by Maxene Novak
“And now?”
Belle shrugged. “Now I kind of feel like I want to fill the void that was left when my partner and I parted ways. I want that companionship, that security. I want a best friend, but more than that.”
Tassie nodded thoughtfully.
“It’s hard to come by those kinds of relationships when you’re starved for sex and attention,” Tassie told her. “Because those are usually based in friendship at least, and mutual passions outside of each other, and similar life goals. If you’re feeling particularly needy or vulnerable, you won’t be considering those things. Every friend will be a potential lover, and every flaw will be acceptable as long as they give you what you need.”
“That’s an interesting take,” Belle commented. “How did you get to be so insightful?”
“I have to be.” Tassie laughed. “You can’t write about people without understanding how they work, can you? Well, I mean, I guess you technically can, but not very well. I can recognize need when I see it, and it’s all over you.”
“Yeah,” Belle sighed, “I wish I knew what to do about it.”
“Easy,” Tassie said. “Well not exactly easy, but simple. You become your own best friend, your own lover.”
“Masturbating only goes so far,” Belle said dryly.
Tassie burst out laughing. “That’s not what I mean. I mean, take yourself out. Go do things you enjoy. Get to know yourself again, as if you’re somebody you’re romantically interested in. Be completely and utterly self-absorbed long enough to figure out just how awesome you are. A little healthy narcissism never hurt anybody.”
“Is that how you cope?” Belle asked.
“Cope? Cope with what?”
“Well… you write novels, right? Romance novels?”
“Well, people novels that incorporate romance. But yeah.”
“Okay, well you’re writing these people living and loving and doing, and you’re watching them do it.”
“Ah, making them do it,” Tassie corrected. “I adore writing, because between the table of contents and the sigh at the end, I am god. But yes, I am my own best friend. I take care of my own emotional and physical needs, and I cater to my own desires. It shrinks the dating pool… you would not believe how many white knights are running around looking for a damsel to rescue… but when I do connect with somebody, it’s real. It’s sustainable. Well, in theory anyway. I haven’t had a whole lot of luck lately, but then I spent most of last year holed up in that room working on a couple of epic trilogies.”
“You don’t think the whole damsel in distress foundation to a relationship is sustainable?” Belle asked.
“No, of course not. Because once he’s saved her she’s saved, and then what? She either continues to have crises in order to pander to his need to rescue, or he gets threatened by her newfound self-sufficiency and battles it; either by finding someone else to rescue, or by trying to tear her down into what she was when he found her. Strong women might have fewer dates, but that’s balanced out by the fact that they also have less drama distracting them from their passions.”
“Passions… I only had the one passion, you know. Spent my whole life nurturing and cultivating it, pushing the limits, exploring the boundaries. I never managed to work up an interest in anything else. Except boys, of course, but that’s mostly biological. I guess… I don’t know, I guess I’m lapping up the attention they give me because I feel… empty, almost. Unsatisfied. Bored. I don’t know what to do with myself, so I’m trying to fill myself with whoever is handy.”
“Do you like them? As people, I mean.”
“Oh yes. Colt stung me with this, so he’s sort of a wild card, but I definitely like Ruger. He’s good people. But maybe I just like that he worships me and gave me a room? That’s the problem, I don’t know. I’ve got all these cutout shapes in my soul, and they keep filling pieces of it just by being near me.”
“Okay, well let’s start there,” Tassie said, pulling a pad of paper and a pen out from the drawer under the coffee table. “Tell me what you need, and we’ll go from there. Like, tell me what you lost when you had your accident.”
“Oh, everything,” Belle sighed morosely.
“Let’s define everything,” Tassie coaxed.
“Okay… I lost my house. I lost my job. I lost my companionship, my whole social circle, my best friend. I lost my goals. My plan for the future. My work, my passion. My fitness regimen. The use of my leg. My feeling of self-worth. My direction. I lost everything but my car, and now… now I’m just drifting.” Belle gazed off into the distance at nothing, detached from the weight of her losses.
