I have a credit card on file at all of them. Just tell them it’s for me.” He turned and headed back down the hall.
She frowned. “I thought you’d said you always have dates or dinner meetings or something?”
He stopped, faced her. “I did. Just like I canceled my last meeting, I canceled my date.”
Harper blinked as he disappeared behind his bedroom door. Canceled his date?
An odd sensation rippled through her. Not happiness. Surely, she couldn’t be happy that he’d canceled a date. She didn’t “like” the guy. He was good-looking—well, gorgeous, really—but he wasn’t Clark, a man she had loved. The feeling oozing through her was more of a recognition of how glad she was that she didn’t have to be alone.
The door closed behind Seth and he leaned against it, blowing his breath out on a long sigh. When he’d invited Harper to live with him, he hadn’t anticipated how uncomfortable it would be to have her in his house, but he was damn glad he’d canceled his date, so they could talk. About Clark. After a nice dinner, where he’d direct the conversation so she would remind him that she’d loved and married his best friend, he’d get his perspective back.
He took a quick shower. When he left his room and entered the living space, he found Harper at the table surrounded by boxes of Chinese food.
“I like Chinese.”
“Good.”
He walked over to the table, saw she’d found plates and utensils and took a seat.
“Your area of the city has just about every type of restaurant imaginable.”
“It’s part of the appeal.”
He lifted a dish, filled it with General Tso’s chicken, some vegetables and an egg roll.
“Oh, and I paid for it myself. I’m not destitute. And I’m not a charity case. I just need some help transitioning.”
Point number one to be discussed. How she wanted to be treated. “I’m sorry if I made you feel that way.”
“You didn’t. I just wanted to fix some misinterpretations.”
“Okay.”
She turned her attention to dishing out some food for herself. Her short hair gave her an angelic look, enhanced by the curve of her full lips. Her casual, almost grungy clothes took him back to a decade ago, when he was a kid who listened to hip-hop and lived right next door to the girl he thought the most beautiful woman he’d ever met.
And that was point number two they had to discuss. Eight years had passed since he’d had a crush on her and she’d started dating Clark. They weren’t those people anymore. He didn’t have a mad crush on her. He’d had a mad crush on the girl she’d used to be. Since then, she’d gotten married, lost a husband, had a baby alone. They weren’t picking up where they’d left off.
He almost rolled his eyes at his own stupidity. He hadn’t even asked how she was.
“So... How are you doing?”
She shook her head. “You mean aside from being almost homeless?”
“Don’t make a joke. Clark was my best friend.” There. He’d said it. Point number three that he needed to get into this conversation. Clark had been his best friend. “You lost him. You were pregnant. You went through that alone. And now you’re facing raising a daughter alone. If we’re going to do this—live together—we’re going to do it right. Not pretend everything is fine. We used to be friends. We could be friends again.”
She set down her chopsticks. “Okay. If you really want to know, I spent most of the year scared to death. It took me a couple of weeks to wrap my head around the fact that he was really gone. But the more I adjusted, the quieter the house got. And the quieter the house got, the more I realized how alone I was.”
“And you couldn’t even talk to your parents?”
“My mom never had anything good to say about Clark, so after a visit or two when I was lonely, I quit going over.”
She stopped talking, but Seth waited, glad he’d decided to go this route. He needed to know what he was dealing with, and if she’d been alone for twelve long months she probably needed someone to talk to.
“I didn’t shut them out completely. My mom came with me to a doctor’s appointment or two and then we’d have lunch. But every time, the conversation would turn into a discussion of what I should do with my life now that Clark was gone.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault. My mother’s a bulldozer. She sees the way a thing should go and she pushes. Whether it’s the right thing or not.”
“Have they seen the baby?”
“Yes. If I’d completely broken off ties, my mom would have mounted a campaign to get me back. So, I kept them at a distance. I let her stay and help the week after Crystal was born. But she couldn’t stop talking about remodeling the condo to bring it up to standards, insinuating that with Clark gone I could do it right, and the whole time I knew I was broke and going to have to sell. Every time I’d try to tell her, she’d blast Clark.” She lifted her eyes to catch his gaze. “That’s how I knew I couldn’t move in with them.”
Seth leaned back in his chair. “I guess.”
The room got quiet. Her mother wasn’t the hellish dictator his father had been, but he wouldn’t have wanted to live with her mom, either.
“So, what’s up with you?”
He laughed, glad for her obvious change of subject to lighten the mood. “Not much. Jake’s a much better businessman than my father was, so working with him is good.”
“And your mom?”
He snorted. “My mom isn’t quite as bad as your mom, but we have our issues.”
She nodded sagely. “Sometimes the best you can do is avoid them for the sake of peace.”
He’d never say that the feelings he had around his mother were peaceful. He had a million questions he’d like to ask. Like, why she’d said nothing when his father embarrassed or humiliated him and Jake. Or better yet, why she’d stayed married to a man who was awful as a husband and father? She’d known he was cheating. She’d known he wasn’t a good father. Yet she’d stayed. Forcing them all to live a lie.
Deciding he didn’t want to burden Harper with any of that, he rose. “Do you like baseball?”
“Sort of.”
“Sort of?” He sniffed a laugh. “There’s a game on tonight that I’d love to see. If you want to watch, too, I can watch out here. If not, I can watch on the television in my bedroom.”
“I don’t want you to change your routines for me.”
“I won’t.”
The sound of the baby crying burst from her phone. She held it up. “Baby
