The door opened a crack. Diane’s sleepy face appeared. “Nicki?”
“Sorry to bother you. I was looking for Ansel.”
Diane closed her eyes. The crack in the door narrowed to a thin white line. “She’s looking for Ansel,” Nicki heard her say.
“He didn’t say good-bye?” That was Brand’s voice, muffled behind the door.
Nicki’s pulse pounded in her ears. Her chest tightened. Good-bye?
She rapped on the door again. “Hello, still here.”
It flew open. Diane stood there in a white bathrobe twice her size. Brand, similarly dressed, except the robe was snug, was right behind her. They looked flushed, glowing, happy, and ready to get back into bed. Nicki was too fixated on the words he didn’t say good-bye to be happy for them, or relieved for herself to have Diane out of the way.
Ansel had taken himself out of the way. “Tell me,” Nicki said, not moving.
Diane stepped aside. “Come in.”
She shook her head. “Where’d he go?”
“You’d really better come in,” Brand said.
Nicki’s hands started to shake. She balled them into fists and walked slowly inside. “Did he get his own place?”
Diane glanced at Brand. “I didn’t talk to him myself,” she said.
“He’s on a plane back to San Francisco,” Brand said. “He called me from the airport.”
Nicki’s breath caught. “San Francisco?” She turned to Diane. “Seriously?”
With a sigh, Diane gave her a worried look. “He told us how you heard us on the balcony. Whatever you heard, please don’t blame Ansel. It’s totally my fault. And Brand. Brand’s fault, too.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“He’s on a plane back home, right now?” Nicki’s back bumped against the front door.
“I’m sorry,” Diane said.
“He was down in the lobby when the airport shuttle came,” Brand said. “He said he felt like moving, so he got on it. Next thing he knew, he was in Kahului booking a flight. That’s what he said.”
“Because of me?” Nicki couldn’t believe it. “Did you tell him about… about you two…” She made a vaguely romantic, hand waving gesture between them.
“I’m sure he’ll be on the next flight back,” Diane said.
Brand rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t think so.”
Both women looked at him.
“He backed out of the real estate deal,” Brand continued. “He said he needed to figure some things out. I told him not to buy a Ferrari, and he said he was doing the opposite—unloading his worldly possessions. I started to think he might join a throwback commune in Marin, the way he was talking.”
“Here I thought I was nuts,” Nicki said dully. She craved her beanbags. “Does he do this sort of thing often? Take off when he’s upset?”
Neither of them spoke.
“He does, doesn’t he?” Nicki asked.
Diane put her hand over her mouth and looked at the floor. Then she said, “Only once. But it was a totally different situation. He ended up in Seattle that time.”
“Because of—something like this?” Nicki asked.
“Oh, no. Nothing like that.” Diane looked at Brand. “A friend of his died in a skiing accident.”
“Drew Probert,” he said, shaking his head. “Great guy. Could make anybody laugh. Even me. The three of us used to play poker together. Drew and I would get wasted, and Ansel, sipping his diet Cokes, would still lose. On purpose, I assume. He knew Drew had tons of school loans.”
“Ansel was in his car when he found out,” Diane said. “He was supposed to meet me for pizza, but he got on 101 and didn’t stop until he hit Canada.” Diane was frowning at her. “Do you mind if I ask what you said to him last night?”
Nicki stared at her. This was her fault?
No. They’d just been having fun the way other people had fun when they were on vacation and found somebody to have fun with. There was no reason he should be running away as if she’d ruined his life because she wasn’t ready to say—
“I only got here about three weeks ago,” Nicki said.
“I understand,” Diane said. “He got carried away again. He’s never been the type to go slow.”
“I have to go.” Nicki turned and pulled the door open, not seeing anything but her fingers wrapped around the handle. Her legs were wooden, her body weightless.
Diane helped her with the door. “I really am sorry. We both are.”
Nicki nodded at her and went back to her own place.
I’m not sorry, she thought.
Better now than later, when she might have been really stuck.
Carried away.
She just had to accept she’d been living in a dream world; they’d had a lovely time, a fantasy in paradise, and now the alarm clock had gone off.
Time to wake up.
* * *
It’s strange how good I feel, Ansel thought as he sat in his favorite chair by the window in his apartment. It overlooked a shady corner of Glen Park in San Francisco, and smelled stale from his long absence, but he was glad he’d flown home the day before.
He hadn’t felt this good in years. Great, actually. Great.
He was his own man. Nobody could tell him what to do. Nobody expected anything from him, nobody could. He was a grown man in his own apartment, drinking his own coffee out of his own mug.
He wasn’t rich but he had the down payment for the oceanfront office building he wouldn’t be buying, and little funds here and there from friends repaying him for old favors he had never called loans, but they had.
He’d do fine. She’d taken his heart and stomped on it, but he’d survive. He saw the world more clearly now, like getting a terminal diagnosis and seeing what really mattered in life.
Making money wasn’t ever going to make him happy. In spite of what he’d told himself months ago, he’d gone into business with Brand to impress his father. Not to become financially independent—like he’d fooled himself into believing—but in a last-ditch attempt to earn his father’s respect.
