Heart Conditions (The Breakup Doctor Series Book 3) (21 page)

twenty-four

Michael rang my doorbell sharply at six thirty on Friday. I wasn’t quite ready—he’d always operated on “band time,” which could mean anything from fifteen minutes after he’d promised to be somewhere, to an hour, to forgetting it entirely—and I answered in bare feet and a ridiculous terry cloth robe that my mom had given me one Christmas.

“Whoa!” I said as I took in his outfit: gray pants with a lavender button-down and a boldly colored Jerry Garcia tie that told me the old Michael wasn’t completely extinguished. I was glad of that. “You look nice.”

He eyed the appliqued cartoon flamingos dotting my robe. “You look…unusual.”

“I am so close to ready, you have no idea. Give me three minutes.”

Michael’s outfit told me loud and clear what I’d been trying not to think about all week: This was a Real Live Date.

I’d planned to downplay that with jeans and a silk top, but there was no way I could do that now. I reached for a faux-wraparound knit dress and a pair of heels, swiped on lip gloss, and then stood at the bathroom counter leaning my weight on my hands ’til I calmed my racing heart.

Michael was still standing in the entryway when I came out.

“You’re allowed to sit,” I said, putting on earrings.

“Yeah, I know, I was…Wow.”

I gave a nervous bubble of laughter. “Thanks.”

For a moment we stood at the door, looking at each other, ’til I had to break the intensity of his stare by reaching for my purse on the entry table.

Outside, Michael followed me to the passenger side of his older-model Lexus—it was still hard to believe he’d traded his funky old Jeep for something so sedate. I shot him a glance as he flanked me. “What are you doing?”

“I’m opening your door.”

“You’re…?” I couldn’t help it—I laughed. It felt like the first time in days, and I relished the feeling. “Seriously, Michael, did you go on like a makeover show or something? You’re weirding me out. You’re too good to be true.”

He just grinned, and held the door while I got in.

“Where are we headed?”

“The Plantation,” he said, rather proudly.

I froze. Ben had taken me there to celebrate my first group session last fall. It had been a turning point for us—that night, after hours of a perfect meal and giggling over our hilariously serious waiter, when we got back to my house I’d finally opened myself up to him, warts and all, showing him my mortifying drunken tattoo, confessing pretty much the lowest point I’d hit after Kendall dumped me…and ironically, telling him about Michael—the first time I’d ever let myself even say his name since our broken engagement. It had been our first real intimacy—before the sex, before we’d even admitted we’d fallen in love. It was the most naked and vulnerable I’d ever been with anyone.

I’d been through too much this week—I didn’t have it in me to face going to the same restaurant with Michael.

But he looked so pleased with himself; he was trying so hard to abide by everything I’d asked of him, to prove that he was an adult now, a professional, and that my business was in good hands—and that I was. I swallowed. “That’s a bit fancy,” I said in a small voice, hoping he’d reconsider.

“Didn’t see that coming, did you?”

“Nope. I sure didn’t.” I made myself return his smile, but it felt more like a labial contraction as I swung my other leg inside and Michael shut the door.

It actually turned out to be a great night.

By the time we were seated—in a different room of the restored old manor house from the one Ben and I had been in, with a different waiter—Michael and I had fallen back into our old easy rhythms. We ordered scads of food, stuffing ourselves from each other’s plates, and a bottle of wine, which lubricated any residual awkwardness and made it easy for us to laugh, to tell each other stories, to reminisce.

When the bill came I reached for it, but he grabbed it away, insisting that he wanted to treat. “The least I can do after everything is buy you a nice dinner,” he said with a crooked grin, and I let him.

I never thought I’d ever see Michael again, let alone have a conversation with him—and certainly not that we’d be able to reclaim our friendship after everything that had happened. And yet it seemed we’d done it. A thorn I hadn’t even realized had been pricking me had been removed, and it felt so good not only not to hate him anymore, but to be reminded why I had liked him in the first place. And for a few hours I almost forgot about Sasha, about Stu…about Ben—or at least the sharp pain of it all faded into a dull ache.

Maybe this was how things had to happen all along. We’d both admitted we’d been different people back then, that we’d changed. Maybe our paths were always meant to run together after all—just not that soon.

By the time we got back to my house I was feeling a little bit tipsy—I’d suggested a cab, but Michael rightly pointed out that three-fourths of the wine bottle had gone into my gullet, not his. He got out and walked me to the door.

