Heart Conditions (The Breakup Doctor Series Book 3) (2 page)

two

I couldn’t move. I’m pretty sure I forgot to breathe, judging by the way my lungs started to burn and I suddenly took in a huge gasp of air.

He looked so…normal. So familiar standing in front of me with those grass-green eyes peeking out from under the unruly lock of dark hair that fell over his right eye the way it always did. I had to stop myself from reaching out to push it back, out of habit. He was dressed the way I’d always seen him, in slim-fitting faded jeans and a battered black concert T-shirt, this one from a David Bowie show that had to have happened long before he was born. Like Jake and his hole in my backyard, I could almost let myself believe no time had passed since I saw him last—except for the uncertain expression he wore, instead of the slightly cocky grin I’d been used to.

And the fact that he was standing on the doorstep of my house, which he’d never been to before. The one I bought in a furious blind rush with the rest of our wedding money right after he called it off—the part I didn’t lose in nonrefundable deposits.

My mouth was so dry, I couldn’t have formed words even if my flatlined brain had provided any. Which it did not.

Michael had moved away shortly after we broke up—I didn’t want to know where, just that he was gone. The last time I’d seen him was two years ago in May. May 4, to be exact—a date I could never forget because of Michael’s stupid repeated joke: “May the fourth be with you.” At 7:43 a.m. That was when I’d left his apartment—the one I thought I’d be living in weeks later—with a frustrated admonition for him to
please
not forget our cake tasting that afternoon.

He’d been tangled up in the sheets, logy with sleep and lovemaking, after a late-night gig at the Buddha Bar the night before with his band, the Dogs of Society. He’d blinked sleepy green eyes at me. “Okay.”

I stopped in the doorway of the bedroom with a huffing sigh, hands on hips like a fishwife. “I’m
serious
, Michael. Don’t space this out, okay? I’m not asking you to do much for this wedding—just
please
be there. Okay? Michael?”

He started awake from a doze. “Okay, Brook. Bakery. Four o’clock. Cake. I get it.”

Those would have been the last words we’d ever spoken, except for the phone call I got from him eight hours later, en route to the Sweet Dreams Bakery.

“Brook, I’m sorry. I can’t do this.”

An annoyed sigh had torn out of me. “Oh, for God’s sake, Michael—it’s cake. Surely you can do cake, at least?”

There was a long silence, and then: “No, not the cake. All of it. Any of it. I can’t go through with this.”

Ice had seemed to crystallize in every cell of my body. “Okay. That’s fine,” my mouth said. And I hung up.

That was the epilogue on our two-year relationship. The way I dealt with adversity back then was to push it way down deep and carry on, which I did: I went on to the cake tasting, though I don’t remember actually tasting any of the expensive pastries I put in my mouth. The next day I called all the vendors to cancel their services, and had blindly put a down payment on a house within two weeks.

This
house. Where the man it had taken me two years, two shattered relationships, and a near nervous breakdown to get over stood on the stoop, staring at me.

“Brook,” he finally said, the timbre of his voice lower than I remembered.

I swallowed, trying to remember how words were made.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m sorry. I know it’s a surprise.”

Behind me I heard the oncoming clickety-clack of Jake’s nails on my tile as he shot through the house from the back, having figured out someone new to play with was here. Without thinking I stepped outside and shut the front door behind me before he could investigate.

That brought Michael and me in close proximity. I could smell his familiar scent—sandalwood—and see the slightly darkened indentations beneath his eyes. He hadn’t been sleeping.

I pushed backward against the closed door, where I could hear Jake scratching questioningly on the other side.

“What do you want?” I asked flatly.

“I wanted to see you. To talk to you.”

Jake started barking.

“You got a dog,” Michael said.

“Yes.” I didn’t owe him any explanations.

Jake’s barking grew louder as he heard our voices but couldn’t get to us, trailing off into an ear-piercing, mournful howling that went on and on, as if he were being tortured. Michael’s face turned stupefied at the racket, and I panicked as a bubble of hysterical laughter swelled up in my chest and threatened to burst out.

A smile spread over Michael’s face, and something panged behind my ribs. His smile had always been like the sun coming out from behind a cloud, shining directly on whomever it was focused on. “You know, he might calm down if we went in.”

I had to clench my hands into fists and dig my nails hard into my palms to avoid returning that smile. Letting him in.

