Coming Home to You

by Liesel Schmidt

  My mind was racing, my heart was going at a rate rapid enough to rival a hummingbird’s wings, and I wanted to throw up. Had I done something that made this thing burst or leak or whatever it was doing that it obviously wasn’t supposed to be doing?

  I felt sick and guilty and panicked.

  Neil was going to blame me.

  I don’t know where the thought came from, but all of a sudden it was there. And, for only being a thought, it seemed as loud as if someone had shouted it into the room.

  Neil was going to blame me.

  Of course he would. I was the one here, watching his house, and I’d let this happen.

  Granted, I hadn’t actually been present, but it had still happened on my watch. And I had absolutely no idea of what I should do.

  I needed to call Ray. It seemed logical enough to me. At least he might know what to do, which was definitely a step up from standing there, staring at the thing like a helpless idiot. My feet were almost rooted to the floor, sunken into the spongy carpet, which seemed to have absorbed enough water to fill a bathtub.

  Oh, God, the carpet! What was I going to do about the carpet?

  Somehow, the realization that I was going to have to deal not only with a defunct water heater, but flooded carpeting, as well, sent me over the edge.

  Not just a little over the edge, either.

  A lot over the edge.

  I turned away from the water heater and barely made it two steps before I threw up. Right there, all over the ruined carpet.

  Followed immediately by crying, of course.

  Naturally. Isn’t that what one does?

  I sat down in the middle of the room, freshly showered and wrapped in a towel, and cried until I had nothing left to cry.

  I must have fallen asleep at some point, because the next thing I knew, I was being awakened by the sound of the doorbell being rung. Not once, not twice, but repeatedly.

  Whoever was out there was either determined to be let in or determined to lose an index finger and have it shoved up their—

  I felt as though I had a hangover.

  My head was pounding, my eyes were swollen, and I was completely disoriented. The room was dark now that the sun had gone down, and the open windows that had previously been a source of natural light were now letting in only the soft glow of streetlights.

  How long had I been asleep? I wondered, staring into the grayness that seemed to envelop the room.

  And who in the name of all that was good and holy was ringing the doorbell?

  I rolled off my side and put my hand down on the carpet to sit up. The carpet sucked my hand into the depths of its soaked pile, and I remembered everything all in a flash that had the force of a slap across the face.

  I took a deep breath—a deep, mind cleansing breath to battle the panic I could start to feel forming a knot in my chest.

  And held it in.

  Something smelled awful.

  Something smelled absolutely foul.

  Apparently, the crying fit I’d had earlier had precluded any post-throw-up damage control; and the puddle of it was now fermenting on the carpet.

  And still the doorbell kept right on ringing.

  I’d been wrapped in a towel when I’d fallen asleep earlier, and now it was sort of bunched up around me and under me—not really on me anymore. I was going to have to throw on some clothes before I went to answer the door, so whoever it was—persistent as they might be—was going to have to wait.

  Period.

  I picked myself up off the floor and made a mad dash for the robe I kept hanging on the back of the bedroom door. That was going to have to do, since the maniac doorbell-ringer couldn’t seem to keep his fingers to himself.

  As I sprinted down the hall to the front door, I plotted ways to break that finger and possibly all of the other digits on the hands of whomever was doing the bell-ringing.

  Someone was going to regret this.

  Someone was going to wish they’d been a little more appreciative of ten functioning fingers.

  Someone was—Ray.

  “Nice robe, sweets, but hopefully you don’t always answer the door wearing that.” Ray grinned at me and thrust a bottle of wine in my hands. “Oh, and I realize it might be all natural and organic, but you might want to rethink the barf doubling as a hair gel. It kind of reeks,” he added, fanning the air and bending slightly to kiss my forehead as he came through the door.

  I was still standing there with my mouth open, feeling somehow robbed now that I knew I wasn’t going to get to yell at anyone or break any bones.

  I blinked and shut my mouth, realizing it might not smell so hot in there, considering the afternoon’s events. Mental note to make a bathroom detour to brush the teeth.

  “Rough day, Zoë?” Ray asked over his shoulder as he walked toward the kitchen, presumably to comb the contents of the fridge. It was his first stop anytime he came over, so I usually made sure I had an ample supply of Fig Newtons chilling out in there. Not that normal people generally kept cookies in their refrigerators, but this—as I’d learned over the past several months—was how Ray McPherson preferred them. And Ray was not normal.

  I rolled my eyes and shuffled along behind him.

  He had no idea how rough.

  “Little bit.”

  “So tell me about it,” he said around a mouthful of cookie. The man wasted no time.

  I blew out a puff of air, wondering where to start.

  “That bad, huh?” he asked, still seeming extremely upbeat. Not that my mood was really anything to compare it to.

  I set the wine bottle down on the counter and took his hand. “Follow me, Ray McPherson, and behold the indescribable bliss that has been my day,” I said as I led him out of the kitchen and down the hall.

  Showing him would be much easier than explaining everything.

  “Where are we going, Zoë Trent, and why are we using full names?”

  “Just wait,” I said over my shoulder as we neared the bedroom.

  “Oh, hey. Um, yeah, Zoë, I love ya and all, but—” Ray stopped the minute his feet hit the destroyed carpet. Even in shoes, the difference was obvious. That, and the overpowering smell of the puddle I’d left on the floor left both of us at a momentary loss for words.

  “What the?” Ray turned to me, his eyes wide in amazement, his nose crinkled involuntarily in disgust.

  I wasn’t sure whether to answer, cry, or throw up again, because I had the overwhelming urge to do all three. I decided that the best thing was simply to tell him what happened. Then maybe he would be able to tell me if more crying or throwing up again were warranted or just a waste of energy.

