Unfortunately when Friday rolled round, I was too wrecked for anything we’d planned and promised and hoped for. Instead, I was sitting on the sofa, dazed and half crying, and clutching helplessly at my phone.
It was only when Matthew said, “Niel, what’s wrong?” that I realized he was there. Or even remembered that he was supposed to be coming.
I glanced up. Noted—with a terrible sense of distance—how lovely he looked just then.
Charcoal gray suit, lilac shirt. And, in what must have been a moment of unusual opulence, a Liberty print tie in shades of silver and indigo. God, he’d dressed for me. And I was—
“It’s Beny.” The words burst out of me in a teary blurble. “He’s been hit by a car or something. I don’t know. He’s in surgery. That’s bad, isn’t it? When people are in surgery?”
Matt
