Romance Impossible

by Melanie Marchande

  Yes, I once made the evening news because I fought with the hostess of a five-star restaurant in front of customers. Yes, it made the evening news. No, nobody was hurt. Every once in a while, I still run into a fan who thanks me for the night of entertainment, but I'm not particularly proud of it.

  Yes, I made Chef Sully DePalma cry. He had it coming.

  About the "trail of broken hearts" thing. I don't know that I'd use such a melodramatic term, but I won't play dumb. I know where the rumor comes from. I'm always on the move, going from one city to the next, meeting new women all the time, and most of them - yes, most of them - actually like me. I don't mind saying it. I'm not boasting, it's just a fact. Entanglements happen. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I have a hard time keeping it casual. Things tend to spiral out of control.

  I resent the implication that it was something I did on purpose.

  Notice I said "was."

  Because that's the only choice, really, when you realize there's something in your life that you can't control. If I was an alcoholic, I'd stop drinking. If I was a gambling addict, I wouldn't even touch a crane game at the mall. But my vice is relationships, so there's only one clear solution.

  Stay away. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars.

  Someday I'll try again. Someday, maybe when I have enough of a nest egg and my career is waning and I can actually focus on being there for another person. Someday, maybe, when I'm less of a selfish piece of shit.

  I'm almost sure that day will come.

  ***

  It was only a matter of time before Beckett caught us flirting.

  Harmless, I kept telling myself, over and over again until I almost believed it. Harmless. It's harmless. She hates you, really, and when push comes to shove, that'll override everything else.

  As usual, it took someone from the outside to see things clearly.

  Once Jill had left the room, her cheeks pink and a smile playing on her lips, Beckett caught my eyes with an expression that said it all.

  "Don't start," I said.

  He shook his head. "What happened to the whole..." He made a vague gesture around his neck, which I supposed was meant to be a reference to a priest's collar, or a rosary, or something. He always was shit at charades.

  "It's nothing," I said. "We're just getting along better, that's all. It only seems like something more, because we were always on the verge of killing each other before."

  "Uh huh," said Beckett, studying his fingernails. "Okay, sure."

  I fumed quietly, focusing on my work, but I could feel Beckett's eyes on me for a long time.

  Later on, after closing time, he managed to corner me in my office before I could pretend to be on the phone, or busy with the numbers.

  "The only reason I'm doing this," he said, dragging out a chair, "is that when things go pear-shaped, which you know is going to happen, because it happens every time - you're going to knock down my door and demand to know why I didn't stop you. Trust me. I'd be more than happy to let you self-destruct for the five-hundredth time, but not if it's going to become my fault."

  "It won't," I muttered, knowing that I couldn't possibly make that promise.

  "Ah," said Beckett, plopping his feet up on my desk. "So you admit there is something going on."

  "Absolutely not," I said. "We're talking in purely theoretical terms, little brother."

  He wanted to get a rise out of me, but the feet-on-the-desk thing wasn't working - so he sat up and started drumming his fingers on the polished wood surface, instead.

  "You know what," he said, finally. "You're right. I guess I'm just picking up on something that's not there. She's nothing special, right?"

  My jaw clenched, involuntarily. "Subtle," I said. "Have you considered going into work as a police interrogator?"

  Beckett sighed, dropping his head back on the chair. "Max, just stop. You're not fooling anybody, least of all yourself. The one way to guarantee that this goes horribly, horribly wrong is to keep pretending that it's not happening."

  "Fine," I snapped, slamming my hand down on the desk, hard enough to make him jump a little. "So let's pretend it's happening. Let's pretend it's completely out of my control. What the hell do you suggest that I do, then?"

  Beckett steepled his fingers. "Stop pretending it's out of your control," he said. "That's step one."

  I didn't have a snappy response to that - and he knew it.

  "Honestly," he went on, ignoring the murderous glare that I was throwing his way. "How long have you been using that excuse? It's ridiculous, and you know it."