He wasn’t going to do that anymore. Even if his father never respected him, Ansel would respect himself. He’d continue to find value in his life—much like his mother did—through lending, helping, playing, living. He’d try to explain that to his father, but he wouldn’t try to change himself to make the old man happy.
Kevin Jarski’s sixtieth birthday party was in two weeks. Ansel wanted to be there. He’d even decided to help his mother with the arrangements.
He picked up the phone again and called Mel Jury’s cell, not knowing where she was, not even which country.
“You’re an angel!” his mother said after he’d made his offer. “It will mean so much to him!”
“No, it won’t,” he replied, “but that’s okay.”
“It’ll mean a lot that you’ll be there.”
“I need to tell you something, Mom,” he said. “You’re not going to like it.”
“Is that why you buttered me up first?”
“No. I was going to do that anyway.”
She exhaled loudly. “All right. Let’s hear it.”
“Dad and I had a fight in September.” He waited for her to tell him what she knew.
All she said was “Yes?”
“He wanted me to live my life differently than how I was living it. I told him to go to hell.”
She breathed out again. He thought he could hear her lips pressing together.
“I didn’t use those exact words,” he continued, “but that was basically it. I told him I wouldn’t draw from the family accounts anymore. I haven’t.”
“And you’ve run out of money and would like to make up?” Her voice was deceptively polite. It was the voice that used to send chills down his back.
“No. I don’t need money. But I do need my father.”
The line went quiet.
“Mom?”
Another loud exhale, this one from the diaphragm. �
�Oh, I’m so glad. This has been a horrible year, waiting for the two of you to pull yourselves together. Just horrible.”
“Did you know?”
“Of course I knew, Ansel. Your father doesn’t have a painful bowel movement without letting me know about it.”
He laughed, relief flooding him. “I figured. That’s why I called you.”
“I’ll get him on the phone. Just—”
“No. Not now. I’ll talk to him at the party. He’ll be happy to get away from everybody you invited and yell at me for a few minutes. That’s my little present to him.”
“I can’t promise I won’t jump the gun, Ansel. I don’t keep secrets from him. He’s my life partner. You’ll understand someday.”
“I doubt it,” he said, sinking back into the chair. He had a moment of feeling very not good. “I’ll set everything up with Jordan. You liked the food at the restaurant, right? Dad can have the party there?”
“It was very interesting. I’m willing to eat it again.”
“Is that what you put in your Yelp review?” he asked. “That’s kind of faint, as praise goes.”
“It doesn’t matter what I think. He had a line out the door. Are you sure he’ll reserve the entire place just for us?”
“I’m sure.”
They talked menus and timing. Then Ansel asked his mother something he’d wanted to do for a while but had been afraid of looking weak to his father.
“I’d like to go into business with you, Mom,” he said firmly. He wanted to continue what he’d been doing with friends but on a formal, larger scale. “Saving the world.”
She paused. “But that’s what you have been doing, Ansel. Didn’t you know that?”
Feeling his throat tighten, he repeated something about the menu before hanging up.
He sat in the chair and stared out the window at the park, the phone abandoned in his lap.
He was watching a man ride his bike with a small white dog on his chest in a baby carrier, thinking about Nicki, when his sister called.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to talk to Rachel right then. She’d want to know everything. Everything. If she didn’t know already, with her twin sister magic.
He hit the button. “Hi, Rache.”
“I’m not getting married, and you’re not going to say a word about it,” she said.
He got up and walked into his kitchen. It was smaller than a suburban home’s walk-in closet but wonderfully affordable.
“Okay,” he said, relieved he’d escape from a conversation about his own love life.
Silence stretched between them. “Okay,” she said. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
“I’m actually packing right now,” she said. “I hear I’ll see you at Dad’s birthday party.”
Unless the tireless Melinda Jury had sent an email while she was on the phone with him, it was too soon for his sister to have gotten that news from their mother. “Where did you hear that?”
“Oh, you know.”
“No,” he said flatly. “I’d like to.”
“Okay,” she said with a sigh, “I talked to Brand an hour ago.”
“Since when do you talk to Brand?”
“We don’t talk every day or anything.”
“But you barely know him. I didn’t think you even liked him.”
“I didn’t used to, but then I got to know him last summer.” She cleared her throat. “We went out for a little while.”
“Went out where?” Then Ansel grimaced. “No way.” Shaking his head, he took containers of yogurt and orange juice out of the fridge to make a smoothie. Liquefying products in a blender could be therapeutic.
“He was sweet.”
“Sweet? Brand?”
“A real gentleman. But he was in love with somebody else.”
“Thank God,” he said. “I didn’t realize how glad I’d be about that.”
“They’re worried about you. Well, Diane’s worried. Brand’s pissed.”
He shoved a frozen banana into the blender. “Maybe I shouldn’t have left like that. I was just about to get the car and go for a drive when the shuttle showed up. I’d assumed I’d turn around and go right back.”
