I Regret Loving You for Five Years novel · Chapter 27 of 32

Chapter 27: Thin Walls

Boone came up the last two steps.

Marshall's footsteps went down the stairwell behind him, slow, and then the street door banged.

Boone set his duffel down on my doormat.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi."

"That was him."

"That was him."

He nodded and didn't move any closer.

"You want to tell me," he said, "or you want me to not ask?"

I thought about the lobby. About five years of a man who never once asked me anything he didn't want answered.

"I want to tell you," I said.

So I did, standing in the doorway.

I told him all of it, and he listened without looking at the door once.

He gave me a piece of paper about the gala, and said good about the roof.

"He said good," Boone repeated.

"He said good."

Boone looked at the stairwell for a while.

"Huh," he said, the way he had in the Christchurch warehouse, the first day.

Then he picked up his duffel and came in.

"Okay," he said.

That was all.

He believed me, and it was over, and he was looking around my apartment.

***

"It's empty," he said.

"I own a parka, a patch and a lemon magnet."

"You've got a radiator." He went over and knocked on it. "That one's going to bang."

"Like a man trying to get out of a filing cabinet?"

"Like a D8." He turned around. "You've got a bed?"

"Gwen's mattress. On the floor. She bought new sheets and made me promise not to tell you they were on sale."

His mouth twitched.

Gwen banged on the wall from across the hall.

"I CAN HEAR YOU. THE SHEETS WERE FULL PRICE."

Boone laughed so hard he had to sit down on the floor.

***

We ate leftover pad thai out of the carton, sitting on the floor with our backs against the radiator.

It hadn't banged yet.

I unwound the old bandage from his left hand and put on a fresh one from Gwen's kit.

The palm was pink and new and shiny, healing clean.

"You did good work," he said.

"You did the stupid part. I just wrapped it."

He grinned and flexed his fingers inside the gauze.

"How was Montana?" I asked.

He took a while.

"There's a family on the place now," he said. "Young couple. Two kids. They put a new barn up where the old one was. Steel. Got a horse in it."

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