  He was right, and I knew he was right, and that was the most infuriating thing about it. I'd always known in the back of my mind, in that way you can know something even as you desperately pretend it isn't true.

  I stood up.

  "Good night, Beckett."

  He watched me leave, but he didn't try to say anything else.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Liaison

  Liaison is such a salacious word for an ordinary thing: any sort of binding agent that helps a mixture become something entirely new.

  - Excerpted from Dylan: A Lifetime of Recipes

  ***

  Jill

  ***

  On Thursday, Max asked me to come in early the following day. He didn't say why, and I didn't ask. I had to catch a train that got me there even earlier, and I spent my morning sitting in the little waterfront park where people bring their dogs to play. Even if I hadn't been going straight to work, Heidi was simply not an option - I couldn't trust her not to run into traffic.

  When I got to the Trattoria, Max was already absorbed in some task. He didn't seem to notice I was there, until I was standing right next to him.

  "You know how to throw pizza dough?"

  By now, I was used to him greeting me with a question every day.

  "Not...really," I said. "I mean, I could probably throw it, but the landing might run into some issues."

  "Watch me," he said. "You'll learn. But for now we'll do it assembly-line. You handle the sauce and toppings."

  He already had a ball of dough out on the counter.

  "All right," I said.

  "Big catering order," he added. I just nodded, unable to shake the feeling that I'd successfully passed some sort of test by never asking "why" until he was ready to tell me.

  "Sounds like my kind of party," I said, mouth already watering at the thought of an endless supply of Max's pizzas. He didn't make them often, as they weren't a regular menu item, but they were honestly some of the best I'd ever eaten.

  "Wedding," he said. "Second time, for both of them, which I assume explains why they've gotten the 'proper' formal stuff out of their systems by now, and they just want food they can actually enjoy. I hear the bride's wearing purple."

  I laughed, although the thought of weddings still send a little twinge through my chest. Talk of catering and taffeta and flower arrangements never failed to remind me of the time I'd been planning my own "happily ever after," not too long ago.

  Spoiler alert: the ending wasn't so happy, after all.

  "They sound like fun," I said, wondering if he'd be able to detect the false cheerfulness in my voice. If he'd even care.

  "It takes balls to break with tradition, on something like this especially," Max said. "I have to admire them."

  "Hmm," I agreed. I'd been planning to wear red.

  "Not much for weddings?" He glanced at me.

  "I guess you could say that." I chopped some mushrooms vigorously. "Had a bad experience."

  "Ah," said Max, quietly. "Well - I'll shut up, then."

  He was true to his word, and I let a few minutes pass in silence.

  "Five years," I heard myself blurt out, suddenly. Max glanced at me briefly, then back down at his dough. I cleared my throat. "I was with this guy Eric for five years, engaged for two," I clarified. "Midway through planning the wedding, I logged into his Facebook to find some contact information for a ve
nue or something - he'd forgotten to send it to me so I figured what's the harm, right? I knew all his passwords and he knew mine. We were in it for the long haul. We didn't keep any secrets. And I saw he'd been messaging back and forth with a girl from work a lot, which I thought was weird. He'd only ever mentioned her in passing. I guess I don't even have to tell you what I saw when I started scrolling."

  I paused, swallowed hard, and set down my knife. Even remembering it now, my heart started beating a little faster.

  "Idiot," Maxwell said. He glanced at me again. "Him, of course. Not you."

  A laugh bubbled up, and I was helpless to stop it. "Yeah," I said. "Right under my nose. I guess he thought I'd never look. And he could have been right, you know, I had no reason to check up on him. Never suspected a thing. He could have gotten away with it for our entire lives."

  "Dodged a bullet." Max plopped a rolled-out dough in front of me.

  "Yeah," I said. "Didn't feel like it at the time, though. Felt more like getting hit with a bullet-proof vest on." I ladled on some sauce and spread it around, carefully. "Bruised, maybe some broken ribs, but still alive."