“You’re like a real gentleman,” I said, giggling as I rummaged for my keys.

“Almost just like one,” he said wryly, with a smile I termed avuncular.

Avuncular. I turned the word over in my head, and liked it so much I said it aloud.

“A
vun
cular.”

“What?”

I just grinned, waving a hand in the air. “Pay me no mind. I’m loopy. You’re fun. I forgot.”

And then suddenly stucco was pressing into my back—I could feel the rough nubs of its texture through the knit of my dress—and hands were on my shoulders…and then lips were on my mouth.

Michael’s lips.

On my mouth.

They were soft but insistent, warm and exactly the right amount of wet—the way they always were. And I knew before he did it that he’d bring his hands to my face, cupping my head and pulling me closer. Michael had always been a nearly perfect kisser.

And he still was.

I shoved him backward as I pushed myself away from the wall and faced off with him, legs and arms akimbo like an Ultimate Cage Fighting champ on the defense.

“What are you doing?” I blurted, all my giddiness evaporated.

He raised an eyebrow. “Well, if you have to ask I didn’t really do it right.”

“Stop it. I’m serious. What was that?”

“It was a
kiss
, Brook! For God’s sake!”

“Why?” I sputtered.

“Why?” He moved a step away from me, shoving a hand into his hair that left it wild and sticking up, the way I remembered it. “Why do you think?”

“I don’t know!” I shouted, then glanced to my nearest neighbor’s house, dark and quiet.

He sighed and stepped back, giving me space, but kept his eyes on mine. “What’s going on, Brook?”

“I don’t know,” I repeated, my voice lower.

“Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I don’t know.” It was like I was stuck on a loop.

“Oh, come on, Brook!” he said, aggravated.

“Shhh!”

“No, not ‘shhh,’” he fired back. “Talk to me! For once, would you please talk to me instead of shutting down?”

That sobered me up.

“Fine,” I said in a harsh whisper after a long, charged moment. “Come inside.”

I snatched the keys from the bottom of my bag so hard one bounced back and bit into my skin as they popped out of the detritus of my purse, but I welcomed the pain as something to focus on. I threw open the door and gave a staccato gesture for him to go in.

I slapped on all the overhead lights in the living room, and we both blinked in the sudden glare.

“Sit,” I said shortly.

He did, with a heavy sigh.

“Why are you mad?”

It was a genuine question, not rhetorical or angry, asked in a reasonable voice. He truly didn’t understand.

Which made two of us.

I took a calming breath and sank into the chair opposite the sofa he’d sat on. He’d called me on my old instinct to retreat behind my stone walls, and that wasn’t who I wanted to be anymore. He’d asked me to be genuine with him, and I would.

“You kissed me,” I said simply.

“Agreed.”

He still looked blank, and I raised my hands palms up.

“You
kissed
me, Michael,” I said, as if clarifying. “We were taking things slow.”

“Aren’t we?”

“I
thought
so,” I retorted.

“And you didn’t want me to overwhelm you—to take you over. And I’m not, Brook. I’ve done everything you asked of me. I’ll keep doing it if you want. However long you want—I told you that. But I also told you how I felt, and it’s not like that’s going to change.”

Something shifted uncomfortably in my belly.

He leaned forward, and then immediately back, as if he were conscious of trying not to crowd me. “This isn’t a game where you can set the rules and we have to strictly play by them. People can change—you have. And God knows I’m trying to show you I have.”

“I can see that,” I conceded, but my tone was still sharp. “But why are you backing me into a corner?”

He shot me a bewildered look. “I didn’t think I…” He blew out a sigh and leaned forward, elbows propped on his knees, looking down at his clasped hands as if thinking.

“Look…” he finally went on quietly. “If there’s someone else…Ben.” His name on Michael’s lips knifed through me, and I looked away. “I’ll get out of the way. If you don’t feel anything for me anymore, I’ll get out of the way. But if neither of those things is true…are you really willing to walk away from this without ever knowing if it could have been something?”

I couldn’t look at him—didn’t want to meet his gaze and see the truth reflected in them: that he wasn’t wrong. That I’d been sending mixed signals.

Now he was forcing me to make a definitive decision…and that was what was making me angry.

Which wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t rational. But I wasn’t feeling particularly rational at the moment.

“I think you should go,” I said quietly.

