Heart Conditions (The Breakup Doctor Series Book 3) (6 page)

“Oh. All right. Then…that’s fine. Thanks.” He sounded disappointed, and I winced at how ungracious I’d sounded.

“It’s a really nice offer, but not necessary,” I tacked on. “I’m happy to have Jake. Anytime—really. I’ve missed him.”

“He misses you too, Brook.”

I listened to him breathing for a moment, unsure what to say, unwilling to hang up.

“Say hello from me!” Perfect Pamela’s silken voice in the background cut through my stupor. I wished she’d sounded snarky or controlling or jealous, but no. She just seemed sincere.

“Hi to Pamela!” I said brightly. “Please wish her big, big luck from me!”

“Will do. Take care, Brook.”

“You too, Ben. Bye.”

I set the phone down, the quiet of my house feeling even more acute. Sasha still hadn’t called back. Ben was gallivanting through the Big Apple with Saint Pamela. Michael was…well, I didn’t know what Michael was. I needed someone to figure that out with.

Jake had finished his dinner and was lying contentedly at the base of my stool, head resting between his paws. “Hey, buddy,” I said. “Come here. Come here and talk to me.”

His eyes blinked open and he gazed up at me, but made no move to get up.

“Jake,” I said. “Hey, Jakie! Come here, boy. Come here! You want some love?” I infused my voice with great excitement, but Jake only closed his eyes, let out a sleepy groan, and farted.

I sighed.

seven

Sasha finally called me back late the next morning. I was with a client, so I missed her call, but when I returned it I got her voicemail. “Call me back!” I said insistently.

And she did—later that afternoon. Again my return call went to voicemail. The cycle happened one more time that day, and I finally realized she was deliberately calling in the first fifty minutes of an hour, when she knew I would be in a consultation with a client.

My best friend was avoiding me.

I remembered how strangely she’d been acting at dinner at my parents’ Sunday night—the last time I’d talked to her directly. Something was bugging her, and there was only one problem she could have that she might feel she couldn’t talk to me about.

Stu.

My stomach tightened—was my brother reverting to his old commitment-phobic ways?

That would devastate Sasha. She really cared about him—and she was herself with Stu in a way I’d never seen her with anyone else: relaxed, comfortable, goofy and…happy. I’d been certain he felt same way about her, but I couldn’t think of any other reason Sasha would be avoiding me like the clap.

Her final message said she was meeting with her trainer that evening for an extra-long workout at the gym, and wouldn’t be able to talk. Clever girl. She knew I would never set foot in there.

I had to talk to her, but Sasha continued to neatly sidestep every call and text I left for her. Intercepting her at her place wouldn’t have done any good—she and Stu had lived together, for all intents and purposes, practically since they’d started dating, and this wasn’t something I could talk about with her in front of him.

That meant I had to get creative.

The one thing Sasha cannot resist (besides, up until the recent development of said baby brother, a completely unsuitable man) is a cry for help. So after work the next day I baited a Sasha trap.

“Hey,” I said to her voicemail on the umpteenth time she ignored my call. “I slept with Michael.” And I hung up.

Her return call took exactly thirty-seven seconds.

“What the hell did you do?!”

“Hey, Sash,” I said despondently.

“What happened? Why did you do it? Are you okay? Did that bastard hurt you again?”

I was lounging on the sofa in my living room, contentedly filing my nails, Jake stretched out on the floor beside me. But I produced a few sniffles and a shaky sigh. “I don’t know what to do, Sash…I’m a mess.”

“I’m on my way over.”

I almost felt guilty about how easy it was.

I was waiting for her in the living room when she got there, an open bottle of wine on the cocktail table, two glasses already poured beside it.

“Okay,” she said, barely stopping to drop her purse and keys on my entry table. “What do we need here—damage control, pep talk, or confidence building?”

I pushed one of the glasses into her hand and came clean: “None of the above. I didn’t sleep with Michael—but I had to do something to make you stop avoiding me.”

Sash’s concerned expression melted into relief and then, just as quickly, anger. She set her glass down on my coffee table so hard I thought she’d snap the stem. “Seriously? What are we, twelve?”

“You tell me,” I countered. “You’ve been playing ‘dodge-call’ with me for three days.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“You’ve been cagey. What’s going on, Sasha?”

Her face shuttered in a way I’d never seen; Sasha was always an open book—to me and anyone else.

“Is it Stu?” I pressed.

“No, it’s not Stu.”

