Fix You (7 page)

             
He chuckled again.

             
“I’m serious.”

             
“You know I’d totally never do that, right?” he countered. “And I’m serious, too.”

             
“I know you wouldn’t,” she said with a sigh, nails tracing an aimless pattern across his chest and down along his ribs. “I do, it’s just…”

             
“Jess and Dylan have your imagination working?”

             
“A little,” she admitted.

             
If she believed the guys, then Dylan had never been well-liked by any of them except Walt. Jordan claimed the guy had watched Ellie’s every move when they were all together, and though she’d wanted to doubt it, Jo could recall moments when she’d seen his eyes wandering. Mike had called him emotionless, and the way Jess had tipped back her wine glass without comment had been as good as agreeing with him. And if all the dark, hidden truths about Dylan were indeed truths, if Jessica’s perfect life was riddled with flaws, then how did any of the rest of them stand a chance?

             
Tam’s hand slid up the curve of her waist, over her shoulder, until he was spearing his fingers through the heavy tangle of hair down her back. “I’m not Dylan,” he said quietly, “and you’re not Jess.”

             
She settled her head again and let her eyes move over the oh-so-familiar textures of her room. The blue walls. Their clothes on the floor. Willa – hard to go down but dead to the world once she was – asleep on her stomach in her crib, face buried in Zeke’s mane. Not being Dylan and Jess might have been an insult once upon a time, but not now.

             
“And thank God for that,” she breathed, and closed her eyes as he doused the lamp.

6

              “
Y
ou graduated in 2006?”

             
“I was an entrepreneurship and creativity major,” Jess said with a crisp, professional nod, crossing her legs inside the tight confines of her gray pinstripe skirt.

             
“I see that.” Her interviewer, Brad, was probably five years her junior. He had a cowlick on the side of his head that gel hadn’t been able to tame and that made him seem even younger. His tie wasn’t knotted quite right and there was a crusty spot of what looked like doughnut icing on the lapel of his jacket. He belonged behind the popcorn counter at a movie theater, but yet here he was, brows wiggling like unimpressed caterpillars as he scanned her resume, holding her financial fate in his clammy, little-kid hands. “And then you worked for, let’s see,” he’d watched someone else frown professionally and did an impersonation of it now, “Days Inn. You were a manager?”

             
“Yes, I - ”

             
“And you were there only six months? Is that when your son was born?”

             
Jess ground her molars together; her smile was forced and now frozen, her whole face stiff. She’d had a laundry list of skills and attributes to tie to her six months of managing a hotel, but Brad had jumped straight to the negative. “No,” she said and managed to say it calmly. “It wasn’t, but if I could just say that, while working for Days Inn, I - ”

             
“You wrote” – a smile streaked across Brad’s face that wasn’t a smile at all: a
gotcha
smirk that was full of how satisfied he was with his own performance –  “that you’re  a ‘dedicated employee,’ so how do you explain quitting after six months and not working since?”

             
“My husband was providing for the household,” she said woodenly. It went back to Dylan because every unpleasant thing in her life went back to him. “I didn’t have to work and I wanted…” It sounded so stupid now. She’d wanted to be a good wife; she’d approached creating their home, shaping their memories, as a fulltime job, morning-to-night, every day of the year. She
had
been dedicated, but all that dedication had blown up in her face, and how did she even begin to explain that? To this little punk, of all people?

             
“You know,” she squared her shoulders, “you’ve asked about my marital status, my child, have now suggested I’m lazy,” Brad’s eyes got big, “and I’m pretty sure the EEOC will be very interested in all of that when I lodge a complaint against your company.”

             
“You…um, oh.” Brad licked his lips and his fingers went white-knuckled on her resume. “Oh, I didn’t mean... Ma’am, I’m…”

             
Clearly, he knew what the EEOC was, but not that his company was too small to be subject to their regulation. Jess wasn’t going to wait around and explain it to him – she was enjoying his facial twitches too much. She slid gracefully to her feet and left his cubicle, stepping back out into the reception room of his real estate office.

