The Heartbreak Cure

by Ashby, Amanda

  He quickly unlocked it and they stepped inside.

  The plain walls where nothing like Birdie’s bright, chaotic house where Cat had spent so many afternoons. But small glimmers of the owner could still be seen—her favorite painting, a mismatched afghan, and the large rag rug she’d made as a child. The aroma of tea and baking clung to the air, and she breathed it in as Alex headed straight down a small hallway.

  He reemerged several moments later. “All done.”

  “Alex to the rescue,” Cat quipped.

  “Yeah, a regular superhero.” He raised his fist in a mock victory celebration.

  “You are to Birdie,” she said as she noticed a small egg-shaped decoration nestled in a wooden bowl of crystals. The glossy blue enamel caught the light, highlighting the gold and silver lines that swirled around it, while tiny gemstones dotted the seam. “Wow, this is gorgeous. Birdie used to let me play with all her treasures when I was a kid, but I’ve never seen it before. I wonder where she got it?”

  “No idea.” His hand dropped, his entire expression darkening. “Probably some friend bought it on a cruise. We should get back downstairs.”

  “Oh.” She quickly put down the egg as he stalked to the door. She hurried after him. Something had changed, she just had no idea what. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded as they waited for the elevator to arrive. His jaw flickered before he turned to her. “Sorry. I just hate the apartment. It’s like a reminder I couldn’t take care of her.”

  Guilt seemed to tug at his mouth, and she longed to wipe it away.

  At least she knew what’d been bothering him.

  All the things he couldn’t fix.

  “That’s the last thing Birdie would want. Even when she lived next door, she’d get mad if my mom brought over too many casseroles. She hated being fussed over.”

  “That sounds about right. She’s a stubborn thing.”

  “Which proves the apple didn’t fall from the tree,” Cat teased as the elevator doors opened. She was rewarded by a small smile that sent a wave of warmth through her.

  They rode to the ground floor in silence, then Alex led her into a large room, decorated to resemble a luau. The tables were trimmed with long strands of dry grass, while colorful paper lanterns hung from the ceiling and blow-up palm trees jutted out randomly around the place.

  “This is the communal living area. Apologies in advance.”

  “Apologies for what?” Cat blinked just as a swarm of elderly women swarmed around them, throwing leis around their necks.

  “Just in time,” one of them said. “Barney broke the record player again. We all told him to wait until you arrived, but he’d turned his hearing aids off. Daft fool. Oh, you must be Cat. Lovely to meet you, dear. I’ll return him in a moment.”

  Sorry. He mouthed as the women moved like the tide, dragging him over to the record player. As soon as he reached them, they all began talking to him at once, their voices rising in a cacophony.

  “They sound like parrots, don’t they?” Birdie appeared, with hair so blue, it made Nikki’s green dye look tame. She was wearing a multicolored kaftan, a hula skirt around her waist, and bright red lipstick. “And I take it from your startled expression my grandson didn’t tell you it was Hawaiian night here?”

  “Not exactly.” She hugged Birdie. Despite the elderly woman’s small frame, hugging Birdie was like stepping back into childhood. It brought thoughts of stolen cookies and summers spent climbing the fence to pick mulberries and search for silk worms on the trees in Birdie’s backyard. “I’m slightly underdressed.”

  “Nonsense, you look lovely,” Birdie said just as a loud applause went up, and a moment later Elvis blared out into the room. Alex grinned at her, but before he could make his way over, another woman hustled him into the middle of the dance floor.

  “Thank you,” Cat told Birdie. She followed her past a bamboo bar to a spare table. “So, what exactly is this?”

  “Fun night.” Birdie eased herself into the chair, her eyes twinkling. “Though, between you and me, if they really wanted to have a good time, they’d give us more than root beer to drink.”

  “And Alex comes each week?” She raised her eyebrow as the Elvis song gave way to a Hawaiian tune. She watched as someone else claimed his hand for a dance. It was possibly the most surreal thing she’d ever seen.

  Birdie nodded. “I think he’s only ever missed one since I moved in here. He should be doing something more exciting than spending time with a group of octogenarians.”

