Dry as Rain (18 page)

“Someone's a poor loser.” Waiting for his retort, I saw something on his face that wiped the smile off mine.

“You really think that, don't you?”

“Think what?”

“That I'm a loser.”

I looked around like maybe there was a candid camera pointed at me. How did we go from having fun to fighting in two seconds flat? Kyra and I had no problem with that kind of acceleration, but Larry and I? Never. “What are you talking about?”

“Forget it.” He pushed past me and headed for the stairs.

“What's your problem?”

He stopped and turned around. The look on his face was one I'd never had aimed at me before. I pushed my mind's rewind button but couldn't replay a single thing I might have done to earn his anger.

“I'm going home,” he said looking past me.

“Are you ticked?”

“Maybe.”

“Is it the game?”

Halfway up the stairs, he stopped and looked over his shoulder. “Yeah, genius, I'm mad because my lame team lost to the best in the league.”

“What, then?”

He walked back down and stood at the foot of the stairs a few feet from me. One of the empties he held spilled a drip on the carpet. “I'm not supposed to tell you.”

I eyed the leaking can. “Tell me what?”

“Nothing.”

I took all but the full can from him and walked them to the garbage behind the bar. “C'mon, man, spill it,” I said as I put the lid back on.

“Spill what? That you're a winner and I'm a loser? You don't do anything wrong, and I don't do anything right.”

I tried to take a mental step back and analyze what was happening here before reacting. There had to be a logical explanation for his strange behavior. Larry was the one person I could count on when the whole world was against me. I didn't want to lose that, especially not over . . . well, whatever this was over. “C'mon, Lar, don't do this. I can't defend myself against accusations unless I know what they are.”

“If I tell you and you tell Thompson I told you, I'll kick your—”

“Easy,” I said, putting my hands up. “Listen to yourself. You're threatening me.”

He rubbed his face. “Just don't call me a loser because I'm not. I may not do things the same as you, and I may not want to take over the world, but that doesn't mean I don't have aspirations.”

“I know that,” I said. “I know you do.”

“Do you?”

Now that the imminent threat of being beaten up had past, I dropped to the couch and looked up at him. “Just tell me what's got you so worked up.”

He pointed his kielbasa-size finger at me. “You better not tell Thompson we talked about this.”

“Never.”

He sat in the recliner beside the couch and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “Thompson told me you said my gross is lacking. I'm laying over too easy, huh?”

Blood rushed to my face. That was something I said to our boss when he pressed me to find something about Larry that could use improving. Nobody was perfect, he'd said, and a good leader needed to see the positives and negatives even in their best friends. “He pressed me to give him one thing you could work on.”

“You just can't stand to lose, can you?”

“Lose what?”

“Thompson told me he was leaning toward me for the promotion.”

“That's funny,” I said, “because he told me he was leaning toward me.”

Larry crossed his arms. “When?”

“Today.” I figured that answer ought to shut him up. He didn't look bothered, which freaked me out.

“What time? Because he pulled me into his office right before he left.”

The blood drained from my face. What was that slob pulling?

“You look kind of ticked. I was hoping you'd be happy for me.”

I shook my head. Was he for real? “How happy can I be? That's supposed to be my job.”

He sneered. “Says who?”

“Sales manager is next in line for general manager. You're next in line for my job. You don't leapfrog over your boss. That's not the way it works.”

He looked up at the ceiling and shook his head. “Let me ask you something. Why do you even want this promotion?”

“Because I deserve it.”

“You seem to think you deserve a lot of things.”

I stood. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“I'm just speaking the truth. You might want to try it sometime.”

“Where's all this coming from?”

“I'm sick of you getting everything a man could ever want and just throwing it away for nothing.”

“Is this about Kyra?”

“Yeah, it's about Kyra. What do you think I'm talking about? You had it all and you blew it, for what? A stupid promotion and a girl who still sleeps with stuffed animals? I still can't wrap my mind around that.” It was Larry's turn to stand. He dwarfed me by several inches and close to a hundred pounds. His face twisted with anger. “Why would you do that?”

“This isn't about the job or Kyra. It's about Tina.”

“No, it's about why you would throw your whole life away for nothing. And look, at the end of the day, you're not going to end up with anything. Which is exactly what you deserve. I thought you were turning things around when you finally leveled with Danielle, but I guess I was wrong. You're just as big a jerk as you ever were.”

I shoved Larry, but bounced right off him onto the couch. Before I could get my footing, he had me turned around and in a headlock. I could hardly breathe with my throat jammed in the crook of his arm.

“Just tell me why you'd do something so stupid? You had it all. Great job. Big house. Beautiful wife. What's your problem?”

Somehow I managed to push him off me. “Stop making this about Kyra and me. Just forgive Tina. She's not even with the guy anymore.”

Red-faced and breathing hard, Larry took a few steps back, watching to make sure I wouldn't pounce. “I forgave her a long time ago, but what good would it do to take her back when I can't even stand to look at her? You may get this stupid promotion, and you may get your bride back, but someday your lies are going to catch up with you.”

“If the promotion's so stupid, why do you want it so bad?”

“I don't have a wife to come home to. I don't have anything but a broken-down TV and a best friend willing to sell me out for a corner office. That's why.”

Dumbfounded, I just stared at him. “I didn't know you wanted it so bad.”

“Does it make a difference?”

I looked down at the Berber carpet beneath my feet. Did it? It was true that I wasn't used to losing. “You want me to throw the fight?”