He slapped his hands on his thighs hard, and in the silence the sound echoed like a gunshot, making me jump. “Dammit, Brook, don’t do this! Don’t shut down and shut me out!”

“I’m not! I just…It’s too much!” I felt as if I were suffocating, and I couldn’t seem to think straight with him sitting here in my house, across from me, asking me for something I wasn’t sure if I still wanted or could give. When you’re out of ammunition, you get out of the foxhole. “I can’t think, Michael. You just have to give me some time to
think
. Okay?”

He looked at me for a long moment, and finally nodded. “Okay.” He stood up. “Okay. I get that. I said I’d wait as long as you need, and I will. But…” One hand lifted toward me, and he looked as if he wanted to move closer, but the cocktail table blocked his way. I didn’t know if I was grateful for that or disappointed. He dropped his arm back to his side. “Brook…” He shook his head, as if the words he wanted wouldn’t come. “I know I don’t have any right to ask this, after the way I…what I did to you, but I’m asking anyway. Just…let me hear from you. Okay?”

Woodenly I nodded. “You will. I won’t leave you hanging.”

twenty-five

I hardly slept that night. When I did drift off it was light and unsatisfying, ill-formed thoughts of Michael and Ben, Sasha and Stu, chasing themselves through my dreams, keeping me unsettled and half-awake, roiling with indecision and confusion and pain.

I was grateful to have my group therapy session to drag my thoughts out of my own head—but they all came crashing back the minute I stepped outside into the bright Saturday-afternoon sunshine. When my phone rang as I climbed into my car I was almost afraid to answer it—but it was only my dad.

“Hey, doll, I was hoping to bring something by tomorrow morning, if you’re free.”

All week I’d desperately been wishing I could cancel my beach day tomorrow with Ben and Jake. I didn’t think I could keep up the farce of a friendship now that I’d extinguished my secret hope of more. Daddy’s visit gave me the excuse I needed and I said yes, then took the coward’s way out and texted Ben that I wouldn’t be able to make it tomorrow.

He didn’t reply.

For a while my dad used to stop by all the time with various tools and supplies for our ongoing rehab of my extreme fixer-upper. But over the last months, neck-deep in Breakup Doctor business, I’d lost impetus, and my father had taken to spending most weekends fishing with Stu on Dad’s boat sort-of named after my mom, the
Joie de Viv
. The house had been in a half-before, half-after state for some time now: My office area and front living room were in decent shape, but the kitchen, den, and master bedroom not so much.

If Daddy was in a renovation mood again this weekend, that might be perfect—nothing sounded better to me right now than a little heavy demolition.

But when the doorbell rang a little after nine a.m. on Sunday, it wasn’t sledgehammers and circular saws my father had brought, but a bag of doughnuts and the rocking chair he’d been working on in the garage for months. He’d set it down on my front walk and was sitting in it, slowly rocking forward and backward, a waxed-paper bag from Merritt’s Bakery on his lap as he chewed a bite of the chocolate-frosted in his hand.

“Morning, doll,” he said, grinning.

“Daddy? I thought this was for Mom?”

“Your mother has her own chair, sweetheart. I thought my girl needed one for herself.”

He handed me the bag and his doughnut, and I followed him through my house with them as he carried the chair onto my lanai. Together we moved the furniture so the chair had room to rock, facing out toward my overgrown backyard.

The wood gleamed in the morning sunlight angling onto the porch, glowing a rich warm caramel from every meticulously smoothed surface. A paprika-colored outdoor cushion covered the seat and part of the back. It was beautiful workmanship—everything my father made was—but the old-fashioned chair wasn’t exactly me. Still, I was touched by the gesture and the months of effort that had gone into it, so I lowered myself into it and pushed myself into a rocking motion. Of course the chair moved like it was on casters.

I smiled up at him. “It’s gorgeous, Daddy. I love it. Thank you.”

He settled onto the sofa across from me, reaching for his doughnut I’d set on top of the bag. He tossed the rest of the pastries to me and I pulled out a Bavarian crème—my favorite—and we munched quietly together. My father always brought a wonderful sense of peace to our silences, and for a long time the only sound was my own chewing, the gentle crunch of unswept dirt under the chair’s runners, and the guttural croaking of egrets outside the screened porch.

“I moved the chairs I made for your mom and me down to the dock,” he said after a while, as if continuing our conversation. “I don’t know if you noticed?”

