The girl turned out to be more complicated than I thought. No wonder she was in therapy. Needy, screamy, "Do you love me as much as I love you," "I'll die if you ever leave me," et-fucking-cetera.
I don't need that shit. There are easier ways to get laid.
But I stuck around a little longer because there was another woman in that therapy group. Long black hair, long brown legs, pretty, but stand-offish. As soon as she met my eyes, I recognized an intelligence and a will as strong as my own.
I was sick of easy marks.
Let the games begin, Dr. Laura.
***
First, I checked my five voice mail messages. They were all hang-ups, which was strange enough to make me check my pager. Someone had paged me twice, but left only a single number: four.
Huh. That didn't seem like Tucker. Not that I was thinking of him or anything.
I paused before I deleted the nonsensical pages. They bothered me, but like I said, our incompetent locating team is legendary, especially at night, when the regular operators go home and leave the switchboard to the security guard.
Before I stripped down for my shower, I paused a long moment. Then I pinged the lock closed.
Ryan had raised a few more specters in my mind.
Part of me wanted nothing more than to wind myself around his warm runner's body and forget the past few years had ever happened. I was almost certain he wouldn't turn me away. Almost.
But we weren't twenty years old anymore. I was a doctor. Tucker was...well, I had no real idea what Tucker was. Yet.
I turned up the hot water and glanced around the tiny bathroom. Not exactly romantic, what with the grimy grout and the slight gap in the blind in the window next to the tub. Well, at least the square mosaic tile floor was charming. And with any luck, Ryan would concentrate on me instead of the décor.
As I drew the translucent shower curtain closed and luxuriated under the spray, I grew fully conscious of the fact that I was naked with just a thin wooden door between myself and Ryan. A man who knew my body extremely well and wasn't afraid to use it.
I ran my hand over my breasts.
I was on a man-moratorium. A manbbatical.
That just made me want Ryan even more.
What about Tucker?
Tucker wasn't here. Although, frankly, the thought of him, too, made me arch toward the water.
I could hear Ryan in the kitchen on the other side of the bathroom. I had a teeny galley-style kitchen, so narrow that you could touch the fridge with your left hand and the oven with your right hand (and the broom closet with your right elbow). The counter top that ran in a U between the appliances met in a sink by the window at the base of the U. I could imagine Ryan boosting me up on that counter. Hmm.
On the other side of the kitchen doorway, I'd crammed a table, to make it an eat-in kitchen, and a metal shelf for my cereal boxes. The shelf barely fit between the built-in ironing board and the door to the interior fire escape stairs, so there wasn't as much room for shenanigans, but the table still had possibilities. I wondered if he'd ever done it on a kitchen table with Lisa.
Lisa.
I grimaced and lathered up my hair. I was a jealous woman. No denying that. But from all signals, she was now out of the picture.
For all I knew, Ryan really did just want my DSL with a side order of apartment security. And Tucker might only want what he couldn't have.
But my entire body hummed the opposite tune. I bent from the waist, the water sluicing through my hair and flowing over my back. My skin was warm and wet.
Ryan and I had been virgins when we met. Because I had good girl hang-ups and he'd been indoctrinated by the church, we held off on the main event for almost a year. Which meant we specialized in foreplay. We could have taught a night course in kissing, a weekend lesson in massage, and given college credits in oral sex. And once we finally got around to full-blown sex, we'd read and talked and nearly done it so many times, we turned it into an honours degree, summa cum laude.
Now he was right outside my door, waiting for me.
Oh, God, I might not be able to wait for him. My hand drifted between my legs, dipping again and again. Maybe it was better this way, release myself so I could think more clearly...
"Jesus!"
Ryan's voice was so sharp and angry, it cut through the pounding of the shower and my libido. I froze. This guy did not take the Lord's name in vain. For him, it was a worse curse than the f-word.
I rinsed off the soap and conditioner, briskly now, my heart thumping for a different reason. Something was wrong.
I climbed back into my used clothes and didn't bother to wrap my short hair in a towel. I threw open the door. "Ryan? What's wrong?"
He was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, frowning by the wall-mounted phone abandoned by the previous owners. "Hope. Sorry." Then he stopped and stared at me.
My cheeks were already flushed from the shower, but they would have heated anyway, under his gaze, raking me from messy, towel-dried hair to my still-intrigued breasts, right down to my slightly damp toes. I knew exactly what he was thinking. His brow furrowed. His nostrils flared. A muscle clenched in his jaw.
Just for a second. Then he shook himself. "Sorry," he said again. "Finish your shower."
"I'm okay." Maybe I'd misread his cues. I wished I'd wrapped myself in a towel instead. More classic. More prone to slipping to the floor.
He shook his head. "No, you relax. Really."
I cocked my head. "Ryan. What is it?"
He sighed and walked back to the front hall. "I knocked over your mail and found something."
He handed me a plain white piece of paper folded in half like a flyer. I unfolded a black and white photocopy of a picture of a tombstone. The name, prominently engraved in the rock:
HOPE.