Keeping the Pieces

by Brenda Lowder

Emma picked up a pen and began doodling on the edge of an envelope. So he’d suspected all along her mother might return before him? “So why are you in Ensenada?”

  There was a pause and Emma heard him swallow. “Well, I want your mother back. I just don’t think I want her back yet.”

  Emma’s stomach clenched, and she shook her head. “After all that, you’re still scared of her?” Her tone came out a lot more accusatory than she intended. But she didn’t apologize. Her father needed a sharp verbal slap to the face.

  “I’m not scared of her, Emma. I just thought a little vacation for Baxter and me would be nice before we returned to reality. We didn’t come all the way out here just to go back without seeing anything. So we just kept driving.”

  “Until you hit the water again.”

  “Exactly.” He hurried on. “Emma, you would love it here. You’ve got to see it sometime. There’s a giant blowhole on the coast called La Bufadora, and it sprays ocean water straight up into your face. Just beautiful. And the sunsets. Oh, the sunsets. Gorgeous. Red and orange and purple lighting up the ocean like it’s on fire. I’ve never seen anything more beautiful.”

  “Well, it sounds like you’ve had a nice break, Dad. You and Baxter. Don’t you think it’s time to come home? Get patched up with Mom?” And get her out of my house.

  “You know what, Emma? I think I’m going to be here another week…or two. Oh, look, my battery’s almost out. I might hang up on you. Accidentally, of course. I’ve had the hardest time finding a charger that works—”

  The call cut out. Accident my ass.

  A hollow feeling in Emma’s stomach told her she was going to be stuck with her mother until her father grew a pair and figured out a less passive and more aggressive way of dealing with the love of his life.

  If only she could lure her mother out of the house. Then she could change the locks too.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  It was easy for Cole to say Derek should just get rid of Honey. But it was hard to uninstall something he’d never installed in the first place. Derek had broached the subject of her leaving several times, but Honey distracted him by intentionally misunderstanding, ignoring his hints, and suddenly suggesting sex. And that was…effective.

  But driving home from Cole’s office, Derek was determined to break up with Honey. He refused to be distracted by any ploy she might use to redirect his intentions.

  When he opened the door to his apartment, Derek’s eyes immediately went to Honey’s usual resting spot on the sofa and he was surprised to find it empty.

  “Honey?” he called, closing the door behind him.

  “In here,” she yelled from the back of the apartment.

  At the doorway to his bedroom, he received the second and third biggest surprises of the night—Honey was standing. Standing and packing.

  He blinked at her, not wanting to question this mirage and risk it disappearing. And he didn’t want to inadvertently change her mind from going through with anything that required luggage.

  “So…” he started and leaned against the doorframe, folding his arms. “You’re packing?”

  She paused to glance at him and then returned to the shirt she was folding. “Yes, I am.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  “I am.” She continued to pack without looking at him.

  Did he really want to ask her anything else?

  Before he could decide, Honey closed her large suitcase with a click. She raised her eyes to where he lounged in the doorway and made a frustrated sigh.

  “Derek, sit down.” She gestured to the end of the bed. He sat, and she moved her suitcase onto the floor beside the others and sat next to him.

  “This isn’t working out for me,” she said.

  Derek nodded, but kept silent, waiting for her to go on.

  “I was talking to Cam earlier—”

  “Cam?” Derek raised his eyebrows.

  “Yes,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone, tilting her chin defensively. “We talk often. You don’t just forget someone you spent eight years of your life with.”

  “Okay.”

  “Anyway, he was going on and on about work and Emma and his mother, and I just thought, why am I doing this? I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  “Talk to Cam?”

  “No. All of it.” She gestured with her hand to include Derek and his entire room. “I was talking to Cam because I was bored and lonely and down. But talking to him didn’t make me feel better. I only felt more stuck.”

  Stuck. Yes. Like someone squatting in your apartment. Derek tried to keep his thoughts from showing.

