Dust of Snow (9 page)

“It’s not like you ever stay long at these
things.” He waved a hand at me to prove his point.

“I’m not leaving yet,” I said belligerently,
despite the fact that leaving was exactly what I’d wanted to do
fifteen minutes ago. “Not that it isn’t nice to see you or
anything, but why are you here?” Now that he was where he wanted to
be, David seemed to deflate. He took off his gloves, stuffed them
in the hat he pulled off his head, and unwrapped the scarf from
around his neck.

“I came to give you this.” He held out a
wrapped package.

“What?” I stared at it. Why was he giving me
a Christmas gift? “I didn’t get you anything.”

“That’s not what this is about. Just open it,
please.”

My hands trembled when I reached for the
gift. I removed the paper carefully, and pulled out an engraved hip
flask.

To Greg.

With love,

David.

“I don’t understand. I mean, it’s beautiful,
but… why?” It was really nice. I loved the heft of the silver and
dark-green leather bound flask. It couldn’t have come cheap.

David pushed his fingers through his thick
blond hair. “I wanted to leave it on your desk the other day but I
ran into your coworker. Patricia? She said I had to come clean
about the gifts. So here I am, making a romantic gesture.”

My stomach clenched uncomfortably. It was
nice of him, I supposed. And I did like that he’d been thinking of
me. Maybe missing me. “That was
you
? You’ve been leaving me
the coffees? The scraper and the massage?”

“What? What massage? I brought you coffee and
ordered flowers. That’s it. I don’t know anything about a scraper
or a massage.” He waved it away. “Doesn’t matter. I’m trying to
tell you that I was wrong and I want you back.”

I looked down at the flask and waited. Out of
the corner of my eye I saw David shift on his feet.

“I mean,” he said, “we should give it another
try.” He took a step and touched my sleeve. “I know how you hate
the cold. You could fill it up with some Scotch or something.”

“And what?” I gave a startled laugh. “Get
drunk at work?”

“If we get back together, maybe we can try
having a social life for once.” David winced when I took a small
step backward. “I don’t mean it like that. I’m royally fucking this
up. I miss you, Greg. I think I want you back. Like I said, I… I
made a mistake last year. And I’m really sorry. I thought… I didn’t
realize I was happy with you until I didn’t have you anymore.”

“You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s
gone,” I said, regretting it almost instantly. I was still waiting
for the butterflies to burst free from my stomach. I’d been waiting
for months to hear this, hadn’t I?

David smiled at me sadly, his baby blues
shining against those cold-tinged pink cheeks of his. His hair was
a mess, sticking up in wild, dirty-blond tufts rising with static
from his hat. He was sporting a little goatee he didn’t used to
have when we were together, and it suited him. David was gorgeous
in a rugged sort of way, the kind of man you’d expect to find on a
mountain with a rifle, hunting deer. A different sort of gorgeous
than Carl, who was sophisticatedly handsome, or even Ashley, who
was almost delicately beautiful. I wondered how they were getting
on—if Carl had managed to explain. I hoped Ashley didn’t hate
me.

“Greg?” David asked, doubt creeping into his
eyes. He reached to touch my cheek. “Did you hear me?”

“I heard you,” I murmured, my eyes on the
flask, and I knew. If he’d come to me two weeks ago instead of
sending me those damn flowers, I might’ve considered getting into
this again, which would have been a loneliness-fueled mistake.

“Look,” I said, searching for words. “I
appreciate it, David, I do. I felt terrible for a long time when
you left, and it helps to know you think you made a mistake, but I
think it might be too late. I’m actually starting to think we
weren’t all that good for each other after all.”

“That wasn’t all me, you know. And people
fight in relationships, it’s normal. We had such good times too.”
He smiled, eyelids drooping. “I’m sure I could persuade you,” David
said, and I took another step back as he advanced on me. “I never
gave you what you needed, did I? But I can now. I’ve—I’ve
learned.”

Oh my God, I did
not
want to know. A
teasing twinkle lit his face like it used to when things had been
good in the very beginning of our relationship, and I gasped. He
took it for an invitation it really wasn’t, because he was on me,
pressing me against the wall, one hand cradling the back of my
head.

“David, no.” I set my hands to his chest and
pushed, but he pushed back, burrowing his face into my hair. The
flask dug awkwardly into my palm.

“You’re so beautiful,” he breathed in my ear.
I turned my face away as far as I could.

“David, get off me. This is not going to
happen.” I’d knee him in the balls if I had to, but only as a last
resort. David didn’t scare me. I felt sorry for him, really.

“Greg, we can make this work.” He took my
face in both his hands and held it still. His mouth was very close,
and I elbowed him, not that it did much good. I was trapped unless
I seriously wanted to hurt him.

“No,” I snapped, squirming to get away,
readying to shove my knee where it mattered. I wrenched my face
from his grip and stuffed the flask in his hands. “And take your
flask with you, I don’t want it.”

David opened his mouth to say God knows what
when a voice bellowed down the hallway.

“Let go of him!”

Carl was on David in seconds, almost lifting
him bodily off me and tossing him out the door. “
Va te faire
foutre!
Gregory, are you all right?” he asked, one hand on my
shoulder, the other on my cheek. I nodded, and then I saw Ashley,
who was standing a few yards away, breathing hard like he’d come
running and stopped abruptly midstride. Great. I had at last
reached the depths of ultimate humiliation. I could fall no
further.

