Semi-Sweet Read Free Page A

be receding and the urge to smash something or have serious hysterics would have passed.
    But the thought of the dark and empty house waiting for her, the thought of going home to nobody, the thought of all the unanswered
     questions, caused a new stab of despair. She lifted her glass and drank too quickly, splashing a little red wine onto the
     front of her horrible black dress. No matter, she thought, dabbing roughly at the damp patch. Who’d see a stain on black?
     And anyway, she wasn’t planning to wear it again. She hated it, and now it was the dress she’d been wearing when Patrick had
     broken up with her. It was the breakup dress. How could she ever look at it and not remember?
    He’s gone. She said the words in her head, and a dart of pain shot through her. She pushed her glass toward the wine bottle. “More,”
     she said to Adam. “Just a bit.” Not too much or the truth might come out, and then the night would be ruined for everyone.
    She shared a taxi home with her parents, having truthfully pleaded a headache when the others began talking about a nightclub.
     The driver with the woolly hat was still on duty, the same soft jazzy music still wafting from his speakers, the same appley
     smell in his cab. Hardly surprising, Hannah supposed, in a place the size of Clongarvin to have the driver who brought you
     out taking you home again. She sat beside her mother in the back, afraid suddenly that Patrick would still be in the house.
    “I must say I really like that restaurant,” Geraldine said. “The food is just right, and they don’t give you huge portions
     like other places.”
    “Mmm.”
    How long did it take to pack up your half of a relationship? What if he were just leaving now, what if they met him on the
     doorstep, surrounded by cases? She should have stayed out longer, ignored her pounding head, and gone on smiling for another
     hour or two.
    “And that waitress couldn’t have been more helpful.”
    “No.”
    The house was dark, and there was no sign of a suitcase outside. Hannah’s heart sank as she opened the taxi door, wanting
     him there now as fervently as she’d dreaded it moments earlier.
    “We’ll wait till you get inside,” her mother said. “Have you your key out?”
    The hall was warm. Patrick’s leather jacket was missing from its usual hook. His keys, still attached to their fish-shaped
     key ring, were on the hall table. His golf umbrella was gone. She kept her coat on as she walked slowly through the house.
     His laptop, his books, his CDs—all absent. His toothbrush, his pajamas, his slippers, his clothes. His aftershave, his razor.
     His tortoiseshell comb. The toffee-colored bathrobe she’d given him for Christmas, less than two weeks ago.
    She crunched on something as she crossed the bedroom and bent to pick up an earring. She remembered the biscuit tin falling
     to the floor earlier and now saw it sitting back on the dressing table with her jewelry inside. She dropped in the stray earring
     and sat on the bed, feeling bereft.
    He was gone. He’d left her, and he was gone. He’d met someone else, and he’d packed up everything and left her. They were
     over. There was no “they” anymore.
    She kicked off her shoes and pulled back the duvet and climbed into bed in her clothes. In her new black dress and black coat
     and blue scarf, in her foundation and mascara and eye shadow and blusher and lipstick. She curled into a ball and closed her
     eyes. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself, yearning for his. Wanting the warm weight of him on top of her, wanting
     his mouth tasting hers. Wanting to pull his pillow toward her but afraid of what that might do to her.
    She wished she’d had more to drink.

    Patrick lay on his back in the dark, wide awake. Leah was facing away from him, a faint asthmatic wheeze to her breathing.
     He moved his head and saw 2:35 blinking redly on the front of the clock radio. The room was brighter than Hannah’s bedroom
     at