by Phoebe Fox
He looked as if I’d struck him.
“Michael? What’s wrong?”
“It’s just…” He stopped, cleared his throat, tried again. “This would have been ours. We’d have been the ones doing all this together if I hadn’t—”
“No,” I cut him off quickly. “It wouldn’t have. This house was my reaction to…to what happened. I rushed into buying it to prove—to myself and everyone else—that I was fine. But I never would have ended up here otherwise. You and I never would have bought a derelict like this.” I turned away from the bedroom, leading us back out to the living room. I ran my hand along the wall as we walked, Jake weaving through us as if trying to trip us. “It’s funny, though,” I said, without turning back to Michael. “It’s a wreck, and it needs so much work, and I bought it for all the wrong reasons in a terrible state of mind. But…I love it. It’s mine.”
“It’s you,” he said quietly from behind me.
It was. But it was also all the people I loved—my dad, Sasha and Stu, who’d worked alongside me on the smaller projects.
Ben.
“Let’s go back to my office,” I said brusquely.
I took a seat in my chair, Jake planting himself beside me, and Michael sat on the chaise.
“Well, first things first,” he said, pulling his laptop from his messenger bag. “They said no.”
“Who said no to what?”
“KXAR. I set up a meeting with the general manager and laid out our case for your own show, and he said they couldn’t offer you that.”
I felt a dull flutter of disappointment, but I wasn’t surprised. “Oh, well. We tried.”
He snorted. “Tried, hell. I told them you quit.”
“You what?”
“Relax. This is how the game is played.”
There ensued a good four solid minutes of my haranguing, complaining, and accusing Michael of making huge unilateral decisions without my okay, before he was able to get a single word in.
“They’re talking about an offer,” he said calmly when I finally wound down.
“What?”
“The station manager is meeting with the owner to discuss what they can offer you, and he said he’ll get back to me. That’s what I was trying to tell you. You have to trust the power of no.”
My heart slowed back to a life-sustaining pace. “Geez, Michael. Lead with that next time, would you? And also…ask me what to do before you just do it. I thought that’s what we agreed on.”
“I did ask! You said go ahead.”
“I said go ahead on starting to negotiate! Not go ahead and tender my resignation!”
“Fair enough,” he conceded. “Then do you also want to see the offer for you to be one of the main speakers for a traveling relationship seminar before I accept it for you?”
“What?” I was a bit one-note today.
He chuckled. “It’s called Relationship Town Hall—it’s run by this dating guru up in New York who takes the show to various towns and hires local relationship experts to be panelists in each city. Attendees come to discuss love and dating, and then afterward there’s a mix-and-mingle for them, like a singles event. It’s been gaining a lot of traction and media coverage—how have you not heard about this, in your line of work?”
That was a good question. It certainly sounded like something I should have been aware of. “I don’t know. How did you know about it?”
“I just dug around a little on the internet. Anyway, I approached the guy who started it—his name’s Rod Traynor; maybe you’ve heard of him? He’s on GMA a lot and has a column in HuffPost.”
“Really—Rod? The dating guru is named Rod?”
“You’re a child,” he said, but he was grinning. “I gave him a rundown on what you do and your CV, and he was really interested—wants to talk about possibly booking you for the panel in the Tampa, Miami, and Jacksonville shows, if you’re up for it.”
“Holy cow, Michael,” I said, stunned. “You really are good at this.”
He sighed. “Why do you and Sasha keep sounding so surprised when you say that?”
Where was this motivated, together, adult version of Michael when he and I were dating? I couldn’t help thinking how different our lives might look right now if he’d found this side of himself sooner. This guy knew what he wanted and how to get it, and wasn’t afraid of growing up. This guy would never have walked out on his fiancée.
I shook off the thought, turning my laptop so Michael could see the screen.
“Okay, like you asked I made a bullet list of possible topics I could write about as guest blogs. Some of them are based on articles I’ve done for my column, but I have a lot of new ones too.”
He had good feedback—helping me tweak broad topics into sharper focus, and suggesting which ones might be best for initial pitches to the bigger sites—but I could tell he was preoccupied. Finally I looked up from the screen.
“What’s the matter? Are these not what you were looking for?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, they’re great.”
“Michael.” I leaned back in my chair, regarding him. “I know you. What’s wrong with this?”
“Nothing, Brook, honestly. It’s good stuff.” Our eyes had a Mexican stand-off for a few long beats, and then finally he said, “It’s…I know you wanted to keep our personal stuff out of”—he made a stirring gesture encompassing my laptop and desk and the area between us—“this. It’s just…harder than I thought. I’m a little thrown by the guy who helped you fix the house. That you seriously dated another guy.”
“Two, actually.” I said it without thinking, but a hot flush of shame rose in the words’ wake as his face fell. Despite my professed forgiveness of Michael, I wondered whether part of me was still deliberately trying to hurt him.
“Two?” he yelped. “You’ve had two serious relationships since us?”
