Page 19 of Love Undecided
I did, so I said so.
“She took it hard, but I also think it had gotten to a point where she was more concerned about planning a wedding and how that looked to everyone else than she was about our relationship. Once I realized that, I had no choice but to call it off.”
It seems as though it still bothers him. A lot.
“How close to the wedding did you call it off?” I ask.
“Two months,” he replies.
“Two weeks,” I say.
“No, two months,” he corrects.
“No,” I laugh. “I mean I was two weeks out when I called mine off.”
“Wow, you’re kind of a brutal bitch, aren’t you?”
“It was because my cancer had returned, I didn’t want him to deal with it again,” I tell him.
“Fuck. I’m sorry, Sherman told me about your cancer, I wasn’t thinking.” He reaches over to squeeze my knee. I feel a zing straight down my center at his touch.
“It’s cool,” I mumble distractedly.
And it is cool, I think.
“You’re in remission or whatever it’s called now, right? Like, you’re okay?”
“For the most part, totally good.”
“Glad to hear it, Cookie.
“Wait, why are you calling me Cookie?”
“Well, you don’t like babe or Kit-Kat and calling you chocolate bar is ridiculous, so I settled on Cookie.”
“Why would you call me chocolate bar? Or anything but my name for that matter?”
He doesn’t respond.
“Did it occur to you that I may not like nick-names? At all.”
“Not really,” he says.
The rest of our drive is quiet and subdued. Me thinking about how his hand felt on my knee and him thinking I don’t know what. But for my own good, I don’t try to figure it out.
Unfortunately, we don’t get much from the other two houses, but that doesn’t surprise me. Returning to a scene long after a crime was committed to try and solve it is not an effective means of catching a criminal.
Apparently, Bauer agrees.
“I knew this would be a waste of time, but I told the mayor that I would follow Sherman’s lead until that lead became ineffectual. I think we can both agree that with today, it just became ineffectual.”
“Yup!”
It's late by the time he pulls into the precinct parking lot and stops behind my car, and I can’t wait to go home and go to bed. I’m exhausted.
“So let’s reconvene sometime tomorrow to devise a new strategy,” he says.
“Sounds good,” I say with a smile.
