Heart Conditions (The Breakup Doctor Series Book 3) (13 page)

Sasha’s eyes slid over to me and the taut lines around her mouth eased ever so slightly. She uncrossed her arms and dropped them to her lap, resting one hand over mine out of Michael’s sightline. I squeezed my thanks.

“Okay, Michael. What do you suggest first?” I prompted.

“Well…” he said, inclining his head. “You need a Facebook page for the Breakup Doctor. You need Twitter. Maybe Instagram. But that’s basic—and it’s easy.”

“And it’s stupid,” Sasha said, but her protest lacked some of its earlier heat. “This is still therapy—not some kind of celebrity fan page.”

He sighed and looked out over the Caloosahatchee, with its hodgepodge of watercraft bobbing on the water. “Sasha, if Brook’s agreed to try letting me promote her business the way I successfully promoted the first band I represented into a major recording contract, can you at least start with the assumption that I know what I’m doing? Just a little bit?”

Her glare didn’t falter, but she held her tongue. I had to hand it to him—Sasha in full-on homicidal mode was a not-unintimidating force to be reckoned with, but Michael was holding his own.

“Okay,” he said after a moment. “Here’re some avenues I had in mind for expansion.” He pulled up a new slide with a bulleted list headed “Growth opportunities.” The headings were almost the same as the ones on the first slide, delineating all the diversifications of my current practice, with a few additions that made my eyes pop: “Speaking engagements,” “Magazines and Media,” “Books.” I saw a flare of interest in Sasha’s eyes too, but it was quickly extinguished.

“This is just a long-range overview of my thoughts,” Michael said, “but I’m guessing you’ll be more comfortable starting slowly.” He hit a few keys and the last several items disappeared. “For now, I think you’re already maxed out with private clients. There’s only so many you can take on, right?” I nodded, and the first bullet point sailed off the screen. “With your column, we’re going to look at getting it picked up by other papers throughout Florida, with an eye to eventual syndication.” The mastheads of area newspapers whose names I recognized popped up at points across the screen like fireworks.

“Fancy,” Sasha said dryly.

He slid a smirk at her. “Presentation is everything.”

The next bullet point wiped the screen clear: “Radio.” Sasha leaned in despite herself.

“The radio plan is similar—but I think first we need to get you actually employed by the station. I assume this is another Big Eyes— I mean, a volunteer position for you?” he corrected with a quick glance to Sasha, and I nodded affirmation. “Well, no one’s going to even
look
at syndicating a drop-in guest. This is the first thing I’d like to address—approaching your station and seeing about putting you on the payroll—and getting you a show of your own.”

“Whoa!” I said, just as a food runner showed up with our dinner and set the plates down in front of us. “I don’t know how to do all that technical stuff the deejays do.”

“There are engineers for that. All you have to do is be the on-air personality—which you’re already doing.”

“Well, I don’t think they’d be willing to pay me much, let alone offer me my own show.” As I spoke I nudged half my sweet potato fries off my plate and onto a spread napkin as Michael did the same with his regular fries, and we pushed our respective piles toward each other.

“What are you two doing?” Sasha asked sharply.

I realized it apparently just as Michael did: He stared at me with a startled expression that no doubt mirrored my own.

“Oh,” I said quietly.

He didn’t take his eyes from mine. “Old habits die hard.”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s all keep our own side dishes to ourselves,” Sasha said flatly, and she dragged our napkins back to our respective plates.

We all started eating, as intent on our food as if we were restaurant critics. Finally Michael filled the heavy silence.

“I’ll see if I can compare the station’s ratings to what they were before you came on those shows. But either way, I think they know you’re a commodity. I’ve been listening in for a few weeks”—my eyes flew to his at that news, but Michael went on—“and the phone never stops ringing on your shows. That’s listeners—and that means ad revenue. And that’s our bargaining chip—similar to what we’ll do with your newspaper.”