“Hey!” I said sharply. “You’re the one who called things off. You’re the one who left and never looked back, as far as I knew. What the hell did you expect me to do, Michael, sit around nursing my broken heart?”
“Of course not. I know you had to move on. But—”
“But what? You thought I’d just have hookups and crappy first dates while I waited for you to get your shit together and come back to me?”
“No! Jesus, Brook, I know you better than that. I knew when I left that you’d be back on the horse probably the next week. That as far as anyone else would see, nothing had touched you. That’s who you are—you don’t let anyone in far enough to hurt you.”
That stung. “You hurt me, Michael,” I said with venom. “You pretty much broke me in half.”
Silence crashed over us like a wave.
“So yes, I tried to move on,” I said, more quietly now. “And yes, I had relationships. But they blew up. Because of you.” I looked directly at him and said levelly, “Because when you left it just about destroyed me—but I never let myself deal with that.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” It was a plea.
I gave a dry laugh. “Well, for starters, you went AWOL.” He acknowledged that truth with an inclination of his head, silent apology written across his face. “But even if you hadn’t I wouldn’t have told you. For the reason you said—I never wanted to let anyone get close enough to be able to hurt me. Which was foolish, I’ve come to learn. Because hiding your feelings doesn’t protect anything—and keeping my heart under such tight guard was exactly what blew up the thing I wanted most.”
I wasn’t sure who I was talking about anymore. I felt his eyes on me as I stared into the bookshelves I’d deliberately positioned to help my clients deal with overwhelming feelings.
“You’ve changed so much, Brook.”
“Yeah. So have you.”
“Jesus. I was s
uch an ass.”
At his words I couldn’t help the grin that crept across my lips, and I shifted my gaze to him. “Speaking of which…Want to see something?”
His eyebrows bunched. “Yeah…?” he said cautiously.
I put my computer on the desk, then shrugged out of my gray suit jacket. Michael watched with an expression I couldn’t read as I turned farther to my right to expose to him my bare right shoulder in the halter-neck blouse I wore.
“What is that?” he asked behind me. “A bruise?”
“Look closer,” I said, knowing that the embarrassing tattoo I’d gotten one drunken night in the lowest part of my breakdown in the aftermath of Michael’s decampment wasn’t quite eradicated yet, despite the months of tattoo removal I’d already undergone.
I felt Michael’s breath warm on my shoulder as he stood and leaned closer to see.
“What does…Oh, my God.”
I didn’t even remember getting the giant donkey tattoo, let alone directing the tattoo artist to endow it with massively engorged genitals. But the caption I’d had inked underneath it certainly sounded like me at the time: “No more jackasses.”
When I shrugged the jacket back on and turned to him, I had to give him points for how hard he was trying not to laugh.
“Well, Brook, everyone has the right to express themselves. I applaud your originality and willingness to take risks.”
I shoved him. “Shut up. I was drunk off my ass.”
“No pun intended…” Michael shot me a sly grin I couldn’t help returning.
And then, contrary to every tenet I once held about keeping things to myself, I plunged into the full story of my rebound relationship with Kendall Pulver, who’d dumped me via text message when things seemed to be moving faster than he was ready for. After Michael, it was the proverbial straw that broke the stoic’s back, and my spectacular breakdown had ensued, complete with drunk-dialing, stalking, snooping, the infamous tattoo, and finally making an enormous public embarrassment of myself by screaming and hurling a drink at Kendall at a bar downtown in our final showdown, when he revealed that he’d been married for the first several months of our relationship.
“It was the lowest point I’d ever been at,” I said to Michael, who’d sat on the chaise mesmerized during the whole sordid tale. “And yet, in a weird way it was the best thing that ever happened to me. It sort of…I don’t know. Shook something loose here.” I popped a fist to my chest in a mini Celine Dion. “As Sasha said, it was like someone who’d been deaf all her life had suddenly had her hearing restored.”
He grinned. “Trust Sasha to provide a colorful metaphor.”
He used to know her so well. I’d lost a lot when Michael and I broke up, but he’d lost an entire social network.
“And what about the other relationship?” he asked. “You said there were two.”
I stood, busying myself shutting down my laptop. “That one didn’t work out either.”
I could feel him watching me. “That was renovation guy?”
“Yes.”
“What happened with him?”
I swiveled around, planting a playful smile on my face. “Uh-uh. I told you one of my stories. Now you have to tell me one of yours.”
“You mean from after we…after I left?” He shrugged. “I don’t have any to tell you.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Come on, now. From your reaction earlier I’m guessing you didn’t get serious with anyone—and God knows I don’t want dirty details—but let’s hear your lowest point. Which meaningless hookup with a skank finally told you you’d hit rock bottom?”
“None of them. I mean, they didn’t.”
I leaned back in my chair, arms folded, and shot him a mock glare. “Fine. You don’t want to confess? Let me guess, then. An underage band groupie. A half-passed-out girl hopped up on E? Oh, my God—a dude? No judgment if that’s what—”
“There’s no story because there were no hookups, Brook. I haven’t been with anyone else since you.”
