This meant she gave me a telling look after the hug we exchanged before we left. But she pretended like it was all good with the warm hugs and good-byes she gave Merry and Ethan.
Ethan chattered on the way home. Ethan chattered when we got home. And Ethan didn’t hide his disappointment when I shared it was bedtime.
He didn’t fight me, though, because it actually wasn’t bedtime. It was half an hour after bedtime, so he knew he’d already gotten a reprieve.
What freaked me (further) was that Merry took Ethan’s bedtime as his opportunity to leave rather than what we did last night after Ethan went to bed—taking time, being together, whispering to each other, laughing quiet so we wouldn’t wake my kid up, and making out.
He gave Ethan another man-to-man handshake.
He gave me a distracted kiss on the cheek.
Then he took off.
The only good part about this was that my son was growing up and there wasn’t a lot he didn’t notice. But he wasn’t grown up enough to know that a man like Merry didn’t kiss his woman good night like that.
Obviously, I didn’t educate him.
I got him to bed and then I sat on my couch with my phone in my hand.
I started a dozen texts.
I couldn’t figure out which words to use, so I erased everything.
I looked at the clock, then I turned my head and looked at the wall, well beyond which was the house that Tilly lived in.
And Tilly was a late-night talk show girl.
“Started the habit with Johnny Carson, honey, a habit that’s hard to break,” she’d told me.
Before I could talk myself out of it, which would mean talking myself into fucking things up with Merry, I pulled my boots back on, grabbed my purse, my jacket, and my keys, and headed out.
Tilly’s house was quiet and dark except for the flickering light of a TV coming from her curtains.
I knocked not too loud but also called out, “Tilly, it’s Cher.”
The door opened almost immediately and I looked down at the round woman with curly hair that was an equal mix of black and steel, who had big blue eyes in a face as round as her body.
“Is everything okay, Cher?”
“Listen, I know this is askin’ a lot, but I need to ask if you’d go over and stay with Ethan. He’s sleepin’, but I…” Shit, shit, fuck, fuck, fuck. “I don’t know if you heard, but I’m seein’ Garrett Merrick and there are some important things I gotta talk about with him. We couldn’t do that with Ethan around, and Merry went home before we got to it. It’s not stuff you can talk about over the phone either. I know this is selfish, but I can’t sleep, Till. I gotta go over to Merry’s and talk things out.”
“I’m in my slippers, hon. Let me get my shoes,” she said instantly.
Totally a good neighbor.
And she’d so totally heard about me and Merry.
She got her shoes.
I followed her over to my house and sat in my car until I saw the door close behind her. Then I sat in it until I saw my curtains flickering with the late show on TV.
After that, I backed out.
I hit Merry’s complex, and before I could turn tail and do the easy thing rather than doing what I’d promised him I would do and give us the best shot I could give, I got out of my car and hauled my ass up to his place.
There was a window in his apartment that faced the landing. No light.
I knocked as loud as I could without being obnoxious to him or his neighbors.
It took too much time (probably ten seconds) before dim light came from the blinds at his front window. I heard the locks go and the door was opened.
Not opened.
Hauled open.
“Fuck, Cher, is everything okay?”
I looked up at his face, lit by the outside lights on his landing, and saw distant-Merry was not with me.
He looked worried.
But he smelled like cigarettes and it hit me it’d been a while since I’d smelled that on Merry.
“I don’t know, baby, is it?” I asked carefully.
“Where’s Ethan?” he asked in return, his gaze flicking beyond me.
“Tilly’s at the house keepin’ an eye on things until I get back.”
Merry’s eyes narrowed when they came back to me. “Babe, it’s nearly eleven.”
I knew that. I just didn’t know why he was telling me that. He couldn’t be so far gone he didn’t know why I was there.
Could he?
“We have to talk,” I told him.
“About what?” he asked.
“About you checkin’ out at dinner tonight.”
There it was. I saw it happen and it freaked my shit right out.
The door closed on his soul and that was written all over his face.
“I didn’t check out at dinner tonight,” he lied.
“Merry—”
“I had my ass in a seat, eatin’ tater tot casserole, and you were right there with me.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
His brows snapped together. “You mean to make problems that aren’t there?”
Seriously?
“Merry, you checked out.”
He shook his head at the same time he sighed. “Get back to Ethan, Cher.”
I lifted a hand. “Merry—”
“It’s late. Get back to your kid.”
“Dammit, Merry,” I snapped. “Talk to me.”
“About what?”
“Boss, you are not talkin’ to a princess who could climb on top of a mattress, feel a pea, and bitch about that shit. You’re talkin’ to me—a real woman who knows what’s important,” I snapped. “And you checked out tonight. Now, you gotta know that I know, like every-fuckin’-body knows, a Merrick checks out, you don’t dick around with checkin’ him back in.”