Truth or Dare (23 page)

Charcoal slacks and a fitted black sweater.

She’d about devoured him with her eyes, feeling that same bubbly elation rising inside until she realized why he looked the way he looked. He was meeting Gina. Who hadn’t left Ray. Hadn’t let him see Charlie. And was using Maggie’s favorite shoulder as a snot rag to cry on, while she whined about Ray and how he was Charlie’s father and how she was trying so hard to give him the chance to act like it.

Tyler didn’t have to hate her.

Maggie had taken on the task for the both of them.

“Yeah, okay, so forget TV. What’s up with Sam and Ford?”

Maggie shook her head, still eyeballing her toenails and feeling less certain about them by the minute. “Hostess at the sushi place Sam tried last week has her cousin in town.”

“Ah.” Ava leaned in close enough to the phone that the screen showed only a single eye. Then, lowering her voice, she asked, “What about Tyler? I know you guys decided to call it quits when it started looking too serious, but now that it’s been a few weeks, I thought maybe…in the wee hours…you guys might get a little lonely and, you know.”

Ava’s thoughts were definitely of a shagalicious nature, but explaining exactly why that wasn’t happening wasn’t Maggie’s place. So she kept it simple. “No. Not even in the wee hours.”

Fine, she still suffered the occasional wee-hour weakness. Every night. Along with the everyday achy heart and overall missing in general. But there was nothing to be done about it. They still talked a little. In the hall. In passing. Checking in on the important developments of the other’s life. But the hanging out? Being there for each other? No matter how much she might wish it otherwise, coming back to friends with a capital
just
from the place they’d been wasn’t going to happen overnight, or over a few weeks, or maybe ever.

Add to that the ishy
other woman
vibe she got every time she asked Tyler something personal? It didn’t matter that this thing with Gina hadn’t advanced beyond mere potential yet. It was there, and that was enough.

“I’ve got it! Come visit me.”

Maggie laughed. “Sure. I’ll hop on a flight tonight. Pick me up in six hours.”

Pouting through her phone, Ava did those ridiculous puppy-dog eyes that would have had anyone with less experience scrambling for an e-ticket. “I’m serious. It’s just one weekend. You haven’t taken a real vacation in over a year. Couldn’t Hedda give you a few measly days off?”

“I can’t get her to give me a phone call. And I haven’t even seen her for three weeks, so I’m guessing she’s not going to be willing to work a full weekend shift. Which is actually for the best. I’d be afraid she’d leave the incense burning next to the turpentine and the place would be burnt to the ground when I got back.”

“And then what would you do with all those hard-earned pennies you’ve been saving up?” Paper rustled in the background and Ava shoved a full third of her fast-food burger into her mouth at once. Talking around the obscene bite, she made a disbelieving face. “Furreal,”
chew, chew, chew. Gulp, gulp.
“She still isn’t returning your calls—what
is
that?”

Maggie shrugged. It wasn’t the first time Hedda had gotten all dodgy on her. But Maggie had already handled the tax stuff and the insurance paperwork, so what was with the unanswered emails and sketchy voicemails returned during off hours? Why had Hedda’s only visit to the gallery been on a day Maggie was off?

A prickle ran up her neck.

Ava stopped chewing. “What?”

“It’s probably nothing. Don’t worry about it— Geez, don’t put so much food in your mouth, either! Is there even anyone there to give you the Heimlich if you choke?”

Another gulp and nod.

“Yeah, but they’re probably too busy to notice if I needed help. Which is why you ought to fly out. So you can save me.” Ava crumpled her burger paper and shot it offscreen, then winked. “All swish and I’m back to the grind. Later, alligator.”

The next morning was cold and wet, leaving Maggie wishing she’d taken Ava up on her offer instead of staying up too late watching back-to-back episodes of
Battlestar Galactica,
checking her phone to see if Hedda would return her latest call, and then lying in bed wondering how it had gone with Gina.

Maggie dragged through a tediously uneventful morning. When their intern showed up at three to do some framing, Maggie asked her to cover the front while she went next door. Because if anyone was going to know what was up with Hedda, it was Dolores.

