I wasn’t sure if it was Blair herself—although she was fantastic in bed and out of it—or if I’d just forgotten how good it could be to get to know someone sexually, let them learn all your favorite things, discover all of theirs, explore their fantasies, share your own, abandon the frantic showmanship of first times and the need to prove yourself, and start peeling back the layers . . . let them know the real you, even if it was dirty and rough and messy and not always nice. It had been a long time since I’d felt so at ease with someone, in bed and out.

I couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or not.

Pushing her from my mind, I picked up the pace a little.

“How’s Mariah?” I asked. “I saw her last week.”

“She told me.” He laughed. “She said Cheyenne told her and her friends you and Blair had gotten married, but it turned out to be a lie.”

“Fucking Cheyenne,” I muttered.

“She said at first she was disappointed, but then she was glad because she wants to be a flower girl at your wedding.”

“Well, sorry to disappoint her, but there’s not going to be any wedding. I’ll take her for an ice cream cone, though.”

“A distant second, but she’d like that.” We ran in silence a few minutes. “I’m a little worried about her.”

I glanced at him. “Why?”

“She’s been spending more time alone in her room, and my mom went in there to clean it recently and found this letter to me. It was full of questions.”

“Questions about what?”

“About her mother. Things that she’s apparently afraid to ask me. She doesn’t want me to get mad or be sad.”

Pain squeezed my heart. “I’m sorry, Cole. That’s rough.”

“I don’t know whether to confront her about it or not. My mother says yes, but I’m worried about violating her privacy.”

“Yeah. That’s a tough call.”

“I think I’m going to contact a therapist. I feel like this is more than I can deal with on my own.”

“That’s a good idea.”

“I’m also worried about the physical changes coming with adolescence, and having to field those kinds of questions.”

“Fuck,” I said, panicked at the thought of facing that situation.

“And it all just makes me miss Trisha more, you know? We should be facing the teenage years together.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just gave him a quick clap on the back.

“Anyway, enough of my shit. How are things going at the shop?” he asked.

“Fine. The bank turned me down again, but we were busy enough to pay the bills. This month, anyway. Next month could be different.”

“Sorry.”

“Yeah, well . . . what can you do? Blair’s got some crazy scheme going to get back some of the business we lost to Swifty.”

“Yeah?” Cole glanced over at me. “So she’s working for you now?”

“I guess you’d call it that.”

“I thought she was moving up north somewhere.”

“She is. She even has a job lined up already. But I have to get her car fixed first, and since she doesn’t have any extra money, she’s sort of working off the cost in trade.”

“Uh huh. And what all is she trading?”

I glanced at Cole and saw his grin. “Fuck off,” I said. But I laughed too. “We’re just having fun.”

“Fun is good. I vaguely remember that kind of fun.”

“So get back out there.”

“Nah,” he said, picking up his pace.

I pumped my legs harder to keep up. Maybe the late nights were getting to me a little. I was usually just as fast as Cole, if not faster.

“So when’s she leaving?” he asked.

“In a few weeks. After Labor Day.”

“And what happens after that?”

“Nothing.”

“Why not? I thought you liked her.”

“I do like her. But it’s just temporary. Casual.”

“You sure about that?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I was there the other night after the game. I saw you guys together. It didn’t look like a quick or casual thing. It looked kind of real.”

“Well, it’s not. She’s moving three hours away.”

“Couldn’t you date her long-distance or something?”

“Why would I do that?”

Cole laughed. “I don’t know. Because it’s not easy to find someone you have such great chemistry with?”

“Great chemistry isn’t the point.”

“What’s the point?”

I tried to think of the point.

Was it that I was better off alone? Was it that I was too busy trying to keep my business afloat to deal with a relationship, especially long distance? Was it that I didn’t want to end up like McIntyre, letting someone else call all the shots in my life? Or was it that no matter how well you thought you knew someone, you could never really know them, and finding out you were wrong about them hurt like a motherfucker?

Really, all the reasons converged in one single truth—I didn’t want my life to change. It was fine the way it was before Blair got here, and it would be fine again when she left.

“Look, I’m not denying she’s hot,” I told Cole. “Or that we like each other. She makes me laugh. And yeah, the sex is great. But that’s it.”

“That’s it?” Cole gave me a strange look. “What the hell else is there, Dempsey?”

Then he took off again, leaving me in the dust.

Entering the lobby a couple hours later, I groaned at the sight in front of me. “Blair, that is not how you do it. You’re dripping paint everywhere.”

“What’s wrong?” Blair turned around, roller in hand. “I did it like you said, didn’t I? From the bottom up?”

“I said from the top down. And you can’t just roll it on aimlessly like that.” She’d made what looked like giant white W’s all over one wall.

She glanced at her work. “I just wanted to get the most paint on that I could. I didn’t know how expensive paint was.”

I shook my head. I’d cringed when Blair suggested she could get started on painting the lobby on her own this morning while I was on my run, but I hadn’t had the heart to tell her no. “It’s fine. Look, why don’t you let me do the actual painting?”

“Because I want to help. You did all the prep work yesterday.”

“You helped me with the taping off. That’s a really important step.”

She beamed and wiped her forehead, leaving a smudge of white paint behind. Paint also dotted and streaked the old charcoal-colored T-shirt of mine I’d given her to work in, and from the looks of her butt in those baggy jeans, she’d likely either sat in paint or bumped into a wet wall. “Thanks.”

“But I’m going to take over here, okay?” I took the roller from her hand.

“Okay.” She looked sad for a moment.

“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” I told her, trying to cheer her up. “Why don’t you reach out to my mother and see if she’s got any of those old photos you were asking about?”