Page 53 of Save the Date
“That was a Friday night,” he went on. “It was late March. Ryan and I were working crazy hours, trying to finish this Victorian house on Huntingdon Street. A total gut job. So I worked all day Saturday and Sunday too. When I got home that night, we had this big blowout of a fight about it. And again, in hindsight, I know now it wasn’t about the dog, and it wasn’t really about me working too much. At some point, I realized I needed to cool off. So I got in the truck, and I went back to the job site, and I actually slept in the truck that night, because I was too pissed off to go home.…”
“And that was it?” Cara asked.
“Yeah. How lame is this? I go back home the next morning, to shower, and she’s gone. Packed up most of her clothes and crap, and just headed out on the road with this character, who calls himself… get this… Jamey Buttons.”
Cara groaned. “And she left Shaz behind.”
“And me. Now I’m like the opposite of what the song says. Come Monday,nothin’was all right.”
22
There was a votive candle in a jar on their table, and the small flame lit Cara’s face in shades of pinks and peach as she leaned in, listening to him tell the end of the Jack and Zoey story. She had large, expressive brown eyes, and her nose had a weird little indent at the very tip, and her hair, which she’d worn up, was falling down, strands lightly touching the bare skin on her shoulders. Her lips were the color of ripe peaches. Or was that just the candlelight? She was wearing the same orangey-pink dress she’d had on the night of Ryan’s wedding.
Why am I telling her all this? Why does she care? Why do I care?
He cared because he’d been deserted, left behind. Because Zoey had found somebody else. Somebody better. And let’s face it, he cared because she’d beat him to the punch, leaving him before he could leave her.
But why should Cara Kryzik care about any of this? Maybe… because she’d been hurt, too. At least, that’s what Ryan had said. She was a good listener. Zoey never listened worth a damn. You’d start telling her something, and she’d interrupt, stepping all over your sentences, making you forget what you were talking about, turning everything around, until, inevitably, whatever you were about to say was somehow about her. Her day. Her crappy job. Her. Her. Her.
“Do you miss her?” Cara was asking.
“Who? Zoey?” He would have shrugged off the question, but there was something about this girl that made him speak the truth, even when it was painful.
“Maybe. Yeah, okay. Sometimes. And then she pulls some stunt, like letting hours go by before letting me know that Shaz has been turned in to the vet’s office, and I’ve abducted somebody else’s dog.”
She nodded.
“What about you?” he asked softly. “Ryan tells me you’re divorced. Pretty recently?”
Cara bit her lip and looked out the window. “Last April. Hard to believe it’s been a year.”
“Miss him?”
“No.” She fairly spat the word.
“Really? Never? How long were you married?”
“It would have been five years, but we split last year on Valentine’s Day.”
Jack grimaced. “Brutal.”
“It was also my birthday.”
“Shit,” he said softly.
“Exactly. He was a shit. Which is why I now have a dog.”
“A female dog,” Jack observed.
Cara took a long sip of wine and then a deep breath. “Hate to say it, but I’d better start thinking about heading home.”
“Really?”
Jack could have kicked himself. He’d struck a nerve, asking about her ex. What was he thinking? Never, ever, ask a girl about an ex. Was he that out of practice?
He put some money on the tabletop and stood, holding out a hand to steady her, as she pulled herself from the narrow booth. Her hand was small and warm, but her fingers were long, like an artist’s.
When she was standing, he released her hand, but rested his own, lightly, on the small of her back, as they made their way to the door. Doyle’s was packed now, with a din that drowned out anything they could have said, until they were back outside on the sidewalk again.