“I don’t think so. My guess is he’d probably tear you limb from limb.”

The smile vanished. “You have a vicious dog?”

“Like Cujo.”

“Brook…that’s not safe.”

Nothing was safe at the moment. But Jake was hardly the threat here.

“I think it’s best if you go.”

He sighed. “I know you have every reason to be angry.” He waited, as if for me to agree. I met his eyes with a steady, flat gaze. “Look, I get that…that this is a bad time. And I caught you off guard. I just didn’t know how to…” He let out a gust of air, looking off to his right and then focusing on something there.

“Hey, you have a wasp nest in your eaves,” he said. “I can—”

“I’ll take care of it.” I hoped they stung him.

He looked back at me, and the vulnerability I saw in his eyes almost made me gasp. “Brook, I am…God, I’m endlessly sorry for hurting you.”

My eyes heated and I had to look away, staring unseeingly out to where two egrets were picking their way through my shaggy lawn. His words were almost exactly the ones I’d used in my letter to Ben after I’d broken his heart.
I am profoundly sorry.

It had tortured me to have hurt someone I cared about so much. In Michael’s agonized expression I saw the reflection of my own remorse, and an unwelcome pinch of empathy wheedled into me.

“Fine,” I said grudgingly.

The tension in his face eased just a little. “Thank you. Just for hearing that—thanks.” He took a breath, running his hands through his hair in a way I’d seen him do a hundred times. “Look, Brook…can we talk? Please? Just for a minute?”

Jake’s anguished howls started up again, and I was suddenly seized with an urgent need to comfort him.

“I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

“Right.” A trailing laugh leaked out of him. “Cujo. Maybe somewhere else, then? Or…another time, maybe?”

He was openly pleading, and the traitorous part of me that had once loved him with everything I had pulled at me to hear him out.

But I couldn’t. I needed to think—away from the overwhelming
presence
of him. I shook my head. “No. Not now.”

His face cleared as if I’d said yes, and he reached into his front pocket. “Okay. That’s fair. But when you’re ready—soon, Brook, I hope—will you call me? I’ll be here…for a while. At least until I hear from you.” He pulled his hand out with a creased white card between two fingers, and I took it by reflex when he held it out.

Michael Cooper, Promotions.

Below the name and meaningless job title was a phone number with an area code I didn’t recognize, and an email address. I looked up when he started talking again.

“Anytime you say, I’ll meet you here. Or anywhere. All I ask is that you listen. And I know you don’t owe me that, and I don’t have any right to ask for it—”

“No, you don’t.”

He nodded, plunging a hand through his hair again, still mussed from the last time, and I saw him blink fast, several times. He looked down, and when he looked back up at me his eyes were shiny. “You must hate me,” he said softly, and in his unsteady voice I heard an echo of the soul-deep pain he’d caused me.

And I liked it. I wanted to cause him more.

“I did for a while,” I said neutrally, and then as soon as his face started to brighten with hope, I snuffed it out:

“But to keep hating you I’d have to somehow summon up some feeling for you…and it seems I just can’t.”

I swung around to grab the doorknob and stepped inside without turning to see whether my bayonet had hit home, shutting the door in his face.

Jake was overjoyed to see me the moment I stepped inside—in exact inverse proportion to my own state of mind.

My legs gave out from under me and I slid down against the inside wall, shaking. As if sensing my mood, the dog didn’t hurl himself onto me the way he usually did, just came over and melted to the floor beside me, his head gently wedged into the crook of my lap formed by my upraised knees. I clutched onto his skull as if it were my sanity.

I had never expected to see Michael again. And even though things had ended so abruptly, so completely, in a way that had made it a little easier on me. Not having to worry about running into him, catching sight of his instantly familiar forest-green Jeep around town, or even seeing his band listed in the community calendar in the paper, meant it was so much easier to slot him away, along with all my feelings of rejection and pain and fury and helplessness.

And love. God, I had loved Michael.

Was that the feeling swamping me now? I thought I’d let those old emotions out, let myself go through the pain I’d managed to smother for nearly a year after our broken engagement. But now, one encounter with him and my head felt squeezed like a Florida grapefruit—and so did my heart.

What was I supposed to do now? Michael wanted us to talk. The therapist in me knew that that was probably a good idea—we’d never had “closure” for our relationship.

