Chose the Wrong Guy, Gave Him the Wrong Finger (29 page)

I was crying out of control now. “If that’s the best I can do, then god help me.”

“You can do much better than me, Quinn. You always could.” And at that, he turned and left me standing there, more heartbroken than I’d ever been in my life.

No matter how I felt about him, no matter how he felt about me, no matter what we wanted or how we tried to go about it, one question remained: Could I ever trust him again?

Chapter 22

Even with your best friend, it’s not a particularly proud moment when you find yourself sobbing, in the middle of the night, about a guy who
done you wrong
. Despite the reality of the circumstances, I couldn’t help but feel like a middle-schooler. Or at least like I
sounded
like a middle-schooler. I was aware that my feelings were legit.

It just became a matter of what I did with them.

I knew
that
. I just didn’t know what I should—or
would
—do with them.

“He admitted he lied, he screwed around with another woman,” I said to Glenn, putting voice to the horrible words I didn’t even want to think about.

He put his hand on my shoulder. “I
know
,” he said, with genuine sympathy. “But he also told you why. He told you it was because he was afraid of making a huge mistake—for
both
of you.”

“Screw that!”

“No,” Glenn said, looking at me seriously. “I’m not saying anything that you feel or felt is invalid. Honestly. So let’s assume you’re right, your heartache sucks and will be hard to get over, if ever.”

“Fine.” I raised my head to him. “So your point is…?”

“What if he’s just telling the truth?” He sighed and shrugged, as if, for a moment, he couldn’t come up with other, or better, words. “What if he was just scared and fucking around to see how it felt and there was nothing more to it than that?”

I gaped at him. “Are you serious?
Just fucking around
like it meant nothing, and he could return to our relationship like it meant nothing? How much more does there
need
to be to it?”

He was
completely
unperturbed by my heat. He just shrugged. “Yeah. Wanted to see if the thing with you was real before he became his dad. Or his mom. Or whoever he relates to more. Whatever; before he had a potentially horrible marriage.”

“Why would that be okay?” I asked, still incredulous. “On what planet would it ever be just fine for a man to cheat on a woman, or vice versa, on the eve of their wedding just to, what? Be sure he really wanted her?”

“Would you rather be with a man who lusted after other women and thought maybe there was something better out there all the time?”

I straightened my back. “Are you kidding? No, I want a man who wants only me.”

“Of course, I understand that, of
course
.” Glenn’s voice was suddenly gentler. “I get that, I’m not on the bandwagon where all men are cheaters by nature and women have to accept it or be miserable. What I’m saying is that he was young—”

“Twenty-three.”

Glenn tipped his face and raised an eyebrow, leveling a gaze on me that I totally recognized as impatient. “Oh,
twenty-three
. You know what? That’s not old enough to get married no matter who you are.”

“I was twenty-one!”

“And how’d that work out for you?”

I wanted to punch him. “Just fine, Dr. Phil.”

“Is that why you’re so upset right now?”

I considered for a moment, but the dull, throbbing pain inside of me took over. “No, I’m upset because he was unhappy—by all accounts he was unhappy time and again—and that was
still
better than being with me. At least to him.”

Glenn paused. Thought. But it didn’t seem like he was thinking about what I’d said so much as he was thinking about what to say to me. He thought he already knew the answers.

Maybe he did. But maybe he
didn’t.

“Quinn,” he said, too patiently. “This was a
long
time ago. A
really
long time ago. And I
know
it was before your wedding and that you were devastated by the betrayal. I would have been too.
Anyone
would have been. Seriously, I’m not discounting that.”

“Seems like you are,” I answered, but there was a question in there too.
What are you getting at?

“Quinn.” He dropped his hands in his lap and leveled a very earnest gaze on me. “Men are different from women, biologically.”

“No!”

Impatience snapped across his face. “I’m not being sarcastic or defensive. I’m completely serious. For men sex can literally mean nothing. For women, I know, it can mean close to nothing but it’s always measured. Am I wrong? Have you not spent time considering every man you’ve slept with, even if it didn’t end up being a
relationship
?”

