Numbly, I followed them through the small entry into the living room, where I came to a sudden halt. Everything in Jeremy’s living room looked . . . different. There were sofa cushions sitting cockeyed, and sheets of newspaper scattered on the chair and the floor. A half-eaten plate of pasta sat on the coffee table. Jeremy never ate in the living room. He never ate any place but the dining room. I remembered clearly one night, when we’d been planning to watch a movie, and I’d suggested we take our fried chicken to the sofa so we could eat while we watched. He’d looked at me as though I’d suggested committing murder.
“I’m going to go, um, put on some clothes. Some other clothes.” She stood on her toes and kissed Jeremy’s cheek. “Be right back.”
We both stood awkwardly as Tess sprinted up the steps. Jeremy cleared his throat. “Vivian, I’m sorry that everything happened like this. I didn’t have any idea that you were coming over today.”
“Didn’t you get my text that I was flying back to Florida today?” He never had answered me, come to think of it. It seemed like ages ago that I’d been sitting at the gate in New York. It had been a very eventful day.
“Uh . . .” He squinted. “I haven’t actually looked at my phone all day. Tess and I . . .” His gaze dropped to the carpet, and his face went dark red. Good God, Jeremy was blushing!
“Just tell me this.” I was suddenly tired . . . exhausted beyond belief. “Why did you ask me to move in with you before I left if you didn’t really mean it? If you were going to fall into bed with the first chick who you met once I was out of town?”
Jeremy’s shoulders sagged. “Because I thought I should. I thought we were a good fit, and I figured that was the logical next step for us. But then you didn’t seem too excited about the idea, so I kind of thought you were going to come home and tell me no. Then about two weeks after you left, I met Tess.”
“How did you meet her?” I tried to think of where someone like Jeremy might run into someone like Tess, who was clearly not his type at all.
“We met at the gym.” His eyes lit up, crinkling at the corners. “She works there, and she talked me into taking a class. And then one day, she took my water bottle home by accident, because ours were identical. She texted me to apologize when she saw my name on the bottom of it and suggested that we meet for coffee so she could give it back. We . . . just hit it off right away.” He glanced away again, and I thought, you dog. You slept with her that night, didn’t you?
“I just don’t understand, Jeremy.” I pushed some of the newspapers out of the way and sank down on to the couch. “You and I . . . we never . . .” I stopped talking, because I just didn’t know what to say. I was flabbergasted to the point of being speechless.
He perched on the edge of the chair across from me, sighing. “Vivian, I used to hear my friends talk about being in love. I thought they were crazy or making it up or hormonal. Or maybe all of the above. I . . . liked you. I felt we were compatible, and we got along. We didn’t make each other unhappy. We didn’t disagree. I felt that was the best we could expect.”
I closed my eyes and massaged my forehead with one hand. “But then you met Tess.” Hearing Jeremy say those words hammered home everything I’d been worried about since I’d left Florida, everything the nosy woman on the plane had told me and all of Aunt Gail’s warnings. I was an idiot.
“Yes.” Jeremy sounded relieved that I understood. “And I realized that everything my friends had been talking about could be true. She just . . . I look at her, and I’m happy. I get this feeling like I’ve never had before. I’d do anything for her. I want to be with her all the time.” He tossed up his hands. “I’m in love with Tess, Vivian. And I’m sorry if you’re hurt or disappointed, but I wouldn’t change that for the world.”
“Jeremy.” Behind me, Tess stood, her hands clasped in front of her mouth. Tears glimmered on her eyelashes. “That’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard. I love you so much, sugar.” Skirting the sofa, she joined him on the chair, sprawling over his lap.
Sugar? And lap sitting? Now I seriously was in danger of gagging. “Jeremy, I’m not hurt. As far as disappointed . . .” I shrugged. “Probably not. I’m surprised. You told me you’d wait for me.” I swallowed. “You said I was worth the wait.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. At the time, I thought I meant it.” He kissed the top of Tess’s head. “That was before I knew who was waiting for me around the corner, so to speak.”
