Blue Smoke

established any ground rules. Or even if we’re going to require them. We were going to have sex, we didn’t.” She lifted her glass. “There’s always another time.”
    “You’re not mad,” he said with a nod. “But you’re upset.”
    “It’s not you.” To give herself something to do, she picked up a spoon to stir the soup. “Not just you,” she corrected. “It’s the past. It’s a sweet lost boy.”
    “Josh. You were involved with him?”
    “He was my first in this small, horrible world.” But there weren’t any tears left inside her, not now, to shed for him. “Oddly enough, I was with him the night you saw me at that party. I left with him, went with him. It was my first time.”
    “I met him.”

    Her spoon clanged against the pot as her head whipped around. “You knew Josh?”
    “No. I met him. I met him the day he died. Same day I met Mandy. Blind date—double date with my friend Brad and that girl he was seeing. When we picked her up, Josh was coming down the stairs. Going to a wedding.”
    “Oh God, Bella’s wedding.” Maybe she had a few tears left after all. They were pressing hot on the back of her eyes. “My sister’s wedding.”
    “Yeah. He couldn’t get his tie right. Mandy fixed it.”
    A tear slipped out, plopped in the soup. “He was a sweet boy.”
    “He changed my life.”
    Reena wiped at the tears, faced Bo again. His eyes weren’t dreamy green now but very intense. “I don’t understand.”
    “I partied a lot back then. Well, who didn’t? I was drifting. Making plans for someday. Yeah, I’ll get around to doing that someday. Clean myself up, get my shit together. I woke up that morning, after going out with Mandy—and hitting a party after I dropped her off—with a hangover of biblical proportions. Woke up in the dump of my apartment. I decided to clean it up. I’d do that about every six months when I couldn’t stand myself anymore. Told myself I’d straighten up, but I told myself that every six months or so, too. Then Brad came by, told me about the kid we’d seen in Mandy’s apartment building. What happened to him.”
    “But you didn’t know him.”
    “No, I didn’t know him. But . . .” He trailed off, then shook his head, obviously struggling to find the right way to make her understand. “But he was my age, and he was dead. I’d just met him—watched Mandy fix his tie, and now he was dead. He’d never have the chance to get his act together, if he needed to. One minute he’s heading out to a wedding in his best suit, and the next . . .”
    “He’s gone,” Reena whispered.
    “His life was over, out of the blue, and what was I doing with mine? Pissing it away, like my father did his.”
    He stopped, blew out a breath. “So, it was epiphany time for me.Instead of thinking about someday, I got my contractor’s license. I talked Brad into buying a house with me. A dump. My grandmother fronted us some of the money. I never worked harder in my life than I did on that place. When I—damn, this sounds stupid and self-involved.”
    “No, it doesn’t. Keep going.”
    “Well, whenever I got to the point where I was disgusted or discouraged or wondered why the hell I’d gotten into that mess, working ten, twelve hours a day, I’d think of Josh, how he never got the chance. And I found out what I could do, if I stuck. Maybe I’d have done it anyway, I don’t know. But I’ve never forgotten him, or that his dying turned my life around.”
    Reena put the wine down, stirred the soup. “Fate’s a kick in the ass, isn’t it?”
    “I don’t want to lose the chance I have with you, Reena.”
    “You haven’t lost anything.” After turning the burner off, she faced him. “It’s no prize standing here in front of you, let me tell you. I have a long line of short-term or messed-up relationships leading from Josh to you. Bad judgment, bad timing or just bad luck.”
    “I’ll risk it.” He stepped to her, lowered his head to press his lips to hers. “I can’t leave her over there alone tonight.”
    “No, you can’t. That’s one of the reasons you haven’t lost anything. Here, take some soup. If she wakes up, there’s nothing like my mother’s minestrone to chase away the blues.”
    “Thanks. Seriously.” Thoughtfully, he brushed his thumb over the little mole above her lip. “Why don’t I fix you dinner tomorrow?”
    She got out a container for the soup, and her lips curved. “Why don’t you?”
    H is living