Page 96 of Sleepover

Chapter 47

Sawyer

I lead her back to my house and tell her to wait in the living room while I run upstairs and come back downstairs with my Lucy journal.

I open the journal to after we met at Maeve’s. I hold it out so she can read it for herself. There’s no entry for that night, because I got home too late and was too tired and (still) horny for her to write in the journal. Anyway, it’s not that night I’d want her to see, but all the nights following it. “Look.”

The entries after the night I met her at Maeve’s are all dated and addressed to Lucy but blank—until the very last entry.

“I couldn’t,” I explain. “I tried to write to her again after the night we met, but I couldn’t make myself do it. I’d get the date down, and my greeting to her, and then—nothing.”

Her gaze flashes to mine, confusion written there.

“Because I knew everything had changed. I knew meeting you had changed everything, and I didn’t want to tell her.”

“Oh,” she says. “Oh.”

Her eyes are huge. She bites her lip.

“And then I moved in next door and it was even more true. I mean, maybe I didn’t know consciously, but some part of me must have known, because I couldn’t write to Lucy. Until the Friday night before the wedding.” I push the journal closer. “Read it.”

She hesitates. I can’t blame her. I don’t think many women would want to read what their lover had written to his dead wife—at least not any more than she’s already had to stomach. But I don’t think I can make her believe—really believe—unless she sees it for herself.

“That’s the entry I saw,” she says.

“I know.”

She drops her chin and studies the page. I read over her shoulder.

Dear Lucy,

I love you. I will probably always love you.

I have something I have to tell you, though. I met someone, and I’m going away this weekend with her. Her name is Elle. I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but I think it could be something real. Something serious. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, but it felt—weird and awkward. I hope wherever you are, you don’t have weird and awkward, and you get what I’m trying to say. Thanks for listening.

Love,

Sawyer

She looks up at me. Whispers, “I thought—”

“I know. I get it.”

“I’m so sorry. I only read the first line. And then I freaked out and my brain went blank and all the words blurred together.”

“I figured.”

“I’m an idiot.”

“Nah,” I say. “You just have a little PTSD because your ex-husband is an asshole.”

That makes her smile.

I reach toward the side table and grab a pen. “Hey. Can I do something?”

Her eyes are quizzical.

“I want to write one last entry. I want to say goodbye to her.”

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