As always, the vintage boutique made her smile.

While The Shrone Gallery was brightly illuminated with white walls, a high ceiling, blond hardwood, and an open, airy feel that invited visitors into the space to stop and a take deep, relaxed breath, The Stopped Clock was a blend of exposed brick, murky glass display cases, and rows of towering, overstuffed shelves that partially obscured the pressed copperplate ceiling panels and made lighting a tricky endeavor. The space was dark, cramped, and as beloved by its loyal customers as its owner.

“Hey, girlie,” Dolores greeted from her little perch behind the register.

Maggie smiled, not having spotted her when she’d pressed through the front door. It was that kind of busy and packed—even though they appeared to be the only two people in the place. “Many customers?”

In this store you could never be sure you were alone without asking.

“Nah, decent morning, but slow since the lunch rush with the drizzle.” Dolores pursed her bright red lips at the plate-glass window and gently patted the neat rolls of her fifties pinup-girl hair. “No way I’m walking out this door until I head home. So how you holding up?”

It was a strange question, but Dolores knew everyone. It was possible she’d even picked up some gossip about Tyler, though honestly the guys seemed to have lost interest in her nocturnal activities after that first bust, and Maggie didn’t think Ava knew Dolores well enough to keep in touch from California. Maybe it was nothing.

It’s never nothing,
a quiet voice warned.

Better get on with it.

“I’m good, but Hedda’s gone off the grid and I can’t figure out why. You know anything?”

The two women had been friends for years, since they’d both opened their businesses about the same time, and usually Dolores could be counted on to know which way the wind was blowing with Maggie’s boss. And counted on to dish it posthaste, and minus the kind of dramatic flair her choice of fashion suggested.

Today, though, those kohl-lined eyes skated away as, pushing off her stool, she breathed a quiet, “Aww hell” that had Maggie’s belly sinking fast.

“What is it?”

Going to the front of the store, Dolores flipped the sign to “Closed” and turned the lock. “She swore she was going to tell you herself.”

Hedda was selling the gallery. To someone else.

Maggie’s throat tightened up, and for a few desperate seconds she was blinking back the tears that for once weren’t over Tyler. Fortunately, before she’d been forced to collapse into some stranger’s arms on Milwaukee Avenue, she got it together enough to keep walking without a total breakdown.

It wasn’t the end of the world.

She had her health. A roof over her head. Heck, she still had her job.

The only difference…all the years, all the plans, promises, and sacrifices, no longer meant what she’d thought they had. She’d been a fool. Again.

Arriving home, Maggie climbed the stairs to her apartment, and then before she’d even registered the decision, she climbed the next flight as well, where she knocked on Tyler’s door.

When a dull ache started radiating up her hand she realized she’d been standing there for over a minute, knocking again and again. And even without much strength behind it, the repetitive contact hurt enough to pull her out of her fog.

What time was it, anyway? She hadn’t passed Tyler running, like she usually did. But then the afternoon had sort of passed in a fog after she’d talked to Dolores. She’d flown on autopilot with the few customers who’d happened in. Helping with any questions, talking about the artists, about their work, because she knew the information like she knew her own name. But when the doors swung shut behind them and she was alone again, her mind spiraled through what she’d learned, what she didn’t want to believe, what wasn’t going to happen for her no matter how certain she’d been it would.

Eventually, she’d realized the dark wasn’t merely the weather, and she’d closed up and come home. Come here, to Tyler’s apartment.

Maybe he’d already gone out for the night.

Resting her forehead against the door, she took a deep breath, telling herself she needed to go downstairs. Get a grip. This was just the first slippery step on what appeared to be the downhill ride she hadn’t seen coming. Bracing both hands against the door to push off, she let out a shriek of surprise as it swung open in front of her.

“Whoa, Maggie,” Tyler laughed as she stumbled into his apartment. But in the next beat, he was stepping forward, concern digging furrows between his brows. “Hey, what’s going on?”

She sucked a thin breath, searching the ceiling for the right words to explain that the path she’d been following for years had just crumbled beneath her feet. Been obliterated by her boss’s impetuous nature and her own unwillingness to recognize it before it blindsided her.

