Page 67 of The Spark Between Us

Sarah sat up and pulled the sheet up to her chin, effectively cutting off any distractions. I guess she did want to talk. I ran a hand over my face, not particularly wanting to think about Ellie at all, but my affection for Sarah trumped my disgust for Ellie. It trumped everything.

“Okay, well, I guess what I fell for initially was her spirit. She was...she always saw the better side of a situation, always looked for the best in people.”

Sarah said nothing at first, and I wondered if she regretted asking the question. She leaned toward me, cradling the side of my face with one of her palms. “Go on.” Her voice was gentle, mimicking the stroke of her hand. “How’d you meet?”

“We met at a bar one night. She’d moved here temporarily to take care of her friend Jane who had breast cancer. Lived in the apartment with her, took her to all her chemo appointments, ran all her errands. Jane was a teacher at the elementary school, so she had lots of people who cared about her but no family to take care of her.”

“Ellie was her person.”

“Yeah. And you know from your dad, chemo wipes you out, so Jane had crashed, and Ellie was climbing the walls. She ended up at the bar near their apartment where I happened to be with a couple guys from work.” I thought back on the memory of that night. It seemed like so much longer than three years ago. And Ellie...the Ellie from that night felt like a ghost of someone who’d never really existed.

“We drank too much, talked a lot. I thought we had a connection but looking back...maybe it was just the stress she was under looking after Jane and the fact that she didn’t know anyone here.” I hated to think about it now. “Maybe I was the only one invested. Like I said, it was her strength in dealing with a difficult situation and maintaining a positive outlook that attracted me. Probably the same reason she was the right person to help her friend deal with cancer.”

Sarah hadn’t moved, hadn’t shifted her gaze away from me, not for a second. I don’t think she blinked. “What happened with her friend, with cancer?”

This was Sarah, the woman who didn’t want anything bad to happen to anyone. Of course she cared about my ex-fiancée’s friend, who she didn’t know.

I nodded and gently took one of Sarah’s hands that were holding down the sheet and interlaced our fingers. “She’s in remission. We’re still friends. But...why do you want to know all this?”

She stared at me like it was obvious. “I just do. It’s your life. I want to know you.”

Shrugging, I continued, telling her how once Jane recovered, Ellie didn’t have as much reason to be here, other than me. “By then we’d gotten engaged, and maybe she felt trapped. I never thought of it that way at the time, but maybe...I don’t know if getting engaged was maybe a way to try and hold onto something that wasn’t mine to begin with.”

Sarah reached and put a hand on mine. “You couldn’t know. Someone like that, I know the type. Lightning in a bottle, or that’s what they make you think. I have a younger sister like that—Tatum, she shines like the sun, blond hair and all. She was born looking like an angel—and it took me that longest time to realize she wasn’t perfect. She knew it, but I couldn’t see it. So she pushed me away, so I never would. And you know what? Once I realized she had flaws, it made me love her so much more.”

As I heard her say the words, all I could think was that Ellie hadn’t been that kind of person at all. Everything I’d thought to be true about her was my wishful thinking. She’d never pretended to be as interested in me as I hoped she’d be. She was only with me until she found something better. Looking back, I supposed there were signs, but I chose not to see them. I was blinded by who I thought she was.

But Sarah...she really was lightning in a bottle. The irony in the way she described her sister was that she didn’t seem to realize that her sister probably pushed her away in order not to be outshone.

“I guess wanting something doesn’t always make it the right choice. She sounds like she had a lot of good qualities.” She rubbed a hand in circles on my back.

Nothing compared to you.

“I guess not,” I agreed. And that was the problem. The more time I spent with Sarah, the more I wanted her.

I admired her modesty. I admired a lot about her. And despite the rules we’d laid down and the damned good job we’d done so far at keeping to them, I couldn’t help feeling a tugging in my heart. It wanted more.

I had to shut that shit down before someone got hurt. It wasn’t going to be me, not again. And I didn’t want it to be Sarah—she had a life to go back to in Berkeley in a couple months. So there we were.

So far, all the lines had been crossed, but no rules had been broken.

No falling in love.

I needed to make sure I kept it that way.

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