by Brenda Novak
“Why do you need a picture of me?” He opened his empty refrigerator and gazed in. He was hoping that, somehow, miraculously, a jug of orange juice had appeared—maybe when Noelle had come over to drop off dinner. Orange juice was a favorite of his, too, wasn’t it?
“We don’t have any groceries to speak of,” Lourdes said. “I checked. Unless you want to eat leftover lemon chicken and rice pilaf for breakfast, you’re going to have to go to the store.”
He should’ve done that last night and would have, if Noelle hadn’t surprised him with dinner. He’d brought the wine from work—a gift one of his vendors had sent him for Christmas—and stopped by to see what Lourdes wanted to eat. But with food on the table, going out again hadn’t been necessary. “For both of us?”
“I’ll contribute to the cost. The shopping is on you. I don’t want to be seen, remember?”
He winced against the hangover that had asserted itself the moment he opened his eyes. “Don’t worry about paying for groceries. It’s the least I can do to compensate you for the inconvenience of having to move in here. But how can you talk so loudly? Isn’t your head killing you?”
“Fortunately, I had some ibuprofen in my purse, because there doesn’t seem to be any painkiller in your cupboards.”
“I doubt I’ve ever bought any. I can’t remember the last time I needed it.”
“Well, I can tell you need it now. And, after last night, I guessed you might wake up feeling a bit off, so I set a glass and two tablets on the counter for you right there.” She indicated the spot before going back to whatever she was doing on her computer.
It was thoughtful of her to anticipate his need...
“So...is this a good sign?” he asked after he’d swallowed them. “Is this you getting back to work?”
“No, this is me fulfilling my promise to you. Since we only have three months, I thought I’d better get started. Plus, it gave me a reason to get out of bed this morning.”
“There’s always that album you have to write.”
“Stop reminding me,” she grumbled. “You’re only adding to the pressure.”
He definitely didn’t want to do that... “I take it you haven’t heard from Derrick.”
“Actually, I have. He texted me at six this morning to say I’m being unreasonable.”
Which brought up the question—what was Derrick doing last night? Lourdes didn’t volunteer that she had any concerns on the subject, so he didn’t mention it. Kyle did wonder, however, if that brief message from Derrick would be enough to change the situation. Maybe she wouldn’t stay. Maybe she’d go back to Nashville to fight for her man. “And you responded...how?”
“I haven’t. I figure if he can let me stew for a day, I should have the same privilege.”
He smiled at her. “You’re talking tough this morning.”
She pinched her bottom lip with her fingers as she studied something on her screen. “I’m distracting myself from the pain.”
“By doing me a favor.”
“No one can write a more appealing solicitation for a dating site than I can.”
He slammed his water glass down on the counter and hurried around to the table. “Oh, no,” he said. “You’re not...”
She seemed taken aback by his displeasure. “What’s wrong? There won’t be a woman on Single Central who wouldn’t want to respond to this ad.”
“I don’t do online dating.”
“Obviously—because you’re not doing any dating. We established that last night.”
He read through what she’d written so far. “I look like Dierks Bentley? No, I don’t. Come on, don’t put that up.”
She scowled at him. “How are you ever going to get over Olivia if you won’t even try?”
“It’s not that I won’t date. It’s just that online dating seems so...desperate. Especially once you reach my age.”
“It’s not desperate, it’s practical. Especially for someone with such a limited dating pool.”
“Lourdes, no.”
“Don’t resist the very thing you need!” she argued. “You never know who you might meet. And don’t worry. I’ll help you vet the women who respond. I’ll make it easy.”
“If you think it’s so easy, why don’t you create a profile for yourself, too?” He figured that would put a quick end to it.
“I can’t,” she said. “And you know why. Besides the reaction it would cause in the media, and the gold diggers who’d step forward, I’m in love with someone else. That makes me emotionally unavailable.”
He opened his mouth, but she spoke before he could.
“The person you love has been married to your brother for nearly five years. You have to release her. It’s time.”
“But I can’t afford to get together with another woman like Noelle—someone who might be completely narcissistic and obsessive!”
She tapped her fingernails on the table as she considered this latest objection. “Granted, there’re a few horror stories connected to online dating. But there are also a lot of people who meet this way and end up living happily-ever-after. We’ll be able to spot the undesirables and weed them out.”
“It’s not that simple. If undesirables were that obvious, they wouldn’t continually screw up the lives of innocent bystanders.”
“If you look for the right qualities, it isn’t hard,” she told him. “You can’t let yourself be blinded by a pretty face, or a nice set of...well, you know.”
“You think I’m that easily distracted?”
“You’re a guy, aren’t you?”
“That’s a stereotype if ever I heard one.”
“Stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason. I saw the way you were nearly salivating when I was in that towel.”