“Okay, good start,” Tassie said cheerfully. “Well the house, you’re here. So that’s handled, albeit temporarily. Let’s focus on the job part. That, I think, encompasses passion, direction, self-worth, goals, and potentially the social circle… though honestly, I think you’re doing pretty well in that department. You’ve been here what, less than a week? And you’ve made three friends already. Oh, but the whole Colt thing… okay, moving on. Taking ballet off the table, what do you like to do?”
Belle had to think about that question for a long time. Looking back at her life, it was all ballet, all wrapped up in everything she did. She thought about her life. She choreographed her own dances frequently, and she enjoyed that immensely. Would it be possible to choreograph a dance class? Certainly possible, but she couldn’t teach a class without being able to model the moves… or could she?
She remembered one instructor she had, back when she was very small. The woman taught the toddler dance class, and she would project animations of the movements on the wall. Then she would go around the room, fixing postures and positions, paying personal attention to each child. Belle had graduated from her class quickly, and all of her subsequent instructors had modeled the movements for her.
So maybe… just maybe… she could do something like that. But what else? Apart from dance and choreography, what did she have to offer? What interests could she explore, now that she had the time? She recalled cooking, back before her life became too hectic. She’d enjoyed it, though she primarily thought of food as fuel. She’d found it relaxing, trying to balance all the nutrients she needed into an appealing look and flavor.
Then of course there was art. The one year that she’d gone to a regular high school, just before her career took off, she’d taken a pottery class as an elective. Getting her hands in the clay and the mud like that, shaping something beautiful out of a formless lump… it had sparked something in her young heart, something that she’d mostly forgotten. Not completely, of course; it had been the one class out of dozens that had caught her eye.
“Okay,” she said finally. “I enjoy choreography, and I might be able to teach a toddler level class once I can walk without the cane. And I do like cooking, I thought about learning more at one point. And I like sculpting, you know, with clay.”
“All good options,” Tassie said, writing them down. “Though it took you a long time to come up with three little answers.”
Belle shrugged. “It’s always been ballet for me,” she said. “I had no higher aspirations, no competing interests; ballet was my first and only love. I never thought I’d have to learn anything else. I should have. But, you know… my career peaked at twenty-four. Even without the injury, I would have had to slow down in another fifteen years or so. You just don’t think about that, you know?”
“Yeah, kids… We think we’re invincible, don’t we?” Tassie said with a kind smile.
“Guess I learned better,” Belle sighed.
Tassie held her hand and squeezed comfortingly.
“Well, we’ve got options. Now we need a battle plan. Too soon yet to pursue teaching a class, so we’ll stick that on a back burner. There are some night classes over at the high school, and an adult learning center next town over. Why don’t we see what they have?”
“Okay,” Belle said languidly. “I, um… I actually already poked around a little bit,
and I found a pottery class on Saturdays.”
“Perfect!” Tassie said excitedly. “I’ll go with you, we’ll have a girl’s day out. What day is it today?”
“Wednesday,” Belle told her with a giggle.
“Groovy. I should be half a dozen chapters in by then and ripe for a brain break. It’s a start, anyway. Between that and the rehab your time’ll be a little fuller, right?”
“Yeah,” Belle smiled. “Maybe it’ll help.”
Chapter Seventeen
Ruger had been stirring his coffee for a very long time. He’d lost himself in his thoughts, and he stood looking out the break room window at his father’s employees work on cars. Cars he was supposed to be helping with but instead he stirred and stared.
“You’re creeping everybody out, son. What’s on your mind?”
Ruger’s tall, stocky, soft-spoken dad set his own mug on the counter and poured himself a splash of coffee.
“Oh… stuff.”
“Is it that damn Colt again?”
Ruger started, nearly spilling his coffee. “Why do you ask?”