I hadn’t.

“We’ve been sitting down there a lot lately. Just taking some time to relax at the end of a day, make some space in our heads, enjoy the evening. We get so busy sometimes we forget how lucky we are down here that we can do that—sit out by the water—in winter, when the rest of the country’s all bundled up against the cold. We forget how beautiful that canal is, especially at sunset; the sun sinks right over the Caloosahatchee, turns the whole thing orange. Just about the color of those cushions there on your chair.”

I was bemused by the idea of my always-in-motion mother and my ever-tinkering dad sitting out in their rocking chairs out on the dock, like the most clichéd of old people. By the fact that my dad, never much of a talker even when I tried to engage him, was rambling on, waxing poetic about Florida and the river and the sunset.

“Your mother picked those cushions out for you,” he went on, oblivious. “She’s got such an eye for that kind of thing, and I don’t know which end is up with anything but woodworking.”

“It’s perfect,” I said honestly. The deep orange was a needed pop of color on my neutral porch, and tied in with the warm earth tones I’d selected inside the house. It pleased me that my mother had paid such attention to my preferences in décor—and to me. But even more, the fact that my mom and dad were doing things together, enjoying each other’s company, felt as if my world were resettling on its axis once again. It had been a long year since her defection from their marriage.

Dad’s voice rumbled out over the breeze. “It’s nice. Sometimes you have to remember to do that, you know?”

I’d lost the thread of our conversation. “Do what, Daddy?”

My father was looking at me strangely, an unreadable smile on his face as he watched me rocking and eating (my second doughnut, but who was counting?).

“Nothing.”

I’d taken my dad’s response to my question as a dismissal—he’d changed his mind about trying to explain what he’d been getting at, reverted to his usual taciturn self, and we’d finished the doughnuts in companionable silence as I rocked in the chair he’d made me until at last he’d stood and patted himself down for his keys, kissed me on the cheek, and said he had to go.

When I got to family dinner that night, I was bewildered to discover the kitchen deserted, my dad’s workshop empty. A frisson of concern tickling my belly, I searched the house, calling their names, until finally, when I opened the sliding glass doors to their lanai, I heard my parents’ distant voices coming from down at the dock. I picked my way down the stone walkway from their back screen door toward the water and found the two of them in the rocking chairs just as Dad had said, each of them holding a cocktail, facing out to where the orange ball of the sun was just sinking into the river. True to my dad’s description, it laid a glowing path of fire along the canal.

“Is everything okay?” I heard the thread of uncertainty in my own voice.

“Hey, there, doll! Couldn’t be better,” my dad said.

“Hi, honey,” Mom said, angling her head back toward me.

“Did you cancel dinner?” I asked, confused. “There’s nothing cooking in the kitchen.”

“No, dinner’s still on. We lost track of time and so your dad suggested we order pizza tonight for a change.”

What was going on? They knew all of us were coming over for dinner, but they’d just been sitting here—and Mom forgot to
cook
? There was no such thing as a non-home-cooked Sunday dinner. And she’d called me “honey.”

Was my mother dying?

“What’s going on?” I voiced my thoughts anxiously, coming around to face my parents head-on.

“What do you mean?” Mom said.

I fisted hands on my hips, eyeing them both with a hard stare. “What are you
doing
?”

Dad shrugged, and he and my mom exchanged a look.

My mother actually smiled as she answered, “Nothing.”

That was when I understood that my father’s “Nothing” that morning had, in fact, been the answer to my question—what he wanted me to remember to do.

When Stu and Sasha arrived, I gave them each a hug, holding them a little longer than usual. Stu squeezed me so tight the breath whooshed out of me, but I said nothing, just returned the pressure. My baby brother was dealing with some real-world shit he’d never counted on. All I could do was let him know I had his back if he needed me. Sasha was slow to meet my eyes, an apology swimming in hers, but I tried to bolster her with my smile, and kept my arm around her waist as we went into the kitchen.

Dinner was quieter than usual, Stu and Sasha barely offering a few words in the weekly roundup, but if Mom noticed she didn’t point it out. Instead, after we’d all gone around the table, she surprised us by taking a turn of her own. “Well, your father and I have a little bit of news. We’ll be away for ten days as soon as
Glass Menagerie
closes, and need you kids to keep an eye on things at the house.”

Stu, Sasha, and I exchanged glances.

“Away where?” I asked.

