Page 69 of This Is How It Started
Just stalking my late husband’s ex-lover. Nothing to see here. “Uh...I was picking up a gift for a friend.”
“Hang on a sec.” He gets out of the car, and I watch him in the rearview mirror go to his truck, which is parked a few spaces down from me. He returns a couple of minutes later and hands me a stack of napkins. “Best I’ve got.”
“Thank you.” I wipe my nose and face, vowing to keep a box of tissues in my car from now on. “I’ll be okay.”
“Did you get your gift?” His voice is so gentle that it makes me tear up all over again.
“Yep,” I lie. “It’s in the trunk.”
“What do you say I drive you home? Jess can pick me up at your place.”
“Thank you. But I’m fine.”
“I hate to break it to you, Rach, but you don’t look fine.”
I start to cry again, unable to help myself. “I guess...I’m having...a bad day.”
“You’re entitled.” He reaches behind me and gently squeezes my neck. “Let me take you home.”
“Okay,” I say as I choke on another sob.
“Jess is in the bakery. Give me a couple of minutes to let her know.”
While he’s gone, I crawl over the console into the passenger seat. Even though it’s only a five-minute drive home, Campbell’s right, I probably shouldn’t be driving in this state...or any state. Even on a good day, I’m a menace on the road.
He’s back in a flash and takes the wheel, nosing onto the street, which is full of traffic now.
“Is Jessica upset?” I should feel awful about pulling him away.
“Nah, she’ll wind up picking it anyway. It’s cake. They’re all good, right?”
“Yeah.” I wipe my nose. “You can’t go wrong with cake.”
He slides me a sideways glance and grins. “Remember Adam’s birthday cake?”
I laugh, but I’m still crying, so it comes out like a baby being strangled to death. “I’d almost forgotten about that.” My mother had brought home a St. Honoré cake for Adam’s seventeenth birthday celebration. It was his favorite. But it’s not the kind of cake you write Happy Birthday on. When I found it in the fridge, I assumed it was up for grabs. By the time my mother set it on the table with seventeen lit birthday candles, half of the cake was gone. Campbell and I had eaten it. “Man, was my mom pissed.”
“Your mom? Adam cried.”
I laugh again, this time snorting mucus up my nose. “He did, didn’t he? It may be the reason why he turned out the way he did. We scarred him for life.”
“Poor Adam. Always getting the short end of the cake.”
It feels easy between us the way it used to, and I’m disappointed when we pull up the driveway so soon.
Campbell lightly touches my leg. “You want me to put your car in the garage or park here.”
“Here,” I say. “Thank you for taking me home, Campbell.”
“Hey, that’s what friends are for.”
Maybe it’s my imagination, but I hear a bit of wistfulness in his voice. For a long time, we just sit in the car, silent. Neither of us need to speak. We both know what the other is thinking, what neither of us need to say. Because the bond we shared is always there between us, even if we don’t want to admit it to each other—or even to ourselves.
“I forgot something in the pool house. May as well get it while I’m here, before Jess comes, which I’m sure is any minute.” Suddenly he’s rushing to get out of the car, like he’s afraid we’ll get caught in a compromising position when all we were doing was talking.
It’s my cue to go inside. I get out of the car, but before I turn to leave, I say, “I hope she’s not mad.”
“Of course not.”