“Sash.” I folded my arms and gave her my best “quit bullshitting me” expression. I ought to have mastered it, having been on the receiving end of my mom’s for thirty-plus years.

“It’s not, Brook,” she insisted. When I just kept my stare fixed on her, she sighed. “Your brother and I are fine. We’re great, actually. In fact your call interrupted a really nice blowie I was giving him, and—”

My hands shot up to my ears. “Lalalalala! Okay! Geez, I was just asking.”

Sasha gave a dry laugh, but there wasn’t much humor in it.

I frowned. “So what is it that’s bugging you? Work?”

“You know, a smart therapist I know taught me that when there are things people don’t want to talk about, they deflect the attention onto someone else.”

“No fair therapizing me.”

“Then quit stalling. What happened with Michael? Did you have sex with him?”

“Hell, no! He wanted to talk, and I…Like you said, I needed the closure.”

“Did you wear the outfit we bought you?”

“Oh…I totally forgot.”

“Brook! I put a lot of effort into that.” She looked so put-out I had to laugh.

“I know—I’m sorry. I’ll wear it. I just…I hadn’t planned to see him. It was sort of an impulse, and I just…went. I left from work, though,” I added, “so I looked nice.”

She tipped her head slightly, offering me a skeptical look. “Okay,” she said, sinking onto the sofa beside me. “Tell me everything.”

So I did, from the peace plant being delivered all the way through our hours-long conversation. Sasha listened, rapt, until I finally wound down.

“So he moved to
Seattle
after he left you?”

I nodded. “He said he had to get as far away from the memories as he could. But he hated it. Hated himself.”

“Rightly so.”

“He never left his apartment. When he realized that he’d spent an entire week without seeing another human face or speaking a single word out loud, he finally moved to Portland.”

“Where he joined another band.” She was sorting out the facts to keep them straight in her mind.

I nodded again. “Except he hated that too.”

“So now he’s a band promoter.”

“Well, he was. He got them signed to a label, and he got cut out of the deal.”

“Too bad. So sad.”

“Sash. He’s not bitter about it. He’s happy for them. You know, he’s not an awful person. You liked him once.”

“That was before he broke your heart in the worst way anyone can. That’s unforgivable.”

“Well, I have,” I said.

She narrowed her eyes. “You have
what
?”

“Forgiven him,” I said simply.

“When did
that
happen?” she yelped.

I shrugged. “Sometime between him telling me why he left, and sitting and talking to him. Little by little…I don’t know. It was like a weight I didn’t know I was carrying lifted off me. I’ve been hating him for so long—even after I convinced myself I was over it—that it’s colored everything I’ve done since—and not in a good way.”

“That’s not true,” Sasha protested. “Look at your Breakup Doctor stuff. You’re doing amazing things for people, helping them in ways you never would have before.”

“Maybe. But I’ve been so angry, so determined never to let myself get hurt that way again, I haven’t really been open to anything new, have I? I mean…look at Ben.” I stopped, my throat closing up.

Sasha held up a hand. “Oh, no. You will not beat yourself up over that. You were right to take some time to figure out what you wanted.”

“I just wonder, if I’d been able to let go of everything with Michael sooner, would I have been ready for what Ben was offering? And now…it’s too late.”

As if sensing my upset, Jake, who until now had been sitting quietly at Sasha’s feet like a huge, hairy white angel, pushed himself up and padded over to me, resting his head on my lap and gazing at me with his big liquid brown eyes. I stroked his head, a wave of tenderness for him crashing over me.

“Is it?” I heard Sasha say, and looked over to see her eyeing us with an assessing expression.

“Well.” I sighed. “He’s got Perfect Pamela.”

“And you have his dog.”

Jake broke into a grin as if to agree, but I didn’t have the heart to remind my best friend—or myself—that no matter how much I loved him, the Great Pyrenees was only a consolation prize.

After Sasha left I cleaned up our glasses—she’d been so laser-focused on me she’d hardly touched her wine—and I realized I never got back around to asking what was bothering her. She’d gotten me completely distracted.

I straightened, frowning. She’d accused me of deflecting…had she masterfully done it to me without my even noticing?

What was Sasha avoiding telling me?

With Michael in mind, I sat down later that night to write my weekly column for the
Tropic Times
.

“Putting Down the Weight You Didn’t Know You Were Carrying”

Somebody broke your heart.

I don’t have to know you to know that’s true—if you’re alive and you interact with people, then chances are you’ve had your heart broken.

