Pam met her at the door. Her eyes were red and her hands clutched a wad of tissue. Torie had never, ever seen her this distraught.
“Pam, what on earth is going on?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I do, but I don’t.”
“Huh?”
“We had this thing,” she sobbed, collapsing on the couch.
“Thing?”
“Yeah, you know.” Pam glared at her as she sat down, as if she should be able to know all this already. “A thing.”
“Do you want some tea or coffee or something?”
“No.” Pam’s head drooped, any flare of anger quickly extinguished.
That, more than anything, worried Torie. Pam never let anything stop her. Never let anything defeat her sparkling spirit. Certainly not a man.
“You’re not…you didn’t…”
“I’m not pregnant.”
Torie sighed. “That’s not what I was asking.” Not that she wasn’t relieved to hear it. “You didn’t…fall in love with him, did you?”
Pam’s laugh was harsh. “No, not me. I never do anything like that, do I? Have you ever known me to do that?”
“No, but I’ve never seen you like this, either.” Torie scooted closer, putting her arm around her friend. “Do you know where he went?”
Pam shook her head, then blew her reddened nose with a loud honk. Torie took a moment to look around. It was obvious Pam had been moping for a while. There was an empty tea mug, her drink of choice when depressed. Tissues were scattered around the trash can, which was pulled to the coffee table.
Definitely not Pam’s usual MO.
“Did you have a fight?”
“No.” Pam’s answer was defensive. “I just asked if he would miss me when he went home.”
“Had he said he was leaving?”
“No. But he lives in New Orleans, right? So I figured I’d ask.”
“Actually, I think he lives in Baton Rouge now, but he’s from New Orleans. He keeps a house in both places.”
“There, see? I didn’t know that. How come you know that? You never slept with him.” Irrational questions weren’t Pam’s usual order of business either, so Torie was beginning to be more and more concerned.
“I’m his cousin, Pam. We share a great-grandmother. He came to my father’s funeral. I know a bit about him.” She cocked her head. “You never showed any interest in him then.”
“I was seeing other people,” she said with ill grace. “I noticed him.”
“Noticed him.”
“Yeah, of course. He’s a man. I noticed him, all right? He wasn’t interested then. Neither was I, okay?”
Uh oh.
“You talked to him then?”
“Well, of course I did. He’s your cousin.” She folded her arms over her ample chest and huffed out a breath. “I flirted. He flirted back. But he was lookin’ at others, so I backed off.”
“Backed off. You?”
Pam rubbed her eyes, letting her head fall back onto the back of the couch. “I have standards, you know.” She closed her eyes. “They’re more flexible than most people’s, but I got ’em.” She rolled her head, opened her eyes, and looked at Torie. “I don’t hunt.”
“Oh, honey, I know. He was so supportive, especially after the wedding was called off. Really kind. But there wasn’t anything between us. You know that, right? Nothing but family.”
“Yeah. He said the same thing.”
“Jeez, Pam, you asked him?” Torie said, a little stung that Pam thought about her cousin that way.
Not like…Torie shied away from the thought. Instead, she focused on her friend.
“So, you fought? You yelled at him, some of your men came by, what?”
“No.”
“No, what?”
“Nothing like that. One minute we’re rolling around on the floor tearing each other’s clothes off…” Pam said it with such gusto that Torie blushed. Pam was, after all, talking about doing the horizontal mambo with Dev. Hot as he was, there was a kind of “ewwww factor” in knowing her friend and her cousin had slept together. “Then the next thing I know, he’s saying he hit his head, has a headache. I’m getting aspirin, joking about how, well, you know, saying the way I do, that doing the wild thing will cure anything, up to and including hair loss.”
“Yeah, as always I agree, but then again,” Torie stopped. Her standard answer to Pam’s hair-loss quote was that she wouldn’t know since she wasn’t getting any. She’d gotten plenty just that morning, so she couldn’t say that with a straight face.
Fortunately Pam didn’t notice the lapse. “Yeah, well. So then his phone rings.”
“He answered it?” Torie was shocked that someone could resist Pam in full siren mode, offering aspirin and wild monkey sex on the floor.
“Yeah, that bummed me, too,” she said, closing her eyes again. “He checked the caller ID, then went really funny looking.”
“Funny looking?” Dev?
“Yeah. He answered it, really sharp and almost mean sounding. Then he made some bogus excuse, and left.”
“Just left?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re stuck on him, aren’t you.” Torie didn’t ask it as a question. She knew the answer. For the first time since high school, Pam was actually smitten with someone.
Heart touched.
“But why would he just leave? I’ve tried to call him, he didn’t answer.”
Torie frowned at that. “How long ago did he leave?”
“Four hours. An eternity.”
“Jeez, Pam, snap out of it,” Torie said impatiently. “That isn’t like Dev. He’s too straight-up about things. If he was just here for a fling, he’d have bought you something pretty to remember him by and had you drive him to the airport. That’s his style, which is to say, he has some style.”
“But he just left.”
“You’re always telling me not to live in the past, Pam. Not to keep living there. You rag on me not to let what happened to me, all the pain of it, rule my life.” She drew a shaky breath, realizing this pent-up need to speak was not going to be stalled. “Well, you’re right. But don’t you sit there and tell me that again, just like you have all these years, and then do it yourself.”
“What are you saying?” Pam demanded, her eyes firing with hurt and frustration. “That I ran him off?”
“No!” Torie exclaimed. “Of course not.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“I’m telling you that you were right,” Torie said, thinking about Paul, about what she’d done to keep him away. Had she been afraid of him all along? Afraid of what they could do to one another? Afraid of the power of their connection?
“About what?” Pam managed around her tissue.
“Not getting over what happened in college. About Todd. Life.” Torie got up to pace. “A lot of things.”
“Well, halle-fuckin-lujah. This isn’t about you,” Pam fired back, still angry. “Why are you attacking me, saying I ran him off?” She was on her feet now, the blanket she’d had wrapped around her shoulders dropped to the floor, tissues scattered like mutant snowflakes.
“Whoa. I’m not attacking you.” Torie put up her hands in defense. An irrational Pam, wrapped in a blanket, was nothing to fool with. “I’m telling you to take your own advice, and not live in the past. Just because you had some jerk leave you and break your heart doesn’t mean every man is going to leave you and break your heart if you get close to him.” She was nearly shouting now, standing toe-to-toe with one of her oldest friends in the world. “So just back way the hell down and take a fucking compliment.”
There was a heartbeat of silence. Neither she nor Pam blinked. Torie didn’t know whether or not to hug her, or duck.
“You said fuck.” Pam was wide-eyed now. Amazed.
“So what?” Torie growled. “I think I’m entitled. I have no home, I have no clothes, my laptop’s toast, my dog’s got a plate and five screws in her leg and is costing a fortune in vet fees, and I slept with Paul.” It was Torie’s turn to yell.