Page 80 of Meeting Mr. Adorkable
“Fuck it.” Lucian sucked his thumb pad. Made to bleed by a thorn on a rose stem. A red rose, the flower of love. Ha bloody ha.
“I’ll take over wrapping them for you, ma’am.” Bibi nudged him away from the counter.
“I don’t expect a whole heap of cussin’ when I spend my hard-earned dollars in the town’s stores.”
Piss off, you dried up old bag. Lucian glared at the woman, who answered with pursed lips.
“No, of course not. I apologize for my assistant. Lucian, there’s something in the back I need you to take care of.”
“Like what?” Bibi was giving him her shark smile, and he couldn’t have cared less.
“Find something.”
Lucian slouched through the door and into the back, and collapsed against the table.
Three days since he’d told Arlo to go, three days of checking his cell, three days of picking it up and putting it back down again, indecision throwing him one way, then another. Should he call? Should he go out to the house? Should he plead, beg, grovel for Arlo to change his mind? But Arlo had made it clear he neither wanted nor loved him enough. His stomach rolled over and over. He’d crawled to enough men, and he refused to do it again.
Lucian pulled up a chair and sank down into it. Flopping forward over the table, he rested his head on his crossed arms and closed his eyes.
The door opened with a bang, but he couldn’t be bothered to look up.
“What the hell is wrong with you? You’ve been like a bear with a sore head for the past couple of days. You can curse as much as you want, here in the back, and with me, but not in front of customers.”
He buried his head deeper into his arms.
“Lucian, I’m talking to you.” Bibi prodded his shoulder.
He buried some more.
“Lucian?” Bibi’s voice lost its angry edge. A gentle hand on his shoulder replaced the prod. “What the hell happened? This isn’t like you. Should I go get Arlo?”
“Arlo?” He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He turned his head to look up at Bibi. “No. I don’t want you to get Arlo. Not now, not ever.”
Bibi’s eyes widened as understanding dawned.
“You’ve got to be joking. I mean, you are, right?”
“Wrong. As of three days ago…” Three days, fourteen hours and fifty-seven minutes, twenty seconds and counting, “Arlo and I have slipped from present and future tense into the past.”
“Oh, no. Luci, I’m so sorry. You were so cute together. At first, you seemed like such a wrong match, but once you looked a little closer, anybody could see you were so right for each other.”
Lucian sat up. “Just a shame he doesn’t see it that way.”
“Then you just have to convince him otherwise. Wait a moment.” She rushed out of the door into the store and was back a few moments later. “I just made sure we won’t be disturbed. We’ve closed for lunch.”
He looked up at the wall clock. “At ten o’clock in the morning?”
“My store, my rules. Do you want to tell me what happened? If it were later in the day, I’d say come over to my place, drink too much wine, and blubber.”
“I’ve already drunk too much wine and blubbered until there was nothing left to blub. I feel like such a damn fool,” he whispered.
“Then join the millions of us all around the world. Talking — or not to anybody other than Arlo — won’t solve your problem, but it might just make you feel a little less alone.” She rubbed his arm, and the tears rose in him. He sniffed and nodded, but it took only a second before the flood gates cracked and burst as he told her everything.
“It’s turned out he’s the worst of the lot. At least my old boyfriend Miles — the one I came out here to get over — didn’t bother to pretend. I always knew he didn’t much like me, except for one thing. There was at least some kind of warped honesty in our relationship, but Arlo, he—he made me believe we had something good, something that would take us into the future.” A discarded leaf lay on the table, and Lucian rolled a fingertip over it, rolling and rolling until he’d reduced it to nothing more than flattened mush. You and me both, leaf.
“I don’t believe he did it on purpose. I’ve always trusted in my gut, and it’s never let me down. And do you want to know what my gut’s saying about Arlo?”
“That he’s giving you an acute case of wind?”