  She shifted around so that they were face to face. She put her hand over his.

  “And Derek, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but you’re the one making me bored and lonely.”

  He nodded, considering. She continued.

  “I was with Cam—off and on—for years because we had so much in common. He let me be who I was. But over time I just got so tired and frustrated with him. His weakness. His attempts to keep me happy like he was scared of me if I wasn’t. Then I met you, and you were just so different from Cam. You were strong and focused and you had all these, like, real-world struggles with your family and going to school, and I admired that. But as you and I got closer, I got scared.” She patted his hand and withdrew hers to fold her arms.

  “When we kissed—before Cam proposed—at first I was thrilled with the novelty. But then it scared me that I could end up with you, living a completely different life with, well, struggles that I wouldn’t have with Cam. So I said yes to marrying him.”

  She looked down and picked at a loose string on his comforter. “I’m sorry I kissed you the night before. That was bad timing.”

  Derek ran a hand through his hair. He felt closer to Honey now that she was breaking up with him than he ever had. They were finally, blessedly, on the same page.

  “That’s okay,” he said. “I think we made it past that.”

  She shook her head. “But that’s just it. We shouldn’t have. You and I were never meant to be, but at the party you got together with Emma, and you’d just kissed me the night before, and I got so damn jealous. Every time Cam and I saw you, you were shoving your happiness in our faces.” She shrugged. “And I wanted that. I wanted to win. I wanted you.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I’m sorry because I’m miserable with you, and I’ve tried long enough to make this work.” She took a deep breath and smiled like she was pleased to unburden herself. “We are too different, and we don’t want the same things.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  She nodded and smiled teasingly. “I always am.” She stood up smoothly despite her cast. Derek suspected she could have been doing a lot more for herself these past few weeks, but he refrained from calling her on it.

  “Well, I have to be going,” she said. “I have a plane to catch.”

  Derek stared at her. “A plane?”

  “Yes. I’m going to Rome. I’ve also been talking to Francesco. He reminded me what a magical summer we had together two years ago when Cam and I were on a break. And Rome is the perfect cure for boredom.”

  “Francesco.” Derek pronounced the name, thinking he didn’t envy his successor. “Good luck, Honey. I hope you have a wonderful trip.”

  He got up and hugged her.

  She pulled away first, looking at her cell phone. “Great. Thanks. Yeah.” She walked to the bedroom door.

  “My car’s here. Would you mind helping me with my luggage?”

  “Gladly.” He grinned.

  ∞∞∞

  After work, Cam took Emma to dinner at Bacchanalia, the best restaurant in Atlanta. They enjoyed one of the most delicious and elegant meals Emma had ever had then walked to the parking lot with linked arms. Emma smiled up into Cam’s downturned face. His eyes crinkled with his return smile, and she squeezed his arm. He tightened his bicep reflexively, and she laughed. Men.

 
They walked to his car. They’d left hers at the office so they could ride together to the restaurant. Emma wondered if anyone at work would notice if her car stayed in the parking lot all night since they’d probably take Cam’s car back to his place and maybe she’d sleep over tonight. She’d decided they needed a redo. She wanted their relationship to work. She’d been committed to making this happen for so long.

  No one at work would notice her car, she decided, since she was usually the first one at the office in the mornings. But she hadn’t packed an overnight bag or anything. She didn’t have something to wear for tomorrow, or a toothbrush, or her makeup, or—

  Cam cleared his throat, breaking into her runaway mental logistics. “I’d invite you back to my place, but it’s being fumigated.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Tented and everything. How about your place?”

  “My mother’s staying with me.”

  “Ohhhh.” Cam managed to stretch the single sound into five syllables of disappointment. And here she’d just resolved to make this relationship work.

  She hesitated. “It’s okay, though,” she said as she ran through scenarios in her head.

  Cam brightened. “It is? Will your mother be out or something?”

  “No.” Emma pushed her hair back from her face and straightened her shoulders. “But I’m a grown woman who can take a man into her bedroom in her own house if she wants to.”

