Page 86 of Never Alone
He had told me. About every one of the times she had shown up. He hadn't had to tell me. No one else would have known. He had told me anyway, the way you tell the person you're with—putting it on the record, making sure nothing could become a thing later, making sure I'd never wonder. As if we were actually in a relationship. As if he didn't want me to think, even for a second, that he had wanted any of it.
It almost made my chest hurt.
"Yeah," I said. "I'll come."
"Tessa, if it's a problem?—"
"It's not a problem. I'll come."
He nodded. Once. The corner of his mouth eased, fractionally.
"Thank you."
Sean's Truck n' Salvage store was on the south end of Havensworth, a corrugated-metal warehouse with a gravel lot and a hand-painted sign Sean's wife had done about twenty years back. Cole pulled into the lot on Wednesday morning and parked on the side, the way he always did.
The bell over the door jingled when we walked in.
Sean was at the counter with a clipboard. He looked up. His face went into that warm shape men in this town got when somebody's fiancée walked in with somebody they liked.
"Tessa. Glad to see you again."
"You too, Sean."
"What can I get you both?"
Cole stepped up to the counter. "Paint. Exterior. And finishing nails. Two-and-a-half-inch."
"Swatches are over by the end wall. Help yourself. I'll grab the nails."
I drifted toward the swatch wall while Cole stayed at the counter with Sean.
The wall was the size of an oversized window—rows and rows of paint chips arranged by color family, cards I could pull off a metal hook. I stood in front of it and felt, for the first time in I couldn't put a number to, the particular lightness of being asked for an opinion on something low-stakes. Color. Just color.
I started with the greens. Sage. Olive. A pale pearl green, the color of new lettuce. A clear, sharp green that stopped me when I saw it.
I knew the green before I knew I knew it.
It was the green of my own eyes. The ones I'd been hiding behind colored contacts for nine months. The ones I'd told Cole, on a Wednesday at the bakery before Thanksgiving, that I hated—because the cover required it, because I needed a reason to be wearing the contacts. The ones Cole had looked at across the bakery counter and said, in a voice lower than he'd meant to use,I don't see why you hate them.
The line had stayed in his voice in my head for two days afterward. I was hearing it again now, with the swatch in my hand.
"Those look like great colors."
I jumped a little. Cole was beside me at the wall. He was looking at the swatch in my hand, not at my face.
"I like the green."
"It's a good green."
I put it back on the hook. I made myself.
"I was going to do the exterior tonight and come back for the inside," Cole said. "Still deciding what color to paint the kitchen."
"What about a yellow?"
He looked at me.
"A kitchen wants a yellow," I said. "Soft. Buttery. The kind of color that makes people want to eat in there."