  "That's much more accurate," he agreed. My eyes flicked over to his workstation as I spread my slices of buffalo mozzarella, and I was briefly mesmerized by the muscles and tendons in his arms as he pressed down on the dough. There was a light dusting of flour on his forearms, where he'd rolled up his sleeves to work.

  "The worst part," I said, adding the sausage slices, "is that even after everything, after he'd proven himself to be the exact opposite of who I thought he was - I was still convinced he'd come crawling back to me. I was so sure of it. I had my whole speech planned out, the one I'd give while he was lying on the floor, clinging to my ankle. But he never did. He left the day I found out, and I never heard from him again."

  I paused, taking a long breath. I waited for Max to change the subject, or indicate that he was tired of hearing about my pathetic life, but he just looked at me expectantly.

  "And that's the whole sad story," I said. "It was surreal. Like somebody slammed the brakes on my life and threw it into reverse. I had a whole ten-year plan mapped out, but it was all predicated on my relationship with Eric. He was my first boyfriend. I moved out of my college apartment and right in with him. For a while, I felt like I didn't even know how to be a grown-up without him."

  "It often feels that way, the first time." Maxwell looked a little distant. Try as I might, I couldn't imagine him ever having been young and fragile, feeling lost in the world without his soulmate. I wasn't sure whether the thought made me want to giggle, or tear up a little.

  "Oh, yeah?" I said, picking up the peel and heading to the oven. "You been dumped a lot?"

  He let out a bark of laughter. "What do you think?"

  "I dunno," I said. "Guys like you, sometimes they have a surprisingly easy time of it."

  "Hm." He tossed another circle of dough in the air. "Well, there's the people you think you want to be with, and then there's the people you can actually live with." Laying the stretched dough down in front of me, he glanced at my face, smiling a little. "Which one do you think I am?"

  "Well," I said. "I thought Eric was the guy I wanted to live with, so maybe my judgment's a little off."

  "I was a serial monogamist, at least," he said. "I never did have the stomach for betrayal. But I could never keep anything going for longer than five months, let alone five years."

  "Always the past tense," I pointed out.

  He just smiled, pressing another ball of dough flat onto the counter.

  "I never even met the girl," I said. "Don't even know if they're still together."

  "Doubt it." Chef pounded down his dough. "They always trade down. You were too strong for him, so he picked off someone else who was limping behind the rest of the herd. I'm sure the charm wore off right quick."

  I laughed. "Thanks," I said. "But who knows, really?"

  "Trust me," he said, seriously. "When people are unhappy with themselves, they want to feel needed in a way that only another deeply unhappy person can make them feel."

  As I spread the mozzarella, I thought about the genesis of my relationship with Eric. How he'd "rescued" me from an unhappy home. A knight in shining white armor. I always knew this dynamic had gratified something in him, but I never suspected he'd need it over and over again, for the rest of his life.

  I thought back to the months leading up to our not-wedding. I was happier than I'd ever been, my career was flourishing...

  "Shit," I said, loudly. Max stared at me, like he was expecting to find that I'd cut off a finger or something.

  "Sorry," I said, looking back down at the pizza. "It's just - you're right."

  "I know," he said, grinning. "Was there ever really any doubt?"

  "Oh, my God." I rolled my eyes, reaching for the pizza peel. "You're a piece of work, you know that?"

  "Indeed," he said. "But at least I'm not Eric."

  "No," I agreed, smiling at him. There was a sparkle in his eyes. "No, you most certainly are not."

  ***

  "Let me guess," said Max, after the dinner rush had started to die down. "This Eric person - really nice guy, yes? Never an unkind word for anyone."

  "Of course," I said. "Not to their face, anyway."

