Just Like a Man (46 page)

Not that Selby wanted to even acknowledge her relationship to Deedee, however dubious. She'd been so sure that by moving away from Dorsey, Indiana, she'd be able to start anew and leave her unhappy past where it belonged—half a state away. But Indianapolis was a big city, and it drew people from all over the state and beyond, so she guessed she should have realized she'd run into someone she knew from high school sooner or later. She just wished it had been later. Decades from now, when the wounds of her youth weren't quite so raw.

"I was there that night at Trino's," Thomas said in reply to her question. "I was sitting on Deedee's other side when you came up to the bar. You were standing right next to me when you got change for that twenty."

He'd been there that night? Selby thought, recalling the details too well. Had he overheard what she and Deedee had said? she wondered. Well, he must have, if he knew Deedee's name and knew she was there. So then he must have heard about the blimp reference, too, Selby realized. He must know now what a complete loser she'd been in high school. And gosh, here she'd been thinking this situation couldn't possibly have gotten any worse…

"That's how you knew I worked at Trino's," she said, recalling how he'd mentioned her additional jobs at his home that day.

He nodded. "And that's how I know Deedee is a mean, nasty bitch who used to do mean things to you in high school. I overheard her telling her friend about you after you left," he said.

Oh, and Selby could just imagine what Deedee had said…

"About how they used to treat you," Thomas continued.

Oh, yeah. She was in Loserville now, Selby thought. Hell, she'd just been elected Mayor of Loserville. She hated it that Thomas had been privy to that part of her past. Then she wondered why she cared, since he wasn't going to be a part of her future anyway.

"And when I heard her talk about the mean, nasty way she'd treated you back then," he continued, Selby barely listening at this point, "I did something mean and nasty to her. It wasn't nearly enough to pay her back for what she did, but…" He finished the story with a careless shrug that was in no way apologetic.

And that was when Selby realized what he'd done. "You're the one who spilled the drink on her that night," she said.

She'd been able to hear Deedee's scream all the way back at the service bar. Jeez, the guys in the kitchen had heard that scream. Everyone in Trino's—and probably in restaurants a few blocks away—had heard that scream. Selby had gone running back out into the dining room to find every eye in the place directed at the bar. And when she'd looked that way herself, when she'd seen Deedee standing there in what had once been a beautiful white sweater outfit, all covered with something mucky and disgusting and foul…

Well, Selby had laughed. A lot. And then she'd gone back to work.

"You did it on purpose, didn't you?" she said now.

"Hell, yes, I did it on purpose."

"But why?"

"Because I wanted her to know how it feels to be the object of ridicule," he said.

"It doesn't change anything that happened to me in high school," Selby told him.

"Maybe not," he told her. "But it sure took the sting out of some of the things that happened to me."

She narrowed her eyes at him, starting to understand. "You were fat in high school, too?" she asked cautiously.

He shook his head. "No, I was a geek. A complete loser that nobody liked. Except when it came to having someone to belittle. Then they liked me a lot."

Selby nodded, thinking about that for a minute. It explained a lot about Thomas, she supposed. About the chip on his shoulder and his attitude toward women. But it didn't excuse anything. "So you've made it your life's work to get even with all the popular kids," she guessed, "on behalf of outcasts everywhere, is that it? Living well isn't the best revenge, after all?"

"Oh, living well is
excellent
revenge," he told her. "But it's not enough. There's still…"

"There's still what?" she asked when his voice trailed off without him finishing the statement.

"There's still something missing," he told her.

She softened a little at his comment. Mostly because she understood that, too. "Well, whatever it is that's missing, Thomas, I hope you find it someday." And she hoped she found it, too.

His expression went almost bleak at that. "I did find it, Selby," he said, his voice tinged with desperation. "With you."

Oh, no,
she thought.
No, no, no.
She wasn't going to fall for that.

"But then I lost it again, when I lost you."

"Thomas," she began, lifting her hand in front of her, palm out, in a physical display of her objection.

But he interrupted her, taking her hand in his, weaving his fingers through hers. "You're everything I ever wanted, Selby," he told her, "without even realizing I wanted it. My life is completely different since you came into it. Nothing has changed, but it's totally different. Do you understand? I thought I had everything, but I was still unhappy. And then I met you, and I realized I had nothing, and that was why I was unhappy. And then, that afternoon when we…" He swallowed hard, his expression growing desperate. "After that I finally understood what it meant to have
everything.
Because I had you. Suddenly I realized how much better my life had been over the past month. Because of you."

"Thomas…" Selby tried again. But she halted, not sure what she wanted to say. His hand on hers was so warm, so tender, and it felt so good to be touched by him again, even in so innocent a way.

"That night at Trino's," he began again when she didn't finish what she had started to say, "maybe I was already beginning to realize how much better you'd made my life, and because of that, I wanted everything to be better for you, too. Maybe that was why I dumped the drink in Deedee's lap. Because somehow, maybe it would undo a lot of what was done to you back then."

"Did it undo anything for you?" she asked.

He hesitated, then shook his head. "No."