“Why didn’t you call me and let me know? Or maybe drop a text? You had to know that I was going to be shocked by this when I got home.” It seemed reasonable from my point of view, anyway.
He fidgeted, his hand running down Tess’s back to cup her—ewwww. “I didn’t want to tell you over the phone. After our year together, it seemed the least I could do was let you down easy. Plus, when we did talk, the reception was so poor that I wasn’t sure you’d understand what I was trying to say.”
I barked out a huff of laughter. “That seems to be a common thread today. You’re the second person who didn’t want to give me news over the phone.” I couldn’t take this anymore. This day had been hell, from the beginning right up to now. I didn’t want to sit here another minute looking at Jeremy and his Tess, whose hands were currently straying into dangerous territory. I gave myself a little shake and stood up.
“I’m going to leave now. Tess, ah—I’d say it was nice to meet you, but I’d be lying. I mean, you seem like a good person, and you definitely make Jeremy happy.” At the moment, if he got any happier, he was going to flip Tess onto the floor and start humping and pumping right in front of me. “Jeremy, I don’t know what to say to you. I guess it’s been nice knowing you, and good luck. Have a good life.”
“Vivian, don’t go off mad.” Tess scrambled to stand up. “I don’t see why we can’t all be friends. Jeremy always said you were a lovely person. I’d like to get to know you.”
I stared at the woman as if she were speaking Mandarin. “I can’t process this right now. Maybe—someday. I don’t know. We could meet for coffee or something, I guess. But not now. Now, I just need to leave. I can’t be here anymore.”
I gathered my tattered dignity and got out of that townhouse as fast as I could. Once I was safely back in Aunt Gail’s car, I tore away from the curb, hitting the hands-free calling button as I broke the speed limit in my ex-boyfriend’s planned community.
“Aunt Gail? It’s me. I’m on my way back to your house, but I’m stopping at the liquor store on my way. How much tequila do you have on hand?”
She was silent for a few minutes, and I could hear the sounds of clinking glass as she sorted through her supply. “About half a bottle.”
“Okay, I’ll pick up more.”
“We’re going to need more than half a bottle tonight?” She chuckled. “Oh, hell. Better get some more salt, too. I have everything else we need for making margaritas.”
“Good. Have my first one ready for when I walk in the door, will you? And Aunt Gail, make it a double.”
“TO . . . MEN. FUCK ‘em all. Fuck every last one.”
Aunt Gail lifted the shot glass high in salute to all the males in the world, and I did the same, my arm swaying a little. We’d already plowed through three margaritas a piece, and now we’d move on to straight shots of tequila. I licked the salt off my hand, tossed back the contents of my shot glass and sucked a wedge of lime.
“I don’t know where I went wrong.” My words were slurring, but I didn’t care. “Three months ago, I was on top of the world. Had a job I loved, won the Amerails residency, had a boyfriend, had parents and a sister living nearby . . . everything was perfect. Then I go away for a little while, and when I come back, everything’s gone to shit. No boyfriends, no parents, no sister . . .”
Aunt Gail took her shot, too, and grimaced. “To be fair, Viv, you still have parents and a sister. They just aren’t going to be quite so close geographically. And you still have your job.”
“That’s true, I guess
.” I brooded for a few minutes. “And thank God tomorrow’s Sunday, so I don’t have to go back to work with the hangover I’m absolutely sure to have.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Aunt Gail poured us each another shot. “You know, Viv, you should be happy about this whole deal with Jerrrrrremy.” She stretched out the first syllable of his name, making me giggle with her wagging eyebrows. “He did you a favor. Don’t look at him as a loss. Look at him as one less frog you have to kiss.”
I nearly fell off the kitchen chair reaching for the lime on the cutting board. “Frogs? Who’s kissing frogs?”
“We all are, silly.” She licked her hand and drank. “Haven’t you ever heard that saying about kissing frogs? You have to kiss fifty frogs before you find your prince.”
I bit down on my next after-the-shot lime, sucking hard and then spitting out the peel. “I think I heard you have to kiss a lot of frogs. I didn’t know there was an exact number.”
