Practice Makes Perfect (3 page)

* * *

Helen stared at her computer screen.

All of the elements were there—the plot was aligned, the storm was raging, it was the perfect time for Rennie and Hawk to finally consummate their relationship. The fingers and the feelings, they all started out great. But then just sort of... fizzled.

“This is not a metaphor for your love life,” she muttered. George looked at her accusingly from his perch on the ottoman. “Sorry,” she apologized. “Oh my god,” she said to the dog and herself. “I am now apologizing for disturbing my dogs.”

She stood up—disturbing Tammy but not apologizing—and stretched.
Sinuous muscles, reaching
. . . it all sounded so cliché in her head.

Probably because it was cliché. When was the last time she had actual sex with another person? Months. She thought back, trying to pinpoint the day.

Visiting Professor left at the end of last semester. But toward the end, he was more focused on shoring up his connections than shoring up her connections. She couldn't actually remember the last time they'd had sex before he left.

So . . . when was the last time she had memorable sex with another person?

Tammy shuffled over to Helen's now-vacated warm spot on the couch.

But come on, Helen thought. You don't need to have constant hot sex to write about hot sex. And didn't she want to separate herself from her writing persona? God, if people thought her love scenes were taken from real life . . .

Although their lack of steaminess told her that they probably were taken from real life.

She flopped her sexless body on the couch, earning another accusing look from George.

Great. The only males who looked her way were canine.

Time to give up, she thought. Not forever, but definitely for tonight. This pity party feels good, and I don't have to work tomorrow, so I'm going to drink that bottle of wine and talk to my dogs about how they're ruining my sex life
and
my writing life, but I love their shmooshy
,
droopy faces all the same.

* * *

Henry shifted the bottle of wine to his other arm and knocked on Helen's door. He had almost fallen on his butt on the way up the stairs, which was the constant hazard of old houses, but he loved them anyway. He knew the third step was wonky. He was just too distracted to actually remember that.

Too distracted that she might not let him in.

Or she would let him in, and she'd cry again.

He took a deep breath—Be a good friend, he told himself—and waited for Helen to open the door. He knew she was home; her car was in the driveway and all of her lights were on.

Also, there was loud Donna Summer music playing. Helen had an inexplicable love for disco music, which puzzled Henry to no end. He also knew that she only broke out the disco when she was feeling sorry for herself.

He knocked again, louder, and he saw a shadow stumble toward the door. The curtain was sloppily shoved aside, and there was Helen's face, wearing a lot of sparkly makeup and a very surprised expression.

He knew it. He should have called first. But something was bothering her, and had been for a long time, and he was determined to get to the bottom of it. This sparkle-faced pity party confirmed it.

Something was wrong with Helen.

He would fix it.

Even if she cried.

He saw Shadow-Helen walking slowly away from the door, but it was too late. He knocked again.

This time, she opened the door.

“Oh, hi, Henry.”

“Hi, Helen.” He couldn't help but smile at her so obviously fake enthusiasm. “What's going on?”

“Nothing. Just. Uh.”

“Can I come in?”

He brushed past her and got a contact high from the wine on her breath.

“Do you want a drink?” she asked.

She tipped the wine bottle into her glass, filling it less than halfway. And then the bottle was empty.

“Um . . .” She offered her glass to him, but he shook his head. He took the glass from her hand anyway, as she stumbled toward the couch.

He wasn't proud of this, but he was glad that she was drunk. Helen got real talky when she was drunk. He would get to the bottom of her malaise in no time.

He set the glass on the coffee table and sat down next to her on the couch. She crossed her legs and looked at him. “So, ah . . .” Her being drunk did nothing to ease the awkwardness of starting a conversation about feelings.

He started by turning down the disco. She pouted.

“Helen—” he started.

She flipped around and put her feet on his lap. “Henry,” she said.

He patted her shin. “How are you?”

She snorted.

That felt like progress.

Her head tilted onto the arm of the couch and she squinted one eye closed. “You're sideways.”

OK, he was going to have to make this fast before she passed out.

“Helen—”

She sat up suddenly and painfully—her feet were still on his lap. “You're not going to shame me for being drunk in my own house, are you?”

“What? No!” This conversation had taken a turn. Some kind of angry turn. He needed to rein it in, bring it back to Helen's problem.

“Because I can drink in my house whenever I want. It's my house. You're not the boss of me. Not you, not Pembroke, not my parents, not society!”

Or he could just sit here and let her bring it back to her problem.

“You think you're so smart, just because you wear a bow tie and you write boring articles that nobody reads.”

OK, this was getting more painful than Helen's heels in his crotch.

“Well, I want to write too! I know I'm not a big, fancy professor like you.” She stood, but her angry hand waving knocked her off balance and she almost fell back onto the couch. He reached out for her hip, but she caught herself before he could catch her.

“Just because I want to write something that someone will actually
read
. Something that people actually
like
, but they can't admit they like it or that they write it, because society and my parents will judge them!”

“Helen. Helen, sit down.”

“No! I'm tired of people telling me what to do!” She flopped on the couch next to him. “I can write sex scenes if I want to!”

That was . . . not what he was expecting.

“It's easy! You just take everybody's clothes off and everyone smooches and that's it! What's the big deal?” She sat up suddenly, and the thin strap of her disco dress slid off her shoulder. He held his hands up. Not that Helen wasn't a beautiful woman, but this was getting inappropriate.

And now she was crying.

He took a deep breath and a mental step back. She was writing something. Something with sex. And it was making her cry.

Nope, he was no closer to understanding.

“I wrote a novel,” she said, kicking off her disco heels. She rolled off the couch and left the room. Henry thought that was it, he'd been dismissed, but she came back with a roll of toilet paper. She tore a bunch off and blew her nose.