“Obviously! I never just slept with a guy indiscriminately.”

“
There
you go.” Glenn slapped his hand on his knee. “That’s
exactly
what I’m trying to say to you. You don’t understand because you
can’t
understand. Men feel emotions more acutely…”

“Oh,
please
!”

“…
therefore
they avoid them much much
much
more strenuously. They will do anything to find out, or prove, that what they feel isn’t real so it’s not bound to them for the rest of their lives.”

I tried to think of Burke in this context. Sweet, loving Burke—or so I’d thought—wanting desperately, deep inside, to get away from me and feeling that was the only way he could ever fully be himself. “I don’t buy it,” I said. “I’m sure some men are like that—I’m sure some women are like that too—but there’s no way I can believe Burke was just
curious
enough all along to experiment with anyone and everyone else, even to my obvious detriment.”

“I’m not saying he was
just curious
,” Glenn returned, his voice hardening. “I’m saying on a very base level he was freaked out and did the number one, biggest dumbass thing he could. Name me one guy—one
person
—who is incapable of that.”

“But—”

“I’m not
excusing
it,” Glenn went on. “We all have free will, presumably we can all make the right choices over the wrong ones. But do you? Every single time, do
you
?”

“In a situation like that? Absolutely.”

“What about in a situation that might matter almost as much?” he acquiesced. “Have you ever been too booked to sew an embellishment, or too tired to double-stitch a hem? Actually, I don’t know enough about sewing for sewing analogies, so forget that. Have you ever put your trash bag by the door instead of taking it out to the garage because you just didn’t feel like it?”

“Seriously? You think that’s the same thing?”

“No, I don’t think on a chart you’d put in front of a classroom it’s the same thing,” he said. “But I think to a panicked guy who’s still young and who was raised by his grandparents because his parents’ marriage sucked until his dad died and then his mother sucked so badly in general that she couldn’t be bothered with him, yeah, maybe all of his values got jumbled up together.”

I didn’t have an immediate answer for that. It didn’t mean I agreed, only that I heard him. Something in what he said made sense. Not the betrayal against me, of course, but I had to admit that I’d never really stopped to think about what Burke—and Frank—had experienced growing up. They
had
to be aware of a big sense of rejection from their mother, even if that wasn’t what she’d meant to project.

It would be hard to trust women from there. Burke should have, of course. He knew me well, and from a young age, so I still wasn’t willing to cut him a break, but this
was
stuff that mattered more than, say, being grounded and kept home from the prom in tenth grade.

And, really, if you were going to dive into the psychological implications, you could see how Frank had landed where he did too: he was the older one, thrust into the role of “parent” even from a young age when their mother left. Even if he wasn’t aware of it, that had to be annoying for him as a kid, and for a long time; he didn’t ever have the freedom to be wild and immature and irresponsible, because his brother and his mother took on that role.

For him to add on to that would have meant utter chaos. His grandparents couldn’t have handled it. Even
I
remembered times in high school when Frank had handled Burke’s antics himself, rather than turning them over to the adults.

Actually, the shakedown of this conversation was that I felt worse for Frank than I did for Burke.

“Am I wrong?” Glenn demanded.

I returned my thoughts to his point. That Burke had probably had some psychological jumbling going on, thanks to the way he was raised, his parents’ terrible marriage, and so on.

But as much as I would have liked to let
myself
off the hook by letting
him
off the hook, I kept returning to the same point. “He lied to me. Repeatedly. In a lot of ways.”

Glenn looked at me for a moment in silence, then threw up his hands. “Okay, that’s who you want him to be. And who you want
you
to be. I’m not getting the feeling I’m going to be able to talk you out of that tonight, so, I don’t know. Just promise me this. Promise me you’ll
think
about what I said.”

“Okay,” I agreed. And it was easy enough, because I knew I’d be thinking of little else besides Burke for the time being, and that would include every possible way of looking at it until, finally, I would be close to madness.

