Not My Type (25 page)

I don’t know why you decided I was worth mentoring, but I’m soooooo glad you did. This has been a very uneven friendship, but I hope I can start pulling my weight soon. I would never have gotten this far if it weren’t for your advice and insights, and I can’t thank you enough for all of your help. In a school yard pick, I’d take you first every time.

Let me know what I can do to repay you, up to and including babysitting your kids, smuggling you some of my mom’s famous fudge, or covering a story for you now and then when you’d rather spend time with your little ones.

Seriously. Thanks.

Pepper

Chapter 17

I trudged into the office Friday morning exhausted. I’d driven home past midnight from the Circling the Drain concert and then spent the next three hours replaying the scene on the bench with Tanner over and over again, trying to reconcile the war between logic and emotion that had overtaken all my higher order brain functions.

By six in the morning, I’d given up on my restless sleep and had crept down to the kitchen to tap out an uninspired review of the punk-lite show from the night before. They were every bit as bad as their name suggested, but I could only partly blame my apathy on the lame show; I owed a chunk of it to the distraction of watching my love life circle the drain too.

I was on the road by eight, and when I pushed open the door to the magazine office, Chantelle’s face showed surprise.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

I understood her confusion. Normally, I didn’t have to come in until midmorning after covering a show. I rounded the desk where Janie sat and headed to my spot next to Chantelle. I dropped my laptop bag on the desk with a muffled thump and collapsed into my chair.

“You look terrible,” she said.

“Thanks,” I replied. “It takes a lot of effort to look this bad in the morning.”

“I bet. How hard did you have to fight the urge to pick up a hair brush?”

That earned her a tired smile. “I was more focused on trying to achieve the largest under-eye bags I could,” I said. “Do you think I could write an article on it and convince our readers they’re ‘the bag’ of the season?”

“What really happened?” she asked, no longer teasing. I glanced around, not wanting to share the story with the whole office. Janie and the other salesgirl looked absorbed in their phone calls, Denny hadn’t shown up yet, Marin wasn’t at her desk, and there was no sign of the boss.

I asked just to be sure. “Where’s Ellie?”

One of Chantelle’s professionally shaped eyebrows quirked. “At a breakfast meeting with some finance guy. This is about Tanner?”

I’d learned fast not to mention him in front of Ellie. Their bad blood went both ways, it turned out. It was rooted in nothing more than professional competitiveness and the disdain each of them had for the way the other did their job, but it was far less stressful for me if I kept them out of each other’s orbits. Tanner only came by when Ellie was out, and I didn’t mention him in front of her if I could avoid it. I jerked my head in the direction of the break room, a question on my face.

Chantelle nodded and got up to follow me. While I stowed my leftover chicken alfredo in the decrepit fridge, she sat at the table and waited. I grabbed the seat opposite her and slumped into it. “Tanner found out I’m Indie Girl.”

Up went her eyebrow again. “Yikes. It obviously didn’t go over great.”

I sighed. “Do relationships get easier after you’re married?”

She laughed. “I’m not going to answer that on the grounds that I don’t want to be the reason you stay single the rest of your life.”

“I think that’s the likely possibility right now. I can’t imagine ever being ready for marriage.”

“Weren’t you almost ready last year?”

I stared at her in surprise. I hadn’t discussed my dysfunctional dating history with anyone at the magazine. I almost never talked to anyone about it at all.

“Landon Scott, right?” she asked.

“How did you know that?”

“My niece,” she said. “When she outgrew Justin Bieber, she moved on to a new obsession. Landon Scott fit the bill. It’s amazing what an obsessed thirteen-year-old can do with a Google search. She recognized your name on the Marisol story and remembered you as Landon’s almost-wife. She asked me about you a couple of weeks ago.”

“Whoa.” It freaked me out a little that I would turn up in a Google search. I’d Googled myself a few times and had never found a connection between me and Landon, so Chantelle’s niece had dug deep. It also weirded me out to hear myself described as an “almost-wife.” I really had been
this
close.

“It’s true, then?” Chantelle asked.

“Yeah, it’s true.” There wasn’t any point in denying it. I only kept it quiet because for a long time it hurt to think about it, and now . . . well, it didn’t matter anymore. Another epiphany. Any more might cause a stroke.