  “I’m sure he enjoys it,” Cat said, wanting to be polite.

  “I hope so. We certainly do. He’s a beautiful dancer. And speaking of which, you’d better go and dance with him before Myra gets to him. The woman’s a good card player, but can’t dance for peanuts.”

  “Dance?” Her nostrils flared in panic. There’d been no talk of dancing. “I’m not sure.”

  “Probably best not to fight it,” Alex said. He’d reappeared at the table, and held out his hand to her. “Birdie always wins.”

  Birdie grinned in response and made a shooing noise as Cat stood up and followed him onto the makeshift dance floor. Several of the residents clapped and hollered in response.

  “This is probably the part where I should tell you I can’t dance,” she said as the music switched and a slow song came on.

  “Just follow my lead.” His hand closed around her waist, and he gently nudged her forward. Her mouth went dry as he continued to move her around the room, making it as easy as breathing. Heat bounced between them, and she became transfixed by his chest while the music continued to play.

  “How do you even know what to do?” She allowed herself to look up and drink in his face, his eyes the color of a tropical sea.

  “Birdie and her friends seem to live in a bingo/tea/cupcake/cha-cha induced haze. I picked up a few moves along the way.” He shrugged, and Cat wondered if she’d ever fully know him. A tea drinking, ballroom dancing, leather jacket wearing friend.

  The lights and music blurred as he continued to lead her around the room. Her pulsed pounded, as his arm remained firm behind her back, supporting her, challenging her.

  Somewhere in the background, people were talking, but it was like listening through glass. Then the music stopped, and the world slowly came back into focus. Adrenaline raced through her body as they returned to the table, but before Alex could sit, he was dragged away by another resident.

  “No rest for the wicked,” he murmured, returning to the dance floor while Birdie grinned, displaying her false teeth, which had always made Cat giggle when she was younger.

  “So, I heard your mom’s finally started dating Joe.”

  “Is there anything you don’t know?” Cat raised an eyebrow.

  “I like to keep my ear to the ground,” Birdie said. “Tell your mother I think she’s chosen well. Much better than some of those fellows she went out with over the years. Still, my brownies always helped get her back on track. And you, too.”

  “Ah, yes.” Her cheeks tingled as the heat rose. “I hadn’t planned to mess up quite so early in my dating career.”

  “Nonsense. The trick isn’t to stop making mistakes, it’s to get back up as quickly as you can and move on. Which you’ve done.” Birdie’s bony, arthritic fingers reached out and patted Cat’s hand. “He likes you.”

  “Er, well, I guess that’s good, since he’s my boyfriend,” she said, not quite returning Birdie’s gaze. It was one thing lying to Mackenzie and people she didn’t know at school. But this was Birdie, someone she’d grown up with.

  And Alex likes me?

  “You’re a sweet girl, Cat Turner, but a terrible liar. I already knew he wasn’t your boyfriend.”

  “You did?” she said, not quite able to hide her confusion. “So, why did you tell Alex you wanted to meet his girlfriend?”

  “Because I wanted to say thank you. Whatever you did to convince him to go along with your scheme, I’m grateful.”
r />   “You’re really not mad?”

  “Mad you’re dragging him back out into the world and letting him see he’s not as broken as he thinks he is? Oh, Cat. I’m not mad, I’m delighted.”

  “Yes, but it’s not going to last. He’s only doing it to help me get back on the newspaper and stop everyone talking about the damn video clip. Then we’ll be going back to our regular programming.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  No. Yes. Gah. I don’t know

  Flashes of his smile flooded her mind. The way his eyes lightened when he talked about the future. How hard he pushed himself to do his grandmother proud.

  How much I want to kiss him.

  “Nothing about us makes sense. I’ve just recently screwed up my life, and he’s off to college in a year,” Cat said, not quite sure who she was trying to convince. “If we were meant to date, wouldn’t it have happened already?”

  “Love doesn’t come to us in a neatly wrapped box with a ribbon on top. You might think what you have is pretend, but I don’t. He’s let you into his life, and when you look at him, you don’t see someone damaged. You don’t see the shadows of his past sitting on his shoulders.”

