She contemplated what was left in her kitchen, and after a minute or so, the phone rang again.
“I’ll make this quick, baby,” Molly said to her middle. “Then I’ll feed us.”
It was Friday afternoon, and she was anticipating a weekend of planning her eventual spring garden. Today she’d lined all her business ducks up in a harmoniously quacking row for next week. Whatever this was, it couldn’t set her too far back.
“M.J. Consulting,” she said, smiling again.
Less than two minutes later, her smile was gone.
Chapter Two
Adam propped his feet up on his second-floor balcony railing, and watched the rain drip onto his bare toes. He’d been planning since yesterday to pick up pad thai on the way home from work today and eat dinner al fresco. September 1 meant summer was on its way out, and he wanted to breathe in the warm air as long as it still surrounded him. Winter in upstate New York had its different snow-covered enjoyments, but it wasn’t time for that just yet.
So with these ambitious plans—and with Adam, this was as ambitious as it got—a day-long deluge wouldn’t change anything. The overhang from his upstairs neighbor’s balcony kept his head and his dinner dry. A few raindrops on his ankles were no hardship.
A tiny black furry flash tore out of the half-open sliding glass door and slid with a soft thud into the wall under Adam’s feet. Just barely righting himself, the Labrador puppy then collided into Adam’s chair leg, and jumped once to try to see what was in his owner’s dish. Then he bumped himself into the wall again, and ran back to Adam again, panting with the excitement of trying to figure out where the most fun was at that moment.
“Elmer,” Adam said. Elmer quivered, looking at Adam’s face, his hands, his dish, his feet. Adam chuckled. Elmer didn’t know his own name, but his exuberance at just hearing Adam’s voice was gratifying.
Adam hoped someone else would be just as happy to hear his voice, as soon as he got around to calling her to wish her a happy birthday. He wasn’t putting it off or anything. It wasn’t even dark yet. Technically, Molly’s birthday didn’t end until midnight.
Waiting until the absolute last minute would be kind of cheesy.
Well, they hadn’t talked to each other at all for approximately six months. She could certainly wait fifteen more minutes while he finished his pad thai. He put a forkful into his mouth. Elmer miniyelped and wagged his tail, watching Adam chew.
Besides, if Molly was so distressed at the six-month hiatus from his voice, she could just as well have picked up the phone and called him.
He shook his head at himself and took a long swallow of ginger ale. The truth was, a six-month hiatus wasn’t exactly unusual in their friendship. Even in college, living in the same dorm, they both knew—verbal acknowledgment unnecessary—that they couldn’t spend many consecutive hours in each other’s presence. Adam’s laid-back attitude got on Molly’s impatient nerves, and Molly’s constant running around gave Adam a serious case of motion sickness. Still, despite their obvious limitations, they each bestowed upon the other the title of best friend. For Adam—and he guessed for Molly, too—no one else had ever seemed to qualify for the position, and at some point soon after they met, the job was filled and no other applicants were considered.
After college, they’d gone their own separate ways, and drifted in and out of each other’s everyday lives. Some weeks, they chatted on the phone nightly. And sometimes months went by without an exchanged word or e-mail. The thing was, Adam always knew she was there, and that was enough. More than that was neediness, which sounded like a relationship, which was synonymous with trouble, as far as he was concerned.
The past six months were different, though, in that Adam had deliberately stayed away. The last time he’d seen her, she was leaving their ten-year college reunion with her long-unrequited crush, Zach Jones. Not just leaving with him, but leaving with his arm possessively around her waist, laughing up at him, her head thrown back so far her dark curls brushed the alluring curve of her behind.
Adam could have called her anytime after that. He could have said, “So. Zach Jones. You finally bagged that creep.” And she could have said, “Why do you care?” And maybe that’s why he’d never called—because he didn’t have an answer to that particular question for her. Or for himself.
She also could have said, “He turned out to be a jerk, just like you always thought.” And maybe that was one more reason he’d never called—because he didn’t want to give her the opportunity to not say that.
Whatever. Molly had a right to leave a party with anyone she wanted, even a schmuck like Zach Jones. And Adam had a right not to talk to her about it. So he’d limited his contact to a few random, somewhat impersonal e-mails—and her responses weren’t more than acknowledgments. Maybe she was avoiding him, too?
He shoveled in another mouthful of pad thai, slightly colder than the last bite. Elmer turned his puppy face up to the dark clouds in the distance and a stray raindrop blew into his eye. He blinked and shook and yelped again, wagging his happy tail.
The thing was, Molly had no idea Adam’s silence was anything but golden. She had no idea how inexplicably annoyed he was with her, with her uncharacteristically poor judgment. But if he failed to call her on her birthday, that was an egregious error. One that she would remember and hold over his head. That part, he could handle. But she’d be hurt, too, and that part he couldn’t handle. Hurting a woman like Molly Jackson by not calling her on her birthday would make him the schmuck.
Another bite of dinner was the deciding factor. “I think this is destined for the microwave, buddy,” he said, standing. Elmer leaped as high as he could, barely scraping Adam’s kneecap.
“Down, boy. I meant for tomorrow,” Adam said. “For lunch.” He stepped into his living room and Elmer trotted in behind him. Adam slid the door shut. “I have to make a call,” he continued, heading into the kitchen and reaching under the sink for the aluminum foil. “I have to wish Molly a happy birthday. I don’t know what else we’re going to talk about, but I know one thing is for sure.” He tore off a piece of foil, fitted it over the dinner plate and slid it into the refrigerator. “It’ll probably be a more interesting and complex conversation than these deep ones I have with you. No offense.”
Elmer wagged his tail, eyeballing the bottom shelf of the open refrigerator. Adam closed the door.
“You and I have fun, though, huh?” He rubbed his dog’s head. “Molly. Now that’s a girl who’s not about fun. She’s about work. Maybe she thinks work is fun.”
Elmer groaned and lay down on the linoleum.
“I agree. She’s nuts. People like that—” An image of his father floated to the front of his memory. Dad, who always did everything one-handed because the other hand was always clutching either a phone or a legal pad or his briefcase. “People like that—they die way too early,” Adam finished weakly. “They’re not for us.”
Elmer stared at him, uncomprehending.
“Molly is—well, Molly just needs to get out more,” Adam said.
Remembering that the last time he saw Molly she was going out and then he held it against her, he felt bad enough to finally grab the phone off the charger and dial her number. Before he got to the last digit, he hung up and tried to decide how he was going to musically deliver the happy birthday message. Traditional version? Beatles version? Finally deciding on the smelling-like-a-monkey version—even though he suspected he might have done that one last year—he redialed Molly’s number.
“Hello?”
Something was wrong. Molly’s voice was muffled, like she was speaking into the wrong end of a megaphone, or she was underwater, or she was…crying?
Molly? Crying?