The Dimple Strikes Back Read Online Free PDF Page B

of the bed and leaned to grab my hands. My face jerked up to find him searching my eyes. “I could let you go and say it’s the right thing to do and be noble, but fuck that. I’m not noble, and I love you. I want you more than I’ve wanted anything, and I will fight to make this work.”
    “How?” I shook my head and turned my gaze from his eyes to his chest. But I couldn’t look at him there, either. Every last piece of him would undo me, dissolve my resolve and turn it into lust or love or some highly magnetic combination of the two. Lord a mercy, he was human quicksand. He wants me more than he’s wanted anything, but I don’t hear from him for weeks on end. Suuuucccckkkk. He doesn’t want to put me in jeopardy, but oops lol kidnappers. Ssssuuuuuucccccckkkkkk!
    His jaw worked as he set my hands on my lap in a way that was a wrenching combination of loving and angry. He whipped on his pants, his back to me. I didn’t want to be thinking goodbye when I watched his butt disappear. We’d had so many swell times, me and his firm posterior. So many well-fitting pairs of jeans.
    “I’m going to find out what the hell happened last night.” His shirt and shoes on, he paused at the door of the bedroom, his face puffy from sleep and hard from worry.
    “Yes, wonderful, the solution to our problems is for you to leave.” I stood to try and reach the moral high ground. “How long will you be gone this time, ‘figuring things out’? A week? Two? When will I hear from you? Will it be an actual call so I can hear your voice and pretend we’re in the same room, or will a dirty text suffice for the all-clear?”
    He grimaced in an obvious effort to not hurl expletives at me and sagged against the door jamb. Shaking his head, he said, solemnly, “I’m sorry. And I don’t know. I’m not an accountant, and I didn’t know you resented me so much for it.”
    “It’s not that fucking hard, Sam! You pick up the phone. You can even track me with mine! Isn’t that what you wanted? I guess I should be keeping tabs on you. At least then I wouldn’t go to sleep at night and pray for a ghost.” I clutched my hands to stop them from reaching out.
    “So what is this? Are you dumping me?”
    There they went again—the tears, sliding down, like my stomach, like my heart. “I don’t know. I’m heartsick from wondering about you. Every. Day. It’s not cute anymore.”
    “I was going to take you sightseeing today, so…” He laughed, the dimple giving a little bow. “Sorry. Again.” Standing there for another moment, he waited for me to speak, to beg him to come back and give me kitchen scraps. But I had a stubborn streak as wide as the Mississippi, and I merely nodded.
    I’d spent a year ignoring the reality of my relationship with Sam, ignoring that it wasn’t a relationship. Or maybe that it was. Ignoring that I wrote ‘Mrs Sam the Thief’ on my mental Trapper Keeper every day in glitter pen. Now was the time to face things, and to hold fast to myself, and my needs. I’d made lemonade from Picasso, and damn it, I would drink up. You have to take care of yourself before you take care of anyone else , Oprah told me in my brain.
    My every nerve ending screamed for him as he walked out the apartment door. I sat, frozen in place, for quite a while—not crying, barely thinking. I’d rarely in my life ever felt so alone, adrift on a strange continent.
    Nothing to do but sob in the shower then watch Law & Order on Netflix until I was numb, like every successful Hollywood player.

Chapter Four
    When the Cat’s Away, the Mouse Will Be Very Confused
    Ext. Hyde Park—day
    Angle On: Our heroine Samantha Lytton walks along the banks of the Thames.
    Music Score Plays: The new, hit single from the group Whiny Boy Band Popular With Your Twelve-Year-Old.
    Samantha takes stock of her life in a touching montage.
    Samantha Lytton: I thought we’d be together forever.
    Nearby Rollerblader: Are you talking to me?
    Samantha