“Salivating?”
“Okay, it was only a glimmer in your eye, but it was enough to tell me that it’s been too long since you were with a woman. And that leads me to believe you might be susceptible to getting caught up in the physical.” She seemed to rethink her words. “Now that I mention it, maybe we should work on getting you laid first. Bringing your drought to an end would remind you of what you’re missing and make you more eager to find someone—so eager that you’ll reach beyond your usual prejudices and boundaries.”
“Those aren’t prejudices and boundaries. They’re standards, for your information. You’re going to have to think of some way to forget your problems other than by solving mine.”
“Why?” she asked. “I feel we’re friends. I’d like you to be happier for having met me.”
“I am. I have a lot to be grateful for. I’m satisfied with my life.”
She tucked her hair behind her ears. “But you can’t be completely satisfied, not without Olivia.”
“Olivia’s with my stepbrother now. He just told me that they’re expecting their first child. I would never want anything to hurt their family.”
“Which is why you have to give up on her.” Twisting around in her seat, she rested an arm on the back of her chair while he searched for his keys. “Can you tell me why?”
He found them under some mail he had yet to sort through. “Why what?”
“What made you do it? What made you crawl into bed with Olivia’s sister?”
His friends had asked him the same thing a hundred times. There wasn’t a good explanation. He’d probably never have an adequate answer. It was almost as if he’d purposely driven into a brick wall. “I told you. Olivia and I were on a break. And I was drunk when Noelle approached me.”
“You were drunk last night, too, and yet you behaved like the perfect gentleman.”
In spite of what he’d been feeling. So she recognized that. But he was older and wiser these days, more aware of the consequences. “It’s hard to explain. I was ready to marry Olivia wh
en she moved to Sacramento to establish her business. The fact that she left in spite of my proposal told me I didn’t mean nearly as much to her as she meant to me.”
Lourdes toyed with the zipper on her sweatshirt. “Maybe she wasn’t ready to settle down.”
“To my mind, she should’ve been ready. It wasn’t as if we were just out of college. In retrospect, I can see that I should’ve backed away and given her some time. She’d been born and raised here, wanted to experience something other than small-town life before starting a family. But I’d never expected her to call a halt, even a temporary one, and it threw me. I was afraid she might meet someone else and never come home. I felt maybe she was out there, looking.”
“That’s reasonable. You were hurt and angry, so you screwed up.”
“I was more than hurt and angry. After she left, I was so lonely I didn’t know what to do with myself. It felt more like a divorce, since we’d been so close. I was used to seeing her almost every night. I was used to eating with her. Sleeping with her. When she moved away instead of moving in like I expected—like everyone expected—it left me sort of stunned and reeling.”
Lourdes flinched. “So you filled in with her sister? Couldn’t you have chosen someone else?”
“I’m getting there. I was listless and bored and sexually frustrated. And I was constantly reminded of her defection. Everyone else was as shocked as I was. Almost daily, I had to hear someone say, ‘But I thought you two would get married,’ as if even he or she believed Olivia had moved on without me. Anyway, I tried to fill the hours I usually spent with her at work but often wound up at Sexy Sadie’s when I couldn’t sleep at night.”
“Drinking.”
He put on his coat. “I did more of it then than I ever have, before or since.”
“And Noelle worked there.”
“Not at the time,” he clarified. “Like me, she came in as a patron that night.”
“And when she arrived...”
He pictured her wearing the tight red dress that revealed so much—and those high heels, which made the most of her legs. “She came over and...” He let his words fall off as he remembered how she’d rubbed her lower body against his while they danced. How she’d whispered in his ear that she often touched herself, pretending it was him.
“Hello?” she prompted.
He wished he could block those memories from his mind. He was mortified that he’d let her turn him into such a chump. “And she soon made it clear what she wanted,” he finished.
“She wanted you.”
“Basically. I mean, she’d flirted with me before, and I’d never had any difficulty resisting her. But that night it was more blatant than usual. And since I was convinced I’d already lost Olivia, there didn’t seem to be any reason to refuse her. Maybe I was even looking for a little revenge, since she seemed to move on so easily.”
“Did you tell Olivia what you’d done after it was over?”
He rubbed his face. “Didn’t need to. The news that I’d gone home with Noelle spread all over town, and I’m betting she had a hand in that. She wanted people to know—was quite proud of herself for finally being able to...divert my attention,” he said, choosing a euphemism instead of the more vulgar expression that came to mind and probably described the situation better.
“That must’ve been horrible.”
“It was the worst year of my life.”
“So did you apologize to Olivia?”
“Not at first. Once I’d slept with Noelle, I figured I’d ruined any chance I ever had with Olivia. I knew she’d never get beyond it. So, for one desperate weekend, I tried to keep an open mind where Noelle was concerned, tried to convince myself I’d slept with her because I was attracted to her and hadn’t destroyed my life.”
