I wait for Josie to explain Aiden to me but it never comes. Not while she finishes our dinner and not while we eat. Not while I clean the kitchen and she piddles around with her puzzle. Not while we watch a movie together on her couch.
Though I would not have appreciated it while I was kissing her after the movie, so I was grateful for that, and I sure as shit didn’t want to know anything about him while I was fucking her in her bed. And it was definitely my name and not his she was moaning when she came. But I do know he is something to her, I sense it.
The bigger question is what am I to her, since she introduced me as her “neighbor.” That’s true enough, and she and I have never defined our relationship. I have never felt the need before now to do so, but I’m not sure if I should push her on that just yet.
I’m lying in bed while Josie’s in her bathroom, doing her thing to get ready to go to sleep. She’ll come out in a T-shirt of mine that she nabbed a few days ago, but I sleep naked. I told her she’s sexy as hell in my shirt, but she was prohibited from wearing her panties in bed. She thought that was hilarious I’d demand such a thing, but every single night she comes to bed without them on.
Finally, the bathroom door opens, and for a moment she’s silhouetted. The T-shirt is baggy, but she’s still about the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. As she walks toward the bed, she’s rubbing her hands together, presumably with lotion, and I can smell its scent before she hits the bed.
Cherries. Nice.
I flip the comforter and sheet back for her to crawl in, and because this has become second nature for both of us these last few weeks, she slides in and snuggles up against my side with her head to my shoulder. She slips an arm over my stomach and yawns.
“Tired?” I ask her.
“Yeah, I am,” she says softly.
“So, what exactly is Aiden to you?” I ask her, preferring to cut right to the chase since she clearly won’t bring it up.
Josie jolts and then sits up in the bed. I figure this is going to be one of those talks, so I lean over and turn the table lamp on. When I look back at her, she’s got guilt written all over her face.
Still, she tries to put me off. “Why would you think he’s anything to me?”
“Because he was staring at you like you were a nice, juicy piece of steak and he’d been without meat for a long damn time.”
Josie rolls her eyes at me and scoffs, “That’s ridiculous.”
And that is a little ridiculous. He didn’t look at her like that at all, but I wanted to see if it would provoke a reaction.
If I expected her to divulge all her secrets, I’d be left sorely wanting. She instead turns the tables on me. “Why? Are you jealous?”
“Of course not,” I say with a wave of my hand. “Why would I be?”
“That’s right,” she says with slightly narrowed eyes, taking a small measure of offense I’d even bring any of this up. “There’s no reason for you to be.”
“Because we have a good thing going here, right?” I press her.
“Damn right we do,” she says with a firm nod. “Friends with benefits to the end.”
“So,” I drawl. “If you were to go to lunch with this guy next week, that would just be as friends. With no benefits, right?”
Josie’s eyes narrow again until I can barely see her irises. “What kind of person do you think I am, Reed? That someone from my past will show up here out of the blue, ask me to lunch, and I’m going to fuck him after that?”
“No. But I can tell there’s something more to this guy than just someone you were in residency with.”
Josie just stares at me for a long moment, and I don’t let my return gaze falter. I can tell she’s calculating something inside her head, and it makes me uneasy that she has to take a moment before she can even tell me what’s on her mind. Finally, she lets out a long sigh followed up by a quick intake of breath, as if she’s trying to shore up her courage. “Aidan and I used to date.”
“What exactly does that mean?” I ask, because date can mean a lot of things.
“For three years. It was serious.”
“How serious?” I can feel my gut starting to tighten with a sense of foreboding.
Josie’s gaze drops down to my chest as she admits, “It was serious. We weren’t engaged, but we were talking about marriage. We were sort of practical, and I guess we both felt the need to discuss whether marriage would be viable before he took the step to propose to me.”
I can control the dryness in my voice. “How romantic.”
Josie’s head snaps up and her eyes are frosty. “What would you know about romance?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I say sarcastically. “I suppose taking my girlfriend to see a meteor shower would never be considered romantic.”
Josie deflates in front of me, and I don’t miss the shame in her eyes before she drops them back down again. Her voice is small when she says, “I’m sorry. That was totally uncalled for. I don’t know why this whole situation has got me feeling so out of sorts.”