“There is.” Aunt Gail nodded, her expression earnest. “And it’s fifty.”
“Huh.” I licked salt and drank again. “So, I have to go kiss fifty guys before I find the one who’s meant for me?”
“Well, how many guys have you kissed already?” She leaned back in her chair.
I thought about it. “Before Jeremy? Hmmm. Let’s see.” I thought about high school boyfriends, a couple of college dates and then there were the random one-night stands . . . well, maybe more like one random one-night stand. “I don’t know exactly.”
“You know what? That doesn’t matter.” She shook her head. “Those were before you were serious about finding your prince. They don’t count. They were . . . practice frogs. Tadpoles.”
“But Jeremy isn’t a tadpole?” I was trying to follow her logic. The tequila wasn’t helping.
“Nope. That dude’s a full-fledged frog.”
“Okay. You’re saying that I need to kiss forty-nine more men before I find the man for me? Is the right one number fifty, or number fifty-one?”
“I don’t know.” She slapped the palm of her hand on the table between us. “I don’t think it’s about the exact numbers. It’s more the idea of not expecting every man you date to be the one you want for the rest of your life.”
I turned my shot glass in small circles on the table. “I never did think that way. Not until Jeremy asked me to move in with him. But now it feels like everything in my world is changing, and maybe I do want to find the one. Or at least feel like I’m moving in that direction.”
Aunt Gail sighed. “I understand. When you’re young, you feel like everything has to happen now. But give it some time. The right person’s out there, hon. Maybe you’re not ready to meet him yet.”
“Right now, I’m not sure I’m ready for anything. Part of me wants to be in love. Part of me wants to run in the opposite direction.” I gnawed the corner of my lip, tasted lingering salt and licked it away. “The sad thing is, I’m not even upset about Jeremy. I feel more relieved than anything else, I think. And maybe a little appalled that I came so close to making a disastrous decision. What if I had moved in with him, Aunt Gail? What if I’d ended marrying Jeremy, and then five years later, woke up and realized I never felt any more for him than vague affection? What if I’d married him and then met the man who I could really love forever?”
“You’re absolutely right. That would’ve been real tragedy.” Something lingered in her eyes, something sad and resigned. I reached across to touch the back of her hand.
“What about you? Shelby and I always wondered why you never got married. I mean, Aunt Gail, you’re a total hottie now, but when you were my age, you must’ve been fighting the men off with a stick. Mom told me that when you two were in college, sometimes you’d have a couple dates a night.”
“Your mother exaggerates. I think because she’d been dating your dad since we were all in high school, my swinging single life seemed a lot wilder than it really was.” She grinned. “But I’ll admit that I did have my share of fun. Maybe more than my share.”
“Is that why you never settled down? You were having too much fun?” I picked up a piece of lime and nibbled on it.
“Not exactly.” She was staring at the table, tracing the design of the wood with one finger. “Oh, Vivian, you don’t really want to hear my boring old stories, do you?”
“I really do.” I leaned forward a little. “C’mon. You know everything about me. I’m an open book. It’ll make me feel better about myself if you share.”
“It’s not really that interesting.” One side of her mouth turned up, but the smile died before it went any further. “After I finished college, your mom and dad got married and started their grown-up lives. Remember, your mom and I were both in theater, but after she got married, your mother began to lose interest in that life. Your father was in grad school, and she got a job teaching to help pay the bills. I was doing regional theater, and I met a man.”
Her voice lowered, becoming almost dreamy as she remembered. “Rick was the director, and he was fifteen years older than me. I was playing a very small role in the play, but I was involved in as much of the behind the scenes process as I could be—set design, costumes, lighting, you name it. Any time I wasn’t waiting tables, walking dogs or babysitting to earn enough money to get by, I was at the theater, with Rick.
“We fought all the time. About anything and everything, you name it. Politics, religion, the press, the state of the arts, education—we were diametrically opposed on every topic. Then one night, after rehearsal, when I’d stayed to finish up some last-minute touches on one of the sets, we were arguing about artists and unions. I’d just made what I thought was a very astute observation, and I’d poked him in his chest as I was making my point. He grabbed my hand and said, ‘I think there’s only one way to shut you up.’ And then his kissed me.”
