Emily's Reasons Why Not (21 page)

“No fucking way,” he shoots back to her.

“Why can’t we talk about Reilly’s wedding or something? For fuck’s sake, she’s marrying a Frenchman,” I pipe in, knowing good and well he isn’t French.

“Belgium,” she snarls. “Look, don’t be bitter at me.”

“Em, how come you have short-term memory loss when it comes to this guy? He’s just telling you what you want to hear,” Grace continues. “I want to be happy for you. I am. I just feel like I’m watching you make a huge mistake.” She turns to Josh. “Emily and RC had the talk.”

“Look, I wasn’t the one who asked for ‘the talk.’ I wasn’t the one who wanted to be committed, monogamous. He’s different. He’s more grown up. He’s learned.” I plead with my friends to understand and support my decision.

“I don’t know. I would just be suspicious with this one. I mean, you already know he is a master manipulator,” Josh adds with a hint of venom. “The guy has two cell phones.”

He looks at me and then says with his “I love you” voice, “I think what the girls are trying to say is, just be careful.”

I try to explain how he changed, but they’re not buying it. I am just glad to have them to help me pack up the house.

There is something safe about these three people in my life
that makes me feel lucky, as if they’ve always been a part of me and always will be.

Careful. Careful. Those words ring in my head as I board Mid-West Express headed to Milwaukee for a Brewers game. Careful is with me when I check my bags on United to see Reese in Colorado, on Delta in Chicago, then St. Louis. Careful never leaves me as my frequent-flyer mileage grows like the Reese batting average. Every week, a new city. Every week Reese sends me a new ticket. Between trips we talk twice a day. Like clockwork, he calls on his way to the field, he calls on his way home to his apartment. We talk before bed. We talk all day. And sometimes we fight. Not bad. Just little disagreements that usually end with Reese saying something perfect like, “Honey, we’re going to disagree. It’s okay. It’s not the end of the world.”

Heaven. I am in heaven. We are a match and I have found the man I want to marry. His love of kids, family, ethics, Arizona, sports, humor, music. All of it. But it’s only been eight months. Too busy traveling to the games, hanging out in the off-season, and being happy—to see Dr. D. I feel good, finally. Maybe I am cured. Safe. I trust again. Wasn’t that the plan? Nothing that I thought would be possible with a professional athlete has become my reality. It just goes to show you that timing is everything.

But, I will say, the being-apart thing has gotten harder. The constant ache when he walks away. Even now, I get the slightest empty twinge. It fills me with the torture that maybe, just maybe, he won’t come back. But he always does … and
there are kisses. More kisses. Reassurance. Kind words. Hugs. Laughs. More kisses. And desperate gaps of time in between.

Dr. D. is pissed. Really pissed that I haven’t been to see him in six months and thirteen days. I went to see him this morning as a checkup and do you know what he said? “Emily, you’ve picked a man who by nature pushes every scared little girl button you have. You have picked a man who leaves you every week. He was home for all of four months and now he’s off, leaving you again. He LEAVES you. Leaves you. Leaves you. And you can’t even blame him, it is his job. But, he’s still leaving you.” He shook his head. “Not good. We had just gotten past the whole abandonment issue lying under your murky past. Don’t you see it? Reese feels familiar and familiar is comfortable, but sometimes familiar is bad for us. You have now traded your major league father issues for a major league baseball player.”

Reason #5
:
If he’s always leaving, he has to go
.

Dr. D. was right. He was always leaving and it did feel familiar, but can we really pick and choose the people we fall in love with? For me, no. It’s all about the flutter, the feeling, the knowing, the passion, the happily ever after. And Reese fits that bill. Would it be better if he was a lawyer or a sales guy or a fireman, sure, but the fact that he had a dream and he was living it was so awesome. It said something about his character. So I was willing to put my own issues aside to love this man.

IN A PICKLE …between what is right for me and what feels good for me. Caught like a runner between third and home. Knowing that I need to pick and make a run for it. But which way is really home for me? Because if I am smart enough to know I have issues, I probably shouldn’t be dating someone who pushes those buttons. At some point wouldn’t he leave me for good?

