Just Surrender... (13 page)

To thine own self be true; screw everybody else.

Right then, a shadow fell across the table. Her goddamned heart leaped—
leaped
—as if it might still be Tyler. Covering quickly she beamed up at Patience and Wanda, who sat down on either side to her. When the waiter approached, they ordered a round of drinks that involved both large amounts of sugar and alcohol, and had sexy names, like Run, Skip and Go Naked and Screaming Orgasm, as if one hundred proof could be a surrogate for a romantic companionship. Very astute, those drink-naming marketing types. After the drinks arrived, Edie absently twirled the fragile pink paper umbrella, watching it collapse under pressure. Across the table, Patience fiddled with her napkin, shredding it into small pieces.

“I thought you had a date,” she told Patience.

“
Date?
Did you know that date was a four-letter word? He wanted to go bowling again. Why did I think it would be fun to date a man whose idea of a fantastic night out is a trip to the bowling alley?”

Tyler didn’t bowl for fun, but he did know how to have a good time at it. Edie pushed the thought aside. “If I were you, I wouldn’t take ownership of that decision. Blame it on something. PMS, lack of sleep. Or alcohol.” Edie raised her glass and took a swig, feeling the warm burn inside her.

“I should have gone to the salon,” Patience moaned, and Edie proceeded to give her a rundown of what she missed.

“Jane Eyre was a pansy. Mr. Rochester was a dickwad and Jane should have never had faith in a man who kept a crazy wife in the attic.” Realizing that she might sound bitter, Edie laughed.

“You’re okay?” asked Wanda, who might have noticed the tremors in Edie’s laughter. Reading the concern on Wanda’s face, Edie rolled her eyes, because Edie was the role model for these women. The epitome of a smart, foot-loose woman who would live her life on her own terms, finding happiness where she could before dancing off to some new adventure. Never staying too long, lest she ended up staring wistfully at an empty doorway.

Edie kept her eyes firmly on her friends. “Are you kidding? I’m fine.”

“Me, too,” announced Patience.

“Me, three,” added Wanda.

Edie didn’t dare ask why Patience and Wanda were here with her, what warning signs they’d noticed that Edie had overlooked. However, these were her friends, there in her time of need, and although as a rule, Edie avoided having times of need, she wasn’t so sure that avoiding something actually eliminated the existence of something. Apparently, when nursing a bruised heart as a well as a cherry-topped coconut drink, she lapsed into the philosophical, which was a helluva lot more comforting than a lot of other things.

Slowly, the pain in her heart numbed and Edie looked at Patience and Wanda and smiled in what some might term a vulnerable, teary manner, which wasn’t a good look for a role model.

“Thanks,” Edie said quietly, not exactly wanting to be heard. It might imply that she was unhappy and as dippy as the next female, and frankly, considering her friends’ own precarious strength of will, they didn’t need to be disillusioned with the truth.

Apparently Wanda had supersonic hearing, or perhaps Edie had intended to be heard. “Hell, Edie, how many times have you kicked us back on our feet? Did you think we wouldn’t return the favor?”

Edie laughed, but no, Edie hadn’t thought they would return the favor, and just the thought of it was getting her all misty again.

Patience slammed back her drink, and then pulled Edie and Wanda to their feet. “Let’s sing,” she pronounced, sounding completely sober, yet scarily insane. “Let’s get up there and prove to everybody that we’re fine. Fine-looking, fine-feeling, fine-hearted females who…” She trailed off, looking disappointed. “I ran out of
F
words.”

Wanda bust out laughing. “We’re not singing.”

“Come on? Are we a bunch of pansies?” Patience asked.

“Yes,” muttered Edie.

Patience made a fist and pumped it in the air. “No, we are strong. We are invincible.”

“I think she’s drunk,” Wanda pronounced.

“I think you’re chicken,” Patience shot back, meeting Edie’s eyes with a familiar, diabolical, devil-may-care gleam.