“I can guess how well that worked out.”
He’d soon disliked Noelle so much he could hardly stand to be around her. That was how well it’d worked out. “After only a couple of days, I realized I wasn’t interested. So I tried to extricate myself from the relationship.”
“How’d that go?”
“The whole situation was pathetic,” he admitted. “It was weird how fast my perspective changed. Olivia needed a year or so to experience life somewhere else and build her business, and suddenly that didn’t seem so bad. I realized I was an absolute idiot to have sacrificed my best chance at happiness.”
“You weren’t alone in what you did. Why would Olivia’s sister ever get involved with her boyfriend?”
“You’d have to know her to understand. She’s always been jealous of Olivia, always wanted whatever Olivia had and constantly tried to outdo her. That’s partly why I felt so bad. I’d let her use me as the greatest weapon she could ever hope to find.”
“She finally had a big stick she could use to hit her sister.”
“Exactly. Only she tried to make herself look as innocent as possible by telling her family I’d been secretly coming on to her for years. That she’d been drunk, and I’d caught her at a vulnerable moment.”
“She turned the tables on you!”
“Yes.”
“But surely they didn’t believe her.”
“It was easier for them to believe her lies than to face the truth—that she’d purposely acted to destroy her sister’s happiness. I got the impression her father didn’t completely buy it. But her mother? Probably.”
“You didn’t set the record straight?”
“I couldn’t see any point in arguing over it. I shouldn’t have gone home with her. Besides, of the two of us, I was the only one Olivia could feasibly cut out of her life. Family is family. They’re forever. An old boyfriend on the other hand...”
“She held you more responsible than her own sister?”
“She expected more from me. What Noelle did wasn’t a surprise to her.”
“I’m thinking that knowing her sister the way she must’ve known her, with time, Olivia might’ve been able to get beyond it.”
“Except just when I began to hope that might be the case, Noelle called to tell me she was pregnant.”
“No!”
“Yes.”
Lourdes got up and came over to where he stood. “Was it even your child?”
“I had to assume it was—at least until the baby was born and we could get a paternity test.”
“You said you don’t have any kids. Don’t tell me, after you married her, it turned out the baby belonged to someone else...”
“Who can say? She miscarried at about five months and we separated shortly after.” If she’d really miscarried. He knew there’d been a baby; he’d made her show him the results of her pregnancy test. But what had actually happened to their child remained a mystery to him. Noelle had walked out of the bathroom one day, crying and claiming she was bleeding.
“And now she’s coming around, hoping to get back together?”
“She knows Olivia’s happily married, that I’ll never be with her, so like you said before, until there’s someone else in my life, she’ll probably continue to see me as a possibility.”
“She has tenacity. I’ll give her that.”
“She’s very thick-skinned.”
“Obviously. But what she doesn’t see coming...is me.”
“You?”
“Yes. I’m going to hold your hand through this process, help you find someone who’s everything you want. Someone you’ll fall madly in love with, so madly in love it’ll be as if Olivia never existed.”
Her enthusiasm tempted him to believe it might be possible. “And you think online dating is the way to go.”
“You’ve met everyone who lives in town, haven’t you?”
“Everyone who’s single and anywhere close to my age.”
“Then it’s time to introduce you to new
prospects.”
He was still reluctant. “I’d be meeting people who live out of the area.”
“So?”
“So I like it here. I won’t move.”
“I’m sure we can get someone who doesn’t live too far.”
“Even then, I can’t expect her to move if I’m not willing to.”
“Quit being so fair. People relocate to be closer to a love interest all the time. Maybe you’ll find some woman who’s looking for a change.”
“At my age?”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-eight.”
“You’re talking like that’s ancient.”
“It’s old enough that most people have established lives. And if they don’t, it could be a major warning sign that there’s something wrong with them.”
“Then we go a bit younger.”
He eyed her disdainfully. “How young?”
“Twenty-eight, twenty-nine.”
“No. That’s a whole decade.”
“What’s wrong with ten years?”
“It was partially Noelle’s immaturity that grated on me. I thought she’d never grow up. Anyway, marriage is hard even without that much of an age difference.”
“Plenty of people marry older spouses and never have a problem with the age difference.”
“My odds of success will be better if I meet a woman my own age. Twenty-nine is too young.”
She seemed to take umbrage. “Whoa, I’m twenty-nine. You like me, don’t you?”
“You’re not a possibility,” he said and hid a smile when that only offended her more.
“Why? You’re bored or...or irritated by me?”
“Of course not. But I wouldn’t date you if you were one of the women who responded to my online profile, because you’re too young.”
She propped her hands on her hips.
