Page 94 of Always You (A Lilac Bay Novel)

CHAPTER 17

For the first time in my life, I didn’t eat lunch with Andrew that week. He left every day at exactly noon and didn’t return until 12:55 on the dot, exactly five minutes before his break was over. He was eating at Rose’s every day. I know because I followed him once.

I couldn’t stand whatever this was between us. I couldn’t even call it tension. Tension required some kind of interaction, some kind of emotion. This—this was just cold. Like ice had formed between my oldest friend and I, and I didn’t have any idea how to thaw it out. He didn’t ignore me—he was nowhere near that immature. He said good morning every day. Brought me requisition forms for approval. Came to my desk to clarify details on the new budget for the show. He was perfectly polite and professional.

I hated it.

I tried, a few times, to apologize. To get him to talk to me—really talk—but he shut me down every time. After work, he left immediately, never offering to walk with me, never asking me to stop at Cora’s for a drink. I stopped by there a few times, just to see if I might catch him, but he appeared to have found a new place to spend his evenings. In desperation, I even went down to the marina to check on his boat. Just as I expected, it was gone.

I was sure that things would change on Thursday night. We had a game against the hotel team and there was no way Andrew would miss that. He considered beating them as often as possible to be a sacred duty. Plus, we’d recently moved to summer hours in all the city departments and on a small island like this, that meant no work on Fridays. What better excuse for drinking at Cora’s after the game than a long weekend?

But on Thursday, just like the other days, he jumped up from his desk exactly at five. He didn’t carry a duffel bag, and my stomach sank. Without much thought, I jumped up and hurried across the office to intercept him near the door.

“Hey,” I said, noticing right away that he wouldn’t meet my eyes. “You playing tonight?”

He shook his head. “I have plans.”

“What? You never miss games. Come on, we’re playing the Big Hotel. We need your bat.”

“Sorry, I’m busy. Maybe next time.” He sidestepped me to pass out into the hallway, leaving me staring after him. Staring after him and suddenly pretty damn pissed.

Oh, hell no,I thought, watching his retreating back. This was ridiculous. There was no way we could keep this up.

“Andrew,” I called, not caring that Millie was glaring daggers at me, and ran out into the hall to catch him. He stopped, his shoulders sagging, but he didn’t turn to me. “Andrew come on, this is stupid. We can’t keep fighting.”

“We’re not fighting,” he said. He sounded exhausted.

“We obviously are! But I don’t even know why!”

He did turn toward me then, and I immediately wished he hadn’t, wished I hadn’t followed him at all. His eyes looked hollow, like he couldn’t care less about any of this. “You know why.”

“Andrew—”

“I really have to go.”

This time I let him. I’d had a hundred fights with Andrew over the years. We fought about hockey players, we fought about the food he stole from me, we fought about how he treated my cat and what movies we liked and who had the better batting average and a million other things. But I didn’t know how to fight this Andrew. This Andrew who was so cold and uncaring towards me.

I walked back to my desk in defeat, wondering if I should skip the game too. But the prospect of going back to my apartment to sit and think about how to fix this wasn’t very appealing. At least I would get to see my nephews at the game. To say I could use a hug was an understatement. So I grabbed my duffel from under my desk and headed out.

“Riley, good,” David said when I appeared at the dugout. “I just heard Andrew isn’t coming. I was afraid we’d be short on batters.”

“Nope,” I said, trying to make my voice normal. “I’m ready to play.”

“And ready to kick a little mainlander ass, too, I hope.”

“I see you’re feeling better?”

“Yeah, that was wicked food poisoning. Iris had to feed me soup, I was so weak.”

I scanned the crowd and saw her sitting in the stands, taking to Posey. My stomach dropped. Somehow, I didn’t want to talk to either of them. Luckily, I saw Rebecca as well. Jake must have had the afternoon off, because he was sitting with her, Aiden and Jayden both hanging off his arms and laughing at the faces he was making as he tried to lift them into the air, body builder style. I caught Rebecca’s gaze and a shadow passed over her face. Apparently she could tell, even from here, that I wasn’t doing so well.

“I’ll be back,” I said to no one in particular and made my way across the dusty field to my sister.

“You look like hell,” she said. “Have you been sleeping?”

“Not really.”

“Why haven’t you returned my calls? What happened with Andrew?”