But I thought I’d managed to gain that on my own rather nicely—eventually. After my next boyfriend, Kendall, broke up with me via text message, all those feelings I’d stashed away after Michael roared out, and I’d spiraled into a fairly crazy place that ultimately landed me in jail, before I got my act together and dealt with my sublimated pain. Which led me to Ben, the first truly healthy relationship I’d probably ever had.

Which I’d handled just super.

It turned out I wasn’t ready for what Ben had been offering at the time, even though I’d wanted to be. I had some work to do on myself first, I’d finally realized, and I had to do it on my own.

So maybe Michael was right. Maybe I still had fallout from our relationship to deal with.

I couldn’t sort my thoughts alone. I needed Sasha.

After I hauled myself off the floor and found my phone, my best friend answered on the first ring.

“Sorry we’re not there yet. It’s been a weird—”

“I saw Michael.”

“What?!”

I took a shaky breath. “He just left.”

“He was
at your house
? How are you? Are you okay? Is he still there? We’re coming over.”

“No!” My shout echoed in my concrete-floored living room, and I torqued back my volume. “No…not Stu. I can’t talk about this with him yet. He still wants to kill Michael.”

My brother had always had a protective streak, but since he’d started dating my best friend this past year, it had ballooned into something a bit volatile where she and I were concerned. Last summer he’d gotten cracked ribs and a sprained ankle after he tried to intervene when Chip Santana—my greatest mistake—had launched himself at us in a blind rage on my back porch.

“Then
I’m
coming. I’ll be there in seven minutes. Don’t move.”

True enough, exactly seven minutes later I heard my friend, who could have given Ayrton Senna a run for his money behind the wheel, screech her car into my driveway, and within seconds the front door crashed open. Sasha stood there spraddle-legged, eyes blazing, and somehow she’d procured a Taser that she wielded in her right hand.

“Where is that son of a bitch?” she bit out, and frankly if I’d been Michael and I were standing in front of this Valkyrie, I’d have wet my pants.

“He’s gone,” I mumbled wearily. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

And then the tears came. Hard.

By the time it was over we were sitting on my sofa, Sasha’s arm around me, Jake lying calmly at our feet after Sasha commanded him to “Go lie down, buddy.” My eyes were swollen like puffer fish…but I felt weirdly lighter.

“Well,
that
was a long time coming,” Sasha said as my sobs tapered off. “Feel better?”

“Yeah,” I said, surprised. “I do.”

She nodded once. “Okay. Now that you got that out…what’s next?”

“I don’t know, Sash. Do I see him? No—what would be the point? But why does he even want to? Guilt, I guess. Do I even want to see him? I don’t know. But should I? I don’t think ‘should’ really means much in this situation.”

She was leaning back against the sofa, arms crossed, watching me. “Did you need me here, or are you having a perfectly adequate therapy session with yourself?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m just trying to work through my feelings.”

She slapped a hand to her heart. “Oh, padawan. I’m so proud.”

Since my spectacular breakdown last winter, Sasha had taken a deeply vested interest in my awakening emotional side. Meanwhile
I
was still trying to deal with what felt like an out-of-control elevator jerking up and down the shaft. “I don’t know what to do, Sash,” I said finally. “What do I do?”

“You see him, of course.”

“What?” It was the last thing I expected her to say.

“Honey, two years ago the most impactful relationship you’ve ever had imploded into a black hole. Now you have the chance to find out why. You’re a therapist: You have to analyze everything—and you need answers. So go get some.”

“But what about reopening old wounds? Mining a spent quarry? Going into the crack den when you know you’re a crack addict?”

Sasha lifted one eyebrow. “Do you think maybe you get too into the metaphors sometimes?” I glared at her. “I’m just saying, you can toss out every tried-and-true aphorism in your arsenal, but you know from your own practice that every person is different—every situation is unique. And for you, with Michael, I think you need to find out what happened.”

“So…what? I should call him? Meet up?”

Sasha shot me a skeptical glance. “Not looking like that, you shouldn’t.”

I reached my fingers up to press under my swollen eyes. “Well, obviously I’ll fix the damage—I’m not a total idiot.”

“Uh, no. It’s going to take a bit more than a splash of water and some concealer.”

“Sash!”

