Blue Smoke

once for a minute before he . . .” Her voice cracked, her face melted in misery. “Oh God, I’m a mess.”
    “You knew Josh?”
    “Yeah. Yeah.” She pressed her hand over her mouth and rocked herself. “Small, horrible world, isn’t it?”
    “Sometimes. I really have to go.”
    “Mandy, give me a minute,” Bo began, but Reena was already shaking her head and walking out the door.
    “No, that’s fine. We’ll catch up later.” She made the quick dash through the incessant drizzle.
    “Bo, I’m so sorry. I should’ve called. I should’ve drunk myself into a stupor. Go after her.”
    But he knew the mood was shattered. And he’d seen Reena’s face when Josh Bolton’s name was mentioned. More than surprise, he thought, there’d been grief. “It’s okay. Let’s sit down.”
    M aybe it was the day or the wine or the rain, but Reena filled the tub, poured yet another glass of wine, then slid into the water. And wept. Her heart, her head, her gut ached with the tears, and when they were done, finally done, she was numb and light-headed.
    She dried off, pulled on thin flannel pants and a T-shirt before going downstairs to fix herself a solitary meal.

    Her kitchen seemed dull and lifeless. Lonely, she thought—she felt squeezed empty with loneliness.
    The wine and the rain, and probably the crying jag, had a headache simmering. Rather than face actual cooking, she pulled out one of her mother’s care packages and heated up some minestrone.
    But she left it warming on the stove, and poured more wine.
    Funny how pain could reach across the years and still claw right through you. She rarely thought of Josh, and when she did, it was usually with more of a pang than this stabbing shock. Sorrow for the boy who’d never become fully a man, and a kind of bittersweet regret.
    Defenses were down, that’s what she told herself as she stared down into the pot of soup. Hard day, and now the loneliness was so acute it was just another knife in the heart.
    She glanced over at the knock on her back door and let out a sigh. She knew it would be Bo before she opened the door.
    His hair was wet again.
    “Listen, can I come in a minute? I just want to explain—”
    She turned away, leaving the door open. “You don’t need to explain.”
    “Well, yeah, because it looked like . . . And it wasn’t. It’s not. Mandy and I are friends, and we don’t—Well, we used to, but that was a long time ago. Reena . . . could you just look at me?”
    She knew he’d see the damage the weeping had left on her face. Tears weren’t something she was ashamed of, but at the moment she was impatient with them, with herself. With him.
    “I’ve had a bad day.” But she turned to face him. “Just a lot of things piling up. I can deal. Seems to me your friend’s having a worse day.”
    “She is. We are—friends.”
    Reena watched him slide his hands into his pockets, the way a man did when he was miserably uncomfortable and didn’t know what else to do with them.
    “And she—Mandy—was twisted up because she just found out her ex-husband’s getting married. Fucking jerk. Sorry. The divorce was tough on her, and it was only final, like, two weeks ago. This hit her hard.”

    Reena leaned back against the counter, sipped her wine and let him rush through his explanation. And thought, Poor guy, caught between two emotional women on a hot rainy night. “I’m getting a little drunk. Do you want?”
    “No, but thanks. Reena—”
    “First, I’m a trained observer. I didn’t mistake the scene in your doorway as a lovers’ embrace. I saw her with you at your grandmother’s funeral and recognized what she is to you.”
    “We’re just—”
    “Family,” she interrupted. “She’s your family. She’s your family, Bo.”
    Some of the tension in his face dissolved. “Yeah. Yeah, she is.”
    “And what I saw tonight was a woman in serious distress, and imagined she didn’t need, or want, a stranger being part of all that. I wouldn’t have. Second, if we’re keeping score, you get points for not being so self-involved you’d brush off a friend in serious distress so you could roll between the sheets with me. Where is she?”
    “Asleep. Cried herself out, and I put her to bed. I saw your light come on out here, so I wanted to . . . I wanted to explain.”
    “And you did. I’m not mad.” Not only not mad, she realized, but not lonely any longer either. “I’m not the jealous type, and we haven’t