Page 21 of Anders and the Girl Worth Fighting For
“We’ll figure it out.”
“I just feel so… lost. Hopeless. I don’t know.” I admitted. The words were out before I could reign them in.
Anders turned to me and grabbed my hands. “You aren’t alone in this. I won’t let you be alone in this.” He rubbed my hands with his thumbs again and I counted the circles as they went round and round, leaving a trail of electric tingles everywhere he touched.
“The only person I’ve ever known that had money was my grandmother,” I said when I could think clearly. “She died, though.”
“That’s a start. Did she leave you anything?” He asked. He still held my hands in his.
“Not that I know of. We used to be close, I’ve told you that, but I haven’t seen her in a very long time. I can’t imagine shewould leave me anything.” The familiar pang of longing and sadness rang through me when I mentioned my grandmother. It was dulled, though, by the proximity of a kind man that has never judged me. “Bill said he would talk to the executor of the will, but he never said anything about it, when or if he did.”
I kept staring down at Anders’s hands holding mine. A distant part of me wanted to snatch my hands away at the thought of Bill. I’d hid Anders’s letters from Bill, a part of me knew my correspondence with Anders walked the line of faithfulness to my husband. I never stopped, though. I never wanted to. Now I didn’t need to worry. My marriage was over and I was free to do as I pleased and I very much wanted to keep my hands in Anders right now.
“I guess I really can’t trust Bill,” I said after a moment of reflection. “I would have thought the executor would have contacted me directly, though, after my divorce. I’m not really sure. I don’t know how any of this works.”
“What about Bill? Does he have money? Maybe someone thinks they can get his money through you.”
“No. He doesn’t have money. We had a small house, and I didn’t worry whether I could buy food or pay bills, but that was about it. We never had as much as I thought we should. We certainly didn’t have enough to be potentially kidnap—” My voice broke on the last word and I couldn’t finish my sentence.
I thought back over my life married to Bill.
“I don’t even know what Bill did for work.”
After ten years of marriage, that seemed like something I should be ashamed of, but then I thought of the times I tried to talk to Bill about his work and how he would dodge the question and change the subject.
“He would talk about how he needed a wife and family for respectability, but whenever I asked him about work, he would be vague or avoid answering altogether. I don’t think I reallyquestioned it, but that’s strange, right?” I asked. A part of me still needed reassurance that I wasn’t crazy.
“Yes, that’s strange.”
I got up suddenly, unable to even stand myself. “How could I not know what my husband of a decade did for work? How stupid could I be?” I yelled, not at Anders, but at myself.
“Remember how Bill is a gas-lighting asshole? He is probably involved in something shady.” Anders said calmly, taking the wind out of my sails. He didn’t blame me for my stupidity. He didn’t even say he thought the same. Maybe he didn’t. That would be nice.
“Right,” I said, much calmer than a minute ago.
I walked over to the pizza Anders had ordered for us earlier while I was lost in the skyline, just trying to process the day, and grabbed a slice. I worried that ordering it would alert someone that we were here, but he assured me he could pay cash and have it delivered to the lobby under an alias.
The pizza was cheese. Just like I liked. I think I mentioned in a letter once how Bill never got cheese pizza for us. It was always some gaudy concoction with pineapple or olives. Anders, though, remembered what kind of pizza I liked from some off-hand comment in one letter however many months ago. I can’t remember the last time someone took the time to consider what I like instead of just outright dismissing me and my opinions. My hand shook a bit as I reached for the slice of pizza and I had to swallow down a sudden lump in my throat.
The weight of the day crashed into me. So much happened, and here was a mountain of a man, by every rights I should be terrified of him, but he was so relaxed and open and willing to help. Longing and hope surged in me, and something else welled up to the surface from somewhere deep in my soul. I couldn’t tell what it was yet, but it was powerful and it threatened to take over the moment I opened the door it was behind.
I turned to Anders. He sat sprawled out on the couch, his arm slung over the back of it, over the space I was just occupying. I wanted to crawl back into that space and curl into him. His arms were shaped perfectly to hold me and guard me from the world. His whiskey-colored eyes bore into me. I just stood there. Staring. Like a fool.
“See something you like?” He flexed his arms and chest, just a little, and winked.
“Yes,” I said before I could stop myself. Blood rushed to my face, revealing my embarrassment at the slip of my tongue. “That couch is very comfortable. I quite enjoy sitting on it.” My voice cracked a bit in the rush to get something out to cover my embarrassment at being caught staring.
Anders’ smirk turned into a full-blown smile and hearty laugh, filling the space with his voice. His joy. My awkwardness and uncertainty melted away as I returned his smile with one of my own.
“It is a very comfortable couch. Duke picked it out. He’s a stickler for comfort. Says he spent too many years on a cot to want to spend one more minute roughing it,” Anders said when his laughter died down. He didn’t make any move to retract his arm or give me more than the barest hint of space. If it were another man, I might be afraid. As it was, I made my way toward him to retake my seat, closer to him than I was before.
“Duke is the one with the cat, right?” I asked conversationally, happy to have a reason to just talk about mundane things.
“Midnight. Yes. Somehow he got that thing back home, though I have no idea how seeing as I was unconscious in a hospital when it happened.”
This surprised me. He never mentioned a hospital. Of course, we’d been so focused on my drama that there hadn’t been time for anything about him since we last wrote.
“What happened? Are you ok? Of course you are, you’re sitting in front of me. I can see that for myself. Obviously.”Shut up, Grace.I squeezed my mouth shut and waited for an answer.