No matter what kind of heartbreak you’ve suffered—romantic or otherwise—it’s the worst kind of wound. Unlike a physical wound, emotional ones don’t heal straightforwardly. They get ripped back open over and over. They fester. They refuse to heal, handicapping everything you do, every new connection you try to make. It’s not that you were hurt once and you fear being hurt the same way again—it’s that you were hurt once and you are still hurting in that same place, the gash in your heart as tender as if it were new, making you overcautious, overprotective…fearful.

Faced with the choice between a broken leg and a broken heart, most of us who have experienced the latter will choose the leg—as painful as it is—because we know this truth: that physical wounds heal more easily.

But it’s only when we realize our happiness rests, at least partially, in someone else’s hands that we truly understand what it is to love them—and to lose them. When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose—it’s only by understanding what’s at stake that we can appreciate the glorious risk that love is. And that it is a risk worth taking.

So be grateful to those who broke your heart. Yes, it hurt. Yes, loving someone deeply means mourning their loss just as deeply. And that’s okay. Like a personal trainer, they have pushed you further than you thought you could go, and in the process they helped make you stronger. And when the next love comes around, thanks to the one that didn’t work out you’ll recognize it. You’ll be ready for it. You’ll be open to it.

But first you have to let go of the injury, let it heal—and get back in the game.

eight

Come to office. 911.

The text came in at eight a.m. the next morning, a good half hour before I usually headed to the office area of my house. When I unlocked the door from the back hallway to my waiting room, Intern Paige was standing outside my office door, her ear pressed to it, knocking urgently.

“I am so sorry,” she said, hastening over to me as I opened the connecting door. “She just pushed past me and went in there and locked the door. I told her you weren’t in yet. I’ve been trying to pick the lock since she went in, but that’s much harder than it looks on TV. I didn’t know what to do.” She was in an unprecedented dither, her hands flying out as she talked and her usual tight twist mussed from where she’d clearly pulled the pins out of it, presumably to try them in the lock.

“Okay, it’s okay,” I said soothingly. “Who’s in there?”

“Lisa Albrecht.”

Ah. Lisa, my editor at the
Tropic Times
, was never known for her tact or diplomacy. She’d started out as a client—my first as the Breakup Doctor, actually—when her husband, whom she’d supported financially for years, walked out on her and her two sons with no notice. For a
much
younger woman. Lisa, to say the least, had not handled it well, but lately she seemed to have finally gotten past her hurt and rage. This new explosion of fury couldn’t be good.

I needed to know just what I was dealing with before I went in there. Lisa was a tough customer on a
good
day. And technically she was also my boss.

“Did she say anything when she came in?” I asked Paige.

She nodded. “Yes. She said, ‘Where’s Brook?’ and when I said you weren’t in the office yet, she said, ‘Then
get
her in here.’ I asked her to wait while I called you, but she was in your office and slammed the door before I could get out from behind the desk. I’m sorry, Brook. I’m so sorry.” She looked utterly crushed.

I put a hand on her shoulder, and she froze, blinking up at me like a cornered fox. “It’s not your fault. You did everything right. Lisa is…well, she has her own way of approaching people. Sometimes there’s not much you can do about it.” I didn’t want her beating herself up over Lisa Albrecht’s sense of entitlement, but clearly physical contact was not the way to comfort Paige. I dropped my hand and she visibly relaxed.

She took a breath and nodded. “I just feel terrible. She’s in so much pain.”

I stopped halfway to my office door and turned back around. “That’s what’s bothering you? Not that she’s in my office?”

“Well, yes, I mean, I know that’s bad, and I should have stopped her. But she’s obviously upset and uncomfortable feeling all that pain, and it’s making her react aggressively.”

I couldn’t help the smile that drew up the corners of my mouth. “You’re going to be a good therapist, Paige.”

Her bemused expression was the last thing I saw before I turned back around and knocked lightly on my own door. “Lisa, it’s Brook. I’m coming in.” I put my key in the doorknob and pushed open the door.

Lisa was lounging on my chaise, one leg tented up, her arms crossed behind her head, looking for all the world as if I were late to a cozy girls’ tête-à-tête.

“I thought about lighting up a cigarette, but you don’t have any ashtrays,” she said.

“I prefer no smoking in here. And you don’t smoke anyway, Lisa.” I calmly walked past her and took my usual seat across from the chaise, waiting for her to explain. Rising to Lisa’s provocation only resulted in heightened dramatics.