“Ohhhh,” I breathed. “God, that’s so romantic. What did you do?”
“I was twenty-three, horny as hell and already halfway in love with him. What do you think I did? I kissed him back, and we had sex on top of a pile of old curtains.”
“Was it amazing?” I couldn’t imagine that it wasn’t. I was turned on, just hearing about it.
“It was. Afterwards, I expected him to say we couldn’t do this again, it couldn’t happen, but he didn’t. He held me and said he’d been trying to avoid doing this since we’d met. He said he’d known the minute he laid eyes on me that he couldn’t help falling in love with me.”
“Oh, my God, Aunt Gail! How did you not end up not marrying this guy?” I gripped the edge of the table to keep from falling over. Too much tequila and now this . . . I was practically boneless.
“Because he was already married.” She spoke softly. “He’d married a girl about five years before this happened. He told me that he had come to the conclusion that love wasn’t going to happen for him, so he and one of his best friends had decided they might as well get married. They got along all right, more as friends than as lovers, and they had a baby. Sadly, their little girl was born too early and had a myriad of medical issues. There wasn’t any question of Rick leaving his wife and daughter. He knew it, and so did I. His wife was actually a lovely person. Over the course of the next year, I got to know her well, too.”
“Seriously?” I wrinkled my nose. “Wasn’t that awkward?”
“Not really. She didn’t love Rick any more than he was in love with her. The night we slept together, he went home and told her, explaining that it wasn’t going to change anything between them. They hadn’t been intimate in a long time, and she honestly didn’t care, as long as I didn’t come between Rick and his daughter. And I didn’t.”
“How long did it last?” I tried to imagine that kind of agonizing relationship, knowing it could never really go any further. “And did you love him?”
“Madly,” Aunt Gail answered immediately. “Not just for the sex either, although that was off the charts. No, we connected on every level. We had a shared passion for our craft, and
we genuinely liked each other, too. He was the one for me, no doubt about it.”
My heart was breaking, because I knew that this couldn’t have had a happy ending. “What happened?”
She closed her eyes, lifting one shoulder. “I thought I could make do with having some of him. I thought I was modern and independent. And then one day I woke up and realized I wanted more. By then you had come along, and I’d see your mom with you . . . and I wanted that. I wanted a family. I even suggested to Rick that if we had a baby, he didn’t have to be responsible. I knew he was already overwhelmed with his daughter’s care. But he refused. He said he couldn’t risk bringing another life into the world, not with what had happened before, and he asked me not to bring it up again. I knew then that he and I had an expiration date.”
“So you left him?” Tears were spilling down my cheeks. I hadn’t cried about Jeremy—I hadn’t even been near tears—but now, for Aunt Gail, sorrow was nearly crushing me.
“In the romantic sense of the word, yes. We remained friends and occasional business associates over the years. When I wrote my first play, he produced and directed it, and he was instrumental in helping me along over the years.” She took a deep breath. “He passed away last summer, after a long battle with cancer. I’m still in touch with his wife now and then.” She attempted a smile. “That’s my tragic love story, Viv. This is why I was so worried about you settling for a life with Jeremy. Love is out there for you, darling. Don’t be content with anything else.”
The Central Florida Sunbeam weekly newspaper had been a staple in my house when I was growing up. With our connection to the local arts scene—my mom had remained active in the theater community as a volunteer, and Aunt Gail had made a name as a playwright—we’d followed the columns religiously and used the calendar to plan adventures and outings. It was only right, then, that when I’d graduated from college and went job searching, I’d applied to work at the Sunbeam. They’d hired me at first as a stringer, covering stuff no one else wanted to do, but eventually, I became a full-time employee, with my focus on the tourism aspect of our area, writing stories to draw in those passing through central Florida. That was how I’d won the Amerails residency, too: the idea of examining how families were vacationing now, in the early twenty-first century, had caught the interest of the panel.
Fifty Frogs (The Anti-Cinderella Chronicles Book 4) Page 4