Sasha had stopped chewing and was fixing him with an assessing look. “You do know what you’re doing.”

“You don’t have to sound so surprised.”

She lifted one eyebrow. “I think we can all agree you didn’t used to be so…”

“Grown-up?” he asked wryly.

She shrugged, as if uninterested. “Focused.”

They stared at each other for a moment, and something seemed to pass between them that I missed. Then his lips curved slightly upward. “Thanks. But you might as well hold off on the compliments until we see if I can actually put anything in motion. So, Brook…is it a go?”

“‘It’?”

He tapped the screen. “The radio show, first off. I’d like to approach the station ASAP. Do I have your permission?”

“Wait—
you’re
going to do it?”

“That’s what promotion is. The talent never negotiates for themselves. I’m your representative. An agent. A representative can push for things that the talent has to stay clear of.”

“It’s weird that you’re calling me ‘the talent.’ Like an inanimate object.”

“As far as they’re concerned, Brook, that’s what you are. This is business—you’re the commodity.”

“Or it just makes it easier to pimp people out if you can dehumanize them,” Sasha grumbled, but her barb was halfhearted.

“Yes or no?” he asked me, ignoring her.

I’d told Sasha that often people freaked out when they finally achieved everything they ever wanted. Here was an unexpected chance for me to show her how to embrace new opportunities—to
not
operate from a place of fear.

Michael waited with a neutral expression and at least a good show of patience, letting me decide.

Finally I wiped my grease-streaked fingers on my napkin and reached across the table.

“Okay. Yes.” We shook hands. I couldn’t deny the jolt I felt at the contact.

When we let go he left his hand extended and moved it over to Sasha. I thought that took a fair amount of courage, as I was pretty certain she was as likely to take a bite out of it as she was to do anything else. But my best friend shocked me by reaching up and meeting his grasp.

“I’m not saying I’m not going to eventually punch you in the face,” she told him. “But if Brook wants to give this a chance, I’m always on her side.”

His sudden wince told me she’d tightened her freakishly strong grip on his hand, and Sasha smiled a shark’s grin at him.
“Always
.
”

“What in the name of sweet Raptor Jesus was
that
?”

Sasha laid into me as soon as the front door of Flamingo Joe’s closed behind us—after stalking backward from our booth, making a vee of her fingers and pointing them at her own eyes, then Michael’s in a Mafia-movie “I’m watching you” gesture.

“What was what?”

She laid a hairy eyeball on me. “Don’t give me that. You two were all cozy-cozy with the side dishes and the repartee. What’s going on?”

I stopped when we reached my car, looking at her over the roof. “I…I don’t know,” I said. “There’s so much history there…so much familiarity. It’s just easy to fall into that.”

“Don’t let your guard down with him, Brook. No matter how much he may have changed or how sorry he is, you can’t trust him. Not ever again.”

The finality of that plucked at something in my chest. “I don’t know, Sasha. You saw him. He’s…different—don’t you think?”

I couldn’t read the long stare she gave me in the spotty illumination from the few parking lot lights. She made impatient clicking motions in the air with her thumb, pointing down to the car, and I hit the unlock button. As soon as we both slid in and the doors were closed she faced me head-on.

“Mike Rowan. Tyler Engel. Joe Herrera. Jude Something. Guy from that band at Sharkey’s.”

“What?” I asked, confused.

“All guys you told me were toxic after they dumped on me. ‘You don’t drink twice from a poisoned well,’ you told me. In fact, you suggested I get it tattooed on my arm. A bit hypocritically, as it now turns out,” she said with a glare.

I sighed, dropping the ignorant act. Sasha was a bloodhound. “I know, Sash, but this is different. We—”

“Are you seriously going to try to justify this? To me?”

I didn’t say anything, looking down to avoid her eyes.

“Honey…” Her tone was gentler now. “Are you actually considering getting back together with that—” She stopped herself. “With Michael?”

Silence filled the car for a long moment.