Issues are important. Issues are what you’ve learned along the way. For me the whole absent father thing is huge. It’s always there. Wondering why he left. Wondering when he’s coming back. Waiting, forgiving. This is my issue. It’s what makes me comfortable in my own skin. It’s what makes me NOT make the mistakes I have made before. It is experience, knowledge of self, and, if nothing more, it is thousands of dollars of therapy and countless hours of conversations with the friends who helped me figure them out. Why am I ignoring my issues?

“Hey, I love you,” Reese says. I choke on a piece of ice and practically fall off the hotel bathroom sink. He looks at me with shaving cream all over his face. I sit there, my legs dangling off the counter, my back against the mirror, just staring at him. HE SAID IT!

I felt the tears filling, something inside of me that moved deep down because I had finally found someone who really loved me. I took his lathered face in my hands and kissed him, through our kisses I whispered that I’d loved him since the first day he smiled at me. And I meant it.

I wasn’t sure when exactly those three little words changed
everything, but they did. Reese left for Atlanta and I went home to L.A. Our relationship had changed into something more, but I didn’t know what.

In my new house in Manhattan Beach.

…the house is on a friendly walk street exactly eleven houses up from the sand. The navy trim gives the white wooded house a nautical, old beach house flavor, with a white picket fence that surrounds a little grassy area and patio. It has two bedrooms and a den. Two bathrooms and a sweet family room and dining room. It needs a new kitchen but has great wood floors and a working washer and dryer that just got delivered from Sears. Currently, I am still surrounded by wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling cardboard U-Haul boxes. Between the travel with Reese and trying to keep my little company running, it seems the home life is still in disarray. Sam has managed to maneuver around the new beach casa pretty well. His hips are still sore but I am more concerned with the lump that we had a biopsy on last week. The vet said it didn’t look good, but as long as he is still eating, the meds should keep him comfortable. When I am away he is well loved at Grace’s house. When I am home, he stays pretty much glued to my side. I think the boxes have given him anxiety. Must unpack!

I hear the phone ring. I see the cord on the floor and follow it along hoping to find the handset. I kick a box out of the way. It’s on the third ring. At four I know it goes to voice mail, but I reach it. “Hello?” There’s no one there. I missed it. I wait a second for a message to register and call my voice mail. Instead, “You have no messages.” I knew the moment I
heard the call that it was my Reese. I knew by the second ring that there was no way I was going to get to that phone on time. By ring three I realized that a call at eight o’clock at night during a game could not be good news.

Why isn’t the ugly automated message that’s on every personal voice mail telling them they have no messages more friendly and apologetic? And why doesn’t it have some self-affirmation at the end like, “But that doesn’t mean you’re not special”?

The phone rings again. “Hello? Hello?” I answer and stand motionless, listening to Reese.

“W … w … wait,” I stop him. “What does that mean? Torn rotator cuff?”

“It means I jumped in the air for a line drive with a man on third and came down on what’s left of my arm. I made the play, but now I’m fucked! Done. It’s over. My season, maybe my career,” he says in a scary tone that I have never heard before.

Reason #6
:
When things go bad you see the real man
.

“I’ll come there,” I say obviously.

“I am flying to Vail tomorrow to see a specialist and to prep for surgery on Friday,” he kinda barks at me.

“Okay, well, I’ll fly to Vail.”

“Emily, no. I’ll call you when I get there.”

I ease back in my chair, staring at a framed photo of the two of us in Phoenix, on top of an unpacked box, somehow
knowing immediately that something has changed. And it is more than a rotator cuff. It has something to do with the fact that I had now been put back on the shelf with the other less important stuff.

I wonder why it is that if I stub my toe, I want him to put a Band-Aid on it. If I’m feeling sad, he can make me feel better. Why is it when men are at their weakest, they don’t want us to help them? Does an injury or a flaw in the armor somehow make them think that we will love them less? Or is it that, like an injured bear, they just retreat into their cave and lick their wounds? Either way, I’m alone and knowing something’s different. At least his pain was tangible.

I get in the Rover with Sam and head to Grace’s to spend the night. She has no idea that our movie of the week and pasta dinner are about to turn into a therapy session.

“What the hell just happened?” I say to Grace as I plop down my overnight bag and Sam’s water dish on the floor of her town house.

