Mixed Signals

by Diane Barnes

  “I love talking to old people,” Ben says. “They have so many great stories. He told me about every car he’s ever owned. That ninety-six Buick he drives now belonged to his late wife. He hates it but can’t stand the thought of getting rid of it.”

  “Sweet,” I say, realizing that’s not generally a word that comes to mind when I think about Mr. O’Brien, but then I remember the coffee cup. He keeps surprising me with his sentimentality.

  “I think he really wanted to take my car for a spin. See how it compares to the one he had fifty years ago.”

  I imagine Mr. O’Brien behind the wheel of Ben’s car. The sunroof is open, and all the windows are down. Mr. O’Brien’s baseball cap flies off. His snow-white hair blows in the wind, that one dark piece sticking straight up. The old man can’t stop laughing as he drives faster and faster. It’s the best time he’s had since the station wagon became his. “You should let him,” I say.

  * * *

  Sean’s black Porsche is in the parking lot when we arrive at the tennis club. “Branigan is here,” I say, pointing at his expensive sports car.

  Ben whistles. “Sweet wheels.”

  Perhaps he didn’t notice the apprehension in my voice. I brace myself for an encounter with Branigan as Ben and I cut across the pavement to the entrance.

  I check in and get our court assignment while Ben wanders around looking at the pictures on the wall. At the front desk, there’s a flyer announcing a rematch of the mixed doubles tournament. A feeling of relief washes over me as I read it. Maybe if Branigan wins, he’ll leave me alone.

  I find Ben standing in front of a picture of Branigan and Tammy receiving the runner-up trophy after last month’s doubles tournament. “He looks like he wants to kill someone,” Ben says.

  “Yeah, me.”

  The bell rings, and we head downstairs and through the tunnel to our court.

  As I push aside the curtain leading into the bubble, I hear a ball bouncing. Branigan is part of a foursome playing on the court next to ours. I stop to wait for their point to be over before we cross through their court. Ben wasn’t expecting me to stop and crashes into me, pushing me forward so that I trip over the rope that ties the curtain down. I end up with my face planted in the clay.

  Ben scrambles to my side to help me up. “Are you okay?”

  I reach for his extended hands. He pulls me to my feet. I’m still holding them when Branigan notices us. “Well, well,” he says. “Who do we have here?” He walks toward us from the baseline. I let go of Ben’s hands. Branigan’s eyes run up and down Ben’s body. “Are you a new member?”

  “A friend of Jill’s,” Ben answers.

  I smile, stupidly happy that he didn’t say coworker.

  “A friend of Jill’s,” Branigan repeats. He turns toward me. “Good for you, Jillian.”

  He places a hand on Ben’s arm like they’re old friends. “Just to warn you, she goes a little crazy after a breakup.”

  Ben starts to say something, but I grab him by the elbow, leading him through the opening in the curtain, to our court. I can tell by the white-knuckle grip he has on his tennis racquet that he’s as annoyed by Branigan as I am. “You okay?” he asks.

  “I’m fine.”

  He watches me strip off my sweatpants and jacket, revealing my white tennis skirt and tank top. A huge grin breaks out across his face.

  “What?” I ask.

  “That’s what you wear?” He stares at my legs.

  One of the benefits of the jogging I do and the tennis I play is that they are super toned. Nico used to love running his hand along my thigh. He’d pay more attention to it than my breasts, which is probably a good thing because they’re virtually nonexistent. Just in case Ben’s a leg guy too, I tense my muscles so that they look more defined. “We should start,” I say.

  “Right,” he says, finally raising his eyes to my face.

  We warm up by tapping the ball back and forth to each other. Ben lets it bounce before returning it, but I take it in the air, trying to improve my net game. When he tries to imitate what I’m doing, the ball skids off his racquet to the right, landing out of bounds. “You make it look so easy,” he says.

  “Keep your wrist still and use your shoulder as the hinge,” I call. “The racquet’s path should be high to low.”

  He tries again. This time the ball shoots high in the air and almost comes down on his head. “Forget it,” he says.