I put my fingers under her chin to force her to look back to me. “Why did it end?”
“Because he chose a different life over me,” she says softly. “He decided to go practice with Doctors Without Borders, and it was a two-year commitment, and he didn’t feel I should wait for him.”
This was my worst fear when I sensed there was something between Josie and Aidan. Not just a history and perhaps even a breakup, but an actual heartbreak. I can hear it in her voice, and he broke hers at some point.
“Would you have waited for him if he’d asked you to?” I ask her bluntly. Because I need to know how close she was with this guy.
She shakes her head in denial. “No, I wouldn’t have. The three years we were together was long enough to wait. It was a matter of importance to him, and being with me for the long haul obviously wasn’t.”
“So, what did he do? Give you an ultimatum?” I ask her.
Another small shake of her head. “I gave him the ultimatum. Either stay here with me or we were over. He countered by inviting me to go with him, but that was so far from my dream of practicing in a hospital that it just wasn’t an option.”
There’s only one thing I can do at this point, and that’s to put aside any misgivings or insecurities I’m feeling. I pull Josie back into me and settle us down into the bed. I’m on my back and she’s sprawled across my chest with her head tucked up under my chin. She wraps her arms around me and once again apologizes. “I’m really sorry. I should’ve told you as soon as he walked out the door today who he was.”
I give her a squeeze. “Not a problem. I wasn’t going to let you hold your silence for long.”
“It feels good to get that off my chest.”
“So, why do you think he wants to go to lunch next week?” I ask. I also want to know why he showed up at her house, but I’m going to keep my mouth shut on that one for now.
I can feel Josie shrug. “He said he was on a break. I guess he’s just catching up with some people in this area.”
I could almost buy that reasoning if he had called her or texted her that he was back in town. Hell, even an email that he was going to be visiting would’ve worked. But to show up at her house unannounced? It implies he’s got something on his agenda other than just wanting a friendly catch-up lunch.
I wait until Josie falls asleep before I carefully extricate myself from her embrace. I roll out of bed and snag my iPhone off the table. Bending over, I pick up my underwear and put it on before heading into the living room.
Once there, I settle onto Josie’s couch and pull up my Facebook app. I’m not a big Facebook user, but I do have an account mainly so I can keep in touch with all of my family who tend to use it to post pictures of their kids and dogs and such. It’s truly the best way to stay involved with them, particularly since I’m traveling so much during the season.
Josie, on the other hand, is a prolific Facebook user. She friend requested me not long after she had dinner at my house on the Fourth of July. Of course I accepted, and while I don’t lurk on Facebook every day, I found myself checking in more than usual to see what Josie would post.
I pull up her profile and start scrolling through her timeline. I scroll and I scroll and I scroll, pause periodically to read one of her posts. She’s funny and witty, and her friends and family all seem to think the same based on their comments. But I’m looking for a very particular time frame, and after a few moments of continued scrolling, I finally reach her posts from two years ago.
As I suspected, there are several posts with pictures of her and Aidan together. I might be a glutton for punishment that I feel the need to know exactly how strong their relationship was. I know ultimately it wasn’t strong enough to pass the test of time, but there was a bond there, at least on Josie’s part, because she suffered heartbreak.
I’m not happy with what I find. Tons of photos of Aiden and Josie together. Always happy, laughing, and that shining look of love in their eyes. Photos of them working together in a hospital, on trips together, or just around what I assume was perhaps a house they both shared. I pay particular attention to those details, and they clearly had a house that was well lived in. Personal photos and knickknacks all over the place, which is so contrary to Josie’s home now.
I keep scrolling backward through time, watching the evolution of the relationship in reverse order. Three fucking years is a long time to be with somebody. When I get to the post that documents the beginning of their relationship, I start scrolling back through chronologically, looking for any details that might strike me. I particularly look at the joint photos of Aiden and Josie to see if perhaps I can detect a waning interest on his part over time. If it’s there, it’s too subtle to see.
But the one thing that’s absolutely clear from every photo right up until the last is that Josie was really in love with him.