Page 79 of Heat Exchange
After a few seconds, Aidan couldn’t hold back the laughter anymore and Scotty laughed with him. It was a start, he thought. He’d be thankful for these glimpses their friendship would survive and use them to ride out the rough times, when Scotty was still throwing him attitude. They’d be okay, though.
But he knew the weeks wouldn’t feel any less long and lonely because, at the end of the day, he didn’t have Lydia anymore.
* * *
THEYTHREWLYDIA’Spity-slash-farewell party at Ashley’s house because Danny had pulled a night tour and she had enough room for them all to sleep if they had too much to drink.
It was a good thing, Lydia thought, since they’d all jumped that hurdle at least an hour before. Some more than others. She was sipping her vodka-and-raspberry seltzer because the last thing she needed on top of unbearable sadness and heartbreak was a hangover.
“We should go put a bag of flaming dog shit on his deck,” Courtney said. She obviously had no fear of hangovers because she was drinking laps around Lydia, with Ashley and Becca somewhere in the middle. “Do people still do that?”
“Abigbag of flaming dog shit,” Becca said. “One of those paper leaf bags that’s like four feet tall. And we can go sneak around people’s backyards and steal their dog shit until it’s totally full. Then we’ll put it on his deck and set it on fire.”
“Courtney, you can’t do that,” Ashley argued, pointing a finger in her general direction and leaning close. “Only you can prevent dog shit fires.”
“He’s a firefighter,” Lydia said. “He’d just put it out, anyway. And we’d get arrested.”
Courtney made a shocked face. “They’d never know it was us.”
“I hate to break it to you, but Ashley and I were born and raised in this neighborhood, so us dragging around a giant paper bag and stealing people’s dog shit from their backyards is not going to go unnoticed.”
“That’s not fun at all.” Becca sighed. “What are we going to do, then?”
“I’m going to go home,” Lydia said. She’d probably go after the weekend, to give Ashley a few more days to acclimate, but then her time in Boston would be over. “I’m going to curl up with my roommate’s cat and a big bucket of ice cream and watch movies that make me cry. And then I’m going to find another job and get on with my life.”
“No.” Courtney shook her head. “We can still make this work. You know everybody, so if somebody asks why we’re in their backyard, you can just tell them you’re cleaning up the dog poo for them. Like community service.”
“You’re shut off, Court,” Ashley told her. “And whatever you do, don’teverdrink without one of us with you because I think you’d make some really bad decisions.”
“I think Lydia going back to New Hampshire is a bad decision,” she shot back.
“So do I,” Ashley said. When Lydia gave her a questioning look, she shrugged. “You asked me why I helped you and Aidan get away for the weekend when I’d been worried about your relationship blowing up in your face. I’d figured out you two might actually be good together and if I helped you guys get away, you’d fall in love and stay here and marry him and work at the bar with me.”
“That was never the plan, Ash.” But, judging by the ache that intensified in her chest, her heart had decided somewhere along the way that it was a damn good plan.
Her sister shrugged. “Sometimes plans change.”
“And sometimes plans get canceled,” Courtney mumbled. “Even great plans that would have been doing your dog-owning neighbors ahugefavor. It was going to be a valuable community service.”
“We’re not setting anything on fire,” Lydia said. “We’re going to leave Aidan alone, which is what I should have done from the first day I came back to Boston.”
Maybe if she’d left him alone, the way she told herself to do that first night at the bar, she wouldn’t be facing the rest of her life with a huge hole in it she wasn’t sure anybody else could ever fill. Before Aidan, she hadn’t known she was missing anything. But now it would never be the same because she missed him so much she could barely breathe.
“Maybe you should ask him to move in with you,” Becca suggested. “He can make you cookies.”
“Why would he make me cookies?”
“Because I like cookies.”
Lydia nodded. “Of course.”
The other three women immediately launched into a lively debate on what the best kind of cookie was. She didn’t really care, so she drained her glass and debated on having another drink.
Asking Aidan to move in with her had crossed her mind, but she’d never been able to muster the nerve to ask him how he’d feel about moving to New Hampshire. To her, that didn’t mean transferring to a firehouse in Concord. It meant giving it up and she couldn’t ask him to do that. Not since the day she’d seen how very much the job meant to him.
Maybe he’d do it, too. He might be willing to walk away from Boston Fire for her, but at what cost? He couldn’t change the man he was and, if he did, was he still the man she loved?
She’d been asking herself that for days and never got an answer but a headache to go with her heartache.
