“Always a wonderful moment.” Judy wrinkled her nose.

“Yeah, great, huh? So now we’re getting a house together, and he’s going to live with me, and it’s going to get weirder if I make partner. I don’t know what to do. You would think after dating all this time we’d have figured this out, but we haven’t.”

Judy took a sip of her drink. “I’m lucky, with Frank. He loves being a contractor and his business is doing terrific.”

“Everything’s good when the boy makes more than the girl.”

“Hey.” Judy winced. “You know money isn’t a big deal with me.”

“I know, sorry, I didn’t mean that about you. It isn’t with me either. But it is with men, at least with Anthony. They still measure their self-worth by their salaries.”

“Unlike women, who measure it by their hair, faces, and bodies.” Judy smiled. “He’s writing a book, and when he gets published, he’ll have money.”

“If it gets published. It’s hard, especially a biography in an academic press. And what if it doesn’t, or if the advance is super low? It will make him feel terrible.”

“He’ll go back to teaching.”

“He could. He says he’d like to talk to Penn.”

“Okay, so there you have it.”

Mary knew it wasn’t that easy. Anthony had been a professor at Fordham when she met him, on his sabbatical in Philadelphia, but he’d left to stay with her. She couldn’t help but feel as if she owed him.

“You love him, don’t you?”

“Yes, but, the other night, you know…” Mary rubbed her forehead. She wished she hadn’t had any tequila. As a drunk, she was a downer.

“Mare, it’s okay to love Anthony. It’s okay to go on.” Judy smiled, sadly. “So be happy. Okay?”

“Okay, right. Will do.” Mary checked her watch. “Well, I guess it’s time to go.”

Judy cocked her head, sympathetic. “You can stay here if you want. I’ll give you the bed and I’ll take the sleeping bag.”

“Thanks, but no. I’m supposed to decide whether to look at houses tomorrow and call Anthony to let him know.”

“So decide, and call him.”

Mary could easily go house-hunting. The brief was done, and her only other option was church. “I can’t decide.”

“So talk to him about that, then. Call him, right now.”

“You want me to drunk dial my boyfriend?”

“Maybe that’s what reposado means,” Judy said, with a crooked smile.

Bennie had no strength left. Her arms lay useless at her sides. She could barely stay conscious. The animal kept growling and clawing his spot, but her body was admitting defeat. She lay there, gasping for breath, hiccupping for oxygen, reduced to an organism trying to survive.

Her chest barely moved in and out, and she was beyond pain and fear. Her will was slipping away. A calm washed over her, and an acceptance. Her thoughts turned to Bear, then the office and the girls, Mary, Judy, Anne. She hated to leave them, and she regretted not telling them how much she really loved them, but it was too late now. She was suffocating to death, and she couldn’t pound, claw, or scream anymore. It hadn’t worked. At least she went down fighting.

Her heart started beating harder and faster, pounding in her chest, and she started writhing in the box. She tried to stay still, to conserve whatever oxygen she still had, but she couldn’t stop twisting and turning. The only sound she heard was her own gasping, her chest buckling but never expanding, her lungs never filling, there was nothing to fill them with, nothing left at all.

She started coughing, and her head felt like someone had taken an axe straight down the center of her brain, and she couldn’t think a single thought, her heart thumping too many beats a minute, and she realized that this would be how she died, in darkness, filth, and urine. She had always thought she was better than this, but in the end, she wasn’t, at all.

The coughing stopped, or she stopped hearing it, and she drifted back in the darkness, in a vacuum that was her lungs, and maybe her very body would turn itself inside out or pop, then she was thinking of her mother again, and finally she found herself remembering the one who got away, the man she loved truly. He was the love of her life, she knew it now, with absolute certainty, and every beat of her heart.

And it made it worse to know it only now, when her heart was, at last, stopping.

Alice rested her head on Grady’s shoulder on the car ride home, her eyes closed, playing her part. The stupid dog hadn’t died yet, although the vet had told them that they’d know more in the morning, after they’d run all their tests. She hoped for good news, when she would have to imagine something sad enough to make her cry, like not getting laid for another week.

“Here we are,” Grady said softly, parking in front of Bennie’s house and twisting off the ignition. “I know you’re upset because you didn’t yell at me for not using my blinkers.”

Oops, again. “You got a bye, this time.”

“Hang in.” Grady patted her bare knee, and Alice felt a rush of warmth. She got out of the car, and he materialized at her side, put an arm around her shoulder, and helped her to the front door. She’d always gone for bad boys, but she could see the appeal in a Boy Scout, especially Bennie’s Boy Scout.

Alice reached into the bag for the keys, opened the door, and they went inside, where he closed the door, and she dropped the bag on the couch, faking a sad face. “It’s so quiet, with Bear not coming to the door. I should’ve known something was wrong when he didn’t meet me.”

“You were distracted by my surprise visit.” Grady smiled tenderly at her, and she faked a simpy smile back.

“I know, I was so shocked to see you.”

“I’d love to stay tonight, but if you want to be alone, I understand.”

“I’d love you to stay. Actually, I need you to stay.” Alice flashed him another simpy smile, which must have worked because he wrapped his arms around her again.

“Good, because I need you, too,” he whispered into her ear, and Alice nestled her cheek against his white shirt, soft from a day’s wearing. Underneath she could feel the hard muscles of his arms, which got her juices flowing. He seemed a few years younger, and who knew Bennie was a cougar?

“I hope he’s okay.” Alice pressed her body into his, though it was too soon for any major moves.

“I wonder if we should have stayed at the vet’s.”

“We’re not helping him by moping around in the waiting room.” We could help him more by having great sex.

“I love him, too.”

“I know you do.” Feel my hips?

“He’s an old guy, but he’s a fighter.”

And I’m a lover, so what are we waiting for?

“Listen.” Grady broke their embrace, holding her away from him and looking into her eyes again. “I don’t want you to think I’m barging back into your life, expecting everything to be the way it was between us.”

How was it between us, again?

“I know we still live in different cities, and we both work too hard. None of that’s changing anytime soon.”

Like I care. I’ll be in Nassau by Monday night.

“I’ve been thinking about you so much lately. I Google you all the time, I’ve been wanting to email. Truth is, I have called your cell. I knew you had changed the number.”

You, devil, you. Kiss me.

“What I’m saying is, it’s not an accident that I’m here. I had to see you.”

Great. Now will you take that shirt off?

“I think we ended it too soon. We made a mistake, and I’m hoping we can give it another try. We can play it by ear.”

Shut up and grow a pair!

“Nobody’s mattered to me since you, and nobody could. I feel like you’re the one who got away, Bennie.”

Bingo! “I feel the exact same way,” Alice said, matching his tone, after he finally stopped talking. “Forget the past. Let’s not even talk about it anymore. We’re both here now, and single, so let’s live in the present.”