Air drained out of me as if someone had pulled out a stopper. “Two years?” I asked, incredulous. “You haven’t had sex in two years?”
He held up his right hand, wiggling his fingers. “Are we counting—”
“No,” I stopped him quickly. “Jeez, Michael. Are you about to explode?”
He shrugged, and now it was his turn to focus intently on my book titles. “At first I had no urge. Like, at all. I could barely remind myself to eat, let alone summon up any kind of…” He made a vague gesture toward his torso.
I held up a hand. “I get it.”
“And after that…I don’t know.” He pushed to his feet, walking over to the shelves closest to the far corner, pulling out a book. I was distantly amused to note that it was Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom. “I just…didn’t do it. It’s sort of like when you get the yips in baseball, and pretty soon you’re on a real losing streak. After a while you don’t even have the game in you anymore—you’ve whiffed before you even step up to the plate.”
He opened the book, thumbing through pages I was certain he wasn’t seeing. I watched him, sympathy I hadn’t thought I could feel for him tugging at me.
“I smoked a lot,” he went on as if speaking to the pages of the book. “Too much. Too many different things. Drank myself into a blackout most nights. Who’d want to be with that anyway?”
“You were punishing yourself,” I said.
“No.”
“You still are.”
Finally he looked up and met my eyes, and I caught my breath at the naked anguish in his. “Shouldn’t I be?” he said softly.
Two years ago I would have said yes without hesitation.
With my clients I was quick to root out areas where they were beating themselves up, causing themselves more pain and making healing that much more difficult. But Michael hadn’t been a client. He’d been the love of my life, or so I’d thought, and he’d done me the greatest of wrongs. If he’d told me then that he deserved to be punished, I would have wholeheartedly agreed.
But so much had happened since then—between us, and to me. And what I saw in front of me now wasn’t the man who’d broken my heart and ruined my life, but someone I’d once cared about deeply—and still did. Someone I couldn’t bear to see launching missiles at himself.
“No,” I said firmly. “You shouldn’t. Don’t you think I know that you weren’t trying to intentionally hurt me?”
“But I did. And I screwed up your whole life.”
“You’re giving yourself an awful lot of credit there,” I said dryly, but Michael didn’t crack a smile. I pushed up off my chair, standing to face him. “Who can say if things got screwed up? I wouldn’t be where I am if that hadn’t happened.” I would never have met Ben. “I wouldn’t have my Breakup Doctor practice. And I love it, Michael—it’s literally my dream job. And you said I’ve changed since then—I have, in ways I like. I don’t think I would have without going through…what we went through.”
“But the way I did it…”
“Sucked. And was cowardly.”
Shame filled his face. “I know that.”
“But it was the best you could do at that time. Wasn’t it.” It was hard to believe I was defending his actions—to the very person responsible for them, who’d crushed me—but I meant every word. “I forgive you.”
“No.” He looked as if I’d hit him.
“Yes,” I insisted. “I forgive you. I did a while ago—when you came back and we talked. And it felt like the greatest gift I’d ever given myself, to let go of all that anger and hurt and pain. I should have told you that then.”
“I don’t deserve your forgiveness.”
“And yet I’m offering it.”
“Stop it.”
“I forgive you, M
ichael,” I said inexorably, stepping closer. “Now forgive yourself.”
He stared at me with a wash of emotions crossing his face—disbelief, anger, denial. And then his face eased almost imperceptibly. “Forgive myself,” he said, as if trying the thought on for size.
“Yes. I can’t believe I’m the one exhorting you to do that, but I mean it. Forgive yourself and, in the wise words of Elsa, let it go. That’s the only way you’re going to move past this.” I put a hand on his wrist where he still held the book, felt his pulse beating under my fingers. “That we are.”
The ghost of a smile played across his lips, and he finally closed the unread book and slid it back into its spot with the hand I wasn’t touching. “Okay. You’re the expert. I’ll give it a try.”
“Good.” We shared a smile that reminded me of old times, and before I realized what I was doing I closed the small gap between us and reached to hug him.
His arms came around me immediately, as if they’d only been waiting for me to initiate, and he held me close. His familiar scent filled my nose; his warmth seeped into my skin from chest to thighs through our clothing.
I pushed closer, relishing the strength of the arms holding me, the feeling of being wanted, cherished. Stroking his back, I found muscles that hadn’t been there before, but knew exactly where my fingers would encounter the raised mole under his left shoulder blade. Something tightly coiled inside me began to unwind as our bodies pressed together.
And then something else pressed insistently into me too.
I jumped away as if he’d burned me, my heart suddenly racing, my face on fire.
Michael reached out a hand to touch my arm, but I took a quick step out of range. “Brook…I—”
“No, no, it’s…I shouldn’t have…I mean, especially given your, um, you know…dry spell…” I gave an awkward laugh. “I know the chamber must be loaded and the safety off.” I moved to my desk, desperate to avoid his searching gaze, my own rattled emotions. “So, I’ll fine-tune these proposals and get them to you ASAP?” I said, trying to school my tone back to business.
