The Girl in the Comfortable Quiet by Susan Ward Read Free Book Online

I
must have, otherwise how would Alan know? And inside is another inscription. May
you always believe in magic and the impossible. Alan Manzone.
    I sit, stunned. “He wrote a note inside. I can’t
even imagine what he paid for this book. And he devalued the condition just to
put a little note there for Kaley.”
    Linda grins. “Oh, no he didn’t, Chrissie. He
didn’t devalue a damn thing. Think of the irony. Alice in Wonderland with Alan Manzone’s autograph.” Her humor hits her with such force she’s
hugging her middle. “Twenty years from now it will probably be worth double.
Some crazy fan will pay a fortune for that if you ever put it up for auction.”
    She can’t stop laughing. I watch her, trapped in
a storm of warring emotions, and then I burst out laughing, too. I can’t help
it. There is too much inside me to process, and Linda’s humor is intoxicating.
    We slouch in the cushions, heads close, until our
laughter runs its course.
    Linda smiles affectionately. “What are you
thinking, Chrissie? You have the strangest look on your face.”
    Flustered, I scrunch up my nose. “I should
probably call him to thank him. That’s all, Linda. That’s what I’m thinking.”
    Linda nods, her expression neutral, deliberately
so I think.
    “Do you have a current phone number for him,
Linda? I doubt the one I have still works.”
    She grabs my mobile phone off the coffee table,
flips it open, goes to contacts and starts punching in numbers.
    “This one always works. It’s never disconnected,”
she tells me.
    Oh God. I didn’t want this. A permanent way to
reach Alan. But Alan sending presents makes me wonder where things stand
between us. We haven’t talked since Jack’s party. I don’t ever want to be
enemies with Alan, not ever. I’ve worried that since the punching incident .
And I never expected to receive gifts from him for Kaley. I can’t help but
wonder if this gesture is maybe his way of telling me that everything between
us is OK.
    I’m probably making too much of this. Calling
Alan is probably the wrong move. For me. For him.
    I take the phone from Linda. My stomach
knots. She put Alan in my contacts under the name Molly. I ignore the
not-so-subtle innuendo. I click closed my phone and toss it back onto the
table.
    I’ll call Alan later after Linda’s gone to sleep.

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
     
    I
close my bedroom door and sink down on my bed. Crud, it’s 1 a.m. I’ve never
known anyone who can talk as much as Linda can.
    I take my lower lip between my teeth, staring at
my phone. It’s too late to call a normal person, but for Alan this is
primetime. Unless he’s at a party or, worse, with a girl. Then it would be totally
ghastly time.
    I tell myself just do it. What’s the worst
that could happen? It might be awful? It’s already awful, the want, the need to
talk to him.
    I try to tell myself calling him is necessity,
the only way to know for sure he’s not wondering things I don’t want him to
wonder. But it’s more complex than that. Every emotion is always something more
complex with Alan.
    It’s us. Connected in the disconnect. Emotionally
messy and emotionally tangled together, regardless of where we are, together or
not, in that indefinable way it has been from the first day we met. Even after
that dreadful scene at Jack’s party, when Alan looked at me before he left, I
knew we hadn’t ended that day. And no matter what I do, I am and always will be
in some way heart-tied to Alan.
    It’s not my fault. It’s inescapable. It’s him .
Linda is the strongest, most confident woman I have ever known, and even she
seems relentlessly held in Alan’s epic universe by having had some sort of
history with him. I’ve often wondered if she just married Len to make the
Alan-hold fit better. Linda and Len definitely don’t match as a couple and she
is a practical girl. It’s a weird match. Strangely, the Alan-factor makes it
more logical to me.
    I hit the call button. Ring. Ring. Ring.