  “Amen to that.” Cam hurried the remaining distance to the car and let her in before jogging to his side and ducking into the driver’s seat. “Let’s go!”

  Emma shut the car door and wondered if she should be flattered that he seemed so excited to go back to her place. She decided she’d take it as a compliment to her proven skills and not just the fact that she was a warm body distracting him from Honey.

  They stopped back at the office to pick up Emma’s car. Cam said it would be more convenient so he could go home and get changed in the morning before going in to work. Emma wondered (meanly) if it was so he’d have a built-in excuse to be late to work in the morning and make her handle the Tallahassee roll-out on her own. Or maybe he just wanted an escape hatch.

  Ugh. Whatever. She hardly cared. She was infinitely more focused on her performance tonight. Or rather, her extreme nervousness as to how her performance was going to go tonight.

  She had to face it, last time the sex was bad.

  And it was her fault. She knew it was. She hadn’t really been focused on Cam or how much she’d always loved him or their future together. She’d been checking a box to catch up with Derek and Honey and why that should be a factor in her sex life with Cam was just ridiculous. It shouldn’t be.

  So she was going to do it right this time. Focus on Cam. On giving him the best sex of his life and in doing that, she’d please herself. And then there would be no time or reason or desire to picture anyone else. It would just be awesome, naked sex as God intended.

  Emma drove slowly, and Cam followed in his car. She kept glancing in her rearview mirror, afraid she was going to lose him. But he stayed right behind her. When they got to her house, she parked in the driveway. He parked on the street. She went over to tell him that he could park in the driveway, too, but found he was on the phone. He apologized with a shrug and a point to his cell. “My mother,” he mouthed and rolled his eyes. She understood. She had a mother she rolled her eyes about too.

  He motioned for her to go in and that he’d follow. Reluctantly Emma started toward the door. She hoped her mother had gone to bed so she could avoid the awkwardness of her mom not knowing her daughter’s longtime friend from college, now boyfriend.

  Emma let herself into the house. No such luck. Her mother was parked on the couch, remote in hand, watching another one of her reality shows.

  “Mom, I thought you’d be in bed.”

  “No, I couldn’t possibly sleep yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, something’s been going on with Sad and Naked. Lance’s house is filled with smoke. I’m not sure if he got out in time.”

  “Oh.” Emma could not relate to her mother’s love of reality television. “What are you watching now?”

  “The dating naked show.”

  “Is everyone naked in all the shows you watch?”

  “Yes, mostly.”

  “Huh.”

  “It’s really good. It’s like a metaphor. They can’t hide emotionally. Because they can’t hide anything. Since they’re naked.”

  “Yeah, I get it. Hey, speaking of being naked…” Emma decided to just say it at once. “My boyfriend…” she started because she found she didn’t want to say Cam’s name. Her mother knew Cam as the bread-crumber, the guy she claimed was stringing Emma along. It would be better not to tell her who he was. It wasn’t any of her mother’s business, anyway. “My boyfriend and I were just on a date, and he’s going to come in shortly, and we’re going to spend some time together.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s on the phone. In his car.”

  “Is he naked?”

  Was she kidding? “Not yet.”

  “Oh.”

  Emma looked pointedly at her mother.

  Jennifer put her hand to her chest. “Well, you don’t have to mind me. I won’t bother you.”

  “Okay. But it’s a little weird. You being here.” Emma folded her arms.

  Her mother raised her chin. “Well, where do you expect me to go in the middle of the night?”

  “Nowhere. Just, you know, turn the volume up on the TV and be cool, okay?”

  “I can do that. I realize I am a guest in your home. I am an intruder, an unwanted party. I’m willing to do whatever you want me to do. Except leave. But I’m more than happy to disappear in the house. You won’t know I’m here.” Her mother turned up the volume on her naked dating show and nodded toward the television with wide eyes as if to say, “See? See? I’m doing what I’m told.”