“He may not have a job. He may not have a career left. He needs to focus on himself right now.” Grace sounds sensible.

“Then why is my heart breaking?”

“You still want a man to need you, not want you. Do you see the difference?”

“But I want him to do both. I want to be there for him and he doesn’t want me.”

“Let him be,” Grace advises as she pours a glass of wine.

“Why the fuck doesn’t he want me there? Maybe he thinks the whole I-love-you thing was really a jinx, like love
is a hex, or maybe he never loved me at all and this is just a good way out. Maybe he’s not even injured.”

She flips away from our movie of the week until the TV lands on
SportsCenter
at the exact moment that my noncommittal, abandoning, faking boyfriend dives horizontally in the middle of a full-out sprint for a line drive toward right field and makes a spectacular catch, only all 220 pounds of him comes down on his right shoulder. Grace and I both grimace in pain.

“Oh, he’s injured.” I shake my head in amazement.

I hit Reese’s number on the speed-dial for the third time today and get the voice mail. I figure two messages is enough and hang up. Three makes me a borderline stalker. I pull into the underground parking structure at Dr. D.’s office, hoping to not hear “I told you so.”

Dr. D. knows something is wrong the moment I walk in.

“Reese got hurt.”

“I know. I saw it last night on
SportsCenter.”

Hmmm. Dr. D. watches
SportsCenter?
That’s not how I pictured him.

“I’ve called Reese three times and he won’t call me back. I don’t understand why he’s not calling me. Why isn’t he calling me?”

“Maybe he needs to focus on his body, or perhaps he can’t come to grips with the fact that his career is probably over.”

“But if his career is over,” I say, “his life with me is just beginning. He has so much to look forward to. We have so
much to look forward to … together. Why doesn’t he want me to make him feel better?”

“Because that’s not how men are,” Dr. D. states emphatically.

I drive home from therapy and know Dr. D. is right. Everything he said was right. I finally got the number to Reese’s hotel in Vail, where he is staying after his surgery, and I call. A woman answers. I knew it. Another woman. Some San Diego, Arizona, Florida slut who’s been banging him this whole time. He never loved me. He never cared. And here she was, the proof.

I stumble with hello, but not before managing to blurt, “Who the hell is this?”

“This is Peggy Callahan, Reese’s mother.”

Embarrassed, I hang up.

Reese never called me from Vail or when he got home. The sad part is I can’t even be mad … because his life is so shitty. Minutes seem like hours, hours like days, days like fall turning to winter. I can’t eat and neither can Sam. I can’t sleep. I’ve managed to unpack every box and hang every picture in my new house, hoping it will both ease my pup’s mind as well as keep me occupied. I can’t stop watching bad TV. Poop bag in hand, I take Sam on a short, slow walk as he wants to get out but doesn’t seem to have the energy. As we meander along the ocean, my cell phone rings. It’s Reese on the caller ID. Two long weeks have gone by. TWO WEEKS, and now he calls.

“Hi,” I say. “How are you?” As if nothing’s happened and my heart hasn’t been breaking!

“I’ve been better. I’m sorry I never called you.”

“That’s okay I understand.” Even though I didn’t. “Where are you?”

“At home in Phoenix.”

“I miss you.”

“I miss you, too, Em. But I’ve really had to do some thinking these last couple of weeks and, well, I need to concentrate on getting healthy right now.”

“But I can help you,” I say.

“I have my family here. I have doctors here. I just need …”

“I don’t understand why you don’t want me there and I don’t understand why you didn’t call me. I …I … I love you. What’s happening to us?”

“Just give me some time.”

I sit down on the beach and look up at the full moon with the waves breaking below and Sam by my side. I sit there and imagine what the moment would feel like if Reese were here.

I feel empty. Spent. Worn out by all of it.

It’s been thirty-six days since I have seen my man. His baseball season is over and I want my goddamned boyfriend back! Who is this new guy? His voice is different. His caring is gone. His ability to be anything remotely close to in a relationship is unfathomable.

I sit with Dr. D. and wonder how we’ve hit the wall on a turn at 185 miles per hour. Unloading all of the irrational, angry things I feel and want to say in this small twelve-by-twelve room.