“So what about it, man?” Chris tried again. “Is she going to be there or what?”

“I don’t know,” John growled under his breath. “I haven’t spoken to her.”

“So that’s it? You’re just going to let her get away?”

What he couldn’t get his friend or his family to understand was that it wasn’t up to him. At the end of the day, Victoria had the last word. As much as he wanted her, needed her, in his bed and by his side, she had to make up her mind. He had the patience of Job when it came to the ornery children in his department and he had tried to extend that same patience to the woman he desired. Victoria had shit to work on. She had to come to grips with her obsessive need to control everything in her life. In the meantime, he just had to wait. It didn’t mean he was especially lovely to be around, but those were the facts. He was going to be a surly asshole until he knew that path was completely closed off. He just wished Chris would stop hassling him about it.

“Just so you know,” Chris said in his ear. “You look like a mess. You look like you haven’t slept in days.”

He looked that way because he hadn’t slept in days. “That’s accurate,” he said. John took the elements of his Zorro costume from Becca and let her explore the rest of the Halloween store. “You think this comes with a holster thing for the sword? Is that what they call it?”

“Man, who gives a fuck about the costume?” his friend whispered. “The love of your life is just floating out there waiting for you to pull her to shore.”

“That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?” Even as John said the words, he knew Chris was right about this too. He was lonely and hurting. If anything, Victoria was his lifeline and he needed to be pulled to shore.

“I saw you two at the gym; I know there’s something between you,” Chris said while playing with some toy guns. “I’m a little weirded out that you’re just bopping along like it’s not a big deal. Like you don’t have something to lose.”

John heaved a tired sigh. “I don’t know what to tell you, Chris.”

“Look, if I had that woman clutched between my thighs in a sweaty rear naked choke, I wouldn’t let her go so easy.”

John clenched his hands around his costume bag. “Chris...”

“If I had a sex arrangement with that woman, you know I’d keep every single appointment,” his friend continued, moving on to the fake handcuffs. “Were you supposed to be with her today? Your place or hers?”

John sucked his teeth and stepped to Chris’s face. “Shut. Up.”