Fingers framed her jaw, warm and gentle, as Tyler brought her eyes to his. “Jesus, Maggie, talk to me.”

She swallowed past the rising knot of emotion. “Do you want to get a pizza?”

The first tear breached the dam, tickling down her cheek faster than she could swipe it away. And then she was promising she could be his friend. That she wasn’t asking for anything else. She just needed him for a few minutes if he didn’t have somewhere else he had to go.

The words were still spilling out when Tyler gave her what she so desperately needed, and wrapped her in arms that were strong and warm and familiar.

Forty minutes later Maggie’s eyes were dry, those pathetic, hiccupy little sobs she’d briefly succumbed to abated by the promise of a Lou Malnati’s sausage and mushroom, which now sat steaming hot on the coffee table in front of her.

Tyler dropped onto the couch beside her, holding the bottle of red wine he’d sworn he still had around there somewhere.

Wiping off the thin layer of dust coating the bottle, he pulled the cork and poured them each a glass. “This one’s a Chianti Classico. 2006. Particularly good with a pie if you ask me.”

It was good. Not that she’d been
particularly
discriminating when her first “sip” leaned more toward a guzzle.

Topping her off with one of those knowing smiles, he set the bottle aside and asked, “What did she have to say when you talked to her?”

After leaving Dolores, Maggie texted Hedda with the message she knew about the gallery. And when she called ten seconds later, Hedda picked up. “It was terrible. She answered, and it was the usual whirlwind of laughter and half-conversations with people in the background. The promise she’d been about to call herself, and relief that I knew because it had been eating her up. But as to explanations—all I know is she met the buyer on her most recent spiritual retreat and her decision has allowed her to find ‘her calm.’ ”

Tyler’s face was pure
What the fuck?
“Did you ask if she’d consider an offer from you?”

“I did and she won’t.” In that, at least, Hedda had been definitive.

Of all the times…

Maggie closed her eyes, hating the way her throat tightened with the new threat of tears.

“Hey, it’s okay, Maggie,” he murmured, rubbing his hand over her shoulder with wide, soothing strokes that drew her in until her head rested against his chest.

She didn’t want to feel so vulnerable, so weak.

Only she didn’t have the strength to pull away from the comfort Tyler was offering.

The comfort she needed.

“I feel stupid,” she whispered against his chest. “I knew we didn’t have a contract, but we’d talked about me buying her out so many times. It was always
when,
not
if.
How could she just change her mind?”

Except she knew.

Hedda had
felt
like Maggie was the only one who could love the gallery the way it needed to be loved.

Hedda had
sensed
Maggie was put in her path for a reason.

Hedda had
believed
Maggie’s energy resonated with the place.

Her boss’s decisions were driven by cosmic interpretation and whichever way the wind happened to be blowing that day. She’d talk about remodeling for months, go as far as getting a contract on her desk, and then breeze in the next day with some line about the walls speaking to her and dismiss all the plans. Leaving Maggie to clean up the mess with the contractor who was ready to begin. The same had happened with the occasional artist over the years. With openings, spotlights, and shows.

Maggie had known Hedda’s whims were fickle from the start. But because she wanted to believe so much in this plan they’d put together, because she’d invested so much of herself in it, Maggie hadn’t even acknowledged the possibility that Hedda’s fickle nature would impact her. She’d willfully ignored all the warning signs, the put-offs, the big talk followed by a refusal to commit…because just like the last time she’d let her life and plans crumble beneath her feet, just like with Kyle, she’d wanted her happy ending so much, she’d been willing to lie to herself to keep on believing she could have it.

A digital trill sounded a few inches south of Maggie’s ear, jarring her out of that last disheartening revelation. Tyler stiffened and then jerked to his feet. Stepping away from the couch, he raised the phone to his ear.

“Gina, what’s going on?”

The temperature in the room dropped 20 degrees.

“No. No. I was surprised to hear from you is all.” Back stiff, shoulders set, Tyler met Maggie’s eyes.

He motioned for her to eat and signaled five minutes, then headed down the hall toward the back of his apartment.

Maggie stared at their pizza and wine, both barely touched.