  “Oh.”

  It was a dizzying picture Birdie had painted.

  “Did I ever tell you how I met Ralph?” Birdie asked, and when Cat shook her head, the older woman let out a small giggle. “He played tuba in a local brass band, wore glasses, and stuttered. When he asked me out on a date, I laughed in his face. I didn’t want a tuba player. I wanted Elvis. I wanted excitement, energy, charisma.”

  Cat let out a gasp. “I hope you didn’t tell him that.”

  “Loudly and often.” Birdie gave a faraway smile. “But he kept asking, and I kept saying no. Then one day when I was riding my bike home from school, I got a puncture. Not too far from this place, although it wasn’t here at the time. Just fields in all directions. Well, who happened to be driving along on his way to band practice? Ralph stopped, fixed my puncture, and then winked me. And do you know what he said?”

  “What?” Cat leaned forward.

  “Can Elvis fix a tire?” Birdie grinned. “Then, before I could answer, he climbed back into his dad’s car and drove off. He might not have had Elvis’s charisma, but damn, he knew how to hook a girl. Problem was by that time he was seeing Marie Whittle.”

  “Is that when you invented the heartbreak brownies?”

  “No, they came later.” Birdie’s voice went flat, and Cat inwardly groaned. Alex’s mom, Birdie’s only child—the person who’d broken her heart over and over again. “But we’re not talking about heartbreak, we’re talking about new beginnings. And my new beginning with Ralph came two months later when Marie Whittle fell for a visiting Marine. Strangely enough, he looked a bit like Elvis. But by then I’d had two months of getting to witness from afar just what a great man my future husband really was.”

  “That’s beautiful.” Cat let out a soft sigh.

  “Yes, it is. And now, it’s time to leave the memories behind and come back to the present. Have you ever thought about kissing him?”

  Only ten times a day.

  “No.” Cat shook her head.

  “Well, you should. Life’s short, Cat. Don’t spend it hiding out in your backyard under the tree,” Birdie said just as a raucous round of laughter broke the conversation. “I suppose we should go and save Alex. It looks like he’s about to lose his jeans.” Birdie glanced over and slowly got to her feet.

  Wait. What?

  “Did I forget to mention that after the dancing comes the strip poker?”

  Cat swiveled around to where Alex was standing by his chair, clad only his jeans. Her eyes zeroed in on his chest. It rippled with muscles, and the skin was smooth, just begging to be touched.

  Oh, boy.

  Her gaze flickered to the middle of the table, where Alex’s heavy leather jacket, his Doc Martens, his socks, his T-shirt, and his belt were all sitting. Then she turned back to him. His face was twisted in a pained expression as he held up his hands in defeat.

  “I’m pretty sure this is illegal in most states,” he protested.

  “Only the boring ones,” an elderly resident retorted in an unrepentant voice.

  Her mouth went dry as Birdie’s words flooded into her mind.

  Life’s short.

  She held up her cell phone and took a shot.

  “Really?” Alex raised an eyebrow. “You decided to immortalize the moment?”

  “It would be rude not to,” she said as Birdie coughed and suggested it was time to give the poor boy back his clothes so he could order pizza without getting arrested.

  And let me figure out if I do really want to kiss him.

  …

  “Okay, that happened,” Alex said as they sat down on one of the park benches dotted around the sculptured garden. It was only ten at night, but the cheddar moon was partly concealed by clouds, casting dark shadows on the manicured lawn.

  “It sure did.” Cat’s eyes shone. Sitting between them was the oversize rubber plant she’d won in the charades game they’d all played. He wasn’t entirely sure if the plant had been bought for the purpose, or if was the property of Brighton Pavilion. Sometimes it was better not to ask. “Octogenarians have a lot more energy than I expected.”

  “Yup. And a lot more innuendoes.” He leaned back and stretched out his legs.

