Settling Up (8 page)

I nodded as Simon approached the table, but Mack held my gaze for just a second longer.

I tipped my head up in an “everything is a go with the plan” kind of way. Luckily, Mack seemed to read my brand of spy language and he winked back at me before walking away.

I played a few hands with Simon before leaving. I scribbled my number onto a sticky note (which I always make sure I carry in my purse because you never know when you’ll need to tackle an equation that needs writing-down) and slipped it under the wiper of Mack’s gray truck.

After giving it a nod of approval, I headed toward my own car. I had to get myself to work. After which, I had a pretty important date.

B
oy did
I really hate being wrong.

I cleared my throat and waited while the phone rang.

“Hello.”

Normally (well, my past week’s new normal), hearing Mack’s voice would calm me down, make me instantly feel better. But that Tuesday morning there was a hitch of disappointment mixed in with those emotions.

“Hey,” I said.

“So, how’d it go? Who’s buying the drinks?”

I tipped my head, even though I knew he couldn’t see it. “You know, I was thinking I might buy.”

“So it was completely weird then?”

I took a deep breath. “Yeppers.”

He chuckled. “Well I can’t wait to hear all about it. Let’s meet for coffee since it’s still early and you’ve got to work later, right?”

“Right.” I nodded as he told me where to meet him and I hung up.

M
y fingers wrapped
tight around the warm cup and I settled down into a worn wooden chair across from Mack. He was wearing a soft-looking gray zip up hoodie and jeans, looking so much more casual than he did dressed up at work. His comfy, laid-back look, plus the warm drink and blustery day made me feel warm and fuzzy all over.

Until, that is, he looked at me expectantly, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“I don’t even know where to start.” I let my head drop back, cringing when I picked it back up and made eye contact with him.

“At the beginning.” His blue eyes held me.

“Well, we went to this really nice restaurant in the city. I met them there since they’d been spending the day together already. When I got there, they all stood up and greeted me like I was the freaking Queen of England or something.”

“Maybe they’re just the kind of people who know right away that they like someone. You know, there are people out there who don’t need a ton of time to get to know —“

I held a hand up to interrupt Mack and all of his excuses. “Are you defending them now? No. There was a distinct crazy-clingy vibe right from the start. But I sat down anyway and after we ordered drinks, I asked them how long they were visiting from the east coast. You know, because when Ray told me about them, he said they were from the east coast. And do you know what they said?”

Mack leaned closer, sipping his coffee.

“They said, ‘Oh, dear. We live here! We
used
to live out east, but we moved out last year to be close to our Ray of sunshine here.’” I raised my eyebrows, but held the rest of my face deadpan for effect.

Mack rocked back and laughed. “No! So it wasn’t like they were leaving soon and needed to get back and that’s why they just
had
to come on your second date with you.”

I shook my head. “Nope. Here. They live here. I could’ve met them in, say, a month or two when it would’ve been normal.” I sipped my coffee for strength. “But that wasn’t even the weirdest part.” I looked up at Mack and he furrowed his eyebrows.

“No?”

I squinted one eye. “Let me see. I’m not sure what was weirder. The fact that they insisted on holding hands most of the time. Or maybe it was the food sharing.”

“Hey, just because they’re close doesn’t seem too weird. You said your parents are still madly in love with each other. My parents are, too, and they hold hands and share food all the time.”

I almost couldn’t get the words out, it was so ridiculous. “Oh, I wouldn’t have minded that. But this was with
me
. His mom held hands with
me
most of the night and the whole family picked off
everyone’s
plates, even mine.” I shivered a little at the memory as Mack laughed in the background, but I kept going, because it got so much worse. “A few times, they were in the middle of eating something that they apparently felt was too good not to share, so they bit some off, spit out the rest, and held it toward me.”

This had Mack rolling. He let his head fall back and his deep laugh wrapped itself around us. I couldn’t help but join in. Now that it was all over, I had to admit that it was pretty hilarious.

“I had to tell Ray that it wasn’t working out, in front of his parents, during dessert when he started talking about houses and wondering where the two of us might live together someday. I told him we had some big discrepancies in how we saw this relationship going.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “If I thought breaking up with one person was hard, having to break up with three was ridiculous.”

Mack composed himself and cleared his throat into his fist. “Sorry. I’m sure it wasn’t so funny when you were going through it.”

Swiping at the air with my hand, I said, “Don’t worry about it. I must be getting all of the crazy out of the way early. My next date has to be normal, right?”

At this, Mack leaned forward. “Next date?”

“Yeah, the dentist Betsy messaged wants to meet up this weekend.” I shrugged. “It is kind of freaking me out that he has hair, though,” I added with a sigh. “That was the nice thing about Ray, the bald head kind of made me feel like I was in similar company.” I smiled faintly at Mack. “

“Hey,” he said. “You never know, they say couples end up looking like each other after a while. Maybe this thick-haired gentleman will rub off on you,” Mack said with a smile.

