up anyway,” Eddie said later, apparently trying to be helpful.
“That only happened a couple of times,” I yelled at him, furious at myself for having shared that with Eddie. I still felt protective of Hudson.
“And he was obsessive about his perfect house. Didn’t he, like, vacuum up every last dog hair?”
Thinking of Chloe made me cry even harder.
Nothing Eddie said helped. Neither did the sobbing I did into his shoulder.
“Shush,” he said, rocking me like a child.
“This one could break me,” I said, leaning on his shoulder.
“Never,” Eddie said, pulling me closer into his arms. “Not in this lifetime, Jess.”
66
Monday, I wanted so badly to call in sick, but judging by the way I felt when I took to my bed after Bryan left, it would be even worse to stay home. I hadn’t slept more than thirty minutes at a time. I cried so hard my pillowcase was damp. Penny, my little life-saver, stayed awake with me all night while I wailed, kicked my feet, and punched at the blankets, finally throwing them all on the floor.
I pictured Hudson in his king’s bed, sleeping like a baby now that he’d tossed me to the curb.
What the fuck had happened?
He didn’t see me in his future? We’d never even talked about the future! I hadn’t asked him for anything! Had I pictured myself in his beautiful house, writing at the dining room table while Pen and Chloe had puppy play time and Hudson made dinner? Sure, I had. Absolutely. But I had never told him this fantasy. Not a single word.
He had called me juicy! Kissed the small of my back. Said he was loving every part of me.
Things made no more sense at dawn than they had at midnight. I pulled on the same clothes I’d worn to work the day before, as if doing that would take back the day and Hudson’s terrible words.
When I got there, Wes and Joe were already arguing. This morning’s inane subject: what type of clouds were gathering over Brew Coffee on the corner.
“Those fluffy ones, cornelius, they don’t mean rain,” Wes said, scratching his ear then looking at his finger.
“Cumulus, you idiot,” said Joe, who abandoned his desk and sat at the conference table with his friends. “It’s them voracious clouds you need to worry about.”
“I think you mean cirrus,” I said, immediately regretting it because it might have drawn me into the conversation, and I just wasn’t in the mood to be cheered up by their silliness.
The men switched topics entirely, launching into a detailed conversation about how many fire trucks were in last year’s Memorial Day parade.
I pulled out my cell. Madison had deleted all Hudson’s messages, even those I’d locked, and his cell number from my directory, but what she hadn’t thought of was deleting his incoming calls from my dial log. It made my stomach lurch to see how frequently he’d called me: first thing in the morning, during my lunch half-hour, at bedtime.
I worked on auto-pilot while the guys’ discussion branched out to historic facts, or rather, their lack of ability to distinguish fact from fiction. I skipped lunch and ate a handful of almonds for dinner, thinking maybe I could go on some sort of grief diet. I pictured myself running into Hudson at the grocery store weeks
