Page 62 of Not You Again
“What would you do without me?” She holds a needle between her teeth while she digs for some thread in the same color as my jacket.
“I don’t want to find out.”
She gives me a look, eyebrows raised. “Noted.”
The flicker of a smile that crosses her face won’t get her out of this conversation. She was truly broken that night she came to me. If Keith was just husband number three, I wouldn’t have had to hold her against my chest for hours while she cried. “Was Keith important to you as a stepdad?”
Andie threads a needle with the confidence of a seasoned professional, then shakes her head. “Not really. It’s just … my mom married him, and they were together longer than the others, and I thought maybe she’d found love and happiness and comfort. The things you’re supposed to want out of a marriage, you know?”
I slip my hands into my pockets and nod. “I take it she didn’t.”
“Nope.” Andie pops the P and pulls her needle through the cuff of my jacket. “What she found was a man with a flush bank account who didn’t have the foresight to ask for a prenup.”
She meets my gaze from under thick eyelashes. This view of her is one of the best I’ve ever witnessed—freckles across her nose, hands at work, eyes asking me a silent question. My hands itch to capture it, somehow. I don’t want to pull out my phone and snap a picture—that would ruin the moment—and there’s nothing to draw on nearby. So I settle for letting my eyes map her lines and constellations, inking them against my rib cage for safekeeping.
Andie lets out a small sigh and turns her attention back to her work. “Jim is husband number six.”
I swallow, fully understanding her mom’s inquiries into the nature of my job and where I live.
“You want to know the worst part?” she mutters, placing stitches with a steady hand. “Every time she gets married, I think to myself, maybe this one will be different. Maybe this one will stick.” She shakes her head. “She did it to keep us safe the first time. After husband number two left when I was a kid, we lived out of her car for a few months. Keith gave us a home, if nothing else.”
Her words are a fist straight to the gut. “I didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t,” she scoffs, eyes still on her work. “What would you have thought if I told you I was homeless in junior high?”
“That we have more in common than I thought.” The words tumble out without my permission. She stops fussing with the jacket and looks at me, her lips parting gently.
I push off the counter and pace in front of her. “Andie, I grew up in a single-wide trailer. I know what it’s like to not have anything.”
“And your parents?”
“Loved each other very much.” When I steal a glance at her, her shoulders have curved inward, and she’s staring at my jacket again. My heart rages against my chest—I just told her I had the one thing she never had: a loving family. I can’t tell her I left because we had too much love, the loss of it nearly broke us.
So I offer her another piece of me. “Every time I go home to see my mom, all I can think of is how they would stay up after I went to bed. The walls were thin, so I could hear them discussing what they were going to give up this week so they could afford a new jacket for me, or shoes, or breakfast.” I rub my jaw with my knuckles and stare at the linoleum floor. “They gave up a lot for me. Sometimes I wonder if they should have.”
“It sounds like they loved you.” She pauses her work to look me in the eyes.
I shrug. “It’s clear your mom loves you, too.”
She nods, then finishes the last few stitches in silence before producing the tiniest scissors I’ve ever seen. “When Keith left, my mom had nowhere to go, and divorce proceedings take a while. So we rented a little apartment together until she could find her next victim. I dropped out of school because I had to work so I could eat. Keith had been paying my tuition, anyway.” She sighs and sets my jacket to the side, folding her hands in her lap. “I got hired at a dry cleaner, and the owner’s mom taught me how to mend things and do small alterations. When they closed down because they couldn’t pay on their business loans, I got work at a bridal shop as a seamstress.”
I stop in front of her and meet her gaze. There’s my missing piece—how she went from a driven business student to a dress designer. One of life’s more humbling moments. And it explains why even her school email address was unreachable at the time.
“You were meant to make dresses,” I whisper. “You’re incredible at it, you know?”
Her lips tilt into a half-smile. “You’ve never even seen one in action.”
She’s right. I saw some half-finished dresses at her studio and poked around her website. “I’d like to,” I admit.
She chews on her lip, brows pulling together in thought. “Is that why you only own three suits?” she asks. “You’re not used to having much?”
“I—” I want to argue, to say it’s just an economical choice. But she’s just seen the truth more clearly than anyone. Besides, last week she said she wanted me. Sort of. So I step closer. I place my hands on either side of her hips and look her in the eyes. “I never want to forget where I came from.”
The muscles in her throat work, and her gaze falls to my mouth. “Do you think we can ever really move on?”
“Andie.” I can’t stop myself from saying her name with so much yearning I should be embarrassed. But if she wants me, this is it. The yearning is part of it.
“How can you look at me like that?” she whispers.