She sighed heavily, her gaze alternating between his dark, anxious eyes and the two hands linked so earnestly together. "Thomas," she finally said, "I don't want to change anything that's ever happened to me. As bad as it was, even if I could go back and make it all different, I wouldn't. Because everything that happened to me in the past, it contributed to what 1 am in the present. Even if I could change it, I wouldn't."

"I would," he said without hesitation. "I'd change my past in a heartbeat."

"But if you did that, then you wouldn't be the Thomas I—" She thought she stopped herself in time, before he realized what she had almost said. But Thomas, she should have known, would be too smart to miss what she had intended to say.

"The Thomas you what?" he asked, his expression turning hopeful because he obviously already knew the answer.

"Thomas doesn't exist," Selby replied instead. "He was just someone you made up."

He shook his head. "No, Thomas is real, Selby. He's real, because you made him real. By falling in love with him."

"I don't—"

"The hell you don't," he objected, some of his certainty returning. "I felt it when we made love. You allowed me to be your first. And you're not the kind of woman who would do that unless you were in love."

"It doesn't change anything, Thomas," she said softly.

"Yeah, it does," he disagreed. "Because when you and I made love…" He shook his head slowly, as if he were still baffled by what had happened that day. "It was never like that for me before, Selby. Never."

"Yeah, because you've probably never had to bother with virgins," she said sadly.

"No, because I was never in love with any of the women I had sex with," he countered. "And none of the women I had sex with was ever in love with me. I know that now. With you, though…" He expelled a sound that was a mixture of longing and frustration and something else, something she only recognized because she felt it, too. "It wasn't sex," he said simply. "It was love. I love you. And I don't want to live without you."

Selby said nothing in response to that. Mostly because she had no idea what to say.

So Thomas spoke again. "You told me that day that you thought it would be the worst possible fate to be alive and have there be nothing left on earth that you want to do. Well, that's the way I feel without you in my life, Selby. I feel like there's nothing left for me."

"That's because you've already done everything," she told him. But the fight was going out of her. She wasn't sure she believed herself any more than he did.

"No, I haven't done anything," he told her. "Not with you. And without you, nothing matters. With you, I can see everything, do everything, and it will all be new and different and unlike anything I've ever done before. But only with you. Without you…" He shrugged again, sadly this time. "Without you, Selby, there is nothing."

She understood that, too. Because she'd spent a good bit of her time since parting with Thomas thinking about her plans to see the world, and how little those plans meant to her now. What she had once considered the most marvelous dream she could dream now seemed bleak and weary indeed. Seeing the world alone wouldn't be any fun at all, she'd come to realize. Unless she could share it with someone else, someone she loved, someone who loved her, too, it just wouldn't be the same. It wouldn't be special. Not the way it would be with…

"Thomas," she said aloud. "Does anyone call you that?"

He smiled. "You do."

"Anyone else?"

He shook his head. "No. No one else. And I don't want anyone else to call me that. Only you."

Only you.
She repeated the words to herself and liked the sound of them very much. Maybe even enough to say them back to Thomas. Maybe…

She took a step backward, into her apartment, moving enough so that he could enter, and she could close the door behind him. She wasn't sure what she was planning, but she did want to move forward. And that one step backward, for some reason, seemed to be the right start. Silently, she invited Thomas inside. And in doing so, she supposed she was inviting him into more than her home. But it felt good to her. It felt right. They had a lot of catching up to do. With each other, and with their pasts. But there was a future for them, too, she thought. And that was really all that was important.

Thomas smiled at her silent gesture, but immediately took advantage. As he moved past her, his arm brushed hers, and a thrill of hope mixed with affection purled through her. No, not affection, she realized when she looked at him again. It was love that did that.

She pushed the front door closed and leaned against it, smiling for the first time since she'd seen Thomas standing on the other side. Because she was happy, she realized. Truly, genuinely happy. For the first time in her life. Because Thomas Brown had come into it.

"You'll have to be patient," she told him. "It's going to take some time for me to get used to this."

He arched his dark brows curiously at that. "Get used to what?"

"To all of it," she said. "To how wonderful you are, and how you feel about me, and how I feel about you, and…"

"And… ?" he prodded.

She smiled. "And how much friggin' money you have."

He laughed at that. "Don't sweat it," he told her. "It doesn't take any time at all to get used to that, trust me."

"The other things, though…" she said, and this time her voice was the one to trail off.

But he kept smiling. "Don't worry," he said as he closed the distance between them and pulled her into his arms. "We have all the time in the world for those."

Hannah sat in the bleachers of the Iceland Hockey Dome and watched Alex Sawyer skate across the ice like a miniature Wayne Gretzky. Well, maybe not so miniature, she thought. The kid was tall for his age, easily the tallest fourth-grader at Emerson.

She gazed down at the diamond ring on the third finger of her left hand that Michael had presented to her two weeks ago—on Valentine's Day—and smiled. Soon Alex would be something else, too. He would be her stepson. And soon, the three of them would be a family. The kind of family Hannah had always dreamed about. Only better. Because this family wouldn't be a dream at all.