  “You need to be able to do this if we’re going to take him on.” I use my thumb to point to Branigan, who is pounding a forehand at his female opponent.

  I walk around to Ben’s side of the court, where I stand behind him and place my hand over his on the racquet. His immediately tenses. I squeeze it. “Relax. I’m just showing you how to volley.” I wrap my other arm around his waist and guide his swing. “Go down on the ball. Almost a gentle rub with the edge of your racquet.” His motion is jerky, and he hits up on the invisible ball instead of down. “Are you even listening to me?” I ask.

  He looks at me over his shoulder with a sheepish grin. “You smell really good. It’s distracting me.” He bends toward me, almost burrowing his face in my neck, and inhales sharply before moving away. “Vanilla,” he says.

  My neck tingles, and I feel woozy. “It’s my shower gel.”

  I return to my side of the net, and we start our first game. Deep in the court, we slide and shuffle from side to side, pounding the ball back and forth. When I’m trying to add power to my swing, I grunt. As our rally goes on, my grunting gets louder.

  Finally I pound the ball into the back right corner. Ben is all the way over on the left side of the court and scrambles to get to the other side, reaching with his long arm and swinging wildly. He misses the ball. “Yes!” I scream, pumping my fist.

  “Sounds like you’re having an orgasm over there, Jillian,” Branigan says. He’s standing by the opening in the curtain, watching us. He winks at Ben. “Was it as good for you?”

  “Come on, Sean,” Tammy calls.

  He turns for the exit but stops. “Did you hear, there’s going to be a rematch of the finals?”

  “Good luck,” I say.

  “I don’t need luck, just an honest linesman.” He steps toward the exit but stops to turn back to me. “After I win, you can come on the show and apologize for stealing the first match from me. Then we can get back to being friends like we used to be.”

  Instead of answering, I serve the ball to Ben. We begin our next point. “Think about it,” Branigan calls out.

  After four games, I have a four–love lead on Ben. In the fifth game, I jump to a thirty–love lead. On the next point, Ben whacks the ball so hard that it flies over the baseline and bounces off the wall behind me. I walk over to where it lands, bend over and pick it up. “Sorry,” he says, but his eyes twinkle with mischief.

  We start the next point, and the same thing happens. He shrugs when I look at him. After the third time, I know he’s doing it on purpose. “What gives?” I ask.

  He tilts his head and gives me a sheepish grin. “Kind of enjoying watching you bend over to pick up the ball in that short little skirt.”

  I feel myself blushing and get that same fluttery feeling I’ve had around him since Nico left.

  Chapter 31

  I hear the jingle for BS Morning Sports Talk as soon as I walk through the door to my area. When I get to my row, Ben’s leaning back in his chair with his hands laced behind his head and his feet kicked up on his desk. “They’re going to talk about the new guy in your life,” he calls out as I walk by, stopping me in my tracks.

  “What new guy?” Renee asks. Holding a bowl of yogurt overflowing with strawberries and blueberries, she rolls her chair out of her cube into the aisle.

  “Apparently Jillian played tennis over the weekend with an extremely handsome man.” Ben uses air quotes so I know the description is not his own.

  Renee’s eyes grow to twice their normal size. “So things went well with your online date and
you saw him again.” She nods as she says it.

  She’s so excited that I feel bad telling her. “Not quite.”

  “Well, then who did you play with?”

  “Yours truly,” Ben answers.

  “Oh.” The disappointed look on Renee’s face says so much more than the one word she utters.

  The advertisement ends. Branigan comes back on the air. “For those of you upset that we’ve been too hard on Nico’s ex, there’s no need to worry about her. I saw Jillian at the tennis club this weekend with her new love interest.”

  “Ben, your love interest,” Renee repeats, as though she finds the idea ridiculous.

  Meanwhile, my face feels like it’s on fire. Is that what Ben has become?

  “Jill and Ben,” Ryan screams from his row. “I knew it!”

  Branigan continues. “I’m comfortable enough in my manhood that I can say this. He’s a good-looking young man.”

  “How good-looking?” Smyth asks.