             
“Done so soon?” the receptionist called as Jess passed through.

             
“Yep.” She didn’t even bother to glance the other woman’s way. There were two girls waiting to be interviewed and both of them glanced up at Jess, both of them doe-eyed and ten years younger than her, both of them exactly what Brad was looking for. She gave them frosty glares and their eyes dropped back to the trash mags they were reading.

             
Just to the left of the door was a rack of brochures and real estate booklets. Jobless, homeless and hopeless, Jess snapped one up on the way out because, apparently, she hadn’t been tortured enough for one day; why not look at houses she couldn’t afford too?

**

              “It’s brilliant.”

             
Ellie closed the door of her Explorer with her hip and the sound echoed like a gunshot against the concrete of the parking deck. “Really?” she asked, breath catching just a little to hear so wonderful a world spoken in reference to her novel. She pressed her cell to her ear and smoothed the front of her dress over her stomach as she headed for the elevator.

             
“Really,” Delta said from the other end of the line. “No romance agent in the world will touch it - ”

             
“I know,” Ellie sighed.

             
“ – but it’s absolutely brilliant.”

             
Her manuscript, the product of three years of effort and doubt, hadn’t been read by anyone except Paige and Jordan. One of her professors had sampled a few chapters and left her with half-hearted suggestions that hadn’t felt plot- or character-specific. Nervous to a point of physical tremors, she’d let Delta read it at Jordan’s suggestion. Delta was a literature buff who spurned trendy porn romances, so if she said it was brilliant, it carried some weight. Ellie wished she could somehow reach through the phone and hug her sister-in-law.

             
“You dared to develop your characters and weave backstory throughout,” Delta continued, “and there’s way too much emotion and not enough three-way sex for those slavering agency idiots.”

             
“That’s what Jordan said.” She reached the elevator alongside another pregnant woman and they shared tight, hey-we’re-both-pregnant smiles as the other girl pushed the down button.

             
“Have you started querying agents yet?” Delta asked.

             
“No.”

             
“I would. Don’t expect a ‘yes,’ but I’d send to romance and literary agents – send to all the agents. Just see what they say. In the meantime, I want my book club to read it.”

             
“You do?” Ellie’s pulse gave a little lurch as the elevator doors slid open and she stepped onboard. The thought of an entire book club reading her work left her slightly nauseas. “But it’s not published.”

             
“That won’t matter. I’ve got the file – I’ll turn it into a PDF and send it to the girls, make it mandatory for July’s discussion. I mean, if you’re okay with it, that is.”

             
“It makes me nervous,” she admitted. “Not everyone’s going to think it’s ‘brilliant.’”

             
“But being published wouldn’t change that,” Delta reasoned.

             
“But having an agent and a book deal would make it seem more legitimate.”

             
Delta chuckled. “Honey, you’re the second coming of Jane Austen – you don’t need an agent to make you legitimately incredible, okay?”

             
As the elevator car hit bottom and the doors opened, Ellie felt tears sting the backs of her eyes. “Thank you,” she said, voice shaking, and could tell by the softening of Delta’s voice that her sister-in-law knew she was on the verge of becoming too emotional over the praise.

             
“Let me send it to the club and I’ll get back to you with what they say.”

             
“Thanks, Delta.”

             
“You bet. Oh, and good luck at the doc today.”

             
She disconnected the call with another
thank you
and started down the tiled hall of the new outpatient building where her obstetrician worked.  All the way to the second set of elevators, and all the way up to the fifth floor, she ran through all the potential critiques of her work. But when she stepped out into the plush, tasteful, air conditioned waiting room of the OB/GYN’s office, she told herself, firmly, that Delta didn’t throw compliments around – just like Jordan didn’t – and she shoved her worry aside and allowed herself a moment to bask in the praise as she signed in and plopped down in a vinyl chair by the window.