“Sorry,” Chantelle said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your story. I couldn’t resist the urge to confirm my scoop.” When she saw my face, she burst out laughing again. “Don’t worry. I’m definitely not going to share it with anyone. I just like being in the know. I can keep a secret.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ve already dropped one bombshell on Tanner. I don’t really want to hit him with another one just now. The last thing I need is some garbage about me and Landon all over the local gossip blogs.”

“So you and Tanner are still talking? That’s good, right?”

“I don’t know if we’re talking or not. I’m not even sure where we left things last night after he dropped me off.” We’d walked back to his apartment in silence, nothing resolved. On the short walk out to my car, I tried a couple icebreakers, but Tanner clearly wasn’t in the mood to talk, so that had ended in silence too. He’d stayed long enough to watch me get in The Zuke, so I guess it was a positive sign that he hadn’t left me to any lurking muggers or serial killers, but other than that—radio silence. No cell phone or e-mail. Nothing.

“I’m guessing he doesn’t love the idea of you dating other guys.”

“Yeah. I mean, he knew I was doing that all along, but he didn’t know why. He thought I was just playing the field and that I might be up for making things exclusive.”

“Are you?” she asked.

“How can I be?” I dropped my head onto the table. My neck couldn’t support a brain so full of conflicting thoughts and feelings anymore. “That’s like asking me if I’m ready to give up my job because that’s what dating him exclusively would mean.”

Chantelle didn’t argue. She knew the column was a big deal to Ellie. “I’d offer to take over ‘Single in the City’ for you, but my husband would get kind of mad. He doesn’t like it if I leave him alone with the kids too long.”

I laughed. “Thanks anyway.”

“If your job weren’t an issue, would you want to make it exclusive with Tanner?” she asked.

I stilled. The answer scared me. “Yes.”

“You like him. A lot,” Chantelle said.

I felt a tear well in one eye, so I sat up and dashed it away, sniffling. “Sorry. Lack of sleep makes me extra emotional.”

Chantelle nodded. “Yeah, me too. But ‘like’ isn’t enough for tears.”

“I’m dealing with a little more than ‘like’ here,” I confessed. It scared me to realize how quickly my feelings for Tanner had grown. They’d been sneaking up on me since way back at the first dinner at his parents’ house, but all the time spent with him over the last three weeks had pushed my feelings to a whole new level.

“Would you really let a job cost you a chance at love?” she asked. “Would you let
Ellie
cost you a chance at love?”

“No. Not if I was sure it was what I wanted,” I said.

“You’re not sure?”

“I don’t know,” I wailed, exhaustion making it hard to think straight.

“Calm down!” Chantelle said.

“It never calms people down when you yell at them to calm down!”

“Okay, okay. Just . . . relax for a minute. Breathe or something,” she urged me. After I took two deep breaths, she let out one of her own. “Wow. I guess it makes sense for you to be so wound up, but remind me to duck after every question.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m a mess.”

“Anyone would be,” she said. “Would you rather not talk about this?”

I considered that for a minute. “No, it’s okay. We’re on a roll. Might as well keep it going.”

After a long, measured glance, she nodded. “Good. But you need a soda if we’re going to continue.” She hopped up, grabbed a Dr. Pepper from the fridge, and tossed it to me before sitting down. “Stop me if you’re about to lose it again, but let me recap. You like Tanner. Maybe even more than like him. If you weren’t writing ‘Single in the City,’ you’d be exclusively dating already. But your job depends on the column, and you’re not ready to give up your job for Tanner.”

I nodded, miserable. “I sound horrible and selfish when you put it that way.”

“No, you don’t,” she said. “Has Tanner been running around professing his love for you?”

“No,” I said.

“Then he can’t ask you to lay everything on the line right now. Is that what he wants? For you to quit?”

“He wants us to see where this relationship is going. He understands that I can’t quit the column. He doesn’t like it, but he didn’t ask me to make a choice,” I said. “We kind of . . . stopped talking. There wasn’t anything left to say.” Tears threatened again, and I took a quick swig of soda to distract myself.

“If you had a way to get out of the column and still keep your job, would you take it?”

A quick yes jumped to my lips, but I caught myself and really considered the question. Without the column, I had no buffer left between Tanner and me. Did I still want one?

“Pepper?” Chantelle’s concerned expression made me smile.

“Don’t worry. I’m not the mayor of Crazy Town yet,” I said. “Patheticville, maybe. But not Crazy Town.”

