Page 142 of Champagne Nights

Keaton rolled his eyes. “Very funny.”

“Here’s your coffee, sweetheart. How’s Ben? Have you talked to him?”

“He’s fine. He actually called me today and asked me if I would go running with him tomorrow morning. I told him that I couldn’t because I have to go to the office.”

“Oh, that poor boy. He probably didn’t want to be alone tomorrow with it being the anniversary of his wife’s death.”

I looked at Keaton and then at my mom. “What? How do you know that?”

“You didn’t know?” she asked.

“No. He never mentioned it.”

“We talked about it last Sunday.”

“What did you do? Ask him when his wife died?”

“Yes, actually, I did.”

“Oh God, Mom,” Keaton said.

“What?”

I couldn’t believe that my mother knew and I didn’t. But then again, I never asked, and he never asked me.

“I think you should go and run with him tomorrow,” Keaton said.

“I think you should too,” my mom agreed.

“I can’t, and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“You won’t,” Keaton said. “I do believe he went surfing with you.”

“That’s different. His wife didn’t die in the ocean.”

“Okay, Paisley. I get it. But you have to get over it and move on. What if you were in a car accident and he died? Or had the heart attack while driving? Would you never drive a car again?”

“That’s different, Keaton, and you know it.”

“How is it different, Paisley?” he asked in a raised voice as he got up from his seat. “You’re hiding. This isn’t the Paisley I know. The Paisley I grew up with would do anything to help someone else.” He stormed out of the kitchen.

I leaned my elbows on the island and placed my face in my hands.

“He was out of line, sweetheart. Don’t listen to him.”

I stood up and grabbed my purse. “I’m sorry, Mom, but I have to go,” I said as I kissed her cheek.

“Please stay for dinner.”

“I can’t. I’ll call you.”

The first thing I did when I got home was start a bath. I was pissed off at Keaton for talking to me the way he did. How dare he say those things to me. I poured a glass of wine and set it on the tub’s edge. Romeo sat on the bath rug next to the tubas I climbed into the bubbly hot water. I leaned back, soaked up the lavender-scented bubbles, and sipped my wine. Maybe Keaton was right. Perhaps I was hiding from the fear that the memories of that day would come flooding back into my mind. I didn’t want to be reminded because if I was, I didn’t know if I would be able to handle it. The anniversary of his death was next month, and I didn’t know how I’d get through it. Would I want company? Or would I just want to be left alone and hide away from the world for the day. I had no clue; everyone handled it differently. Ben reached out to me because he obviously didn’t want to be alone. He could have done something with his mom, dad, or brother, but he asked me to go running with him.

Ben

I woke up and looked at the clock. It was six a.m. As I lay there, I thought about Amy.

“It’s been a year, Amy, a whole year. The longest year of my life without you. FUCK!” I screamed as I threw the pillow across the room. I climbed out of bed, brushed my teeth, and threw on my running clothes. After making a cup of coffee, I sat down at the table and tried to block this very day, one year ago, from my mind. I didn’t want to think about anything at all, even Paisley Logan. As I walked out into the garage to look over the chairs I had stained, my phone beeped with a text message from Finn.

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