A Love for All Seasons by Bettye Griffin

Author:Bettye Griffin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kimani Press
Published: 2007-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

With a Little Help from My Friends

The next morning the snowplows came out in force to clear the streets of Manhattan. The storm hadn’t broken any records, as had first been feared, but was recognized for being rather early in the season, causing many to predict a difficult, snow-filled winter.

Alicia rose at her usual time and took a Tylenol for the mild throbbing in her head. A look at the wine bottle revealed she’d consumed three-quarters of it. She’d never drank so much as she had since that night in October when she saw Jack standing on her doorstep.

By now she felt reasonably certain that she’d never met him before. She’d probably never know why he affected her the way he did. But it looked like it no longer mattered, not now, after she drove him away.

Her phone rang as she was stuffing her feet into snow boots. She reached for it inside her purse. “Hello.”

“Good morning, Alicia.”

Her back went rigid at the sound of the voice that said her name like no other. “Good morning,” she said stiffly.

He paused. “I called to apologize for last night.”

She said nothing.

“It wasn’t right for me to wander off like I did.”

“It seemed more like a walk out than wandering off to me,” she said.

“I didn’t walk out on you, Alicia. I can’t explain it. I don’t understand it myself. One minute I was doing a mental measurement of the snow on the ground, and the next I was walking toward the subway.”

“It didn’t have anything to do with my talking to my friends, particularly the ones who happen to be male?”

She heard him take a deep breath. “All right,” he said. “I have to be honest. I didn’t like it. When the second dude called I felt like I needed to get some air. But I didn’t leave your apartment with the intention of going up to Pete’s for the night. It was a last-minute impulse.”

“All because I had some phone conversations with a couple of friends.”

“Yes,” he said with a vehemence that surprised even him. “Because you consider them your friends, and you consider me your friend. You classify us all the same way. I might not understand everything, but I do understand that much. That’s what’s so hard for me to accept.” His attempt at a chuckle came out more like a grunt. “For someone who opens up so little, I’m surprised you even have so many friends.”

“Maybe ‘friends’ is too strong a word,” she said breezily. “I should probably call them something else, like ‘playmates.’”

The double entendre irked Jack. He hardly expected Alicia, a mature woman in her mid-thirties, to be without sexual experience. On the other hand he found it unbearable to hear her refer so cavalierly to having had affairs with other men, especially when he put his own desires on the back burner and held off trying to get her into bed, hoping her feelings for him would grow. He wanted more than just sex from Alicia.

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