they’re not actively chatting, looking at her contact window and seeing his screen name there is like a touchstone. He’s there if she needs him.
And, oh, Stella needs him.
She needs the jolt he gives her with every flirty comment and the small, secret jokes they’ve created that would mean nothing to anyone else. She needs his perspective on the world because it’s different than hers, and even though they disagree on politics and religion, they never argue. He makes her think. He makes her feel, and it’s been so long since she’s had anything but agony or numbness that at first she doesn’t recognize what it is that Craig gives her.
Joy.
He doesn’t know her, so there are no reminders of the past she needs to forget. No stilted conversations steeped in pity. All Craig gives her is joy, and that’s what she needs the most.
Stella knows this...thing...is wrong. But Craig makes her feel as if everything will be all right. As if she hasn’t been through what she has. He makes her feel smart and funny. And sexy, yes. There’s that. The giddy, floaty, heated rush of knowing someone finds her attractive. She needs that too.
Everything about them together is dishonest, but it’s the only thing in her life that feels like the truth.
“Can I call you?” he asks. “I miss talking to you in person. Hearing your voice.”
Craig lives alone. Shared custody means he has daddy duty only a few days of the week. The rest of his time is his own. Stella doesn’t have that luxury. She has to think about when she can sneak in a late-night phone call. When she can fit him in around the rest of her life.
There’s something special about the phone that makes it different than typing instant messages or even texts. Somehow talking on the phone is both more anonymous and intimate than even meeting in person in the coffee shop, in public, where they watch their words and are always so very, very careful not to touch.
“Why do you keep talking to me?” Stella asks him late one night when, feigning an upset stomach, she’s sought the dark and quiet of the couch in the basement rec room. She stretches on the chilly leather, reaching for a blanket to warm her.
“I don’t know. Sometimes I tell myself I shouldn’t.”
But he does. Over and over again, he comes back to her, and there is never any reason why they shouldn’t continue this friendship other than that both of them know it’s becoming more than that. It was already more than that before they ever spoke on the phone. They very specifically do not meet in person. They very carefully do not talk about why.
He complains about his ex-wife, but Stella is carefully, neutrally quiet about her husband. There are things she could complain about, if she wanted, but if she did that, other truths would come out. Things she doesn’t want to talk about, not even to Craig. Perhaps especially not to him, because once he knows the truth, there will be no unknowing it. Sometimes things slip out, though. You can’t talk to someone almost every day for hours at a time without them learning the most important bits and pieces of you, especially in the darkest parts of the night when it’s so easy to feel alone.
“I miss you,” Craig says abruptly when the silence has stretched on too long. “I miss seeing you.”
“I miss seeing you too.” She closes her eyes against the sudden relief of a fear she hadn’t wanted to admit she had.
“Maybe we could have lunch sometime.”
She should say no, but what comes out is “Yes. I’d like that.”
* * *
“It was great seeing you. Catching up.” Craig’s gaze lingered on hers, and Stella let it.
They’d spent the hour she would’ve spent shopping lingering over their coffees and a couple very good blueberry scones he’d bought without asking her if she wanted one. He’d just remembered how much she liked them. His knee had nudged hers occasionally under the table, and once when handing her a napkin his fingers had brushed hers.
There was a time she’d wanted him so much it had been like fire inside her, consuming every thought. And now... Now, Stella thought as they stood sort of awkwardly by her car, each of them hesitating about a final hug...now, she didn’t want him anymore. That made her sadder than anything else. Once she’d been put to her knees because of the man in front of her, and it had been a place she’d willingly gone, but in the end it had broken her, just the same. She had wanted him, and now she did not.
When he pulled her close, she let him, startled but not resisting. When his mouth found her cheek, Stella closed her eyes and breathed in his scent. The warmth of his skin on hers was familiar. The weight of his hands on her. When he let her go, she swayed, unsteady for a few seconds before she could open her eyes.
“It was so good seeing you,” Craig said in a low voice. “I’ve really missed you.”
Stella had not missed him. Not for a long time. But she smiled and reached to squeeze his arm. “Me too.”
“Maybe I could call you?”
“Sure. Absolutely.” She nodded, smiling, a little taken aback by how this all had gone. He could call her. She would answer. It might get awkward, depending on what he said or asked of her, but she didn’t have the heart to tell him no.
On impulse, she leaned in to hug him again, this time holding tighter. Craig had been there when she’d needed someone.
Maybe he needed someone.
“Call me,” she said and scribbled her cell number on a scrap of paper from her pocket. “That would be great.”
The awkward brush of his mouth on hers would once have made her shake; now it only made her smile. She touched his face and took a few steps back. Craig nodded, lips parted as though he meant to say more but didn’t. He looked back at her as he walked away, though. Waved. Stella waved back.
In her car she sat for a few minutes, thinking of how easily things could change even if it didn’t feel easy at all while you were in them.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Knock, knock.”
Stella looked up to see Jen rapping on the soft edge of the cubicle. “Hey.”
“What’re you doing tonight?”
“Nothing.” Stella swiveled in her chair. “Tristan’s with his dad tonight through the weekend.”
“Want to go check out the new Justin Ross movie? Jared told me he’d rather poke out both eyes with a chopstick than go.” Jen grinned.
Stella hesitated, thinking about the empty house, the laundry she’d planned to do. Cleaning out the fridge. Paying bills. She was flying over the weekend, but tonight she had no plans. “Yes. That sounds great.”
“Dinner first?”
“Sure.” Stella returned Jen’s grin.
They went to dinner at a new Italian place that Stella had heard about but never tried. As she settled into her seat and put the napkin on her lap, Stella realized how long it had