Then, Wanda looked at Edie with those “she’s right” eyes, and Edie squirmed because she wasn’t a singer. She liked to sit back and have a good time, knowing that she would never put anything important on the line, but there was Patience, staring at her, expecting her to put something important on their line. The worst thing was the doubt in Wanda’s face. She didn’t think that Edie would.

“You are going to make me do this?”

“Jane Eyre wouldn’t,” stated Wanda.

Now, Edie knew that Wanda knew that was the red flag to the bull, the smell of blood to the shark, the bugle call for every army that had ever marched off to their death.

However, Edie was neither shark nor bull nor soldier. “Don’t compare me to her,” she said, putting her hands on hips.

“If the pinched-toe shoes fit,” mocked Patience.

Edie glared. “I don’t sing,” she protested, and her own words echoed back in her head: Bricks don’t sing, either. Don’t be a brick.

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t bowl,” said Patience, whose confidence was now growing in leaps and bounds and she was fast becoming a royal pain in the butt.

“Fine,” answered Edie, as Wanda dragged her up on stage. “But I’m not going to sing.”

“Follow my moves,” whispered Patience, pulling the mike off the stand and waving it at the audience. “I win the open mike night at my local all the time.”

“Do we have to do this?” pleaded Edie, just as Patience held out a hand and then burst forth with those unforgettable words…

“Stop, in the name of love!”

Oh, god.

“Put on your big-girl panties,” teased Wanda.

And Edie knew that she was well and truly beaten.

The audience began to clap, the skeevy kid ogled and leered and Edie made a mockery of background dancers everywhere. “I hate this,” she whispered through tightly clenched teeth.

“Think it oh-oh-oh-over,” sang Wanda. “Go with it. Lighten up. Be free from the rigid confines of someone else’s expectations.”

“Why do you listen to me?” she asked. When Wanda poked her in the side, she turned sideways to the audience and sang. “Baby, baby. Oh, oh…”

“You’re smarter than you know, Edie.”

Smarter? No. Not smarter, because as they sang—slightly off-key—and looked more than a little silly, Edie began to smile, no longer pretending to. She liked the non-judgey atmosphere of the crowd, but no matter the warmth inside her, no matter that her friends stood beside her, when no one was looking, her eyes still strayed to the door.

Foolishly waiting.

Idiot.

With a wide yawn, Tyler pulled himself upright and grinned.

Nothing like the smell of victory in the morning.

Nothing like a hot date tonight.

He checked his watch and it was at that precise instant, as he was still basking in the glow of success, that Tyler realized the surgery had lasted over twenty-four hours. Today wasn’t Monday. It was Tuesday. On Monday, he’d had a date with Edie.

Yesterday.

Shit.

Still not panicked, he’d checked his phone, expecting a voice mail, a text message, something to indicate that Tyler was an irresponsible brick, but there was nothing and he frowned, because Tyler deserved a snippy text message, or an angry voice mail, or something.

Anything.

Nothing.

Quickly, he shrugged into his jacket, brushing out the wrinkles. For a second, he took a hard look in the mirror, uncomfortable with the sloppy hair, the glittering professional ambition in his eyes. It had been a long time since Tyler had disappointed anyone. Not since he was a kid, and it was a behavior that he’d ruthlessly eliminated from his life. So what was a man supposed to do when he messed up? These were the sorts of things that Edie was supposed to teach him. If she didn’t kill him first.

He’d buy some flowers—no, no flowers for Edie.

A card? Nope.

Edie would expect him to use his charm and sincerity. A moving plea of emotional candor.

God almighty, Tyler was screwed.

The lunch rush had just finished when Patience skidded into the kitchen. “Are you sitting down?” she asked, then pushed Edie to a stool. “You should sit down.”

“Is there something wrong?” Edie asked cautiously, because frankly, she didn’t want to deal with any more wrongs at the moment. Bacon grease was about the biggest problem she wanted to handle at the moment.

“It’s your father. He’s at table three. I never knew your father, but you know, you have his eyes. They’re really pretty. Sort of tawny.”