  Emma shrugged. “Thanks.” She turned to go retrieve Cam. When she opened the door, he was already standing there, fist poised to knock.

  “Hey.” She smiled at him and held the door open.

  “Sorry about that.” He kissed her cheek. “I’d been putting off talking to my mom, and I just couldn’t get rid of her.” He put his arms around Emma and hauled her closer. She stretched to try to close the door behind him, but he kissed her neck loudly.

  “Just a sec.” She pulled away and closed the door as Cam stepped into the living room.

  “Oh my God! Lance! It’s you!” Emma’s mom leaped from the couch and ran over to Cam. Emma had to jump out of the way.

  “It’s really you!” Her mother stared at him, open-mouthed, then threw herself into Cam’s arms—where Emma had just been.

  “Mom! What are you doing?” Emma looked at Cam. He was frozen in place, a terrified look on his face. Emma put her hand on her mother’s arm and pulled her away from him.

  Jennifer looked from Emma to Cam and back again.

  “Mom, this is my boyfriend, Cam.” Emma spoke slowly and gestured to Cam. “From college. And after. You’ve met him once or twice before. I think you have him confused with someone else.”

  Her mother straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin. “I do not. I may not know his real name, but he’s the man from my favorite show. That slow one I call Sad and Naked.”

  Emma and Cam stared at each other then looked at her mother. It was definitely time for the men in white jackets.

  Jennifer narrowed her eyes. “Now you two are looking at me like I’m crazy, but I swear to you. He’s on your television. I’ll show you.” She walked to the coffee table and picked up the remote. “I watch him every day. It’s been off for a couple of days with the smoke bombs going off. I’ve been really scared about it. Did you escape in time?” She keyed in the channel.

  “Uh-oh.” Emma’s stomach dipped sickeningly a second before the damning evidence leapt to the screen.

  Her mother wasn’t crazy. She’d j
ust been watching the feed from Emma’s installed spy cameras at Cam’s house. Emma had managed to forget about them once she was actually in a relationship with him.

  She reached a hand toward Cam, but he strode to the TV, slipping out of reach. “What the hell?” He swiveled around to stare at them in disbelief before returning his eyes to the screen. “That’s my apartment!” Plumes of fumigation smoke floated through the unmistakable vision of Cam’s living room. The smoke must have triggered the motion sensors which was why the cameras were still recording when he wasn’t there.

  “Um, yeah.” Emma could feel her face getting hot.

  Cam turned to stare at her. “Emma. What is this? How is my apartment on your television screen?”

  Emma nodded. Just be matter-of-fact about it, she told herself. She continued to nod. “Yes, Cam. You’re right. That is your apartment. Oh, look! It’s being fumigated. Just like you said.”

  His eyes were wide. “How is it on your TV?”

  She put her hands on her hips. “Well, that would be the spy cameras.”

  “Spy cameras?” Cam blinked.

  “Spy cameras?” her mother parroted.

  Emma crossed her arms. “Yes. The very affordable spy cameras I happened to install in Cam’s apartment one day before we got together.”

  Emma’s mother took a few steps back without looking. “And you were calling me the crazy one,” she said under her breath. When the back of her legs brushed the wingchair, she turned and retreated to the guest room. Emma rolled her eyes. Oh well. That was one way to get rid of her.

  Cam knelt by the television and stared at the screen in wonder. When he looked at Emma, his forehead furrowed deeper than she’d ever seen it. “Why?”

  Emma suddenly didn’t know what to do with her hands. She felt like she was on stage, in a play, and hadn’t been given any blocking or business to do. “I was in love with you,” she blurted. “I wanted to see you. Be with you. More.”

  He was very still. “Where’d you put the cameras?”

  Emma tucked her hair behind her ear. “Well, let’s see. There’s one in your workout room—by your free weights. There’s one in the light fixture over your kitchen table. And there’s one in the living room, on the fireplace mantel behind the family picture.”