friends. They had known you too long and too well.
“I’ve put them on,” she admitted, not clarifying that she’d put them on a dozen times, staring at them, wondering what he’d meant by giving her running shoes. “They’re a perfect fit.”
“I wouldn’t have expected otherwise. He pays attention to details.”
Lance did pay attention to details. Like the fact she ran away when things got sticky. Then again, he hadn’t tried to convince her not to. Not once had he mentioned anything beyond their seeing each other on Valentine’s Day. If she’d agreed, would he have asked for more? No matter how many times she asked herself that question, she couldn’t convince herself that he would have. She wasn’t the only one who ran.
Maybe she should have gotten him a pair of running shoes, too.
She bit the inside of her lower lip. “You think I messed up letting him go, don’t you?”
Cecilia’s look was full of amusement. “If you were any quicker on the uptake I’d have to call you Einstein.”
“It wasn’t just my choice, you know. He walked away that night at my mother’s rehearsal.”
“He gave you roses and running shoes.”
Yeah, he had.
“Running shoes? What kind of a gift is that anyway?”
“The kind that says he knows you better than you think he does. You’re a runner—physically, mentally, emotionally. He also gave you red roses. What does that say?”
“Not what you’re implying. He never told me that he loved me.”
“Did you want him to?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sure you do.” Cecilia pulled another strand of hair loose, coated it in dye, then wrapped it.
“He was in love with a woman who died. I can’t compete with a ghost.”
“She’s gone. She’s no longer any competition.”
“Cecilia!”
“I don’t mean to be crude, McKenzie, but if he’s in love with a woman who is no longer around, well, she’s not a real threat. Not unless you let her be.”
“He never even mentioned her to me.”
“There are lots of things you still haven’t told him. That’s what the rest of your lives are for.”
“He and I agreed to a short-term relationship.”
“You didn’t have a signed contract. Terms can change.”
“Ouch!” McKenzie yelped when Cecilia pulled a piece of hair too tightly.
“Sorry.” But the gleam in her eyes warned that she might have done it on purpose. “You could have kept seeing him. You should have kept seeing him.”
“He didn’t want to go beyond our two months any more than I did.”
“Sure you didn’t. That’s why you’re miserable now that you’re not with him anymore.”
“I’m not miserable,” McKenzie lied. “Besides, I see him at work.”
“How’s that?”
“Awkward. Strange. As bad as I was afraid it would be. I knew I shouldn’t become involved with a coworker.”
“So why did you?”
“Because…because I couldn’t not.”
Cecilia’s face lit with excitement that McKenzie had finally caught on. “Exactly. That should tell you everything you need to know about how you feel about the man. Why you are so intent on denying that you miss him makes no sense to me.”
“I miss him,” she admitted. “There, does that make you happy? I miss Lance. I miss the way he looks, the way he smiles, the way he smells, the way he tastes. I miss everything about him.”
Cecilia spun the chair to face her straight on, her eyes full of sympathy. “Girl, how can you not see what is so obvious?”
McKenzie’s rib cage contracted tightly around everything in her chest. “You think I’m in love with him.”
“Aren’t you?”
McKenzie winced. She wasn’t. Couldn’t be. She shouldn’t be.
She was.
“What am I going to do?”
“Well, you are your mother’s daughter. Maybe you should grab the happiness you want instead of being afraid it’s always going to be just outside your grasp.”
All these years she’d not wanted to be like her mother, but her mother had been happy, had been choosing to be single, but not out of fear of love. If her mother, who’d borne the brunt of so much hurt, could love, could trust, why couldn’t McKenzie?
If her mother could put her heart out there, be in a committed relationship, find happiness, why couldn’t McKenzie?
Maybe she wasn’t like her father. Maybe she wasn’t like her mother either.
Maybe she was tiny pieces of both, could learn from their mistakes, learn from their successes and be a better person.
Right now, she wasn’t a better person. Right now, she didn’t even feel like a whole person. She felt like only half a person, with the other half of her missing.
Lance.
“I want him back,” she admitted, causing Cecilia’s eyes to widen with satisfaction.
“Good. Now, how are you going to make it happen?”
“He didn’t want more than our two months, Cecilia. He was as insistent on our ending point as I was,” she mused. “I wasn’t the only one who let us end at two months. He didn’t fight to hang on to me.” He hadn’t. He’d walked away without a backward glance. “His heart belongs to another woman.”
“Another woman who can’t have him,” Cecilia reminded her. “If you want Lance back, then you don’t worry about whether or not he’s fighting for you. You fight for him. You show him you want him in your life. Show him how much he means to you.”
She did want Lance back and, Lord help her, she wanted to fight for him, to show him she missed him and wanted him in her life.
“How am I supposed to do that?”
Cecilia’s gaze shifted to the back of a flyer posted on the salon’s front door. A flyer someone from Celebration Graduation had dropped by a week or so ago, advertising a St. Patrick’s Day show at the Senior Citizen Center.
“I have the perfect idea.”
McKenzie