“Because every time you’re mooning around like this, Colt goes off on one of his trim binges. What’s with you two, anyway?”
Ruger shrugged. “We, uh… we kinda had a thing, and now it’s nothing, and it never really was anything, but it was our thing and now it’s not a thing, and I think it should have been something. Or something. I don’t know.”
Ruger set his cup down and scrubbed his face with his hands. “So why isn’t it something?”
“Because we were young and stupid and now we’re old and bitter.”
“Hmm.” Ruger’s dad sipped his coffee, looking out over the garage. “First of all, you ain’t old,” he said. “I’m old. Your grandma’s old. But you? You’ve got years of bitterness left to build up.”
Ruger laughed at that.
“Look, son, nobody’s perfect. And you can’t wait around expecting them to grow to suit you.”
“People keep telling me that,” Ruger sighed.
“Who’s people?”
“There’s this girl. She moved into my house last week, and she… you know, she’s pretty smart.”
“Got your eye on her?”
“Sort of. I’ve got… dreams of being something to somebody. I guess that’s all it really comes down to. This girl, she’s sort of… well, she’s a celebrity of sorts, and she sort of landed in my lap. Serendipity, I guess. Anyway, it just kicked off this whole emotional clusterfuck, and now I think I screwed things up with him permanently, and she’s as out of reach as she ever was. I think I tried to get too much and lost everything.”
“It’s only lost if you can’t get it back,” his dad said, peering at him over his bifocals. “You need to feel like you matter, at least to yourself. If you aren’t honest with them about your feelings, you tell yourself that your feelings aren’t worth having.”
“That makes sense,” Ruger said miserably.
“It wouldn’t hurt to ask the girl out.” The old man grinned. “Even celebrities need snuggles.”
Ruger laughed. “Maybe I’ll take her out for snuggles one of these days. What’s left on the cue?”
“Uh… two oil changes, a tire rotation, and a ‘clanking sound like my water pipes’,” he quoted.
“Good times. I’ll take the mystery clank if they can handle the basic crap.”
“Good enough for me. You gonna drink that, or did you just stir it up for the hell of it?”
Ruger grinned and sipped his coffee. His dad always did have a way of making everything seem clear. He wished he’d talked to him about all this sooner.
***
Once the work was finished—more quickly than he’d anticipated, since the mystery clank turned out to be a small shovel trapped between the axle and the chassis—Ruger strolled to the cottage. His dad was right. There was no reason he shouldn’t at least ask her out, worst she could do was say no, and it wasn’t like he hadn’t had plenty of practice with rejection lately. Still, his heart thudded in his chest as he climbed the shallow steps to the front door.
Tassie opened the door just as he reached it. “It’s the master of the house! Quick, hide the drugs, the weapons, and the illegal pets!”
“You’re in a mood,” Ruger said playfully.
“I am, it’s glorious. The book is speeding away, virtually writing itself, my lovely little roommate has decided that life is worth living, and I took a shower for the first time in days.”
“Gross,” Ruger laughed.
“Oh shut up. It’s an artist thing. Come on in, we were just about to have seven-layer nachos and cheap beer.”
“Sounds perfect,” Ruger said, kicking off his boots and stripping out of his coat.
Tassie led him into the dining room. “We decided to eat like people today since Belle’s leg is doing better. Look at her, sitting with her legs bent and everything!”
Belle blushed prettily and covered her full mouth with her hand.
“Awesome! Guess Colt’s been doing good work on you, then?”
Belle finished chewing and swallowed the mouthful with a splash of beer. “He was, but I guess he’s not anymore,” Belle told him.
“What do you mean?” Ruger asked, brows furrowed.
“He said he had some personal stuff to handle. He’s got a massage therapist coming on Friday, and someone else covering the class tomorrow.”
“Huh.”
Ruger wasn’t really surprised. This was classic Colt. There was no middle ground with him, no compromise. He was always all in or all out.