“I don’t know,” I said almost inaudibly to my lap.

Air gusted out of her like a blown bicycle tire.

“What about Ben?”

“What about him?” I met her stare. “He has a girlfriend.”

“You said she
wasn’t
his girlfriend.”

“I don’t know!” I shouted. “I have no damned idea! I think I’m getting one message from him, and then I get something totally different. For all I know all of it’s just in my head and nothing’s changed with us—I still blew it and he’s still moved on. But meanwhile, the man I thought I was going to spend my life with—who I loved, for
real
, let’s remember—is back, and seems like a better person, a grown-up now, and he wants me, Sash. He
wants
me.” I fell silent again, looking back down at my hands, which still held the key I hadn’t pushed into the ignition.

“Honey…” she started, but I shrugged her hand off my shoulder.

“No. I can’t talk about this with you.” I tried to find a way to articulate what was churning inside me without hurting her feelings—or our friendship. “Look, you’ve got problems you’re dealing with, and I want to help you with that. I do. I want to be a good friend and a good therapist and help you figure out what you really want. But, Sash…” Heat speared into my eyes, and I felt the prickling of oncoming tears. “Everything you’re struggling with right now…that’s everything I
want
. So how can you possibly know what I’m feeling?”

Silence dropped like a sandbag between us.

“Because I’ve been there too,” she said finally, after a long moment. “Up until Stu I
lived
there—wanting so badly not to be alone, to be loved by the right guy. I get it, Brookie—I do. And I can’t explain why I’m freaking out when I’m finally getting everything I ever thought I wanted. But it doesn’t mean I can’t relate to what you’re feeling—the same way you were still a great Breakup Doctor even when you were neck-deep in the crazy after Kendall.”

I gave a watery laugh. “Thanks.”

“I’m serious,” she said. “And you’re right—you don’t know what’s going on with Ben yet. And I get not wanting to cut things off with Michael until you do. Just…be careful, okay? I don’t want to see you get hurt. There are a
lot
of people in the mix who might get hurt.”

Michael. Ben. Pamela. No matter who she was talking about, she was right.

“I know,” I said softly. “I’m trying to figure this out.”

“You know I’ve got your back whatever you decide, right?”

I nodded, smiling through blurry eyes. “Yeah. I always know that.”

Finally I put the key in the ignition and started the car, backing out of the parking spot. “You were terrifying back there, by the way.”

“I
was
, wasn’t I?” Leaning back in the seat, she closed her eyes, smiling that creepy predator’s smile. “
God
, it was good to feel normal again.”

We rode home in spent stillness, like the quiet hush after a squall has passed, until we turned off Summerlin and I pulled into Sasha’s apartment complex. Instead of idling in the visitor’s slot, I turned off the car and turned to face her.

“What do you think about backing off on Operation Bring It On?”

She slid a narrow glance at me. “Is this some new strategy?”

“No. You said it was nice to be normal again.”

“Threatening to castrate and garrote your ex…good times.”

“It was,” I said, grinning, and she laughed.

“Well, I won’t complain if we’re not all pregnancy, all the time. That’s what Stu’s doing and it’s making me crazy,” she said.

“Agreed then—brief moratorium?”

She blew out a breath as if she’d been holding it for a long time. “Agreed. Thank God.” Sasha reached for her door handle, then stopped and turned back to me. “But there is a built-in time limit here, don’t forget. I can’t put off making a decision forever.”

“I know,” I assured her, realizing that neither could I.

thirteen

After Ben dropped off Jake on Thursday morning, his bright smile when I opened the door doing nothing to help sort my jumbled thoughts, Rae Ann Wilson was my first appointment. I was looking forward to seeing the change in her after our conversation last week and the homework assignment I’d given her. I suspected that simply taking better care of herself, looking more polished, would have done wonders for her self-esteem. I sequestered Jake in my bedroom—Rae Ann was strictly a cat person.