Dad was grinning at my mom, his eyes alight. “Wherever your mom wants to go,” he said. “I think we’re thinking a little driving tour out west, maybe the Grand Canyon.”

I raised my eyebrows. That seemed a little cornpone for my mom. “Seriously?” I said to her.

She raised her shoulders.

“Your father’s never seen it. I want him to.”

They were looking only at each other, and for a moment we kids weren’t even there.

“I can grab the mail and rotate the lights,” I said, and then in a fit of magnanimity borne of the warmth blooming in my chest, I added, “And I can even check on your Naples apartment if you want.”

“I don’t have that anymore,” Mom said lightly, reaching for the salad.

Again Stu, Sasha, and I bounced glances off one another.

“You don’t?” Stu asked cautiously.

“I released it.” She said it as casually as if she were announcing the side dishes for the evening, rather than telling all of us kids that she and my dad were back together—full-time.

I blinked, and looked across the table to see Sasha and Stu wearing matching grins that probably reflected the one growing across my own face. For just that moment everything was wonderful, and I let myself simply enjoy it.

As we cleaned up afterward, I noticed the glass phoenix I’d given my mother in the windowsill above the sink, glittering even in the harsh overhead light. It was the only knickknack out—Mom didn’t like clutter—and the sight of it chased away a little bit more of the sadness that sat on my shoulders like a shroud.

Monday morning, when I snapped awake at four thirty a.m. from muscle memory, unable to get back to sleep, instead of torturing myself listening to Jim Veneer carrying on with my old radio show without me, I took my coffee out onto the porch and settled into Daddy’s chair. I pushed off with my feet experimentally, swaying forward and back with the chair’s movement.

After work, in the gap left by Jake’s absence, I took a glass of lemonade out and rocked. As the week went on, sitting in Dad’s chair on my porch looking out over my backyard became a routine. At first I was antsy, rocking fast, my mind buzzing over my to-do list, a thorny issue with a client, or topics for my column.

I worried over Sasha and Stu like the most devout of Catholics on well-worn rosary beads. Would they make it through this challenge together? Would Sasha resent him forever if she turned down this job—took on the new job of motherhood she seemed increasingly certain she didn’t want? Would he ever truly get over it if she didn’t?

I thought about Ben—drove myself crazy with pictures of him and Pamela getting ready for their adventure together, or stationed together in an isolated village, working toward common goals by day, sharing a common grass hut by night, removed from the world and the petty desires and problems of someone like me.

I wrestled—endlessly—with my feelings for Michael. So much of my resistance to him had been related to Ben. With that option finally closed off, would I always regret it, as Michael had said, if I didn’t give him—give us—one more chance now that we’d both grown up a little?

Gradually my busy thoughts uncoiled a little as I rocked on my patio with my coffee in the mornings, or a glass of juice or wine at the end of the day, and instead of the constant stream of rumination I began to actually see my surroundings—the chipped and peeling areas on my porch that needed to be scraped and repainted, the lawn that was overdue for mowing, the beds that hadn’t been mulched since I moved in. A new to-do list took amorphous shape in my mind.

Little by little I found my imagination wandering off aimlessly, picturing the weedy areas cleared and flowers growing in their place, a miniature citrus grove I could plant in one sunny corner, a place for a vegetable garden in another.

I made no specific plans, just looked and dreamed and listened to the sounds of tanagers chirping their bouncy melodies in the oak tree outside the porch door, a distant lawn mower somewhere in the neighborhood, the whoosh of cars speeding by on Winkler Avenue behind my house.

One evening I picked up Sasha and we went to HomeGoods. Since Jake had savaged my bedding and curtains the first night I’d had him, I’d been using a cheap bare-bones comforter and had never bothered with new window treatments.

I’d spent so much time and energy on the “public” spaces of my house—the office area, the living room—but I’d let my own personal spaces stagnate. So that night we picked out a fluffy comforter in sunny shades of yellow and cream, with a cheery teal stripe that instantly lifted my mood. Sasha directed me toward crisp ecru sheets in a high thread count that she swore I’d love to feel against my skin, beachy off-white linen curtains, and a stack of new pillows. Afterward we stopped at Lowe’s and she helped me pick out carpet—a thick pile the color of sand—for the bare concrete floor I’d never bothered to cover after I ripped up the previous owner’s horrible ancient blue carpet, and bamboo blinds for the windows.