Page 31
But as soon as those memories return, my soul goes dark. The words are still there, as fresh as they were on that computer screen in an English hotel.
Just an orphan.
The doorbell rings just after Jolie’s turned off the shower, while I’m standing at the penthouse window looking out over the city, my fingers clenching into a fist and then loosening. Clenching, then loosening. Over and over.
“What is it?” Jolie calls from the bedroom.
“Dinner.”
I grab the pizza boxes, tip the driver, and then leave her box on the kitchen counter like a payment, taking mine out onto the balcony to eat alone.
Yeah, I will make sure she’s fed, but I’m not going to eat with her.
I shouldn’t have barked at her when we entered the penthouse. That was stupid and wrong. But I was unnerved by her mere presence. I tell myself I don’t care, but I still fucking dream of her face.
In the years since we last spoke, I’ve run through a million things to say to Jolie Auclair, but when it got to that moment... when we finally met again, and I was in front of her with the opportunity to lay it all out, I had nothing.
Nothing but pain.
And I reverted back to being that hurt little boy reading an unexpected email and having his heart crushed. I hate it.
The biting chill of New York’s wind brings me back to reality as I sit on the balcony and stew. I’ve been so deep in my thoughts that I haven’t even touched my pizza. It’s already gotten cold.
Behind me, the balcony door slides open.
“You’re going to pretend I’m invisible?”
I turn in my seat to see Jolie standing there in the doorway, no longer a figment of my imagination. No longer a fantasy I can yell at in the middle of the night.
She’s a real, living person who once broke me, standing only a few yards away, looking at me like I’m the one who’s wronged her.
Her voice is enough to puncture my chest, and I wonder if she knows what she does to me.
“I got you pizza,” I say. “Your favorite.”
Jolie bites her lip.
“You haven’t poisoned it?” she questions, half-joking, half-serious.
“Eat.”
“With you?”
“I’m not here to talk,” I reply. “You do your own thing.”
Jolie hesitates.
“Extra mushrooms?” she asks softly.
I pause for a heartbeat.
“What do you think?”
Jolie Auclair glares at me. She doesn’t step out. Instead, she slowly slides the balcony door closed. Sealing us off from each other.
That’s the closest I’m going to get to a thanks, I guess.
I turn back to the New York City skyline and shake my head.
