Page 40 of The Sharpest Edges

“We need to get her on board with a real name.” He whispers to the cat, giving it one last pat before shifting the conversation. “Anyway, I gotta ask. Where’d you get that thing? It’s a damn nice car. Not that you wouldn’t have a nice car, that’s not what I meant, just that ya don’t see a lot of those. Pretty rare. You said it was a story before and now I got some time.”

Little does he know, he stepped on a landmine.

She knows how to explain why she has it, but why she keeps it…well, she can hardly explain that to herself. The reality of this story will make her sound like a crazy person, but he asked, and he’ll find out anyway if he sticks around, so she takes a breath and rips off the band-aid.

“It belonged to John. He came home with it one day out of the blue. Used his Christmas bonus from work and our entire life savings to buy it. I think it was some sort of mid-life crisis, I don’t know.” She pauses, rolling her eyes. “He never let me drive it, not that I wanted to because I hated it. Hated that he bought it at all.”

Dean’s watching with a furrow in his brow, like he regrets asking. This story is not a happy one, but now that she’s started, she can’t stop.

“She loved it, though. Charlotte. Love isn’t even a strong enough word. She was completely obsessed with it. She would beg him to pick her up from school in it. It was the only time…the only time…that she was happy with her father. When he’d take her for a drive in that stupid car, and he did that a lot. Not because he wanted to spend time with her, but because he wanted to show it off to anyone who’d look.”

“Shit,” he mumbles, having connected the dots to how this tragic story ends before she’s gotten there.

“It wasn’t the car’s fault, what happened that day. It was the truck driver that hit them. Wasn’t even John’s fault, much as I want to blame him.”

He looks like he wants to reach out and pull her into a hug and that’s when she realizes there are fat tears making their way down her cheeks, even though her tone remains level and detached.

“Why don’t ya sell it?”

There is no judgment in his tone, only the desire to understand.

“Hell if I know,” she says with a flippant shrug, and an out-of-place snort of laughter. “Maybe because he’d hate knowing I’m driving it. Oh, he’d hate that. It would light him right up. Would have gotten me a broken nose if I tried it when he was alive…” She trails off, realizing she’s getting too specific, telling him too much all at once. She’ll be lucky if she ever sees him again, she thinks to herself.

“Mostly, I think I keep it because it was the last thing she touched,” Ava continues. “Something she loved. I’m sorry. I know it’s fucked up and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It doesn’t even to me. I’m telling you way more than you wanted to know, and we were supposed to be having a good time here.”

“Hey, I asked, right? Wouldn’t have done that if I didn’t wanna know the answer.” He touches her upper arm like she might bolt, fluttering a soft thumb over her skin.

“I’m not crazy enough to think it’s not crazy.”

“Ain’t crazy. I dunno what to say, to be honest, but don’t think there’s any wrong way to deal with something like this.”

“It’s refreshing to hear someone admit that they don’t know what to say. Usually, it’s ‘Oh hang in there. It’ll get better.’ Or ‘you need to sell it, it’s haunted now.’ Or maybe ‘so sorry for your loss, everything happens for a reason’.”

“Pffft. Fuck that useless crap,” he says with a huff. “Especially the everything happens for a reason line. People said that tome after my momma died and I always wanted to punch ‘em.”

She wants to walk into his arms more than she ever thought possible, but she’s raw and ragged, a lanced open wound, and crying on his shoulder isn’t how she wants to spend this evening.

“Do you like Thai food?” She’s searching for anything that’ll get them out of this depressing hole and give him a reason to stay longer.

“Never had it.”

She gasps. “Never? Well, we have to fix that. If you’re hungry we can order in? There’s a place that delivers here.”

Insecurity in the wake of spilling such a large burden has her worried he won’t accept. What happens next could decide the fate of their entire relationship, as dramatic as that sounds even in her own head.

“I could eat,” he agrees with a nod, his hand dropping away from her arm, his eyes soft.

* * *

An hour later, they’re eating pad Thai on her living room floor, an open bottle of wine on the coffee table, and her inhibitions fading fast. She was nervous to suggest they have a drink…or three, but he’s been on board from the moment she mentioned it, saying he hadn’t had a drink in forever.

She also has not had a drink in forever. She’s one glass in, starting on her second and she must be such a lightweight, already feeling the heavy fuzz of alcohol.

“Do you think there are aliens out there in space?” She asks, shoving her empty plate onto the coffee table beside his andleaning back against her sofa, legs bent, head lulling to the side to face him.

“Wasn’t expecting that question.” He snorts.

“You’ve never thought about it?”

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