“Yes, but I’m thinking of starting. I mean, why not? My lungs will forgive me, right? It doesn’t matter how bad anything I do is—apparently all I have to do is let it go and magically it’s all okay. At least, that’s what I just read.”

Ah. Lisa was unhappy about the column I’d turned in last night.

“Forgiveness is about emotions, Lisa. Our psychological well-being. It doesn’t really affect physical ailments.”

She shot upright, sudden fury pulsing from her so strongly I could almost feel waves of it hitting me. “It doesn’t work for
any
‘ailments,’ Deepak Chopra,” she spat. “What, so people can do whatever they want to you, and all you have to do is forgive it and it’s like it never happened? A big get-out-of-jail-free card? A license to hurt anyone, in any way, and poof! All is forgiven? That’s
crap
. I don’t pay you for that kind of New Age bullshit. And I’m not running it.”

I nodded. “Okay. If you didn’t like the column, all you had to do was call me. I’m happy to rewrite it.”

“I don’t want you to rewrite it. I want you to trash it. It’s irresponsible! It’s quackery!”

I frowned. “I’m not sure I see—”

“You want to give people carte blanche for bad behavior! You want me to publish something that’s going to make anyone who’s ever been angry over what someone did to hurt them—
rightfully
angry—feel bad about themselves because they can’t just wave their magic wand and feel better and say, ‘No problem that you stomped on me…I
forgive
you.’” She said the word as if it were coated in slime.

And I finally thought I saw what she was so upset about. Paige was right: Lisa was uncomfortable with anything that made her feel vulnerable. Her first reaction was to strike back—but what was underneath was simply raw, naked pain that terrified her.

“Lisa,” I said gently, “that article was inspired by something in my own life. I needed to be able to forgive someone—my ex-fiancé who jilted me, actually”—I thought it might help if I let her have a glimpse into my own embarrassing past—“so I could finally be able to move on. But that doesn’t mean I think what he did was okay.”

“That’s sure as hell what it sounded like.”

I didn’t actually think so, but I considered the possibility that Lisa was right. “What part sounded like I was absolving people who hurt others?”

But she didn’t seem to hear me. “What if my asshole ex sees it? What if my kids see it? Then I’m the jerk who can’t forgive their dad, and he’s the angel, right? I’m raising
sons
, Brook.
Men.
What am I supposed to teach them—that it’s okay to do anything they want to a woman, because ultimately there’s
forgiveness
?”

And suddenly my stomach unclenched. Lisa was usually so fiercely defensive and dedicated to her own point of view, she didn’t have a lot of concern for anyone else. But now I realized what was troubling her—she was personally offended, yes. But mostly she didn’t want to raise her sons to do to some woman what their father did to her. What Michael had done to me.

And that was downright…compassionate.

I let out a long breath. “I see your point. Let’s not run this column, and I’ll get you a replacement by end of day.”

But Lisa didn’t jump up with a vindicated smirk, as I’d half expected. Instead she sat back against the cushion, her brows pulled together.

“When did you get jilted?” she asked.

It took me a beat to find an answer—conversations with Lisa tended to be exclusively one-way. “Two years ago,” I said. “A month before the wedding.”

She winced. “And this jerk, he asked you to forgive him for that?”

“He didn’t ask outright. Actually, I never saw him again after the breakup—he left town. But I realized when he came back and wanted to see me recently that I needed to forgive what he did or I’d never move past it.” I chewed on my lip, thinking. Why
did
Michael come back?

“And you did? You just let it all go?”

I pulled my attention back to Lisa. “I don’t know. Probably not entirely, but yeah, mostly I guess I did. Holding on to it has caused me a lot of…issues.” I had no intention of telling Lisa about my meltdown after breaking up with my rebound boyfriend after Michael, or the mortifying evening in jail that followed, let alone about Ben. It was foolish to show my throat to the lion.

She grunted and pushed up off the chaise. “I have to get to work.” Our little moment of connection was over, apparently. “I’ll let you know by lunchtime if I need another column from you.”

The door had closed behind her before I could even react to the unprecedented act of Lisa actually softening a position.

I was antsy for the rest of the day, a low-grade static buzz that left me feeling anxious, especially in between clients, when I couldn’t distract myself by focusing on someone else. I thought perhaps my nerves were about waiting for Lisa to let me know whether my article would be buried and I’d have to throw together another one last-minute, but Intern Paige left after my one o’clock client checked in—she had late classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays—and Lisa still hadn’t called.