But when my office door opened, it did not reveal the woman I’d expected. Rae Ann hadn’t even made an attempt at grooming today, wearing the same slouchy sweats and sneakers I’d seen her in for months, no makeup, her hair pulled back in a plain, low ponytail. She galumphed into the room and slumped down into a corner of the chaise.

“It didn’t work,” she said flatly, before I could even offer a greeting.

“Oh?” I asked neutrally.

“Before you ask, I did it—I got up every day and got ready. And I made an effort to leave the house more—I went to the post office instead of printing the postage from home, went inside to pay for my gas instead of paying at the pump, went into the bank instead of the drive-through, blah, blah, blah.” She lifted her feet onto the sofa and pushed herself back against the arm so hard I was surprised a chunk of food didn’t come flying out of her mouth. “First of all, it’s weird to ask someone about their hobbies while they’re making change for a twenty, okay? But I did it. And at first you were right—it was kind of nice to talk to someone besides Theo. But then…” She trailed off, glaring at her sneakers as though they’d insulted her.

“Then what happened, Rae Ann?” I prompted.

She transferred her scowl to me, and I had to fight my instinct to lean away. “Someone asked me
out
, Brook!” she snapped.

I waited, but that seemed to be the extent of the egregious trespass against her. “Um…good?” I ventured.

“No!” she whined. “
Not
good! I was in the checkout line in the grocery store yesterday, and they were slammed, so I grabbed a magazine off the shelf to kill time. And then I hear this guy behind me kind of chuckle, and he holds up
his
magazine to show me that we’re both reading the exact same article. ‘Great minds,’ he says. So like you said, I tried to talk to him, right? Instead of what I wanted to do, which was just turn around and mind my own business. So I did, and he was all
friendly
and we talked about the article for a few minutes, and he asked if we could meet for coffee later after we both unloaded our groceries at home.”

As she paused for a breath, a dozen scenarios crowded my mind for what could have gone wrong.

“So I say yes, and we agree on this place and a time, and he gives me his number just in case I need it…and…and…”

I frowned in growing alarm as Rae Ann became increasingly distressed. Had the guy turned out to be some kind of predator?

“And
I never showed up
, Brook!” She hurled the words at me like an accusation. “I left this really nice guy sitting there all alone, stood up, probably feeling like there was something wrong with him, when the truth is
I’m
the one who’s defective! You want me to
date
? I don’t know even how to
talk
to people!”

She’d worked herself into near hysterics, breathing too hard and too fast, and swallowing air. I moved over next to her on the chaise and put an arm around her. “Okay. Okay, Rae Ann, slow down,” I said soothingly, rubbing her back. “It’s okay…it’s not your fault. You’re all right. Breathe.”

“I…know it’s not…my fault,” she said raggedly, between hitching sobs. “It’s
your
fault. Why couldn’t you just help me get over Paul, like I came here for?”

I didn’t want to explain my reasoning in the face of Rae Ann’s very real pain. Instead I simply sat beside her, making calming circles on her back.

“You’re right,” I said when her tears finally stalled and her breathing evened out. “I pushed you too hard, and I’m sorry.”

Rae Ann nodded sullenly, not looking at me.

“I
am
going to help you, Rae Ann. We’ll do this together.”

She angled a wary glance at me. “What do you mean?”

In school and training it had been deeply ingrained in me to keep a certain remove between myself and patients, not to color their thought processes with my own input, and never, ever to get directly involved in their lives.

But this wasn’t a theoretical scholastic exercise—this was real life. And I didn’t run a typical psychological practice anymore.

“Go home and put on clothes and do your hair and makeup,” I said to her. “You think you don’t know how to talk to people? Fair enough. We’re going out together tonight, and I’m going to help you learn.”

I hadn’t heard from Stu since Sasha had told me everything. The last time we’d talked—when he and Dad were out on the boat—he’d sounded troubled. And when my baby brother was upset, it raised a primal protective streak in me that made me want to slay his dragons.

