Page 58 of Close Match
Picking up one half of the delicious-looking cheesy jalapeño bread, I take a bite. My teeth sink into the nutty gruyère and the tangy mustard before I reach the salty ham. “Twisissogwood,” I mumble even as I’m trying to take the next bite.
Monty barks out a laugh. “Are you going to give me my half of that?”
Do I want to give up the other half of this deliciousness to the unknown? Monty takes the decision out of my hands by holding his sandwich across the table. “Come on,” he coaxes. “You know you want to give it a try.”
I manage to swallow down the bite despite the intensity that just settled over us.
“Give in. Who knows when you’ll have the chance again?” he murmurs. And somehow, we’re talking about lunch, and we’re not.
And we both know it.
But I’m not ready.
“I’m content for now.” Even as the words come out of my mouth, they settle my mind but disturb my soul.
“You don’t seem like the kind of woman where being content is enough.”
“What makes you think you know me?” I’m mildly offended. We might be living in the same house, but our interactions have been relatively limited. While I spent my last visit getting to know Ev and Char, Monty was working hard. And when I had some downtime, he was sleeping. Our schedules have never seemed to mesh.
Until now.
Putting down his sandwich, Monty leans forward. “Because I studied your emails. I looked for some clue about who you are. Despite my promise to Ev, if something had set off alarms about you, there’s no way you’d have got near him. What I read was a woman who is both intelligent and sharp. She’s also looking for adventure, whether she’s willing to admit it to herself or not.”
“What if I told you Bris wrote those emails?”
“Then I’d tell you that you were lying. I may not be an active investigator, but I used to specialize in interrogation. You can’t lie worth a damn.”
Shit.Throwing him a mock glare, I sigh. “Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe that’s who I needed to be. Maybe I’m always acting, and for the first time, I’m trying to figure out who I am without a role to play.”
Monty’s taken aback. “You think that we’re not all acting to get through life? Wasn’t it Shakespeare who said ‘All the world’s a stage’?”
“Yes, but…” I’m not allowed to finish. But his words cause me to freeze just as I’m about to sit back.
“We’re all acting. Every one of us. We all have our grief and pain that latch on and refuse to let go.” He sits back and picks up his sandwich. Tearing off a bite, he focuses on chewing while I’ve lost all interest in food.
Monty’s words hit me hard. Whether by purpose or by accident, I’m being forced to confront who I am. “I think it’s the idea of not knowing who I was, that the expectations were changing,” I say slowly.
“Why did your expectations change?” He asks.
“Because I did.” My voice is firm. “A whole half of myself I thought I knew as intimately as…a lover…was just gone. Dead as much as my mother was. How am I supposed to embrace this part of me that’s been living there all the while?”
“Seems to me you’re making it harder on yourself than you have to.” Monty takes another bite of his sandwich.
“Why?” I challenge him. Picking up my coffee, I take a sip. The silkiness of the caramel and mocha slide down my throat. The combination works, just like I thought my life did.
“Because regardless, life continues. You just have to figure out what you’re going to do to cope.”
Monty’s words echo in my head long after we leave the coffee shop and head back to the farm. They ricochet through my head after he lugs the heaviest suitcases into the kitchen. As I unpack it to put the goodies from New York away, he graciously takes my other cases up to the suite of rooms Ev and Char declared as mine.
But when I get upstairs, I don’t unpack. I throw open the bag which I know has my dance clothes. I find a pair of leggings and a ratty tee and throw them on. Slipping a pair of worn sneakers on my feet, I quickly braid my hair before racing from the bedroom and down the stairs.
I know of one way to cope. And it involves losing myself to the rhythm and music as quickly as I can.
Thirty-Two
Montague
I’m standing at my bedroom window on the opposite floor of the house as Linnie’s. Mine overlooks the backyard, so I get a full view of her sprinting single-mindedly out the back door like the fires of hell are licking at her feet, her braid flying. I feel a stirring inside of me. And it’s like my body and my mind finally have a conversation far too long denied. Long legs were whipping past me on a crowded city street. A body that lightly bumping into mine. My body’s instinctive reaction as I turn to catch her from behind.