  “Well, when Jillian was with Nico, she was definitely the better-looking part of the duo. With her new guy though, she’s dating up. Way up. He looks like the American Sniper—not the real one, but the actor who played him in the movie.”

  Dating up? What the hell?

  “Bradley Cooper,” Zachary chimes in. “I met him at my granddad’s this weekend. Ben, not Bradley Cooper.”

  Ben has a dopey smile on his face, clearly enjoying being talked about on the radio. He points to himself with his thumb. “Movie-star handsome.” He chuckles, almost as if he doesn’t know it’s true.

  “So, Nico,” Branigan asks, “how do you feel about Jill moving on?”

  The radio is silent for several seconds. I swear I hear that weird clicking sound Nico makes with his tongue when he’s stressed. Finally, his voice comes over the airwaves. “All I’ve ever wanted is for Jill to be happy.” His tone is eerily reminiscent of the time he told my mother he loved the sweater she gave him for Christmas minutes after he came back from returning it.

  * * *

  Rachel has a doctor’s appointment near my building. Her mom is watching Sophie, Laurence, and Jacob, and Rachel’s not ready to give up her kid-free time, so when the appointment ends, she calls me to go to lunch. I have a meeting at one and can’t be gone for long, so instead we decide to take a quick walk around my office park.

  As I wait for her in the visitor parking lot, I see her green minivan chugging up the hill. It’s covered in a grimy coat of salt and dust. She pulls into a spot in front of me, straddling the line separating it from the next. She throws open her door, and it scrapes against the car parked to the left. Oblivious, she steps onto the sidewalk, greeting me with a hug.

  She looks me up and down. “You look great, Jill.” I’m wearing my favorite outfit, the short black skirt, blue sweater, and tall boots.

  “Why do you sound so surprised?”

  She laughs. “No offense, but you’ve been miserable the last few times I’ve seen you.”

  We set off in the direction Rachel came from. While the snow has all melted, the stakes marking the road for the plow remain, warning us not to get too optimistic about spring’s arrival, because Mother Nature could make another sneak attack at any time.

  “So what is this about you playing tennis with Ben?” Rachel asks. “What’s going on?”

  “You listened to the show this morning?”

  “Mark did. He said they called Ben your new love interest.” Her face is pinched. “Why do I have to hear these things secondhand?”

  “It’s not true.”

  Her expression relaxes. “Thank God!”

  The sun, which has been hiding behind the one puffy white cloud in the bright blue sky, pops out. “He’s actually a good guy.”

  Rachel inches toward the trees lining the edge of the sidewalk so that she can be in the shade. “From everything you’ve told me about him, he’s a player, and the last thing you need is to be played again.”

  “How did Nico play me? We were together for six years.”

  “And that entire time he made you believe he would marry you.”

  A car approaches from behind, beeping. Lucas’s Jeep pulls up next to us. The roof is off, and Ben is riding shotgun. “We’re going to Dom’s for lunch. Can I bring you something back?” he asks. His hair is already windblown from the brief ride from the parking garage to the spot on the hill where we are standing. I resist the temptation to reach out and smooth down his curls.

  He looks past me to Rachel. “Hello,” he says.

  I introduce him and Lucas. She moves to the edge of the sidewalk, next to Lucas’s vehicle. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” she says as she pushes her sunglasses back into her mass of black curly hair.

  Ben eyes me. “I’m probably not as bad as she makes me seem.”

  Lucas revs the engine.

  “I’ll have a—”

  Ben cuts me off. “I know. The caprese.”

  The Jeep continues its descent toward the main road. Rachel waits until it’s out of sight before speaking. “Does he always look at you that way?” she asks.

  “What way?”

  She wraps an arm around my shoulder. “Oh, Jill, you always miss what’s so obvious to everyone else.”

  * * *

  When I get home from work, I rummage around the refrigerator, looking for something to eat. As usual there is no food except for two eggs and a little bit of milk. I hate grocery shopping. Nico used to do it all. I rummage through the cabinets. They are as barren as the fridge, though.

