Gideon Read Online Free Page B

parked illegally out front in the loading zone that was reserved exclusively for hearses. The interior, as always, was littered with collapsed Starbucks containers, an assortment of coats and sweaters and shoes, notepads, file folders. Neat the woman never was. He stood there on the curb with the rain pouring down the back of his neck while she unlocked the door and threw the shit that was on the front passenger seat on top of the shit that was in the backseat so that he could get in.
    Once inside, he folded his long legs so that his knees almost touched his chin. Other than offering him a ride, Amanda still hadn’t said a word to him. He realized it was up to him to be mature and civil. “When are you heading back to—”
    “Washington? Right now. We’re in the middle of a huge team investigation of the D.C. school board. I’m quarterbacking and I don’t want anyone else mucking it up. Besides, there’s no reason to stay around, is there?” she said pointedly.
    “Amanda, can’t we at least be—”
    “Friends? Sure, Carl, we can be friends. ” She was forever cutting in on him like this, never letting him finish a sentence. Their conversations were always fast, sometimes furious, rarely linear. It was the way her mind worked—in overdrive.
    “Well, do you want to get—”
    “A cup of coffee? No, thanks. I just don’t think I can handle that much friendship today.”
    The Subaru didn’t particularly want to start. The engine was balky and reluctant. And when Amanda finally pulled away from the curb, it started clanking, regularly and loudly.
    “You’re not going to drive this thing all the way back to D.C. sounding like that, are you?”
    “It’s fine , Carl” The day they’d broken up was the day she’d stopped calling him Granny. “It’s been making that noise for the last seven thousand miles.”
    “But—”
    “It’s nothing. So just shut up about it, will you?” She floored it, just to prove her point. He closed his eyes and held on for dear life, remembering.
    Remembering them .
    They’d met at a pub party for a mutual friend’s book. And for eighteen months, two weeks, and four days after that, they had been inseparable. She liked the Velvet Underground, the Knicks, and cold pizza for breakfast. She was pleasantly round in all of the places she should be and enviably taut in all of the others. She possessed great masses of rust-colored hair that tumbled every which way, impish green eyes, a smattering of freckles, and the most kissable mouth he had ever personally kissed.
    Remembering their nights together. Making love, talking into the dawn, making love again. And again.
    Remembering how she made him feel: warm and excited, exhilarated and insecure, always so alive. Amanda was tremendously warm and passionate and even more tremendously opinionated. She was also a pain in the ass. Not easy to get along with. Intense, spiky, and stubborn. She was the smartest person he had ever met and, sitting next to her now. Carl realized with a touch of regret that her approval and respect still meant everything to him.
    Remembering how it had ended between them.
    Badly, that’s how.
    Mostly, she’d said, she wanted him to get real. Like she had. After years of scratching around as a freelancer, living month to month in a crummy studio apartment, she had decided that what she really wanted more than anything else in the world was a life. A good job. A nice place to live. Commitment. Him. She had found the good job—deputy metro editor of the Washington Journal . And D.C. was the perfect place for her. She loved politics, it was her passion. That was where they were different. Numbers were his. As in 30.1 and 22.9, which were Wild Chamberlain’s scoring and rebounding averages per game for his career. Or .325—Dick Groat’s batting average in 1960, when he beat out Norm Larker for the National League batting title on the last day of the season. Still, there was a good job waiting there in D.C.