Page 55 of Considering Us

“Aww, I love that. Speaking of family, I moved in with Professor Plum.”

“Tam! That’s the best news! I’m so happy for you. I really dig him.”

“Thank God because he’s here to stay. And I love your place, but the wood-burning fireplace won out.”

“I get it.” My condo was now empty. I had a lot to decide where that was concerned, but it could wait. I had much bigger issues to deal with. “So, about Kyle,” I began.

“And Heath! Darling, you went out there with the handsome paramedic, and you came home alone? And somehow, you’re now on a train? What happened?”

I sighed, looking out the window as we crossed into New Hampshire.Soon, Kyle.“It’s a long story that involves snoring and someone who was not what he seemed, and the most wonderful bartender named Charlie, who used to live in Charlestown and who we probably got drinks from at some point but now lives in LA. But it all made me see that Kyle’s the one. I just hope he still wants to be with me.”

“So, you’re heading there now?”

“I’ve got to figure out how to get from UNH to Rockwood, but yes, that’s the plan.”

When I got off the train in Durham, I found someone who looked like a student and might not be totally freaked by a person asking transportation questions. “Do you have any idea how I can get to Portsmouth from here?” I posed, trying to seem as normal as possible.

“There’s a bus,” she said, giving me the once over. Considering my lack of sleep and a recent shower, I may have looked worse than I realized.

“Awesome!” I exclaimed. “When?”

“Not till noon,” she said with a shrug. Which was almost two hours away, yet it seemed like an eternity. “Sometimes Uber will do it. I usually ask a friend for a ride,” she said, walking away from the unstable stranger asking strange questions.

Ask a friend for a ride.I dug out my phone and called Andrea.

...

“I can’t thank you enough,” I said to Andrea, closing the passenger door behind me as I settled into the front seat of her Volvo sedan.

“I needed to unload some hot gossip on someone, so your call came at a great time,” she said, pulling her car away from the curb. She gave me a quick glance. “But seriously, what the hell happened to you? You look a little, well, thrown around. Like you’ve been on a bender or something. I saw the basketball game last night. That was some exciting shit, but it didn’t end here until after midnight. I wasn’t expecting to pick you up at a train station less than twelve hours later.”

“Heath-the-paramedic and I are through,” I said, checking myself out in the car’s visor mirror.Rough.I threw a stick of gum in my mouth and dug through my purse for a hairbrush and some lip gloss. “It took a cross-country flight that he slept—and snored—through and very minimal interaction once we got there for me to realize that he is not the guy for me. And once that game was over, I couldn’t wait to get back here.” I had left out quite a bit of the story—Charlie the bartender, David’s pre-game near-collapse, my post-game phone call with Kyle—but I knew who I was talking to. Anything I told Andrea could easily be repeated at The Horse later that night or to any random staffer she happened to run into walking from her house to her office.

But Andrea knew better. “You couldn’t wait to get back here to Kyle, huh?”

“Time will tell,” I said, dropping Visine into my bloodshot eyes. “I’m sure you’ll find out.”

“Likely,” she said with a laugh. “All right, gossip time. Wait until you hear this one.”

“Lay it on me,” I said. “We have approximately twenty-five minutes until we are back on campus.”

She cleared her throat and almost whispered, “I know who’s behindThe Underground Stallion.”

“No way! I thought it was your niece until the other day, and I point-blank asked her. Not sure if you heard about that,” I said.

“You know, I always suspected her, too. The perfect way to say eff off to your aunt, you know? Anyway, it’s not her. It’s a team effort. A partnership. Are you ready for this?”

“You’re killing me, Andrea.”

“Ryland Dennis and Marnie.”

“Marnie? My Marnie?” My jaw was probably scraping the floorboards of Andrea’s car at that point.What the hell was Marnie doing running an underground newspaper? And with Ryland, of all people? A faculty member?

“Well, she’s sort of his Marnie, to be honest, but from everything I can tell, they’re not involved sexually. I think it’s more of the fucked-up kind of thing he had with Kyle’s ex-wife Cora. He gets wrapped up in these weird, co-dependent, emotionally obsessed relationships. And then there’s the Ward Connelly situation. That’s who she’s actually banging from what I can ascertain. You know about that, right?”

“I do. I spotted them making out on the scaffold. She was disguised, but we figured out who it was. How doyouknow?”

She sighed. “Julianna Preston called me one day screaming about it. I guess he’s done with Julianna, at least for now, andtold her that he found a woman who serves him meals in tiny, inspired, beautiful boxes.”

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