Susan Mallery - Evening Stars

He sat at his desk, the disk of pills next to his keyboard. He wasn’t typing, but he didn’t look up at her, either.

She’d met Kevin six years ago. She’d been in her senior year of college. A journalism major, sent to report on a street fair in Mischief Bay. Not her usual assignment. Averil had been the go-to reporter for her college newspaper, accustomed to hard-hitting stories on criminals or cover-ups. But one of the junior reporters had flaked out, and she’d agreed to fill in.

She was just pretty enough to be used to a lot of male attention. Tall and blonde, which made her practically an indigenous species on a California beach. She’d been taking notes and shooting pictures, when a guy had approached her.

He’d been kind of cute, about her height, skinny, with the intense look of someone with more intelligence than the average man-on-the-street. He’d held out her camera bag and said, You left this on the bench back there.

She’d smiled and thanked him, then had playfully asked, Are you going to hit on me now?

He’d shaken his head. No, but I will tell you that you shouldn’t use autofocus in this setting. It’s letting in too much light, and you’ll lose contrast in the scene.

An unusual response. She’d studied him more closely, taking in the gold flecks in his brown eyes and shape of his mouth. He’d lacked the deep tan of a surfer—no surprise there. Engineer, she thought. Or computer science major.

You do like girls, right? she’d asked.

He’d smiled at her, then. A slow, sexy smile that had made her toes curl in her Keds and caused the noise around them to fade into the background.

I’ll take the pictures, he’d said, reaching for the camera. You make your notes.

I’m writing an article for The Daily Bruin. She paused. That’s the paper at UCLA.

I know what it is.

You’re out of college?

Yup. Just got a job at a software company here in Mischief Bay. He’d slipped the strap around his neck and started making adjustments on the camera. I went to MIT.

Smart, great smile and he had a job. Things were looking up. I’m Averil, she’d said.

Kevin.

He hadn’t hit on her, but he had asked her out. It had been three dates before he’d kissed her and nearly four months before they’d had sex. The day after she’d graduated, he’d proposed. She’d said yes to him and a full-time job at California Girl magazine.

“About the pills,” she said, stepping into his office.

“You said you were ready. You said you wanted to have kids. Have you changed your mind?”

“No. It’s just...” She took a step forward. “There’s a lot going on.”

“What’s going on now that isn’t going on all the time? We’re settled in the house, we have money in the bank. You have your job and your novel. What are you waiting for?”

She wished he hadn’t mentioned the novel. The one she was supposed to be writing. The one that was little more than a few notes and a hundred and forty-seven false starts. Saying you were going to write a novel was easy. Actually writing it—not so much.

“I’m feeling pressured,” she said, hearing the defensiveness in her voice and not liking it. “It’s so soon.”

“Our fifth anniversary is in a few months. It wasn’t exactly a shotgun wedding.”

“No, but...”

He looked at her then, his brown eyes filled with what could only be betrayal. He looked as if she’d cut out his heart.

“Kevin, no,” she breathed as she started toward him. “I’m—”

He waited. “You’re what?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Nina told you to wait, didn’t she?”

Averil had to hold back the overpowering need to stomp her foot. “You always bring up Nina. Why do you hate my sister?”

“You know I like Nina a lot. I bring her up because she’s always with us.”

“That’s ridiculous. She’s a thousand miles away.”

“No, she’s not. She’s the voice in your head. You talk to her every day for weeks until you two have a fight, and then you complain about her every day until you two make up. She’s the opinion you care about most.” He returned his attention to his computer screen. “It’s never you and me making a decision. It’s always the three of us.”

She wanted to tell him he was wrong, but he wasn’t. Her and Nina’s last blowup had been about three weeks before, and they hadn’t spoken since. Funny—Averil couldn’t even remember what they’d been fighting about.

She looked at Kevin. She could feel his pain. He wanted more, and as much as she wanted to give it to him, she couldn’t. The problem with Kevin was that he saw her as more capable than she could ever be. But how was she supposed to tell the man in her life to expect less of her?

“I need more time,” she told him. “Please, stop pressuring me.”

She waited, expecting him to say that asking her to keep her word wasn’t exactly applying brute force, but he only nodded.

“I love you,” she whispered.

He looked at her then. “Sometimes I’m not so sure.”

* * *

The next morning, Nina woke without the alarm. One of the perks of a Saturday morning. She’d had a restless night. While she’d avoided the brownies calling her name, she’d given in to the wine. Worse, she’d dreamed of Dylan on and off. Probably the result of seeing him and then watching The Day After Tomorrow.

She would guess that most women remembering a breakup went for a more classic romantic comedy or a movie that would make them cry. She would have, as well, but it was right after seeing The Day After Tomorrow that Dylan had broken up with her. She’d been making a point on global warming, and he’d announced he wasn’t going to be coming back to the island on weekends anymore.

Now the shots of ice and snow were firmly linked in her brain with the pain of losing the only man she’d ever loved. In her pathos, she’d noticed that the sheer size of the storm had matched the vastness of the emptiness filling her heart. Dylan had filled so much of her world, and now he was going to be gone.

All this time later, he was back. Not that it was going to be an issue for her, she told herself as she sat up and stretched. It wasn’t as if he’d sought her out. Their meeting had been completely random. Even on an island this small, she was unlikely to run into him very much.

For the best, she thought, standing by the bed. She would simply—

“Crap. My car!”

She’d never called Mike about it. Never asked him to tow it to his shop and start work on it. All because she’d been distracted by a handsome man from her past. Dylan had a lot to answer for.

She glanced at the clock and saw it was nearly eight-thirty. Which meant Mike’s repair shop had been open for an hour. Saturdays were busy for him, and she was pretty sure someone else would have gotten the beat-up truck that was his loaner car.

She walked into the kitchen and picked up the phone. Mike’s business card was one of a dozen held to the refrigerator by a tacky magnet designed for the tourist trade. No surprise to anyone, Nina’s mother collected them.

Mike answered on the third ring. “What?”

“It’s Nina Wentworth.”

“Hey, listen, I’m good but I’m not that good. I’ll get to it later today. I’m guessing the fuel injector, but I mean it. That’s a guess.”

Nina blinked several times. “Excuse me?”

“Your car. That’s why you’re calling, right? You’re not going to try to sell me any damn magazine subscriptions, are you?”

“What? No.” She walked over to the kitchen table and sat down. “My car is there?”

“Sure. I got a call yesterday just before closing to go pick it up. I had Benny drop off the loaner last night. You telling me you don’t know about this?”