I ducked my head. “Maybe.” I fiddled with my coffee cup, remembering Betsy questioning our relationship, wondering if it was all about me. “That’s enough about me, though. Let’s talk about you. How long have you lived up here?”

“About four years. I tried to make a go of it in our house after – but I just couldn’t do it. Then it took me a while to sell it and everything.”

“What was it like?”

“The house? It was great.” His eyes crinkled at the edges as he thought. “Two story, blue with white trim, white picket fence. Tess was really into interior design so the inside was always changing, she was constantly adding a new vase full of twigs here or a throw pillow there. She was really good at that stuff.”

I bit my lip and nodded, a sinking feeling in my heart at the thought of my sparsely decorated apartment and lack of all decorating skills that didn’t have to do with hanging posters in perfect perpendicular positions on the wall.

“What else did Tess like to do?” I asked.

“She scrapbooked and made her own jewelry, too. Her job was her real passion, though. She loved working with the kids in her school.”

I ticked off the other ways Mack’s late wife was different from me. Her job was helping children deal with their emotions. She was officially my opposite. I couldn’t even understand myself, let alone help anyone else understand what was going on in their mind.

But then a realization swept over me. Betsy had asked me why Mack and I wouldn’t work. I had told her the truth when I’d said that I didn’t want to risk our friendship, but I’d been wrong when I’d said it was mostly because I wasn’t his type. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t Mack’s type. People changed their “type” all the time (I mean, look at me).

What mattered, the real reason behind why Mack and I wouldn’t work, was that he was still in love with Tess. And I knew I wasn’t the girl who could (nor would want to) compete with a perfect dead woman.

Mack was just looking for a friend. Which was fine by me. I smiled over at him.

“I’m glad you’re talking about her. It seems to make you happy.”

“It does. It feels good. I hated feeling like she was some dark secret I couldn’t tell. Thank you.”

“We should meet like this more often. I like that you can talk to me without having to worry about working.”

He nodded. “Yeah. It’s nice. You sure you don’t miss Blackjack, though?”

I bobbed my head. “Very sure. I’m finding that I don’t need the distraction so much lately.”

He smiled. “Good.”

We chatted for a little longer, parting at the door with a plan to meet up later in the week. And even though a pit of sadness sat deep in my gut for what this guy had gone through, I couldn’t help the fact that I felt wonderful and warm about the fact that he had opened up to me. He saw me as just as good a friend as I saw him. And now that he’d let me in, I had a feeling we could do a lot to help each other.

I
took
the day off work on Friday for my doctors appointment to be followed later that night by my date with the dentist. This turned out to be a disastrous combination.

The doctor, while assuring me that what I was going through did seem to be stress induced “shedding and balding”, a form of Alopecia, also found three more bald spots on my head that I hadn’t noticed. (How had I not thought to look for more?) She ordered blood work to check on a few other factors before we made any decisions about treatment. Which meant that I was left hanging for a few days, knowing that I was losing my hair, had more bald spots than I’d originally thought, and was helpless to do anything about it. At least, for now.

The feeling of helplessness is not a great one to have dominating your thoughts when going into a date. So even though the restaurant Ben picked was cute and even though he had a wonderful smile, a feeling like some ‘roided-up-cousin of disappointment clung to my shoulders, pulling me steadily down with it’s freakish strength.

Having always been someone who was wholly incapable of faking or hiding my emotions, this dispiritedness was as evident as my lack of mascara (cried away earlier in my car) and the rampant disheveled nature of my hair (from feeling the new bald spots obsessively while I drove, walked, sat, breathed). So much so that after only two minutes at the table, Ben wrinkled his forehead and asked me if everything was okay.

I took in a deep breath, cringed, and said, “Sorry. I’ve been dealing with some stuff today and it’s got me a little shaken up.”

He leaned in close, concern coating his words as he asked, “Would you like to talk about it?”

“Oh. It’s nothing, just that I’m losing all of my hair. No big deal.” I laughed because it was easier than crying, in public.

His concern turned to pity and his face softened. “I’m so sorry, Lauren. I’m sure it’s worse in your head than in realit—“

I cut him off by flipping my hair over in the three places I now knew (by heart) those bald spots would be. “See for yourself,” I said, showing him, because (contrary to common sense) I seemed to fluctuate between not wanting anyone to see my baldness to suddenly needing everyone to see these terrible, stress-induced-and-inducing patches of hairless scalp so they would believe me about how horrible the situation really was.

While I couldn’t see (because of the bits of my remaining hair covering my eyes), I could hear the rattled breath that he sucked in at the sight.

“Oh wow. I’m so sorry.” He was shaking his head when I flipped my hair out of my face and settled it back into the four-way-comb-over it had morphed into. “Do you know what’s causing it?” He gulped at his water.

I could tell this was not how he wanted our date to start out, or to go at all, but I couldn’t help myself. I was like a runaway train, going forward no matter what was in my path, gaining speed and becoming more dangerous by the minute.

“Stress, most likely.” I put my hands up in defeat. Stress was literally the most amorphous and intangible thing to try to pin down or change. Even saying it made me feel like I was an ant fighting an elephant, completely ineffective against the larger-than-anything-beast.