             
There were a scattered handful of other patients waiting, all of them at some stage of pregnancy save for the reed-thin redhead two chairs over from her. And she could have been pregnant; who knew? Ellie picked up a wrinkled parenting magazine she had no desire to read and flipped it open anyway, wishing she’d remembered to tuck a book inside her purse. Her girls were hell on her memory; two nights before she’d added cinnamon instead of pepper to their chicken, and bless Jordie, he hadn’t said a word and she’d only realized the mistake when she’d gagged on her own bite.
Pregnancy brain
Beth had called it, and apparently two babies meant twice as much stupidity.

             
“Missus Walker?” the receptionist called and Ellie glanced up from her magazine. “You signed in with the wrong sheet.” She held up a clipboard to demonstrate.

             
“I’m sorry,” Ellie groaned. “It’s probably a miracle I’m even wearing shoes.”

             
The receptionist laughed. “It’s fine. If I could just get you to fill this out.”

             
Which wouldn’t have been a problem if heaving herself out of her chair hadn’t become so difficult. Seven months along, her baby bump was no longer cute, but a hindrance to her normal range of motion. She felt fat and swollen and unseemly, especially as the skinny redhead’s eyes followed her up to the counter.

             
“Will your husband be joining you today?” the receptionist asked as Ellie printed her name on the correct sign-in sheet. Jordan had come to all of her appointments that he’d been able to and the staff thought his nervous fidgeting was cute. The f-bomb he’d dropped in front of the doctor the day they’d been told it was twins, though, hadn’t been so cute.

             
“No, he couldn’t get away from work.”

             
“Aw, well that’s too bad. Tell Jordan we all said ‘hi.’”

             
“Will do,” she said with a forced grin, thinking the OB staff’s “hi” wasn’t anything he cared about.

             
“They’ll call you back in just a sec,” she was assured, and then went back to her chair and lowered herself into it gracelessly.

             
“Excuse me,” someone asked to her left a moment later, and Ellie turned to see that the redhead had her magazine in her lap and was watching her with a curious half-smile. Curious, but not a
friendly
smile. “Hi, um, your last name is Walker?”

             
“Yes…” Ellie felt a prickling up the back of her neck.

             
“And your husband’s name is Jordan?”

             
“Yes.”

             
The redhead’s smile stretched, toothy and sparkling, taking up nearly all of her narrow face. She propped an elbow on her knee and dropped her chin in her hand, nothing short of  fascinated. “I know a Jordan Walker,” she said in a sugary sweet voice that left Ellie with the sudden urge to gag. “Skinny guy. Used to run track.”

             
Ellie settled a hand over her distended stomach and took a deep, steadying breath as her eyes moved over the other woman. She was pretty, as big around as a pencil, glamorous on a Wednesday in her blue strappy dress and high-heeled sandals.
My Jordan
, she thought as she was hit with the desperate knowledge that the redhead
knew
him. “That’s him,” she said with a weak smile.

             
“I haven’t seen him in a while,” the redhead kept smiling. “God, you’re his wife? He got married? Good for him – he never was as adventurous as he thought he was.” She chuckled darkly and then her eyes went to Ellie’s stomach. “You’re really pregnant, huh?”

             
“Seven months.” Ellie hated the dazed sound of her voice. Coming off the high of
brilliant
, she hadn’t expected this kind of sucker punch and was reeling. “Twins.”

             
“Wow. Guess his little soldiers came marching in, didn’t they?” She tossed her hair over her shoulder. “I’m Janet, by the way. Janet Jennings.”

             
“Ellie.”

             
Janet smiled in an insincere way. “Ellie Walker. Cute.”

             
Ellie knew her husband had history; she knew that when he’d talked about
dating
in the past he’d meant
sleeping around
, and that there was always the possibility of running into someone he’d slept with. But still…

             
“Noelle,” a nurse called from the door, and she lurched to her feet, startling Janet who sat back with wide eyes.

             
“Nice meeting you,” Ellie offered as she turned away from super skinny, super sparkly Janet, trying to banish the image of the woman’s long, long legs wrapped around Jordan’s narrow hips from her mind.

             
“You too,” Janet called. “Hey, tell Marathon Man I said ‘hello.’”