Page 90 of No Kind of Hero
“No. When I’mhome.I’m sorry to dump Marjorie on somebody else, but like you said—it’s billable hours. It’s job security. It’s somebody else’s ticket to their partnership.”
Now, Simon took off his glasses. The signal, those who’d been there said, that you were in trouble. “Six years. You’re going to throw away six years. Next year, where will you be? Starting over. This is a journey straight to nowhere.”
“But you know the thing about nowhere?”
“Spare me the philosophy.”
Her head still hurt, but her heart didn’t. “It’s empty. It’s open. And I get to fill it.”
Evan was painting the top of a column when he heard Dakota call out, “Hey.”
He didn’t have to turn to know it was her. He’d been painting with her too long for that. He said, “One sec,” and stroked gold paint onto acanthus leaves.
Acanthus, because it was a Corinthian column. Not Doric or Ionic. And he didn’t need to think about a woman who loved shiny things like gold-topped columns and copper-colored shoes and nail polish with glitter. He needed to paint. He needed to move forward.
Sharks have to swim forward,she’d said,or they die.Well, he wasn’t going to die. He was going to keep on keeping on.
He finished the capital, and then he set the brush in the paint tray and climbed down the scaffolding. Carefully, because he was a father. When he got there, he unhooked and said, “Hey.”
Dakota had a thumb in the belt loop of her jeans and was rocking on the heels of her cowboy boots. Her dark hair was loose, and her earrings were porcupine quills trimmed with beads. But she was wearing her glasses, and she wasn’t wearing makeup. In other words, she was one hundred percent Dakota Savage, and she’d come loaded for bear. She was looking at him hard, and she was looking too deep.
“Come outside with me,” she said. “I brought coffee. Iced.”
“I’m pretty busy.”
“I don’t care.”
This was about him, or it was about her. If it was about her, he needed to know it, and he needed to help. And if it was about him, she was going to say it one way or another. If he hadn’t come down, she’d have climbed up to him and said it. Anyway, he’d told her what he thought of her life choices in the past. He’d told her plenty. He guessed she was due.
She didn’t start talking right away. She grabbed two plastic glasses with straws from the bottom of the scaffolding, handed one to him, and stalked out of the theater. Outside, she headed to the bench outside the First National Bank, sat down, and, when he was sitting too, said, “So Beth left.”
He shoved the straw down into the ice. “Yep.”
“And you’re just going to let her go?”
He could feel the doors in his mind slamming shut like the hatches on a submarine. “Yes. I am. Because it’s what she wants to do.”
“Did youaskher to stay?”
“No. I didn’t. It wouldn’t have been fair. I told her I didn’t want her to go.”
“Did you tell her you loved her? Comeon,Evan. You have totry.”
He let out a long, slow breath. “Dakota,” he said, keeping it measured. Keeping it even. “You’re one of my best friends. But you don’t know all of my life, and you don’t know all of Beth’s.”
“She looked sosad,”Dakota said. “When she came over to say goodbye. She looked just like you. All shut down, and all that joy she’s had, all that happiness I’ve seen coming back because of you, because she loves you and she loves Gracie—it was gone. And it made me so sad, too. You both deserve better. You deserve each other. One of you needs to go out on that limb and do it. Please, Evan. Take that leap. Jump into that deep water, and then turn around and tell her to jump, too. That’s what she needs to hear. She needs you to tell her you’ll catch her, and that you’ll never let her go. “
He couldn’t sit here. He stood up, and after a moment, Dakota did, too. “Well,” she said, “I had to try. I love you too much not to.”
He nodded, and then he walked away. He went back to work. Back to where he could think. Where he’d have a brush in his hand and quiet in his head. Where he could breathe.
And by the time he knocked off for the day, he’d thought it through.
He was in the driveway at seven that evening, holding Gracie and talking to his mom, when he heard the engine.
He knew what make it was, and he didn’t turn around. He didn’t need another stupid letdown. There were downsides to being able to recognize a car’s make by the sound of its engine or the look of its headlights.
He was still talking, but his mom put her hand on his arm. “Honey, wait. Look.”