“I’m fine,” I mumbled, but it worried me how
Ashley’s hands were balled into fists by his sides. He turned and
stalked away. Again.

When Carl noticed, a string of French curses
fell from his mouth like I’d never heard from him before. “I did it
again,” he said. “Just when I thought I had mended the bridge. When
I saw that man on you… Ah,
mon coeur
, I should have left the
rescuing to
monsieur
Montgomery. But I care for you,
mon
petit
. I couldn’t do nothing.”

I could tell he was drunk, or he’d never have
said those things. Not wasted out of his mind, but enough to loosen
his tongue.
Mon coeur?
His heart? It should have been nice
to hear, but the fact I’d needed rescuing in his eyes—and
Ashley’s—took all the sweetness from his words.

“I’m going home.”

“Gregory—”

“No. I’m going.”

“All right.” Carl stepped back. “But you
should talk to Ashley. He cares for you too, maybe even more than I
do.”

“Uh-huh.” I didn’t believe Ashley felt more
than pity, but I didn’t have it in me to fight about it. I felt
cold, exhausted, and a little bit sick.

“At least let me step outside with you and
make sure that man is gone.”

Humiliation burned in my chest. “I can handle
him,” I snapped, sharper than I meant to. After a deep breath I
added, “I’ll be fine. See you Monday.”

“Take care, Gregory.”

I grabbed my coat from the store room and
left without looking back.

The closer Monday morning loomed, the more I
wished time would grind to a halt completely. At least with the
holiday party over, work would be so insanely busy as we prepared
for the annual corporate meeting at the Marriott that I wouldn’t
have time to think about anything else. And once that week was
over, Carl would go to France for Christmas, and I’d be off for a
few blissful days. I wished we could just have the whole week off
between Christmas and New Year’s, but head office wouldn’t hear of
it.

Monday morning brought, to no one’s surprise,
more snow, and no magical clearing service. I plowed my way through
it with the snowblower, fueled on resentment and bitter
moodiness.

The first thing I did when I had two seconds
to myself at work was put the damn snowblower on eBay and call a
snow removal service. I was pleased to hear they’d start the next
morning. If I couldn’t sell the snowblower I could just shove it in
the basement.

With a start, it occurred to me that my small
basement was still half full of David’s stuff. All things he
obviously didn’t miss. I realized I’d been hanging on to them for a
whole year, hoping that somehow he’d come back. And now he’d tried,
and I’d turned him away. I reached for the antacids in my
drawer.

Maybe we could make it work this time. Isn’t
it better than being alone? Shouldn’t I be glad he wants me back?
Isn’t it what I want?

I chewed the chalky tablets and washed them
down with crappy office coffee.

Carl didn’t treat me any differently after
the incident. I hung his borrowed shirt and sweater—cleaned and
ironed—in his closet, and he simply thanked me, congratulated me on
a well-organized party, and proceeded as usual.

“I need to talk to you,” I said after our
morning briefing.

“Yes?” He quirked a curious eyebrow at
me.

“Patricia is too smart for the job she’s
doing. We need someone to oversee the sales people when they’re
abroad. I don’t mean from a managerial aspect, but a personal one.
Too much of it is falling to Ash—Mr. Montgomery. Sometimes the
sales guys are in countries they’ve never been to before, and it
would help them greatly if someone could provide them with
information on the culture, the area, and even what restaurants to
go to or what parts of town to avoid. I think Patricia could take
on the extra work, and it would make her job far more interesting.
She’s an asset to the company, and if she’s not pushed more than
she is now, she’ll leave.”

Carl stared at me with his unblinking cat
eyes. After a long pause, he said, “Noted.”

That was it, my dismissal. I nodded and left
with my heart beating a mile a minute.

That afternoon Patricia jumped me in the
kitchen, clinging to me like a barnacle and saying,
“Thankyouthankyouthankyou!” in my ear while I tried to spit out her
ponytail. “You’re the best, Greg.”

I shrugged. “It was nothing.”

“Not to me. And hey, I’m really sorry I
didn’t tell you right away that it was your ex leaving the
presents. He bribed the janitor to get here early. I thought it was
romantic, but I heard it didn’t go well at the party. Is it true
that Carl—”

“It was nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

She hugged me again, squeezing me tight.
“You’re the sweetest guy, you know that?”

Of course this was how Ashley found me.
Patricia went bright red and tootled off.

“Seems like everyone wants a piece of you
these days,” Ashley said.

My turn to go red. I didn’t know why Patricia
blushed around Ashley, but when I saw him I felt maybe unfairly
resentful. He’d seen me unable to fend off a former boyfriend. He’d
seen my boss help me get dressed after a tiny baby puked on me. I
couldn’t take it.

“Seems like it.” I grabbed my coffee, avoided
his eyes, and stepped past him.

“That’s not how I meant it.” Ashley sounded
pained.

“Sure.” I smiled blandly and walked away.

On Thursday I had my hour-long massage after
work. As the large massage therapist hunted for kinks in my spine
as though her life depended on it, I wondered who had given me
this, if not David. He said the flowers had been his, and the
coffees. But then who had given me the ice scraper, the ugly little
tea cozy, and this voucher? The driveway clearing could have been
accidental. Probably wouldn’t be the first time those guys got an
address wrong.