#chapter Twenty-Eight
“Someone had a good lunch.” Madge beamed from her cubicle as Maura passed.
Maura paused. “Hey, you.”
“I was going to stop by with these, but here.” Madge handed over a manila file folder bulging with the office’s collection of kids’ fundraising and home party catalogs. “Get it out of here before I buy more garlic bread and cookie dough I don’t need!”
Maura tucked the folder under her arm. “No kidding. How’ve you been? I haven’t seen much of you lately.”
“That’s because you’ve been going out to lunch every day.” Madge leaned an ample hip against her cubby wall and gave Maura a significant look. “Anything you want to tell your dear friend Madge?”
“He’s just a friend.”
Madge raised both brows. “Uh huh. Just a friend who comes to pick you up every day for lunch and brings you back looking like you just spent the hour winning the lottery.”
“It’s not every day,” Maura demurred.
“Every day this week,” Madge said with a grin. “And a few last week, too.”
Had it been that often? Maura would have had to do a quick count to be sure, but if Madge said so, she was willing to believe it. “He’s going to be leaving soon for work overseas.”
“Make hay while the sun shines. That’s what George says.” Made leaned a little closer, conspiratorial. “Me, I like to say eat steak while you still have teeth.”
“Good advice.” Maura shifted the folder to her other hand and leaned on the cubby wall across from Madge. “I like him. That’s all. It’s not permanent, so…”
“So why not have lunch with him every day? Dinner, too.” Madge chuckled. “It’s good to see you smiling, that’s all.”
“It feels good to smile.” That was the truth. Maura held up the folder. “I’ll pass this along, if you’re finished with it.”
Madge waved a hand. “Definitely. Stop me before I buy again.”
Laughing, Maura headed toward her cubicle. There wasn’t anything in any of the brochures that she wanted to buy, though she would probably order a few things anyway. Daniel liked garlic bread, and she could pick up one or two of those pizza kits….
She stopped herself. By the time the stuff was delivered, Daniel would probably be gone, and what would she do with all that food for herself? Her easy mood vanished as quickly as cotton candy in a rainstorm. Dissolved. Washed away. Destroyed.
Sitting at her desk, slick catalogs spread out in front of her, Maura choked back her sudden sorrow. Not because Daniel would be going away — that she’d known since their first date. This renewed relationship, this twist of friendship that was a little more but not quite enough, had not been meant to last. No, her grief was not for that.
It was for how easily she’d let him make her happy.
How quickly she’d begun to move away from Ian. It had been a month since the last time she’d talked to him. A month without a call, text, instant message. This hadn’t been what she wanted, but it was what she’d asked for, and now she had to live with it.
She had done this, she reminded herself as she piled the brochures and catalogs back into the folder and took them to the next cubicle over. Cindy wasn’t at her desk, but Maura left it there for her. Back at her desk, she forced herself to put her phone in her purse so she wouldn’t be tempted to download the messaging app again, or to stalk him on Connex. No good could come of that. What would she see, anyway? What would she do if she found he’d been tagged in pictures with another woman the way she’d been tagged in Daniel’s recent photos? Just because she’d unfriended him didn’t mean she couldn’t find him if she tried.
She had to give up trying.