Her lips curved up, a smile threatening to break across her face. “Was it my Purple Snow Globe?”
“Indeed it was.” He extended a hand to shake. “I’m Glen Mills, and my magazine has been running a search for the best cocktail ever.”
Julia took his hand. “And I trust you found that cocktail here at Cubic Z?”
* * *
Clay sank down onto Michele’s couch. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
She flashed a small, sad smile. “Why didn’t you ever notice?”
He held out his hands, showing they were empty. “I don’t know.”
“Did you? Notice, finally?” she asked, and her voice rose, touching some kind of hopeful note as she sat down across from him in a dove gray chair in her apartment.
He shook his head. “No. But then, lately, I haven’t been so astute at connecting the dots, in the right time or the right fashion.”
“Then how did you figure it out?” she asked, cocking her head curiously.
“I didn’t. Julia did. She mentioned it when we went outside during the game.”
Michele winced, then dropped her head in her hands. “She must hate me,” she muttered.
“No,” he said quickly, needing to reassure her. “She doesn’t hate you at all. She’s not like that. She thinks you are lovely, and smart, and funny,” he said, repeating Julia’s words from Saturday. “And I happen to agree with her.”
Michele raised her face, and rolled her eyes in self-deprecation. “Some good that did.”
“Michele,” he said gently.
She shook her head several times. “I feel like an idiot.”
“Please don’t. You’re the farthest thing from that. If anyone’s the idiot, it’s me. I didn’t have a clue.”
She managed a small laugh. “I wish I could say that’s because I was so good at hiding how I felt, but seeing as Julia noticed it instantly and you didn’t have an inkling for ten years, I’m going to have to go with you being completely blind to what’s in front of you sometimes. I just have to wonder, though, Clay, how could you not tell?”
He raised both shoulders, shrugging. “I’ve been trying to figure out how I missed it and all I can conclude is this—I care about you so deeply as a friend, and you’re Davis’s sister, and I feel like the three of us are kind of in the trenches together. Like we’ve risen up together in our jobs, and we’re this great threesome of friends somehow. I guess I only ever saw you that way.”
“Let me ask you a question then,” she said, taking a deep breath, the look in her eyes one of fierce determination. “If you’d have known how I felt, would it have made a difference anyway?”
He locked eyes with the woman he’d been friends with for so long. With his best friend’s sister. With the gal he had drinks with every Thursday night. The person he’d turned to for advice on the woman who had confused him. She was his friend, always had been, and that’s how he wanted to keep her. He shook his head, and sighed. “No,” he admitted. “I’m sorry.”
She held up a hand. “Please,” she said firmly. “No pity for me.”
“It’s not pity.”
“I mean it, Clay,” she said. “I’m going to be fine. I’ve been in love with you for ten f**king years, and have managed it. Now it’s time I get out of love with you.”
He sank deeper into the couch, and breathed out hard. “Why didn’t you say something, if you felt that way?”
She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them. Her mouth was set in a firm line. Then she spoke. “I think, deep down, I knew it was unrequited. That even if I told you, I knew that it wouldn’t change a thing. That whatever that kiss was about in college was all it was ever going to be, but it did a number on me.”
He tilted his head, stared at her as if she were a science project he was in the middle of constructing. “Why? From one kiss?”
“It was the kiss, but most of all, it was you. I thought you were the most handsome man I’d ever met, and smart, and funny, and most of all, you had your act together. You have no idea what my days are like,” she said, with a light laugh. “I love my job. But I spend my days with a lot of messed-up people. And you’re the least f**ked-up person I’ve ever known. You don’t have issues. You don’t have baggage. What you see is what you get. For someone who spends all day fixing people, I suppose I really have been longing for someone I didn’t have to fix.”
“I take it Liam isn’t doing it for you?”
“See, that’s not fair. How can you be so observant about my feelings for Liam, but so clueless about how I felt for you?”
“Pretty amazing how I can have blinders on about certain things, isn’t it?”
“I do like him . . .” she said, then let her voice trail off.
“But?”
“But, it’s hard to like someone when you’ve been focused on someone else.”
“I can understand that,” he said, since Julia was his whole world.
“You’re madly in love with Julia, aren’t you?”
“Madly doesn’t even begin to cover it. But we really don’t have to talk about her,” he said softly.
“I’m a big girl. I can handle it. Talk to me.”
“I mean it, Michele. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable. You need to tell me if it upsets you if I talk about her.”
“I survived six hours of poker with you having your hands all over her, and watching that dopey look of love in your eyes the whole time,” she said, both teasing and being truthful. “I can handle talking about her. And if I can’t, I’ll let you know.”
He patted the couch. “Sit next to me.”
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”
“What, are you going to throw yourself at me? I’m strong. I’ll fight you off.”
“Oh, gee. Thanks.”
“C’mon. We’re friends, and hell if I’m letting you go over this.”
She moved off the chair and sat next to him on the couch, tentative in the way she folded her legs up under her, keeping a bit of distance. He took her hand, clasped it in his. “I need plenty of fixing. Trust me on that.”
“Okay,” she said playfully. “You need Dr. Milo again?”
“I always need Dr. Milo, but I also need you to know I think you’re an amazing, beautiful person, and you are going to make some man the happiest man on the planet, and you probably won’t need to fix him either.”