Love Game Read Free Page A

“No need,” she interrupted. “I still know the way by heart.”
    “But I only took you home to meet my parents that once.”
    “But I only drove by with my girlfriends to check up on you at least a dozen times. I quit after you dumped me for Tiffany Goodbody. Remember? The bad girl with a good body.”
    “I remember.” Groaning, Greg shook his head.“I’m not proud of the way I treated you, Chris. I was immature and a little too full of myself, putting more stock in scoring with a bimbo than waiting for an extra-special girl. There’s more than one thing I’d change if I could turn back the clock.”
    “Same here.” That said, she let it drop.
    As they tooled down the rain-slick road, neither spoke. The swish of wipers and the patter of a heavy drizzle seemed louder than it should. Didn’t they have anything left to say? Strange, but he felt a loss that they had crossed paths again only to part with a “Thanks for the ride and take care.” Then again, maybe they’d run into each other at a checkout stand and wave, or fumble for conversation now that they’d hit another dead-end street. Second verse, same as the first.
    Their arms and thighs were separated by a stick shift between bucket seats. He took up a lot of room but the car felt crowded with more than the space their bodies consumed. When she turned on the radio he sensed it was more from a need to fill the silence than to listen to “Carol of the Bells.”
    “Are you sure it won’t be an imposition to leave my car in your parents’ driveway until the—”
    “Of course not.” She slid him a brief smile.
    “I hope you don’t mind what I did,” he offered, turning down the radio. “You know, kissing you in the foyer.”
    “Mind? Hardly. It was the best Christmas present I’ve had all night.”
    “No kidding?” At her nod, he touched her hand, which gripped and ungripped the four on the floor. “You look great, Chris. Even better than I remember. Who’s the lucky guy?”
    “His name was Mark, but I wouldn’t exactly call himlucky. Thirty years old and he had a heart attack. It happened when he was jogging, trying to work off the love handles he’d picked up behind a desk.” She laughed—a brittle sound. “Staying-in-shape heart attack, get it? Life’s a real joke. It sure had the last laugh on me.”
    “I’m sorry, I had no idea.”
    “Yeah, well, it was a surprise to me, too.”
    “Recent?”
    “Almost four years ago.”
    Reaching over, he tapped her gold band against the steering wheel. “Four years and you’re still wearing a wedding ring?”
    Her shrug he took to mean indifference, but the passing streetlights illuminated the strain in her profile.
    “I’ve had trouble letting go.” She glanced at him sharply, then returned her attention to the road.
    Another two miles and they’d be at his drop-off. Another mile and a half…then, maybe a mile to go. Why did her wedding ring bother him? Why did her loss of weight, the tension in her smile? He’d seen friends die. He’d made plenty of personal sacrifices and they’d aged him, too. But none of that seemed to compare with the emptiness he read in the shuttered gaze of a woman who seemed too old too soon.
    “We’re here,” she said, pointing a red fingernail at the solid-as-they-come ranch house.
    Who had she done her nails for? he wondered. That ring declared her still bound to a dead man, so she’d likely painted them for herself. Yeah, women were funny that way, making themselves look pretty on the outside when they didn’t feel so pretty in places the eye couldn’t see. He saw…a terrible waste. Chris probably wouldn’t like what he had to say. Tough, Greg decided. He was saying it anyway.
    “I’ve never gone through your situation, so if I soundinsensitive, I don’t mean to be. But look, you’re plenty young to make a new life for yourself. Seems to me you’ve hung on to your grief, Chris, that you’re still tied to the past. Not to say you need a