“Dad’s here?” Yes, he had said he might show up, but politicians promised balanced budgets, dietetic food products promised great taste and weathermen promised that it wouldn’t rain.

“Up front. Go on. He looks like he’s in a hurry.”

“Sure,” said Edie, and disbelieving, she walked through the diner just to the same.

“Dad? You’re here?”

His smile was charming and sheepish and completely sure that she would forgive him. “I know. It’s the end times.”

“Something like that,” she murmured, sliding into the booth across the table from him, fighting the instinctive urge to forgive him.

“I owe you an apology,” her father started, but Edie cut him off.

“No, you don’t. An apology would mean that my expectations were not met. You meet my expectations on a daily basis, Dad.”

He clasped his hand to his chest. “Ouch. I can see you handle knives as well as your old man.”

“Not nearly as heroically. You save lives with yours. I merely toss them out and see where they land.”

Her father sighed. “Are you going to let me apologize?”

Edie agreed.

“I know I’m not the dad you want. I know I’m not the dad you need, but I’m the only dad you’ve got. Someday I will retire, and then we’ll have time for those father-daughter chats that I always wanted to have.”

Oh, yes, the myth of the perfect family. Edie glanced out the window and noted that it looked like rain. “Retirement? Dad, you’re approaching seventy. I think your golden years are going to be spent hunched over an operating table, your instruments not trembling at all.”

Her father held out his hands, steady and firm. “They are holding up well, aren’t they? Not any of the distal tremors that Les Harbinger has.”

“He doesn’t have anything on you, and you know it.”

“True. Did I tell you about the surgery yesterday? A prime minister. His heart stopped twice.”

Whenever her father talked about his work, his face would light up with drama and pride, and Edie leaned forward because everyone always listened intently when the tales of the table began. “Did you save him?”

“No. Some other young hotshot with dreams of surgical grandeur.”

“You’re jealous,” she teased, pleasantly surprised that her father would admit it.

“Maybe,” he hedged, still not admitting it, but almost.

It was the first time she had seen the sad awareness in his eyes. Medical science did much to save life, prolong life, but in the end, the body and the mind were destined for weakness. “Do you
want
to retire?” she asked, not so discreetly, but he seemed to be more approachable today, less luminary, and more like a dad. It was nice, and thus, she could ask these sorts of impertinent questions that regular daughters would ask.

Her father chuckled. “Retire? Nah. Your mother would kill me. I’d be doddering around the house, complaining about this, correcting that, and after a week, you’d find us lying on the floor in a pool of blood. And then you’d be all alone.”

She quirked a brow. “Thinking of me? Is that it?”

“Always. I’m not here a lot, Edie Ma Didi, but I think of you all the time. You and Clarice.” He picked up her hand, curling his fingers around hers, resting it on the cut and gouged Formica tabletop.

The most useful of objects often bore the most scars. “Don’t make me cry, Dad.”

“You don’t cry. You’re tough. You’re strong. You’re invincible.”

“I could be vincible and you’d never know,” she told him, not completely a joke.

Her father missed it, or perhaps he chose to ignore it. “You want to go see a movie? Surgery’s been re scheduled.”

“Seriously? You’re off this afternoon?”

He looked sheepish. “No, I have a consult in half an hour.”

Edie laughed, feeling herself being swayed to the dark side. It was like that with her father. A few minutes in his company, and she was willing to forget all prior bad acts.

“Let’s make a plan. A real plan. What would you like to do? You always wanted us to go to the zoo. We could do the zoo. Next week? Wednesday.”

“I’m twenty-eight, Dad. I’ve been to the zoo.”

He looked at her, offended. “Not with me.”

“You’ve never been?”

“Not with you.”

“Next Wednesday?” Edie repeated, but she didn’t have to write it down. “It’s a date. Thanks for stopping by.”

“I’ll do it more often.”

“Right,” she mocked, but when their eyes met, she couldn’t help but wink. That was the allure of her father. He lived in a different universe, occupied not with celebrities or politicians, but a place where true superheroes lived.

And they always lived alone.