Dear Heart

25. Wendy. Ollie.

25

Wendy

The police wanted to talk to her, too. They stood in the parking lot, the ever-lightening bowl of the sky overhead, a reassuring counter to the badges and wool coats. It was straightforward, the sky, pure and undemanding.

The questions were straightforward, too.

Yes, she knew Chase Lawrence.

Yes, they dated previously.

Yes, he'd hit her.

Yes, there was a restraining order involved.

Yes, he'd tried to intercept her at work.

No, she had no idea what happened to him after that. She fled.

Yes, Chase had many unsavory connections.

Yes, Detectives, bad things do tend to happen to people like that.

"Do you think they bought it?" Wendy asked when they were gone, sagging against the office door.

Ollie perched a hip on the desk and watched the parking lot through the windows. When he folded his arms, his biceps bulged, threatening the integrity of his shirt sleeves. "I think." He sucked at his bottom lip, turned it wet and red. "He's the kind of dick who gets beat up. We've got his record on our side." He didn't sound too sure, though, or even happy.

"We've got friends on our side, too," she added.

He nodded, eyes tracking the pigeons that waddled around the cracked asphalt beyond the glass.

"How did you know what to tell them?"

He finally looked at her then, and there was something in his gaze she hadn't seen yet – not since they were kids: under the doubt and the self-loathing, there was something almost like hope. "I didn't," he said. "I just knew I didn't want to lose you." His mouth quirked to the side. "Guess that makes me a selfish bastard. And it for sure mean's morality's out the window."

She went to sit next to him, leaning into his side. "There's morality, and then there's the law. Not always the same thing."

His arm stole around her waist. "Yeah."

~*~

The inside of Gino's was another of those hometown touchstones she hadn't realized she'd needed when she first came back to New York. The iron tables and alternating red, white, and green vinyl seats on the chairs: Italian flag colors. The ferns in macramé baskets hanging from the ceiling. The counter, and its glass pastry case full of cheesecakes and cannoli. The air was rich with the scents of dough, and cheese, and crispy-edged pepperoni, and roasted tomatoes. Not a Southern facsimile, but real pizza.

Wendy chose a table well away from the window, in case there were prying eyes skulking around this part of Queens. The idea sounded absurd in her head, but she had been visited by the police, so she figured there was no such thing as too careful in this instance. From her vantage point, she watched Tate climb out of the Uber he'd taken and walk up to the door, squinting against the bright sunlight, expression one of extreme trepidation. She smiled to herself as she watched him read the lettering on the windows, the promise that inside waited the city's best pizza. He considered the door handle a long moment before finally stepping inside.

Wendy hid her smile in her Coke glass and waved to get his attention.

He paused to goggle at the macramé in horror a moment before he slid into the booth across from her. "Oh my God," he whispered.

"Hey, you drink at Denver's. You don't get to judge."

"I can get buzzed at Denver's. You can't think about macramé when you're buzzed. Also, no macramé."