“That's great,” he said, reminding her that he was still there and she was still opening up about her problems so he could solve them for her.

“It's a romance novel.”

“OK.”

“Don't look at me like that!”

“I'm not looking at you like anything!”

She flopped back onto the couch. “I know. You're Henry. You're too nice to be judgmental.”

“Helen, what are you talking about?”

“It doesn't matter, nobody's gonna read it anyway.”

“Why not?” She'd written a whole, entire novel? Why the heck wouldn't anybody read it?

“It's not sexy enough.”

He was confused. He was also not a fiction writer, so that was probably inevitable.

“I entered it into a contest,” she explained, “and I lost. But this one editor, she really liked it.”

“That's great!”

“She said she liked everything but the sex scenes.” Helen suddenly reared up and grabbed Henry's shoulders. “I. Can't. Write. About. Sex.”

Which explained the clandestine research. It also explained why she was trying to hide it. Henry knew what it was like to feel passionately about something that nobody else took seriously. It was kind of how he made his living.

While he pondered, with relief, that Helen's problem was, really, an academic one, Helen had slumped back onto the couch again. Her eyes had closed, her mouth had opened, and she began to snore.

Clearly, they weren't solving any problems tonight. But now he knew what was wrong. He would help her.

He had no idea how, but he would help her.

H
elen took a deep breath and put on her sports bra. It was Sunday morning, which meant she put on her running shoes, met Henry on the corner, and jogged to the Daily Drip where they met up with Grace, and Helen basically cajoled them with her organization and focus skills into keeping up with their ambitious academic publishing schedules. It was a Sunday morning tradition, and sometimes the only exercise Helen got all week. It was important. It was time for her to explore the colleague side of her relationship with her friends, and it led to really good things in all of their professional lives.

She so very badly wanted to skip it this morning.

She'd woken up the morning before with her disco dress tangled around her waist and her pillow covered in sparkles. Also, a giant hangover. For which she had no one to blame but herself. And the entire bottle of wine she drank. By herself. There was no one else to blame.

She also vaguely remembered crying her eyes out to “MacArthur Park.” And Henry was there. Ugh. Henry was there, then she fell asleep on the couch, then she woke up to Henry doing dishes in her kitchen, then that song came on and she bawled. That poor cake! Someone left it out in the rain! She cringed, even after having a whole additional day and night to absorb the fact that she'd been totally wasted and crying, and the only thing she could remember was the badly disguised look of horror on poor Henry's face.

And what had she said to him? She must have tried to explain the tears in some way, but she couldn't remember a word she'd said. Maybe she didn't say words. Maybe she just blubbered.

Or maybe she did say words. Terrible, embarrassing words. That would explain why she hadn't heard from Henry all day. She'd gotten a call from Grace, but her head hurt too much to talk to her. And her doorbell rang early in the afternoon, but by the time she stumbled down the stairs, there was nobody there. Just a greasy bag of fast food, for which she thanked the gods of good friends. And she thanked Henry, via text, then turned off her phone and binged on fast food and shame and old British ladies solving mysteries on public television.

She felt much better today. At least her head did. Her shame reflex still kicked in whenever she remembered that she didn't remember anything she'd said to Henry. But today was a new day, and she wasn't going to let a little secret-baring (or possible secret-baring) slow her down.

She might, however, act like it hadn't happened.

Shoes tied, door locked, she did a few quick stretches, then started off to meet Henry.

* * *

When Henry saw Helen round the corner in her running clothes, he felt a surge of relief. He didn't even know he was worried until he wasn't. He shouldn't have worried, though. Helen never disappointed. She always showed up where she said she was going to show up, and she always pitched in when she said she would pitch in.

Of course, she had also been keeping a pretty big secret from him.

While she was cracking the whip, making sure he and Grace kept up with their scholarly writing, she'd been secretly writing novels. Romance novels. He didn't even know she
read
romance novels.

Not that there was anything wrong with romance novels. He just didn't think Helen went for that sort of stuff. It was all so cheesy and predictable. Just a bunch of dudes with big muscles seducing women into becoming good little housewives.

He was actually a little disappointed. He'd thought she was more creative than that.

But what kind of friend would he be if he didn't support her? Besides, he knew for a fact that she thought he dressed like a stuffy old man, but she still let him make his own sartorial mistakes, as she put it. If she wanted to write fluffy nonsense books, he would support her.

First, he should stop thinking of them as fluffy nonsense books.

She jogged up to him and gave him a weak smile, then pulled out her phone. He'd never actually seen someone's face drop before, but there it went.

“Something wrong?” he asked, his heart dropping faster than her face.

“Grace isn't coming.” Her phone pinged again. “She's . . . never mind.”

“What? Is something wrong?”

Helen blushed. “Uh. She's hanging out with Jake.”

“Oh.” He couldn't believe it. Grace would choose hanging out with her fiancé—who she lived with!—over their regular Sunday afternoon date? What did Jake have that they didn't have?

“Oh!” He really was an idiot. “Well, that's OK. We can still get coffee, right?”

“Right.” She didn't sound so sure of that. “Actually . . .”

And here we go again, he thought. Gettin' the old brush-off. Well, he wasn't going to stand for it. “I really need coffee,” he said firmly.

“OK, well, I had some before I left . . .”

Not going to stand for it, he reminded himself. “OK, great. Let's run over to your house. You can brew a fresh pot.”

“Excuse me? Did you just tell me to make you coffee?”

He almost smiled. There she was, pushing back in response to any sort of bossing around. That was his Helen.

Instead of smiling, he just took off running. In the direction of her house. She could follow him, or not. He knew where the spare key was. He'd get to the bottom of her romance novel situation. That's what friends were for, dammit.