  After conning him into half stripping, Birdie and her friends had eaten their body weight in pizza, and after charades, they’d insisted on watching the pair of them dance. He wouldn’t have put it past them to send them into the closest for seven minutes of heaven, which was why he’d claimed an early start at the canning factory as a reason to leave.

  When they’d walked outside, Cat had taken one look at the glittering stars and insisted on sitting down to admire them.

  “Still, I think we left before irreversible damage was done.” Cat shifted, and her perfume floated toward him as the night cloaked them. She paused and shivered.

  “Are you cold?” He glanced down at her bare arms.

  “What?” Even in the darkness her eyes clouded over, as if confused. Then she nodded. “Um, yeah. I guess.”

  “Here.” He shrugged off his leather jacket and leaned across the rubber plant to drape it over her shoulders. It was miles too big on her, almost going down to the fitted denim skirt she was wearing.

  “Thanks,” she said, not attempting to move as his hand continued to straighten the jacket. “Very chivalrous of you.”

  God, I want to kiss her.

  “Least I can do, since you wouldn’t let me carry the plant.” He tried to tell himself to shift farther away, to where it was safe. Forty or fifty feet should do it.

  “It’s the twenty-first century. I can carry my own plants,” Cat told him with a solemn grin. It could only mean one thing. Birdie had been dishing the dirt while he’d had his ass handed to him by a bunch of strip-poker fiends

  “So, how badly did she quiz you?” he said.

  “She didn’t.” Cat shook her head as she slipped her arms into the jacket. “Well, not exactly. She knows we’re faking it.”

  He opened his mouth and then shut it again.

  The hardest part about moving in with his grandmother had been her uncanny knack of knowing everything. It had come as a shock after living with his mom, who was often too wasted to remember his name. Then he let out a groan. If Birdie knew they were faking it, and had still asked him to bring Cat along, there could only be one reason.

  “Please tell me she didn’t try and convince you to date me,” he said.

  “’Fraid so.” Her mouth parted. Alex swallowed hard as he studied a stray strand of her hair hanging down the fine line of her cheekbone. “She likes that I stop you from living like a hermit. Oh, and she told the story of how she first fell for Ralph.”

  “Can Elvis fix a tire?” Alex recited as he stared up at the inky sky. Smudges of gray and black and mottled white stared back at him. I
f there was anything worse than having his grandmother set him up, he hadn’t come across it. “Birdie thinks she’s too smart by half. What else did she say?”

  “Nothing.” She answered a little bit too quickly as she studied her hands. When she looked up, her eyes were glowing. “Would it be such a bad thing?”

  Her voice was little above a whisper. Alex caught his breath as the world stopped.

  No. He wanted to say. It wouldn’t be a bad thing at all. It would be amazing.

  But there was only one answer he could give her, thanks to the damn egg. Trust Cat to notice it. His secret shame.

  The last connection between his old life and his new one.

  He’d acquired it the night his mother had taken his two sisters, and put them in the car—without seat belts—all because she wanted to buy more beer. If he’d been home, he could’ve taken her keys away. Or at least kept his sisters out of the car. Or a hundred other things that didn’t happen.

  Because he wasn’t there. His mom had asked him to babysit, and he’d refused. He had things to do.

  Houses to break into.

  It had been his mom’s no-good son-of-a-bitch boyfriend who’d suggested it. He had a crew who did work for a gang. And when Clay had invited him along, Alex had seen it as a pathway to a better life. To get what he’d never had—money, a family.

  He’d been smaller then. Small enough to climb in through a window and smart enough to disable the alarms. It was the second house he’d helped them break into, and Clay had plucked the egg out of the bag of plunder and tossed it to him as payment.

  Except it wasn’t payment at all. It was a sickening reminder of just how devastating his choice had been. He didn’t even find it again until months after the accident, and then when he’d tried to throw it away—to bury his shame—Birdie had discovered it and, thinking it was pretty, given it a place in her own collection.

  And now he was with here with Cat. The sweetest girl in the world.

  But what kind of guy would he be to kiss her without telling her the truth about who he was? A liar, a thief, a lowlife. The Alex Locke trifecta.

  And when she knew the truth, it’d all be over.