“You’re not pathetic,” she said.

“Would you still think that if I told you that I need to talk to my daddy right now?” I asked.

“No. It’s great that you have a good relationship. I can go do some writer-type stuff at my desk if you want to call him.”

I nodded. “You won’t be offended that I’m trading you for him?”

She smiled and walked out of the break room. I pulled my phone out of my jacket pocket and dialed his number.

“Everything okay?” he asked as soon as he picked up the phone.

“It’s fine,” I said. “I think. Except for the parts that aren’t.”

“What’s going on, Pepper?” he asked, and I loved hearing the concern in his voice, the tone that said, “I’m totally focused on you, daughter.”

“I had a bad night with Tanner.”

“Sorry to hear that. What happened?”

I swear, talking to my dad is better for the soul than even the most magical chicken soup. “He found out that I’m Indie Girl,” I said. “It didn’t go well.”

“Want to tell me the details?” he asked, his voice gentle.

With a hiccup that betrayed my tenuous grip on my emotions, I explained the whole evening to him, feeling better the closer I got to the end because I knew my dad would tell me what to do. I could breathe again without feeling a heavy weight on my chest.

When I finished, he was silent for a long moment. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

“I was hoping you would help me figure that out,” I said. “Am I too old to be calling you and asking you for advice about boys?”

I could hear the smile in his voice when he answered. “Of course not,” he said. “But are you old enough to accept things you might not want to hear?”

I paused. “No.” Then I sighed. “Yes.”

“Good girl,” he said. “How much of your hesitation with Tanner is because of Landon? Are you still mourning that relationship?”

I thought about it. “No,” I answered. “I’ve been figuring that out lately. Landon never would have been the right guy for me. We want different things, and no matter how much I loved him, in the end, it wouldn’t have been enough.”

“Pepper,” he said, his tone gentle again, “how much did you really love him?”

The question caught me off guard. “A lot,” I said.

“A lot,” my dad repeated. He sounded thoughtful. “How do you know?”

Again, I had to grope my way toward an answer. “Because it took so long to get over him.”

“Hmm. Let’s try a different question.
Why
did you love him?”

I lifted the phone away to stare at it for a moment. These were not the loving words of encouragement I had called to hear. These were hard, uncomfortable questions. But he had warned me. I thought about the why. I had loved being with Landon because he’d made me feel like, for the first time, I wasn’t flying under the radar like I had all the way through high school. He’d acted like my quirks were cool. I’d liked the way other people, especially other girls, had looked at us with a touch of envy when we were together. Each jealous look stroked my ego. I’d liked knowing that I always had someone to hang out with on the weekends, a permanent movie date, and a guaranteed kiss every Valentine’s and New Year’s. I’d liked being part of a couple, being a part of Landon-and-Pepper.

I explained all that to my dad as best I could and waited for his verdict. He asked another question instead.

“Why did Landon love you?”

“I don’t know, Dad. Maybe he didn’t. We’d be married if he had.”

“Try to come up with an answer, Pepper.”

I thought some more. The truth was, I’d spent many months after our engagement had fallen apart asking myself why he didn’t love me enough. I hadn’t focused much on why he had loved me in the first place. I’d assumed he didn’t, or I wouldn’t be heartbroken. I asked myself the question grudgingly. Why had Landon loved me?

“I made him laugh,” I finally said. “He liked my style. He liked that I’m a good girl. He thought we were a good team.”

“Good,” my dad said. “Was it true? Were you a good team?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I used to think so.” I struggled to come up with an analogy. “We weren’t a team like doubles tennis, where you both work equally hard and share the rewards. It was more like he was the star and I was his ball girl.”

“Did that bother you?”

“Not then. Now it does.” I dropped my forehead to the table and stared at the scuffed tile between my shoes. “When are you going to tell me what to do about Tanner?”

“I’m not,” he said.

I bolted up. “But—”

“Because I’m not clear on what you want from him. I’m trying to figure that out. More importantly, I think you’re trying to figure that out. So let’s go there next. I have the same questions. You care about Tanner. Why?”

“Because he’s a good man,” I said. I didn’t even have to think about it, and there was no point denying to my dad how invested I already was in Tanner. I wouldn’t be near tears on the phone with him if I weren’t. “He treats his family with respect, and he treats me with respect too; he works hard; he makes me laugh; I like his sense of adventure; he has integrity—”