  I didn't know why he was bringing up my ex, out of the blue, hours after our initial conversation. But I didn't mind. Honestly, it was somewhat of a relief to talk about him again, which I hadn't expected. My friends had long ago grown tired of the discussion, and I couldn't speak to my family about it. My mom persisted in her belief that we should have "worked things out" - as if I had a choice - and my stepdad voiced what they were both thinking: it was, somehow, my fault.

  "It's what I've always believed," Max said, wiping down one of his frighteningly large knives. "You can't trust nice people. They're always hiding something."

  I snickered. "Not always," I said. "I like to think I'm pretty nice."

  "Yes, but you're an oddity," he said. "And I mean that as a compliment."

  "Of course you do."

  "In my experience, most 'nice' people are just afraid of confrontation. They have the same cruel, uncharitable thoughts as anyone else - they just don't voice them."

  "But that's not a bad thing," I cut in. "I mean, if you have negative thoughts about somebody and never tell them, then they never know. Their feelings never get hurt."

  "Things need to be aired out," he said, folding his arms across his chest. "Everybody walking around, never saying what's on their mind - what kind of world is that?"

  "Well, thankfully we have people like you to balance the scales," I said. He was smiling. Any other time, this might have spiraled into a fight. Any other time, I would have been worried. But today, something was different. There was definitely a kind of tension between us, but it wasn't the same as before.

  He was standing very close to me, I realized, and we were alone in the kitchen. My tongue flicked out to wet my lips, and I could feel my pulse start to flutter.

  Just then, he took a step closer. Slowly, almost as if he was testing my limits. I was up against the counter. There was nowhere else for me to go. His eyes were locked with mine, dark and growing darker, a smile still playing on his lips.

  I was trapped. I couldn't move. And I didn't want to.

  I took in a deep, shaky breath. The massive kitchen suddenly felt very small - too small to hold this moment, and everything unspoken that was hanging there, suspended in the tiny space between our bodies.

  This is what he does. He breaks hearts.

  But the look in his eyes, no, that wasn't the look of a man who ever wanted to break somebody's heart.

  I felt like I was on the verge of shattering, bursting into a thousand pieces. The conflict, the confusion - it was too much. It was much too much. My resentment hadn't gone away. It was stronger than ever. But my feelings for Max were stronger still, and growing stronger with every moment while he was poised there, a breath aw
ay from kissing me.

  All of a sudden, I couldn't bite my tongue anymore.

  "Do you even remember?" I whispered. I did mean for it to come out full-volume, or at least half, but my voice wasn't cooperating.

  He looked confused.

  "Giovanni's," I clarified. "When you first came back to Boston. I made you salmon and spinach, and you practically..." His face was already falling, so there was no need to continue, but I did anyway. "...spat it out on my shoes."

  He looked down at the floor for a moment. Swallowed. I watched his Adam's apple bob up and down. "Of course I remember," he said, his voice a little rough. "The look on your face, you think I could forget something like that?"

  Was he trying to guilt-trip me? Oh, hell no.

  "That bad, huh?" I said, my voice cold and brittle.

  "I thought if you hadn't forgiven me by now, you never would have taken this job." He blinked a few times. "I...obviously I was wrong." He was pulling back, barely noticeably, but I could no longer feel the heat of his skin.

  "I didn't really have a choice," I said, flatly. He'd pulled away completely now, turning back to his station and leaving me alone there, still pressed up against the counter.

  I stayed there silently until he'd finished up, and was heading for the door. He stopped before he go there, turning around to look at me. My heart thumped like it wanted to jump free of my chest.

  He was still smiling, a little, but there was something else in his face.

  "I'll see you tomorrow, Jill."

  ***

  After work, I went over to Shelly's to try and focus on anything but obsessive thoughts about me, and Max, and whatever the hell was happening between us. She was on a health food kick, preemptively trying to undo some of the damage of the upcoming holiday season, so we ate bite-sized vegetables and talked about nothing, while she occasionally broke off to yell at the Bachelor contestants on TV.