Was it about Michael? Lisa’s interrogation had me questioning what I hadn’t before: Michael’s motives in coming back to Fort Myers, seeking me out. He couldn’t be moving back now that he was working as a band promoter, given that our local music scene was mostly made up of workmanlike musicians doing Jimmy Buffett covers for the tourists.

Was it just to get my forgiveness, as Lisa had suggested? He’d specifically said he wasn’t asking for that, but I wasn’t putting total trust in his word anymore, for obvious reasons. Maybe he just wanted to clear his conscience, or—like me—finally put closure on our unfinished last chapter. But it would have been easier to do that via a heartfelt letter or email, especially since he had no reason to expect that I’d have anything to do with him if he did make face-to-face contact.

A new suspicion bloomed in my mind, simultaneously filling my belly with ice and my chest with heat.

Did Michael come back to rekindle something between us?

He had to know that that wasn’t a remote possibility. I could forgive, yes, but I would never forget a betrayal as thorough and foundational as his. How could I ever trust again that he’d stick around?

Even if he did seem to have changed.

And anyway, if that were a possible motive, Sasha would have jumped all over it—she wouldn’t cut Michael one inch of slack as far as his intentions went, and she’d have lit into me about being on guard. I’d call her tonight, though, and ask her directly.

Tonight. Ben was coming home from New York, and I would see him tonight when I dropped off Jake.

The sudden fizzing feeling in my belly told me I’d finally lit directly on what had been making me so jumpy all day long. I was going to see Ben. Hearing him and Perfect Pamela tell me all about their trip wasn’t exactly top of my list for anticipatory events.

The light on my wall that signaled an arriving client lit up, saving me from further useless ruminating, and I moved to the door to invite my next appointment inside, grateful for the chance to get out of my own head and into someone else’s.

By way of being a dog, Jake got to act out the reaction I had to stifle when Ben opened his door and the two of us first caught sight of him: The dog let out one loud yip of excitement before his tail started wagging so hard it blurred. Two bunny hops and a lot of whining followed, and then Jake charged him like a bull, Ben putting his hands out in a futile effort to slow the oncoming train before the big white dog hurled himself full-length into him on his hind legs, wrapping his big shaggy paws around his shoulders and licking his face.

Lucky dog.

“Should I leave you two alone?” I joked.

“Okay, buddy, no jumping,” Ben said soothingly, easing the dog’s paws back to the floor before grasping Jake’s head in his hands and assiduously rubbing his ears. “How’s my boy? How’s my Jake?”

Jake was excellent, he wanted Ben to know, as he pressed his entire body against his master, but had clearly been starved for attention.

“As you can see, I’ve spoiled him rotten and there’s been utterly no discipline at my house,” I said. “Sorry about that.”

“That’s okay—it was a vacation for you too, right, Jake?” Ben straightened to face me and did a double take. “You look nice.”

“Oh…I just threw on some old jeans.” I brushed an indifferent hand over the outfit Sasha had carefully curated last weekend. I felt a little foolish standing on his front porch holding a bag of dog food and wearing sky-high pumps, but I couldn’t take the idea of facing Ben and Pamela without putting a little more effort than usual into things.

“Let me get that for you. Has he eaten?” he asked, tipping his head toward Jake as he reached to take the dog food from me, his fingers brushing the skin of my arm.

I shook my head.

“Not yet.”

“Come on back,” he said, and disappeared toward the kitchen, Jake scrambling after him.

I froze for a beat at the unexpected invitation, then took a deep breath and followed, planting a welcoming smile across my face for Perfect Pamela. But Ben was pouring food into Jake’s bowl while the dog sat patiently at his feet, and there was no sign of her.

“Where’s Pamela?” I ventured, broadening my smile so wide I could actually see my cheeks. “I’d love to hear how her interview went.” Almost as much as I’d love to stick egg beaters in my eyes and whisk.

“Dropped her off at home on the way from the airport. She’s got an early surgery tomorrow,” Ben said.

Of course. “Oh,” I said eloquently. “So, is she off to save the world?” I heard the pettiness at the edge of the words as soon as I said them, but Ben didn’t seem to notice.

“She won’t know right away. You’d be amazed how particular Doctors Without Borders is about their volunteers—they only take the best of the best.”

“Well…I’m
sure
she’ll be chosen then,” I gushed. My overcompensation thudded into the silence that fell after it, and Ben just looked at me for a moment, as if I were a particularly obscure passage of building code.

“Do you know about the High Line on the West Side?” he asked finally.