The Next Best Thing by Kristan Higgins Read Free Book Online Page B

wrapped his arms around me and lifted me off my feet, made me dizzy with love. Everyone knew Jimmy, despite the fact that he’d just moved to town a year or so before, and he remembered everyone’s names, sent over complimentary appetizers, asked after children. Everyone adored him.
    He was a wonderful boyfriend, bringing me flowers, hiding notes in my dorm room on the rare occasions he made it to Providence, calling a couple of times a day. He constantly told me I was beautiful, and with him, I felt it like never before. He’d gaze at me as we lay in the grass in Ellington Park as the tidal river flowed past, the smell of brine and flowers mingling as the sun beat down on us, and he’d forget what he was saying, breaking off midsentence to reach out and touch my face with his fingertips or kiss my hand, or even better, lay his head in my lap and say, “This is all I’ll ever need. This and a little food.”
    It was Jimmy who gave Bunny’s a boost when he suggested that Gianni’s buy their bread from us. He recommended us to other restaurants, too, and that side of the business mushroomed. My mother and aunts thought he just about walked on water because of it. “That Jimmy,” they’d say, shaking their heads, their dormant love of men peeking through the snows of their widowhood. “He’s something, that Jimmy. He’s a keeper, Lucy.”
    They didn’t have to tell me.
    Jimmy waited till I was done with college to propose. He asked me to have a late dinner with him at Gianni’s one night, after everyone else had left. It was something we did once in a while, the restaurant only lit by a few candles. I still remember the taste of everything he made that night…the sweetness of the tomatoes, the yeasty tug of the bread, the smooth vodka sauce on the perfectly cooked pasta, the tender, buttery chicken.
    When it came time for dessert, Jimmy went into the kitchen and returned with two dishes of Marie’s famous tiramisu, a cool, rich combination of chocolate cream, sponge cake and coffee liqueur topped with the creamy mascarpone. He set my dish down in front of me. I glanced down, saw the engagement ring perched on top of the cream. Without missing a beat, I picked it up, licked it off and put it on my finger as Jimmy laughed, low and dirty. Then I looked into Jimmy’s confident, smiling, utterly handsome face and knew I’d spend the rest of my life crazy in love with this guy.
    Obviously things didn’t turn out quite that way.
    When we’d been married for eight months, Jimmy drove down to New York for a chef supply show. He’d gotten up at 5:00 a.m. to get there early, spent the whole day learning about new oven technologies, hearing how remodeling a restaurant kitchen could save time and money, looking at hundreds of new or redesigned tools for the chef. Then he and a bunch of other chefs headed out for dinner.
    It was past midnight when he called me from outside New Haven, nearly two hours from Mackerly.
    “You didn’t have too much to drink, did you?” I asked, cuddled up in our bed. I’d been waiting up for him, and in truth was disappointed that he was still so far away.
    “No, baby. One glass of wine at about five, that’s it. You know me.”
    I smiled, mollified. “Well, you’re not too tired, are you?”
    “I’m a little beat,” he admitted, “but not too bad. I miss you. I just want to get home and see your beautiful face and smell your hair and get laid.”
    I laughed. “Now that’s funny,” I said, “because I just want to see your beautiful face and get laid, too.”
    I didn’t say, Jimmy, at least pull over and take a nap. I didn’t say, Baby, we have our whole lives together. Get a motel room and go to sleep . Instead, I said, “I love you, honey. Can’t wait to see you.” And he said the same thing, and that was the last thing he ever did say.
    About a hundred minutes after we hung up, Jimmy fell asleep at the wheel, crashed into an oak tree six miles from home and died