She held up her hands, and Jake took that as an invitation for petting, scrambling up and scootching his head within her reach. Sasha absently obliged as she frowned at my face. “Honey, no offense, but he caught you…well, not the way you want to run into an ex.”

I looked down at the jeans and knit shirt I’d put on this morning to meet Ben. I’d given some thought to what I wore—while Ben and I had met face-to-face sporadically since we’d renewed contact a month ago, I was still conscious of wanting to make a good impression. I didn’t just throw on shorts and a ratty t-shirt—but I also didn’t want to look like I was going overboard, knowing he was seeing someone else…and that she’d be there too. But then again, that someone was Perfect Pamela, so I’d spent a little time on my makeup and with my hair. I thought the effect was just about right—I looked nice without seeming to have tried too hard. At least before my crying jag.

But Sasha was still assessing me with a troubled look on her face. “This”—she waved a hand up and down my body—“does not say, ‘Eat your heart out.’”

I threw up my hands. “Fine. You win. Come on—you can pick something out of my closet.” I stood and Jake scrambled to my side, thrusting his skull under my hand so I could put it to good use.

“Oh, no. This requires a bit more than that.”

“You mean—”

“Get your purse. We’re going shopping.”

Sasha was a wizard.

Four hours later, I had shopping bags dripping from my arms—the whole shebang: new clothes, shoes, even underwear (she insisted that confidence came from the inside out, and by “inside” she apparently meant “the crack of my ass.” The lacy little thongs she’d insisted I buy bisected my buttocks, but I had to admit they made me feel sexier than the bikini briefs I usually wore). She’d also engineered a stop at the MAC counter, where she bustled her usual makeup artist over to me—a gorgeous transgendered woman named Trixie—with instructions to give me a “fierce daytime look that will make her ex’s tongue fall out but look totally natural.”

“Oh, sugar, I’ve been there,” Trixie said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes. “Sit yourself down, honey, and let Trixie fix you up.”

Trixie was a bit of a magician herself—when she was finished I looked like I’d stepped out of the pages of
Glamour
magazine, but no matter how closely I examined my face, I couldn’t quite detect what product had given me such an elegant, polished look. I didn’t look made up so much as I looked like the best possible me.

I bought everything she’d used on me, reflecting that a year ago I wouldn’t have been able to swing even a lipstick. My Breakup Doctor practice had changed my life in more ways than one.

“You come back and see Trixie if you need a little refresher on how to paint all that on, sugar,” the woman said, blowing us a kiss as we left the counter.

Back at my house we did a test run of the whole thing: makeup, hair (Sasha trimmed my bangs and smoothed them into a side part that skimmed my right eye in a really sexy little swoop I wouldn’t have thought my usual frizzy waves could pull off), and the outfit: faded skinny jeans with some fraying here and there that actually looked worn-in, instead of intentional; a royal blue knit tank over my new professionally fitted Freya bra that made my modest boobs look truly impressive; and a fitted hot-pink jacket that nipped my waist into nothing. “Bold colors indicate confidence, and they really make your complexion glow,” was Sasha’s verdict.

She had insisted on nude five-inch pumps, which I’d tried to veto, but they were surprisingly comfortable with their one-inch platform, and I had to admit they took the whole ensemble up a few notches. “Plus they’ll make you an inch or two taller than he is, and that will make him feel literally and metaphorically small,” she said with a satisfied smirk. She finished the whole thing with a plain silver chain that dipped below the tank top’s neckline, a chunky pink watch, and a wide blue leather bracelet.

I would never have put any of it together, but it looked…spectacular. I literally felt like a Hollywood star, effortlessly stylish while out picking up my kids from daycare and trying to avoid the paps.

“How in the hell did you do that?” I said, staring at my image wonderingly in my full-length mirror. “I look amazing. But casual amazing.”

Sasha preened as she made a minute adjustment of my pushed-up jacket sleeves. “You have your forte; I have mine.
Now
you can call that jackass and arrange to meet.”

She was dead right—since I’d learned to stop running from my feelings, stop pushing them down and pretending everything was okay, I knew I needed to see Michael to finally close that chapter of my life. And
this
was the image I wanted to present to the man who’d left me devastated: this confident, polished, poised woman in the mirror. The woman, in fact, I hoped I was well on my way to actually becoming.