Die for You Read Online Free PDF Page B

I could see was the gun pointed in our direction. I watched Rick put his hands on top of his head, lower his chin to his chest, and close his eyes.
    I thought, He’s been waiting for this, expecting this moment. What have they done? I stood stunned, mute, my fingers touching the edge of Marc’s desk, feeling like the bottom had dropped out of my life and I was free-falling through space.
    W HEN I MET Marc, I had already resigned myself to the role of spinster aunt. And I was actually okay with that, maybe even relieved, after the parade of losers and weirdoes I’d had trekking through my life over the previous years. I had started to see myself as a dating oddball, as the kind of woman who couldn’t manage to fit herself into a relationship. For me, the problem wasn’t meeting men, a very common New York City complaint. I couldn’t swing a dead cat without meeting a man—in the grocery store, in bookstores and cafés, on a subway platform. The problem was that no matter how auspicious the start, things just never lasted, never bloomed into anything permanent. I’d start to get that cool, apathetic feeling, begin to dread phone calls or zone out during dates. And if that didn’t happen, he’d stop calling me, eventually disappear altogether. I rarely even got to the ugly breakup phase. Generally, there was just a slow fade to nothing.
    “You know, Izzy” my sister, Linda (married, two gorgeous kids, outrageously successful photographer, older than me by five years, thank God , or I’d have to kill her), said one night over conciliatory Pinot Grigio, “have you considered that there’s just no give to you? That you’re looking for someone to fit into your life exactly the way it is now? You’re not willing to bend or shift anything”
    I bristled at this statement, thought it was patently untrue. “When it’s right, I won’t have to,” I said defensively.
    An ever-so-slight eye roll, a sip of wine.
    “Right?”
    She held my gaze for a moment, gave a quick shrug. “Well, in a sense. But more like when it’s right you don’t mind so much doing a little shifting and bending.”
    “Fight the good fight, Iz,” called Erik, the perfect husband, from the kitchen. “Make them bend.”
    “Shh,” said my sister as he walked into the room. “You’ll wake them up.” The kids: Emily and Trevor.
    “Did you bend?” I asked Erik.
    “Hell, yes , I bent. I’m still bending.” He flopped his lean form onto the low suede chaise across from us, inviting himself into the sister talk session. He rolled his head back for maximum drama.
    “Oh, please.” My sister smiled at him, eyes glittering, reaching out with her bare foot to knock him on the knee. The way she looked at him embarrassed me sometimes—naked adoration. They adored each other. There was none of that insidious bickering or sarcasm, none of the whispered comments or veiled insults so common in my friends’ marriages. Not that they never fought. Oh, they fought. But it was always so aboveboard , so earnest, and over quickly. Healthy; they were very healthy. Sometimes it made me sick.
    I remember thinking that night, I’ll never have this. It’s just not going to happen. With this thought, instead of despair, my system flooded with a strange relief. I’d given up at twenty-eight years old. It felt good, a justified surrender.
    “What about Jack?” She’d asked the question and I had answered it so many times that I just got up to refill my glass without comment.
    A ND THEN THERE was Marcus.
    His first words to me: “I’m a big fan.”
    I smiled and thanked him for his kindness, took the book he held out to me. The first thing I noticed about him were his hands, how large and strong they were. I’d just finished a reading from my recent novel in a small bookstore to a small crowd who had, with the exception of this gentleman, all promptly left without buying a single copy. Outside, the wind pushed at the door, causing the little entry bell