Refrains of the Heart by AJ Mars

Author:AJ Mars [Mars, AJ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-62639-838-2
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2016-02-23T05:00:00+00:00

*

Louise’s cell phone rang shrilly when she was on the bus on the way to Jennifer’s practice hall, her bag of art supplies and two canvases resting awkwardly between her knees and the back of the seat in front of her. It took her a frustrating long few seconds to dig the phone out from her pocket and she didn’t have time to check caller ID before she flipped it open.

“Hello?” she said breathlessly, hoping Jennifer wasn’t calling to cancel.

“Hey, babe.” For a moment the voice was unfamiliar, then very much not. Louise felt her hackles rise like a physical thing.

“Mark, why are you calling me?”

“Steve’s fed up of me in his guest bed. It’s been nearly a week. Can I move back in yet?”

For a moment Louise was speechless. “I—what?”

“I know you needed some time to cool off. I’m sorry. I’ll totally support your art. Let’s fix this, okay?”

“I thought we made it pretty clear you were moving out. And if not, the fact we haven’t spoken once in the week since kind of cemented that.”

“I—”

“I mean actually moving out, for real, the end.”

“I know you said that then. But that was in the middle of an argument, you never mean things when you say them like that.”

“That’s your impression, Mark. I said it and I meant it, and surely even you could see we’d been together out of expectation and habit more than anything else recently? Tell me you’ve missed me this past week and not having somewhere nice to live.”

There was a telling pause. “Louise,” he said plaintively.

She sighed. “I don’t have a car and it’s a pain in my ass, but I’m taking the bus. You don’t have a house and it’s a pain in the ass, but you’ve got savings. Get your own place. Move on. We’re both of us going to be happier in the long run. I don’t want you to move back in and I don’t think you really want to either.”

“You’ve met someone else, haven’t you.” His voice was ugly, which meant he knew Louise was right and didn’t want to admit it.

“No,” she said calmly, though she went hot in the face like she was lying, which was stupid. The truth of it was that she had met someone else since Mark had left—or rather, she’d become reacquainted with someone she’d thought was gone for good. The old Louise, the girl she’d let fade into the background without realizing it, was back, and Louise had no intention of letting her go again. She sighed, itching to cut off the conversation before Mark said something else to draw this out, make her yell at him when really she didn’t want to waste the energy. “Mark, I’ve got to go. I’ll see you around, maybe, but have a good life, okay?”

She hung up before he could say anything further. She realized with a lurch that she was twenty seconds away from the stop she needed. She hit the button and scrambled her

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