“You should. I’m afraid to call Nicki. My brother’s being an asshole.”
“When the plane was landing at SFO, I finally saw what everyone else had seen all along. Nicki was just looking for sex.” He swallowed hard. “She doesn’t want anything else from me.” He banged the lid over the blender and punched the highest setting.
When he turned it off, Rachel sighed. “You don’t know that.”
“I’m just another challenge for her to cross off her bucket list. She’d been afraid of seeing me again after college, just like she was afraid of swimming or bridges or whatever. She built up a tolerance, got her fix, felt good about herself”—he yanked a bag of strawberries out of the freezer—“and it has nothing to do with me. She got what she needed.”
“You haven’t given her a chance.”
“If I go back to Maui, we’ll just get back in bed together and drag out the inevitable. Better to have a clean break now.”
“I can’t believe you’re saying this. You didn’t even talk to her.”
“We talked. She ended the conversation. I’m happy to continue it, but not there. If she’s interested in talking more, she can come find me in the real world.”
“You’re hurt and afraid and dumping all of this on her, instead of—”
“I told her I loved her. She told me to fuck off.” He shoved an icy strawberry as big as a baby’s fist into the blender. “It’s not me who’s afraid.”
“Give me a break. You’re terrified.”
“Not anymore. I put myself out there—”
“And then ran away!”
He fired up the blender again and enjoyed the horrible noise. When it had pulverized the sugary mass into a rosy paste, he punched the off button. “She needs some time. I’m giving her time.”
“Sounds like you’re the one who wants time.”
“Maybe I do.”
“Can I tell her you want to see her when she gets back?”
“I’d tell you to mind your own business, but that’s not going to happen.” He pressed his thumb over the blender’s ice crush button until Rachel yelled at him over the noise to cut it out.
He took off the lid and scowled into it. It would be a waste to pour it out, but his stomach was too tense to digest anything. “By the way, I know you set us up,” he said. “Believe me when I say I don’t appreciate it.”
“I’m sorry,” Rachel said with a sigh. “I thought you two would really like each other.”
“Yeah. We did. That was the problem.”
Chapter 28
TWO WEEKS LATER, ON A Friday night in mid-July, Nicki pulled her laptop bag from under the seat in front of her and waited for the aisle to clear so she could get off the plane.
The other passengers looked happy, well-rested, and sun-kissed. She, however, was recovering from a bad burn after spending the day on a catamaran tour, and the skin on her shoulders was coming off in sheets. The flesh underneath was pink and tender, sensitive to the pressure of two bags slung across her body.
Her knees were still a little shaky from the landing as she walked off the plane, but she’d been writing through most of the trip and hadn’t ordered a drink, popped a pill, or blown a gasket. She hadn’t even squeezed the Phobic Phoebe stress ball that had finally arrived at the condo. The extras—Betty had sent two dozen—were in her suitcase insulating a hand-painted vase she’d purchased at an art show in Lahaina. The show had been one of the excursions she’d forced herself to make. She’d refused to mope in the condo.
He hadn’t come back; he hadn’t called. She’d relived the fight in her mind over and over, concluding only that he’d wanted more than she could give. She wished he’d given her more time, and it galled her that he’d left like that.
The air inside the terminal was cold and humid, li
ke a basement after a rainstorm. She found Betty waiting in the baggage claim; her green hair was now as purple as grape soda. On her, it looked more natural, almost black.
“Thanks for the ride,” Nicki said. “Love the hair.”
“I’m going through a conservative phase. Jaynette’s driving around so we don’t have to pay for parking,” Betty said. “Is that all you brought?”
Nicki looked around for the right baggage carousel. “I checked a couple bags. Sorry, but I couldn’t carry it all on.”
“A couple? Just for the weekend?”
Nicki moved her laptop bag to the other shoulder, flinching at the sting of the strap tugging at raw flesh. “I’m not going back.”
“But you’ve got three weeks to go! In Maui!”
“I’ve had enough.” She didn’t have anything else to prove to herself there.
“Damn, what a waste. I’ll tell her to drive around again,” Betty muttered, starting to text on her phone. “I wish Jaynette could get time off work. She and I could take your place. Fly out after the reception after chugging champagne.”
“Sorry, it’s already occupied.” Brand and Diane had moved into the Jury-Jarski condo as a cost-saving measure. Diane was also taking Ansel’s place in the real estate deal; although, because his abandoned possessions were still strewn all over his bedroom, they would be moving into the room Nicki had used.
“What’s with the two backpacks?” Betty asked.
“Ansel forgot his computer.”
Betty lowered her phone to gape at her. “You’re his mule?”
“Gives me an excuse to talk to him.”
“You already have an excuse to track him down and smack him upside the head,” Betty said. “Talk to him then.”
“I’m not angry anymore,” Nicki said. “We both went a little crazy. Being away from home can do that to you. You forget who you are, do things you’d never do otherwise.” Painful, pleasurable memories cascaded over her. She didn’t know if she’d ever have such a comprehensively sensual experience again in her life. She didn’t know if she’d survive one.
Diving In Page 26
