CHAPTER EIGHT
DUFFY
“I can’t believe we’re saying goodbye.” BJ unbuckled himself in my neighbor Charlie’s prehistoric Toyota Camry. Charlie let me borrow it, even though I knew what he thought. BJ didn’t need a ride. He needed to jerk me around one last time to ensure I was truly and faithfully his. We were parked outside the terminal of JFK. The heat was still unbearable, perhaps even more so, because everything—the concrete, the trees, the streets—was already permanently hot.
“Me either,” I said hollowly. I wore my gray-checked Donna Karen dress, minimal makeup, and my hair up, the way BJ liked it. Now if only I could muster the courage to tell him I was marrying someone else in his absence.
“So. We agreed on no emails, no calls, no connection until I’m back, right, babe?” He gave me his puppy face. This was his idea, not mine. Something about making sure we had time to reflect. My pride wouldn’t let me tell him I wanted to keep in touch. Not that it mattered. BJ said he wouldn’t have access to a phone unless he traveled from the monastery into Kathmandu to an internet café, which he didn’t intend to do often.
“Right.” I smiled tightly. “I’m starting my love life detox, in which I’m going to lose a hundred and seventy pounds of boyfriend.”
“A hundred and sixty-eight. I’m still riding that clean-juice weight-loss high from June.” BJ chuckled. “I’m going to miss you so much.” He pressed his lips against my cheek. “My heart physically hurts from this.”
So don’t leave.
Stay.
Propose, so I can at least get a fiancée visa.
Right. Speaking of. “I do need to tell you something.”
“What is it, babe?” he cooed, and I was beginning to get quite agitated with how he treated me like Winnie’s blind/old/half-dead dog.
I cleared my throat. Here goes nothing.
“Since I’m running out of time, and my visa expires at the end of the month, I decided to—”
“Holy shit!” BJ interjected. Again. This time he flung the passenger seat open. “Look who it is, Duffy! Kane! Kane from Cambridge. I thought he lived in Bristol? I wonder what he’s doing in New York.”
I clasped my mouth shut. I didn’t even remember Kane. Nor did I care to.
“BJ, wait—”
“You think he works in the city now? I gotta catch up with the guy. I’m gonna call after I pass TSA, ’kay? Thanks for the ride.” He leaned in to kiss me quickly, palming my cheeks and pressing his forehead to mine. “Love you to the moon and back. We’ll get through this. Mwah.”
I sat in the car, watching BJ dragging his luggage from the boot and hurrying toward a man I now vaguely recognized as someone from the rowing team. He turned to BJ, looking pleasantly surprised. I clutched the steering wheel in a death grip and told myself that I was being unreasonable. BJ couldn’t know what I’d wanted to tell him. And I’d hardly stood my ground, had I? Besides, did it truly matter? If I wanted to marry into money, I needed to appear less desperate.
I pressed my forehead against the wheel, sucking air into my lungs.
It wasn’t until a few minutes later that I realized I fell asleep on the wheel, thankfully not while the vehicle was in motion. A police officer knocked on my window. I rolled it down with a wince.
“Ma’am.” He parked a hand on his waist, staring at me pointedly.
Christ, I couldn’t catch a break today. Ma’am? I was quite clearly a miss.
“Hello!” I smiled politely. “Did I do anything wrong, Officer?”
“You? No. Your forehead, however, was honking that horn for thirty seconds straight.”
Bugger.
“You under the influence?” He arranged his belt over his stomach.
“Ha. I wish.” The joke did not land as well as I thought it would, as his face remained stoic. “Sorry. It sounded funnier in my head. I just dropped my boyfriend off. He’s going away for six months. I’m quite distressed about the whole thing. Sleep’s not in the cards for me these days, you see, so—”
He held his palm up. “I asked if you had a drink, not for your life story.”
“Right. Yes. No, I’m completely sober.” But I am going to rectify the situation as soon as I return to my flat.
“Drive safe and straight home.”
He didn’t have to ask me twice. There was a half-empty bottle of a cheap tequila with my name on it.
When I came back to the flat, I found my future husband’s head stuck in a sink full of water and ice. I should specify that the head was completely attached to the rest of his body. Which made the scene a lot less gory than it could have been, but still quite odd.
“Please tell me it’s not a cult ritual of sorts,” I mumbled, trudging inside. He jerked his head back and shook the water off like a dog. “Fuck.”
His face was the shade of an ice cube. And still, he was infuriatingly handsome.
“Christ, Riggs!” Without thinking, I hurried to the bathroom, grabbed my robe, and returned to wrap it around his head. He may have been morally corrupt, but he was still my ticket to a green card. I needed him alive. “What were you thinking?”
“I’m thinking you’re cutting off my oxygen supply, wrapping this thing around me. How’d it go?” He shook the robe off, allowing me to lead him to the settee, where I threw a duvet across his massive body.
“Brilliant. A smashing success.” I sat next to him, tucking the duvet behind his back on both sides, like he was a human burrito. “Why was your head in ice water? You could’ve gotten hypothermia.”
He leaned back, screwing his fingers into his eye sockets. “Headache.”
“And your first reaction wasn’t to reach for the Tylenol, but to my freezer?”
“It’s a trick a Greek physician taught me.” He peeled the duvet off him. The imprint of his abs was visible through his henley. “I get them often. Migraines.”
“Well, an English newswoman recommends some ibuprofen.” I stood up and went to the kitchen to retrieve a bottle of water. “My special recipe is three pills.”
I handed everything to him. He raised the pills in the air in a salute motion before knocking them back. “Compliments to the chef.”
“Stay hydrated,” I urged him.
“Yes, Mom.”
He’d been saying that a lot. The Mum thing. This was my cue to go to my bedroom and cry into my pillow, hugging the tequila bottle I’d been fantasizing about the entire journey back, but I decided to stand in my living room instead. I didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts right now. And surely, he’d ask me about Brendan.
Riggs didn’t disappoint.
“So now that Cocksucker’s gone, are you guys over?”
“His name is BJ,” I said icily, as if the question itself was invasive and prodding. “And as I said, we’re just on a break.”
“A very long break.”
“Time is relative.”
“Relatives are time-suckers,” he fired back.
“Suckers can sometimes be relatives,” I managed, playing his stupid word game.
“But sucking relatives is a big, fat no-no.” Riggs grinned.
“All right, you win, I cannot possibly top that.”
We both stared at each other before exploding into hysterical laughter. To be fair, I was quite sure I was laughing from exhaustion, overwhelmed by my impending marriage and runaway boyfriend and complicated employment situation.
“Is Nepal nice?” I asked on a sigh. “Do you think he’ll have a good time there?” I wanted the answer to be no. For Riggs to tell me Nepal would be awful and BJ would run back home before his jet lag was over.
“Nepal is stunning.” Riggs had the good manners to smile ruefully at me. “Fascinating culture, great food, rich history, and the views are some of the best I’ve seen.”
He must’ve noticed my crestfallen face, because he added, “And I don’t think Cocksucker can appreciate any of those things, so I wouldn’t worry too much about it. He is going to hate the lack of Starbucks.”
I barked out a laugh. “He did say his favorite city is Vegas.”
Riggs gagged. “Vegas isn’t even a city. It’s a never-ending main street full of drunks and people looking to make a buck.”
We stayed like this for ten more minutes, talking about Vegas, and cities, and holiday destinations, until I felt better. Like I could handle being alone in my room.
“Good night, then,” I said finally.
Riggs smiled. He always smiled. “Night, Poppins.”