  With few other options, I decide to make scrambled eggs for dinner. I crack one against the side of the counter and empty it into the mixing bowl. A piece of shell floats on top. I try to scoop it out with a spoon but can’t separate it from the slimy, stretchy goo, so I dip my finger into the mess to extract it. Nico used to laugh watching me cook the few times I tried. Good thing I’m around or you’d be five hundred pounds from all the fast-food takeout you’d be eating. He’d kiss the top of my head. Go relax, and I’ll finish this. He’d take over dinner preparations while I caught up on what he used to call my girly shows, The Good Wife or The Affair.

  Since I heard him on the radio this morning, I haven’t been able to forget what he said on the air or how he said it. All I’ve ever wanted is for Jill to be happy. As I beat the eggs and milk, I think about his jacket, wondering why he hasn’t come back for it. The butter heating up in the frying pan sizzles, so I turn down the burner. The fire extinguisher resting in the brackets mounted to the wall next to the stove catches my eye. Nico is fastidious about planning for worst-case scenarios and installed it there the day he moved in.

  I pour the contents from the mixing bowl into the skillet. As I wait for the eggs to begin to set, I think about how he always has contingency plans. If we were spending a day at the beach, he’d have a list of ideas of what we could do if it rained. If we went out to dinner without a reservation, on the drive to the restaurant he’d list his second and third options in case the wait was too long. If we were going to see a movie, he’d have second and third choices in case his first was sold out.

  The eggs have finally begun to set, so I pull the mixture around the skillet with my spatula, moving the cooked pieces away from the bottom and bringing the remaining liquid closer to the flame. As I stare down at the large, soft curds of egg, it occurs to me that I am Nico’s plan B. He left his jacket here and hasn’t asked for the ring back in case things don’t work out for him. He knows me well enough to know that as long as I think there’s a chance he’ll return, I’ll wait. After all, how many other women would wait six long years for a proposal? Agitated, I whisk the eggs around the pan, sending some flying over the top onto the stove. It’s time to show Nico that I’ve changed. I’m not the same girl he left.

  * * *

  The following evening when I get home from work, Zac’s Civic is parked in the driveway behind his grandfather’s station wagon. As I walk by Mr. O’Brien’s living room window, I see the two
of them sitting on the couch watching a baseball game.

  Inside my apartment, I head straight upstairs to my bedroom, to the bureau with the ring. I pull open the drawer and find it at the back. The diamond still sparkles, like it’s full of hope and promise for the future. I slip it back on my finger, struggling to get it over my knuckle, which is weird because I never had a problem with that before. I look down at my hand. The ring, which I always thought was so perfect for me, doesn’t look like it belongs there, especially because my nails are a mess, uneven in length and some with ragged edges. It’s definitely time for a manicure, which I used to get once a week when I was wearing the diamond. The ring slides off easier than it went on. I place it in the small blue box it was in when Nico gave it to me and head downstairs to the closet for his leather coat.

  Mr. O’Brien and Zac are both cheering wildly when I ring the bell. My landlord opens the door with a huge smile, which must mean the Red Sox are winning. It’s the beginning of April. The season started a few days ago, and already the old man has his hopes up.

  “Can I talk to Zac for a minute?” I ask.

  If Mr. O’Brien is surprised to see me standing on his welcome mat with a jewelry box and Nico’s coat, he doesn’t show it. He pushes open the screen door and motions for me to come in. Even though I’ve lived next door for more than eight years, I can count on one hand the number of times he’s invited me in. Like the few other times I was in my landlord’s house, the collage of photographs of his wife at different stages of her life captures my attention. There’s a picture of her as a beautiful twenty-something bride with a young, smiling Mr. O’Brien standing beside her; as a new parent with a baby Colleen cradled in her arms; as the mother of a teenage daughter with a laughing Colleen standing next to a bicentennial sign with tall ships in the harbor behind her. The one that really gets me is the image of her as a frail older woman, resting all her weight on Mr. O’Brien, whose smile doesn’t reach his eyes, as though he knows their time together is almost over.