Page 32 of Meet Me in Montreal

“The first step in getting over a problem is admitting you have one,” he said wisely, and she gave him a dirty look. “But get ‘em anyway. And those rocks you were checking out.”

“I have too many already.”

He made a scoffing noise and took the stack out of her hands to carry it to the counter, where his new friend was watching with a grin. Before she could insist she didn’t need anything, Santino pulled out his card and stacked them next to the register along with the feather and several of the stones she’d been lusting over, including the strings of wampum. She wondered what he had planned for that feather, and her core involuntarily squeezed. Vanessa grabbed a shell and one of those sage bundles for good measure and set them down too.

“What’s the sage for?” he asked.

“For all ofthis,” she said, waving her hand over him in a circle.

The lady laughed. “Oh yeah. I’ve got a lot of it at home, too, but my hubby hasn’t disappeared yet, so it might not be that good. How long have you been married?”

Vanessa cracked a smile. “We’re actually divorced. But those three years felt like alongtime.”

Santino pursed his lips and shook his head, suddenly looking less jovial. The lady laughed at his expression, rang them up, and handed Santino the cotton bag that was heavy with his purchases.

“You’re carrying that,” Vanessa said once they said goodbye to the woman and headed outside into the late afternoon.

“I know,” he said. They walked without speaking for a little bit, but it was anything but silent as the strains of jazz and hip hop fused together skipped past them. Santino was the one to break their personal bubble of quiet. “Okay, new rule. Stop telling people we’re divorced. We’re still married. I’ve still got my ring on.” He held it up to show her the gold band. “Where’s yours? Don’t tell me you sold it as a ‘fuck you’ to me.”

He only seemed half-kidding about that. “No, I have it at home. It’s good jewelry. I was going to pawn it, but I thought, why not keep it ‘cause it’s pretty? That’s all,” she retorted.

“Regardless, we’re still married. And your last name is still Donahue. I don’t care if you go by Watson for work, but everywhere else, you’re a Donahue.” Santino’s lips were set in a determined line. After they’d lapsed into another awkward pause, he asked, “Was it really that bad being married to me? I know we had our squabbles, but was it really more bad than good for you?”

That one question shocked her more than anything that had happened so far that day. Santino had never been the introspective type before. She glanced at his profile. He was serious.

“Are you asking because of my joke back there?” When he nodded, she expelled a breath. “Here we go. Fight number one.”

“It doesn’t have to be. I did feel like it was a little disrespectful to say that in front of someone else, though.” Vanessa quieted atthat. “I know we fought a lot, but on my side, it wasn’t all serious. That’s how I grew up, jokes, insults, bickering. That’s how my family communicated. And, to be honest, I liked getting you riled up ‘cause you were cute when you were mad and the make-up sex was crazy. Maybe you saw it differently.”

“If you mean aside from the issues with yourfriend… it was more good than bad,” she admitted slowly. “I did love the making-up part, but after a while I wondered why we had to fight first to get to that. You didn’t take a lot of things seriously, but sometimes that actually made it worse, like you weren’t trying to hear me when something was really bothering me.”

“Like the bathroom thing,” he acknowledged after a moment.

“Theprivacything. I know you grew up with a lot of boys in the house, and it was fine to be all up in their business, but my household was different. It just wasn’t appropriate. And as close as you and I were, I wasn’t comfortable with you seeing that much. There’s no mystery left after that.”

She paused after that unexpected litany poured out of her. He didn’t look surprised when she darted a glance at his face. Troubled, yes, but not surprised.

“It wasn’t because of my brothers. You were in school all day or at the library studying after that. I was out on long-ass shifts for days at a time or leaving for emergency calls. I wanted to spend as much time with you as possible when we were home together. Ten minutes in the bathroom was ten minutes too long away from you.”

Fuck, that was the sweetest explanation for his intrusions that had honestly never once occurred to her. Stunned, she was the one who went silent as her heart throbbed, like an old wound being poked and prodded.

“But it goes both ways,” he said after a moment. “You went through my phone. I’d call that a privacy problem.”

Her face flamed. “I did that because you were giving me reasons to worry.”

“It was still an invasion of my privacy. I never did that to you. I did the bathroom thing because I wanted to be closer to you, but you were looking for reasons to get pissed off,” he said pointedly.

She sighed hard. “Let’s just say we both crossed boundaries that we shouldn’t. What about you? You got pissed with me too, like real pissed. So now’s your chance to get that off your chest.”

“If you want to hear it.”

“Not sure I do, but go ahead,” she responded, tension tightening her spine.

“Well…kinda like back there when you made that comment in front of the woman at the store. You did stuff like that a lot, made little jokes about me in front of other people. And you corrected me a lot or always had to explain something to me like I’d never heard of it before. Mansplaining except in reverse. Like, I got it, you had a bunch of degrees, and I didn’t, but I was cool with that. In fact, I was really proud of you for graduating law school. I love how fuckin’ smart you are.”

Yikes, her heart again. How was he managing this, making her angry and yet so touched all at the same time?

“You called me a nerd. A big nerd. Professor Donahue,” she countered, trying hard to stay on the angry side. But she was softening like melting butter in his sunshine.

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