I didn’t know if there was anything I could say to reassure him right now. But I could try.

I wasn’t meeting Rae Ann until later this evening, so as soon as my last client of the day left, I texted Stu:
Got time for a drink? Mickey Mack’s?

His reply came almost immediately:
Gross. Hell, yeah. See you in 30.

When we were kids, Mickey Mack’s was someplace he and I loved to go together. As soon as I got my driver’s license I’d drive us to the harbor-front shrimper dive bar anytime we had things to talk about that we didn’t want our parents to overhear, like planning a nighttime sneak-away with our high school friends, or TP’ing the neighbors.

The place fascinated us then—splintering raw-wood picnic tables, peanut shells all over the floor, a bartender who looked like he might also moonlight as a hit man. Sitting in their battered wooden chairs, we felt dangerous and grown-up, the only kids in a group of rough-looking shrimpers off the boat after a week on the gulf, drinking up their paydays. It was a miracle we never got hurt—or contracted staph. The tumbledown shack couldn’t have passed any health inspections. Case in point: they allowed dogs. That was one reason I’d suggested the place—I knew we could sit with Jake out on the dockside deck. Though I doubted the staff would stand on ceremony if I did bring him inside. Jake had probably had a more recent bath than half the clientele.

Stu was waiting for me out front when I pulled into the gravel lot, and as soon as he caught sight of Jake bounding out of the car, he dropped to his haunches and threw out his arms.

“Jakie! The Jakemeister! My main man!” he gushed as Jake practically pulled my arm out of the socket yanking on the leash to greet him.

“Jesus, Stu, I thought Sasha told you not to get him all riled up.” During the time I’d kept the dog when Ben and I were dating, Sasha and I had discovered to our amusement (and her mild revulsion at their openmouthed kisses) that Stu and Jake shared the love that dare not speak its name.

“But that was a long time ago, and maybe Stu forgot!” he said, speaking directly to Jake in baby talk. “Maybe Stu missed his best buddy too much to be cool! Didn’t he? Didn’t he?”

Jake basked in the attention, twisting his giant body this way and that in an apparent effort to become one with his soul mate.

“Well, you make it harder on Ben when he has to reinforce discipline every time you see the dog,” I muttered.

Stu’s eyebrows lifted from behind the corona of white fur now engulfing his face.

“Are you two getting back together?”

I gave a half shrug. “No. Maybe. I have no idea.”

Stu gave Jake a final ear flap and then stood, wearing a sympathetic expression. “Sorry, sis,” he said. “I know you care about him.”

Old Stu would never have picked up on my complicated feelings about Ben. He really was growing up.

That was the other part of why I’d wanted to meet with him face-to-face—despite Sasha’s assurances, I needed to make sure for myself that Stu was truly ready for marriage and fatherhood.

“Come on,” I said to my brother. “Let’s get a table.”

There was no wait service at Mickey Mack’s, so I sat with Jake while Stu went in and ordered for us—I opted for just a bottled beer and a bag of chips, a snack I knew came in a factory-sealed cellophane bag rather than from the Mickey Mack kitchen. It seemed my days of blindly trusting that I wouldn’t get giardia had been left in my childhood. When my brother came back out, he carried two bottles of Heineken—about as micro a brew as could be hoped for at Mickey Mack’s—and a grimy laminated card with a number on it, shoved into a rusty metal stand. He set it all down and slid into the bench across from me.

For the first time ever with my brother, I put on my therapist’s hat.

“So…how are things going, Stuvie? How are you?”

“Not bad,” he said, never looking up from massaging Jake’s head.

“You know I know, right?” I clarified.

The slightest wave of pink crept across my brother’s face and he glanced up at me. “Yeah. I figured Sash wouldn’t keep anything from you.”

I didn’t point out that in fact she had—for days. I simply nodded, reaching across to play with the glass sugar container on the table. It was sticky, the sugar inside clumped and grayish, and I set it back on the weathered wood, wiping my hands on my jeans and grimacing.