*   *   *

Which I was sure
wasn’t
what Dottie had in mind, having me come over to the farm to check her hip measurements, since she was sure she’d put on “enough to confuse my ass with a donkey” after attending parties in celebration of the golden anniversary of the Curry Comb Hunt Club.

“Three-quarters of an inch,” I said, after doing the measurement for the third time. “And, honestly, that could be water weight, sluggish digestion, anything. The dress won’t need alteration.”

“But, by my measurements, it’s a difference of three and a half inches.” With that she took out her carpenter’s tape measure and started pulling the metal sheeting tape out to wrangle it around her waist.

“Dottie, there’s no way you can measure accurately with that.” I put a hand out to stop her, and cut my finger on the tape.

“Oh, dear, are you okay?” she asked, gesticulating with the now-dangerous-seeming tool.

“Yeah, it’s nothing. It just startled me.” I pushed my thumb against my finger to stop the tiny drop of blood that was forming from getting bigger.

“Are you sure?” Anxiety rang in her voice, and she nervously unwrapped her third amaretto cookie. When I was a kid I could remember we’d make the wrappers into a cylinder, make a wish, and light them on fire—if the wrapper flew up toward the ceiling, your wish would come true.

I have no idea why my parents allowed this activity.

Anyway, the cookies weren’t quite Oreos, but if she kept scarfing them down in her fret about her weight, she really could put on a couple of pounds. But her dress wasn’t a fitted pencil skirt for a twenty-year-old body, so I had no doubt that it would be fine.

“I’m really sure,” I told her. “And as for your hips, you’re
fine
! This sounds like a case of prewedding nerves, nothing more.”

“I
am
having some nerve trouble,” she agreed. “Burke’s been hinting around that he doesn’t approve of this marriage.”

Darn it. “Oh, I’m sure you’re imagining that.”

She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “I don’t think so. I get a distinct feeling he’s thinking I’m an old fool.”

“No way,” I said vehemently. If only he knew what his skepticism was doing. He wouldn’t want Dottie to feel this way! I was sure of it. “If anything, I bet he’s just feeling funny about life changing and you moving away and selling the farm. He is a creature of habit, you know. He likes things the way he likes them.”

“That’s so.”

I nodded. “I’m sure that’s all you’re picking up on.”

“Everything all right?”

I turned to see Frank striding into the room, looking seriously dapper in his business clothes, dark gray pants, and a simple crisp white button-down that was so well tailored I bet it cost more than many people made in a month.

“Dottie was just saying—”

“Everything’s fine!” she trilled, and shot me a quick look. She was obviously embarrassed, and here I’d been about to announce her worries to anyone who walked in the room and asked what was going on.

Shamed, I tried to cover up. “We were just talking about how excited we are about the wedding.”

Frank came to his grandmother, concern etched in his handsome face. “Gran, is something wrong?”

“No, no, I’m doing great. Just”—she gestured with the tape measure again and I saw it catch on his shirt, though she didn’t—“hoping my darn foot will be good as new on time to walk down the aisle instead of hobble.”

“You’ve been doing great,” he said, shifting his arm so she wouldn’t see the tear she’d just put in his shirt and freak out about that too. “I’ve barely seen a limp lately.”

“It is better,” she confessed.

I eyed the tear when he moved and noticed it was on the seam. Good. I could fix that in just a couple of minutes.

“Why don’t you go up and get some rest?” Frank suggested to her. “You’ve been wearing yourself thin lately, and that’s no good before a big event like a wedding.”

“I am not a doddering old woman who needs to have an afternoon nap!” she snapped.

“You’re a bride-to-be, though,” I said. “And that is very high on the list of life stresses.”

“All right, all right, I’ll go up. But I’m going to pack for the honeymoon, not fall onto my fainting sofa.”

We both laughed.

“I’m going to work from here,” Frank said. “But I’ll be back Friday. We’ll knock out the packing in the tenant house pretty quickly. Let me know if you need anything in the meantime.”