His laugh was cold and mirthless. “I'm not asking you to throw the fight,
friend
. I'm just asking you to fight fair.”

Twenty-Three

“I can't believe you're here.” Kyra wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed me. The cashmere of her sweater didn't feel half as soft as her lips against mine. When she retreated, the disturbed look in her eyes betrayed her true feelings. I'd caught her off guard and apparently not pleasantly so.

Drained from the twelve-hour flight from Virginia to Italy, I stood in the hallway waiting to be invited into the hotel room.

“You don't look happy to see me,” I said, as much to her as Marnie, who glared at me from the bed she sat on.

Kyra stepped aside and let me into the room. Two full-size beds took up most of the space with a claw-foot table, two chairs, and a chest of drawers occupying what was left. Though tastefully decorated, it was a small room by American standards. On the edge of my wife's unmade bed sat a silver tray holding a plate with a spoonful of tomatoes, a crust of bread, and a fork in the center of it.

“Of course I'm happy,” she said. “I'm just surprised. Why didn't you call? It would have been terrible if you flew this whole way and we weren't even here.”

That possibility practically gave me an ulcer on the flight, then taxi ride over, but I didn't think the leading man I was trying to play would admit that. “Sometimes in life, you have to take chances.” I pulled the bouquet of roses I'd picked up on the way over from behind my back and held them out to her.

She gave them a strange look as she took them from my hands. “That's really sweet. Thank you.”

Her hesitancy made me wonder if her feelings for me had changed overnight. I brushed the dampness from my hands, wondering if it was from the flowers or my own nervousness.

She walked over to the bathroom and disappeared inside it with them. I heard the water turn on, which Marnie took as a cue to finally say what she'd been trying to convey through scowls.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered.

“Trying to win my wife back. What else?”

“Shouldn't you be doing that
after
her memory returns?”

She was right, of course, but I was more and more convinced that a preemptive strike at redemption seemed my best and only hope. If and when Kyra's memory returned, she might weigh this moment against what I'd done and maybe I'd earn a little leniency.

Her eyes narrowed, and she was about to say something else but stopped and turned. Kyra emerged from the bathroom holding the flowers, which leaned awkwardly inside their makeshift, ice-bucket vase. Petals rained down like snow. In my mad rush to get to the hotel, I must have overlooked the fact I'd bought a bouquet of half-dead flowers.

Decaying roses. Real romantic.

Embarrassed, I squatted down and began plucking debris from the carpet. “These are already on their last leg. I'm sorry. I'll take them back and get you fresh ones.”

She stooped beside me to help. Our hands brushed as we reached for the same petal. “Don't you dare. I love them. It's just that . . . the only time you bring me flowers is when you've done something wrong.”

Laughing nervously, my gaze jetted from her up to Marnie, hoping she'd save me. Knowing she wouldn't.

Instead, she sat there on her bed, arms and legs crossed, wearing a stony expression and her workout clothes. “He's a man. They've always done something wrong.” She tapped her sneakered foot against the carpet. “Where are you staying?”

“Nowhere. I'm just in for the day,” I said.

“What?” both women said simultaneously.

I shrugged as if it were no big deal. “Hey, I missed my wife, so I decided to fly in and spend the day with her.” Somehow that line I'd rehearsed at least a dozen times on the flight over sounded more Pee-wee Herman than the John Wayne I'd intended.

In my fantasy, Kyra was supposed to lay a hand across her heart as tears sprang to her eyes. Looking at her now, staring me down with that unreadable look of hers, I began to wonder if maybe I'd accomplished nothing more than inconveniencing her.

I stood and brushed my hands together, knocking off the last bit of dried leaf. “I thought you might think it was romantic. You know, the man you love flies across the globe just to spend a day with you in one of Europe's most amazing cities. I thought women liked that sort of thing.” My face grew warm. “I thought, well, you know . . . ”

“You should have called,” Marnie said. “We have plans for tonight.”

I licked my lips. “Oh, well, I . . .”

When Kyra's mouth turned upward in that Mona Lisa way of hers, I knew it was going to be okay. “It's true, lover, we do have a party to go to.”

“Not a party,” Marnie interjected. “A gala on a yacht with the biggest names in fashion. Probably the most important networking opportunity I'll ever get.”

Kyra turned to her sister and tilted her head to the side. “He flew in just to spend the day with me. How awesome is that?”

Relief filled me. “So, you're not mad?”

She laughed. “Yes, I'm furious that a handsome man flew all the way across the world just to take me on a romantic excursion. What girl wouldn't be?”

I extended a hand down to her and she took it. Bracing myself against the pull of her weight, I helped her stand.

Marnie pouted. “You can't do this to me.”

Kyra sat beside her on the bed and leaned into her shoulder. “What are you sad about? You'll rub a lot more elbows if you don't have to babysit your little sister.”

Looking on the verge of tears, Marnie said, “Please don't make me go alone. What if I fall over the side of the boat? Who would even know? I could be treading water for days until I died a slow, horrible death of thirst. Do you know what saltwater does to your insides if you drink it?”

Kyra raised an eyebrow. “You're not going to fall off the side of the yacht.”

“You don't know that.”

I could see Kyra's resolve melting away with each quiver of her sister's lip. “Fine, but he's coming too.”

My heart sank. I had our evening planned. I'd reserved a table at the most romantic restaurant in all of Milan—according to Google, anyway—and a horse and carriage to take us there. I even arranged for a violinist to serenade her over dinner. I haggled the guy down to one hundred and fifty if he learned Rod Stewart's “Broken Arrow” by then.