“You feeling okay about everything?” I probed. “I mean…it’s a lot. And it’s fast.”

“I know it is. But I’m good with it.”

“Dirty diapers. Spit-up. No more partying…I honestly never thought I’d see the day, bro.”

“I know. Neither did I.”

I narrowed my eyes as he fondled the ecstatic dog. “It’s a lot of responsibility—physical, emotional, financial. And it’s hard. And it’s not always satisfying—some studies show that people with kids are significantly less happy overall than people without. And it’s
forever
. No days off. No end date. No guarantees that your kid will turn out okay. Plus there’s your relationship—a lot of times kids can really throw off the dynamic between two people.”

“I’m going to be a great dad. Sasha will be an amazing mom. And we’ll just work extra hard to make sure we don’t lose sight of each other.”

“Well, that’s what a lot of couples think, until the reality hits and—”

He stopped petting Jake and abruptly turned to face me. “You think I can’t handle this. That I’m going to jump ship.” He sounded bemused more than hurt, but shame plucked at me anyway.

I shrugged guiltily. “It does fit your usual MO.”

He stared at me for a moment, and then to my surprise nodded. “Fair enough. But Sasha’s not usual,” he said. “Sasha’s…well…” A smile crept over his face, his eyes taking on an expression I could only call besotted. “She’s Sasha. You know what I mean.”

I smiled back. I did.

“If you’d asked me with anyone else if I could see myself getting married, having a kid…I’d have said no way—you know that. No time soon. But this doesn’t even feel like the same thing. It’s like…it’s just the next part of
us
. It’s just
right
. And I don’t know what’s going to happen, and I know we’ll screw up and make mistakes. But we’ll hold on ’til we can fix things again. I’m not letting go.”

My throat ached with tenderness, but Stu cut me off before I could embarrass us both with major waterworks in the middle of the tough shrimpers’ bar.

“It’s Sasha who’s not sure about all this. About…about
me
, I think.” His smile melted away.

“Oh, Stu,” I said. “She loves you. All the way. You have to know that.”

“Yeah. I do. But I’m not sure she…I don’t know if this is what she wants. If
I
am.” His face crumpled like plastic in a fire, and I wanted to hug him. But we were Ogdens, and sloppy public displays of affection were not our style.

So it was rather strange when I found myself walking around the table to sit beside him and wrapped my arms around him, leaning my cheek against his shoulder. Stranger still when I felt Stu’s arm go around my back, and we just sat like that for a few quiet, utterly unprecedented moments, Jake’s nose wedged in between our bodies as though he couldn’t bear to be left out.

The squeak of the bar’s rickety screen door finally broke the moment, and I looked up to see an overweight, sweaty man carrying an armful of food toward us.

“I got chips,” he said around the lit cigarette in his lips, flinging a small bag of Doritos to the table without making any comment on our tight clinch. “Fisherman’s special”—Stu had a heaping platter—“and fish sticks.” He laid a second plate beside my chips, and turned to go back inside without asking whether we needed anything else.

I let go of my brother and scooted a few inches away, staring at the plate in front of me. “I didn’t order the fish sticks.”

“I didn’t know if Jake had eaten.”

“Oh. I don’t know if he can have fried—”

But Stu had already set the plate on the splintering wooden deck, and Jake surged toward it and was inhaling its contents before I even finished the sentence.

“Whoops,” Stu said mildly. “It seems he can.”

“Oh, no. Stu!” I chastised futilely.

“He’ll be fine. Dogs eat cat poop and drink from toilets.” He picked at his fries.

I couldn’t stand seeing my happy-go-lucky brother so glum. “Stuvie…” I wanted to reassure him, but I wouldn’t lie. “Sasha’s scared right now, but she
wants
to want this. She’s asked me to help her with that, and I am. We’re going to fix this, okay?”