Aces High by Wild Cards Trust

Author:Wild Cards Trust
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

They’d come out of it as friends. He was proud of that. It was hardest when their wounds were still raw, and for the first eleven months they avoided each other. But Bayonne was a small town in its own way, and they knew too many people in common, and it was not something that could go on forever.

Maybe that was the hardest eleven months Tom Tudbury ever lived through. Maybe.

One night she called him out of the blue. He was glad. He had missed her desperately, but he knew he could never call her after what had happened between them. “I need to talk,” she’d said. She sounded as though she’d had a few beers. “You were my friend, Tom. Besides everything else, you were my friend, right? I need a friend tonight, okay? Can you come over?”

He bought a six-pack and went over. Her youngest sister had been killed that afternoon in a motorcycle accident. There was nothing to be done or said, but Tom did and said all the usual useless things, and he was there for her, and he let her talk until the dawn broke, and afterward he put her to bed. He slept on the couch.

He woke in late afternoon, with Barbara standing over him, wearing a terry-cloth robe, red-eyed from crying. “Thank you,” she said. She sat down at the foot of the couch and took his hand and held it for a long time in silence. “I want you in my life,” she said finally, with difficulty. “I don’t want us to lose each other again. Friends?”

“Friends,” Tom said. He wanted to pull her down on top of him and smother her with kisses. Instead he squeezed her hand. “No matter what, Barbara. Always. Okay?”

Barbara smiled. He faked a yawn, and buried his face in a pillow, to keep her from seeing the look in his eyes.

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