by accident she found a section she hadn’t thought to look at before: roommates wanted. She read a couple of those and decided to phone the one that looked the most promising.
“Hello,” she said brightly when the woman answered. “I’m calling about your ad in the paper.”
Rush walked into the kitchen, hesitated when he saw her and opened the refrigerator to take out a cold can of pop. Lindy strove to ignore him as much as possible. Her fingers gripped the pen unnecessarily hard as she doodled while the woman on the other end of the line explained a few of the details regarding her ad.
“It says here that you’re looking for a nonsmoker. I…I don’t smoke and I’ve recently moved into the area and need a place to live. I…have a job.”
“Lindy.”
Rush called her name, but she pretended she hadn’t heard him. Besides she was already involved in one conversation and if he chose to be rude that was his problem.
Undeterred, Rush waved his hand in front of her face. “Get off the phone.”
“Excuse me a minute please.” Lindy spoke to the woman, enunciating each word as she held her temper by a fragile thread. She pressed the receiver to her shoulder blade and glared up at Rush. “Just what do you think you’re doing?” she hissed between clenched teeth.
“There’s no need for you to find an apartment,” he told her, returning her heated stare.
“I beg your pardon, Rush Callaghan, but this is my life, and if I choose to leave this apartment, I’ll do so with or without your permission.”
Rush cursed beneath his breath and walked away from her.
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” Lindy said sweetly into the telephone receiver. “Perhaps it would be best if we met?”
“Damn it, Lindy,” Rush shouted, twisting around to face her once more. “Will you kindly get off the phone so we can talk?”
He might as well have been speaking to a stone wall for all the attention Lindy paid him. “Yes, Tuesday afternoon would be fine.”
Rush’s returning glare was hot enough to peel thirty-year-old wallpaper off a wall, but still Lindy ignored him.
“You won’t be meeting whoever that is,” he told her sternly, looming over her. “You’re only wasting time.”
“Kindly excuse me again, would you?” Lindy asked softly, deliberately calm. She turned to Rush then and half rose from her chair. “Would you shut up? I can’t hear a word she’s saying.”
“Good.”
He was making Lindy more furious by the minute, and she tried to tell him as much and still keep control of her temper. “I’m sorry to keep interrupting our conversation,” she said to the woman on the phone.
Rush walked around the table a couple of times, looking like a man trapped in a small space—or a shark circling its kill. Finally he stopped, standing directly across from her. He closed his eyes and rubbed a hand along the back of his neck as though to relieve an ache there, then paused and looked at her. “Lindy, I’m leaving.”
The words were nearly shouted. She hesitated and prayed for patience, and when that didn’t work, she counted to ten. Flippantly she raised her hand and waved goodbye. Still, he didn’t move.
“I’m twenty-two,” Lindy answered the woman’s question. “No…no you needn’t worry about that sort of thing. There isn’t anyone important in my life at the moment.” She swallowed tightly at the lie.
She exchanged a look with Rush and feared he was going to explode. “I thought you were leaving,” she whispered heatedly, cupping her hand over the mouthpiece. “Don’t let me stop you.”
“Not the apartment,” he raged, staring at her as though she were completely dense. “The Mitchell is sailing out.”
“I know…. In two weeks.”
“The catapults are being tested tomorrow and possibly Wednesday. If everything works out we’ll be gone by the beginning of next week.”
“The beginning of next week,” she echoed, hanging up the phone. She kept her hand on the receiver feeling numb with shock, numb with fear. “But you said it would be at least a month.”
“As I recall, I told you it could be as long as a month. As it happens, it’s only two, possibly three weeks.”
“Oh, Rush.” She turned to him, her eyes wide with a hundred emotions she didn’t know how to define. She’d accepted long ago that their time together was limited. But she’d counted on every minute of these remaining weeks. Needed them. Needed Rush.
“It shouldn’t come as any great surprise,” he told her, and pulled out a chair to sit across from her.
“It isn’t…. It’s just that…I don’t know.” Her stomach twisted into hard knots and for a painful moment she couldn’t breathe. She was stunned, and she felt Rush’s eyes slowly search her face. With everything in her, she met his gaze, determined to appear cool and composed. Her heart might be quivering with apprehension, but she’d die smiling before she’d allow him to know it. He’d already told her once that he didn’t want her clinging to him when he left. And she wouldn’t. She’d stand on the dock with a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye, and wave until her arm dropped off, but she’d never let him know it was killing her.
“About tonight,” he started again. “I didn’t mean any of what I said.”
He dropped his gaze, but not before Lindy saw a strange mixture of regret, desire and remorse. In the two weeks they’d been together, Lindy had thought she’d witnessed all Rush’s moods. She’d seen him at his cynical best, when he’d been purposely aloof and brash. She’d experienced his comfort, his tenderness as he held her in his arms while she sobbed against his chest. And she’d heard the music of his laughter, stood transfixed by his sometimes warm-heated, playful moods. Oh Lord, she was going to miss him. Miss everything about him.
“Lindy, I’m sorry for what I said.”
His hand reached for hers, rubbing warmth back into her chilled fingers. She shook her head, hoping that would suffice as acceptance of his apology.
They were silent for a moment, caught in the surging tide of their individual thoughts.
“I don’t have any right to ask you to wait six months for me.”
“I’ll wait,” she offered quietly. Lindy had no other choice.
“If you meet someone else…”
“Is that what you want?”
“No.” Anger flared briefly in his eyes. Then his expression changed to that cool, watchful look he wore so often. “No,” he repeated softly.
“That isn’t what you said earlier.” She tried to laugh, but the sound of her pain was carried in the mirth.
“I didn’t mean it. Not a word.”