Ben nodded. “You should probably try to relax, then. Don’t think about it.”

It was a comment which should’ve been well-received. It was a normal, nice thing to say. What he didn’t anticipate was the fact that when you’re stressed out about losing your hair, people telling you not to think about it is like telling you not to breathe.

My eyebrows lifted. “Try not to think about it?”

“Yeah. You haven’t stopped messing with it since you got here. Maybe that’s part of the problem.”

I let my eyelids drop closed and tried to breathe evenly, to calm myself. My heart pounded wildly in my chest, my thoughts did the same inside my head.

“So I should try not to think about it when my hair is literally falling out of my head and I can’t do anything to stop it?”

Ben nodded (the poor guy), not knowing what he was getting himself into.

“I should just ignore when it comes out in clumps every morning in the shower?”

His nodding grew smaller and more unsure as he started to realize the mess he was in. Or maybe he could see the crazed look growing in my eyes.

“And when I have to wear it a certain way so none of my many bald spots show?”

He just sat there silently at that point, looking around for someone to save him.

“Yeah, sounds simple. Thanks so much for the heads up. I’ll definitely take your advice since you know so well what I’m going through.”

He bit his lip and swiped a hand through his full head of hair, probably out of habit. His cheeks were red and he looked like he wished everything was different.

I shook my head, hating myself for snapping at the poor guy. “Look,” I said, softening my gaze. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I know you’re just trying to help.”

Ben tipped his head to the side. “That’s okay. I can see you’re having a hard time with it. I know I don’t have any room to give you advice.” His mouth pulled into a side smile, we picked up our menus, and I tried not to hate-stare at his thick hair.

After settling on a nice salad for dinner, my heart started to calm down, my frustration dissipated slightly, and I counted by squares, hoping to return myself completely to normal. 2…4…9…16…25…36…49…64… I felt bad for snapping at Ben; he seemed like a nice guy.

Until the waiter came.

“And what can I get you two?” the perky man asked, smiling so big it was contagious.

Or, at least, I felt it should be contagious. But what happened next seemed proof of the contrary.

Ben rolled his eyes. “Don’t you have any specials? How are we supposed to order without knowing that? We can’t read your mind, you know.”

The waiter’s jaw tightened with something in between surprise and disappointment. ‘Sorry, sir. Yes, our specials tonight are a pan fried halibut filet with seasonal vegetables, rice pilaf, and a garlic cream sauce. We also have a strip steak with a baked potato and asparagus.” He clasped his hands in front of him as he waited.

“I’ll have the steak. Rare,” Ben said as if he was being offered garbage and forced to order something.

I smiled up at the man when he looked over at me. “I’ll have the Caesar salad with blackened salmon on top.” The waiter nodded and turned to leave.

“You’re not going to write it down?” Ben’s words stopped him in the middle of his much-needed retreat from our table.

He spun around and pasted the smile back on his face. “Don’t worry, sir. I’ve got it right here.” He tapped at his temple.

Ben made a sure-buddy face and shook his head, but thankfully let the guy go this time. “Every single time they do that, they mess up my order.” He said it loud enough that I was sure our poor waiter heard.

I shrugged. “It’s his job, though. I bet he’s pretty good at remembering.”

“He’s a waiter. They don’t get these jobs because they’re smart.” Ben shook his head while mine shot back in surprise. “You probably take peoples’ intelligence for granted because you and I work in such intellectual fields.” He gestured in between us. “Other people are not up to our capacity, Lauren.”

I pursed my lips together, trying to keep the words lining up in my throat from bursting out in surprise. I felt the heat in my skin that signified my neck was definitely turning red and rashy.

Even though I had been branded as “smart” very early in life, I’d always felt envious of my age-level peers who seemed so smart in every other way. Sure, I got math, but I didn’t have an easy time talking with people, making friends, keeping the small number of friends I had. Skipping grades made it even harder. Though I was intellectually on the same level as those classmates, I was years behind them emotionally. It had taken me a lifetime to learn how to talk to people and it was something I still struggled with today for fear of being judged. And here was Ben doing that very same, ugly thing, breaking rule eight on my list, being rude to people who were only trying to help him.

My list suddenly flashed before me. Oh gosh. I wasn’t any better, was I? I had set a criteria that excluded certain people from even being an option. I had prematurely discriminated against a whole slew of people, assuming they wouldn’t be a right fit for me even before I met them.

I took a deep, shaky breath. “Look Ben, I’m really sorry that I snapped at you. I realize I’ve put you in a bad mood, but please don’t take it out on our waiter. He’s really doing a great job.”

Ben’s eyebrows furrowed together and I suddenly understood, he wasn’t acting like this because of how I’d talked to him. This was his normal, how he treated people. An ache filled my chest. List or not, I didn’t want to spend my time with someone who put other people down just to make themselves feel better.

I got out my wallet. “I’m going to take my dinner to go. My treat. Sorry for wasting your time.” I stood up and went to find our waiter before Ben could say anything else.