“I thought it was strange,” Tassie said, settling herself in the chair across from Belle. “I mean, it’s not like he was sleeping with her or anything.”
“Yeah, strange,” Ruger said unconvincingly.
Tassie looked at him suspiciously, but didn’t ask. She knew enough about their history that she avoided prying into their personal business. Belle, however, did not.
“You sound like you know why,” she commented.
“I have my suspicions,” Ruger said.
“Like what?” she asked, cheeks turning a deeper shade of red.
“Like….” Should he tell her? He was going to ask anyway, might as well take advantage of the natural segue. “Like he’s into you, and he knows I’m into you, and it was too complicated for him to manage,” Ruger said all at once, staring at the nachos.
He felt like a little kid. Like asking a woman out or confessing his feelings to someone was something he should have figured out ten years ago, but somehow he never had. He cringed internally, waiting for her response.
“You’re into me?” Belle asked, but she didn’t sound any more surprised than he had a moment ago.
“Yeah,” Ruger said, looking up at her face.
She seemed pleased, but Tassie was shooting her a warning look. He’d have to ask her what that was about, later. Right now he was more interested in Belle’s answer.
“So, um… you aren’t really in a position to go dancing or anything, but would you consider letting me get to know you better? Wouldn’t have to be anything serious, just… I like you a lot, and I kind of want to see where that goes.”
“I have no reservations about that whatsoever,” Belle said, obviously and deliberately ignoring the signals from Tassie’s side of the table. “I like you too. At least I think I do. I’d like to find out for sure.”
“Awesome.” Relief washed over Ruger, and he grinned at her.
She smiled back, flirtatiously.
“Ugh, why do I even try,” Tassie muttered.
“Problem, Tassie?” Ruger asked her.
“What? No, no, not at all. Get two needy people under the same roof and next thing you know there’s a houseful of needy babies. No problem there!” Tassie rolled her eyes and shoved a loaded chip in her mouth.
“Well that’s not fair,” Belle said. “He just wants to hang out and get to know me. It’s not like I’m going to seduce him. Can you ima
gine, though? Strip tease, cyborg edition.”
That brought laughter from the whole trio, and the cranky Tassie relaxed slightly.
“Fair enough,” she said. “I just worry. It’s what I do. I like you guys, and I’d rather not be here if or when you two tear each other to pieces.”
“You’re a good friend, Tass. I promise I won’t break her heart if I can possibly avoid it,” Ruger said playfully.
“Ditto,” Belle grinned. “Here’s to friends with whole hearts.”
They clinked their beer bottles together, their various dysfunctions comfortably balanced for a moment.
“So… do you think Colt will ever come back?” Belle asked.
“Of course he will,” Ruger assured her. “He’s not like me. He wouldn’t just uproot and leave town, and he wouldn’t leave you in the lurch without making sure that you’d be okay. It is kind of weird that he left right when you got started, but I’m sure he has a good reason.”
“I wish he would have talked to me about it,” Belle sighed. “I really didn’t want to offend him or anything.”
“Offend him? How could you possibly offend him?” Ruger laughed.
Belle blushed bright red, and Ruger distinctly felt like he was missing something.
“No reason, just, you know, bitchiness with the pain and whatever,” she said, unconvincingly.
“Uh-huh. So much for getting to know you better,” Ruger teased.
“Baby steps, Ruger, baby steps,” she replied.
She sighed and shook herself, grabbing another chip. Ruger piled some of the messy meal onto a plate for himself, and let it go. If she didn’t want to tell him everything right now, that was her prerogative. It poked at him like an itch on his brain, but he ignored it. If something had happened between the two of them, it was none of his business; if anything, it brought him closer to the dynamic he’d been fantasizing about.
“So you said you’d never dated two people at once, right?” he asked.
“Who didn’t know about each other,” she clarified, eyes twinkling.
“Ooh, I like the specificity. Go on then, tell me.”