  “The water heater. In the closet there,” I stammered, pointing in the direction of the door that stood open. “It exploded? Or leaked? Or something?” It might have been an irrefutable fact given the state of the carpet, but it came out sounding like a question, simply because I still wasn’t sure what exactly had happened to the water heater.

  Or why.

  The carpet made very odd, very loud wet noises under Ray’s feet as he walked across the room.

  “Hmmm,” he grunted and scratched his head, working from the back, to the right side, to the hair that ended just above his forehead. He let out a huge burst of air, then ran the back of his right hand back and forth under his chin, skipping up his jaw line to scratch his beard.

  And then he started laughing.

  “I’m glad you think this is funny, Ray, but I fail to see the humor in all of this. Look,” I said, gesturing wildly at the room around me. “Look at this room! What am I supposed to do? This isn’t the kind of thing that’s supposed to happen when you’re just watching someone’s house. This isn’t the kind of thing that’s supposed to happen to women who are already teetering on the edge.”

  The crying had started again.

  And the snot.

  My God, the snot.

  Why is it that when you’re already reduced to extreme indignity, you’re taken
down even more by a seemingly unending stream of mucus?

  How fair is that?

  I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and covered them with my hands, trying to stave off the flow of tears, wishing like hell that I could just crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head. I felt Ray wrap his arms around me, wordlessly pulling me into an embrace.

  I could have melted into his arms. I felt weightless, formless, and somehow like I’d finally reached water after having been denied it. It had been so long since I’d had a man’s arms around me, an eternity since I’d last felt the security of being held by someone whose bulk felt like a refuge. Somehow, every tear, every gut-wrenching sob that I thought I no longer had in me was dredged up as I stood there wrapped in Ray’s arms. There was nothing romantic in the exchange. It was the solace of one friend to another, where nothing but human contact was needed.

  We stood like that for what seemed like forever, the water heater and ruined carpet fading somewhere into a distant haze of unimportance as Ray stroked my hair and listened to my choked sobbing.

  Chapter 8

  “So tell me about this bottle of wine,” I said, reaching for the Shiraz that had been sitting on my kitchen counter without explanation for the past two hours.

  Ray and I had done as much damage control as we could in the bedroom, then decided to make another go of it once it was daylight and within normal hours of operation for water heater repair men.

  Ray shifted his weight and leaned against the counter.

  “What?”

  He bit his lip against a huge grin that was threatening to escape and reached into one of the millions of pockets of his faded cargo pants. No one would ever accuse Ray of being a metro-sexual.

  I was about to ask him if he had a frog in his pocket when he suddenly held out his hand, a black velvet box resting in his palm.

  My eyes widened, and for the umpteenth time that night, my eyes were welling with tears. But these, for once, were happy tears.

  I set the wine back down on the counter and took the small box from his hand. I held it for a moment, running my fingers lightly over the top, feeling the gentle curve of the lid and the crush of the velvet under my fingertips. I realized I was holding my breath when I opened the box, and the faint creak of the hinge was the loudest thing in the room.

  Nestled in the blackness of the box was the most beautiful ring I’d ever seen, one that put even the ring Paul had given me to shame.

  One-point-five carats of princess-cut perfection sparkled brilliantly, seeming to capture every possible ray of light in the tiny kitchen.

  I looked up at Ray, who stood silently, breathlessly awaiting my words.

  And there were no words.

  I reached out to him and pulled him into my arms, happier than I’d felt in longer than I could remember.

  “What do you think?” he mumbled into my shoulder, finally breaking the silence.

  I smiled even though he couldn’t see my face. “Yes,” I whispered, my eyes closed as tears crept out the corners and trailed down my cheeks. “I think she’ll say yes.”

  It’s amazing how much life can change in the space of two months.

  I knew from first-hand experience how much could change in the blink of an eye, but I had been on pause for so long that the past two months were like a whirlwind.

  Kate was settling in nicely to her new position up in Atlanta—bettering the world in ways that made me feel as though I was merely taking up space on the planet, while she battled every day on behalf of those without voices. She’d been there only a month, but it felt as though she’d been gone a lifetime.

  During the month between her return to the country and starting her new job, she had been a daily part of my life, and our relationship had recovering the strength it had lost while she’d been away. Life was gaining normalcy, little by little, and having Kate there to help me keep my perspective was invaluable. She was a lifeline for me, but I knew I wasn’t the only one who was now feeling the sting of her absence.

  Though Buzzing Beans and I were seeing less and less of each other, Ray’s presence in my life had grown beyond the brick walls of the coffee house. He was basically the man in my life now, calling at various points of the day to check on me, stopping by the house just for a “quick visit and a cookie.” It had been how I’d discovered his absurd love of refrigerated Fig Newtons. He had come to check up on the house one day, supposedly just to see how things were going, and he’d wandered to the fridge. He’d peeked inside, then closed the door and shaken his head regrettably, all the while muttering under his breath about the uncivilized living conditions of a house with no Fig Newtons in the refrigerator.

  Needless to say, the next time he did a spot check, there they sat—waiting just for him.

  As all three of our lives became increasingly intertwined, romance bloomed, and soon Kate and Ray became nearly inseparable during her month there with me. The three of us had regular outings together, weekly trips to the movies and dinner. Game nights that lasted until the latest hours of the night. But in between those games and dinners and movies, Kate and Ray stole time together that didn’t include me, time that forged their bond as a couple instead of the trio that had begun it all. He complemented her in ways that made it inarguably apparent that this was it. After she’d moved to Atlanta, they’d been reduced to daily phone calls and video chats, but I knew they were both aching to see one another in person.

  And now, Ray and I were sitting across from each other in the small living room of Neil’s house, toasting the future.

  Ray finally left just after midnight, riding high on the optimism of a man in love and fueled by just the right amount of wine. I watched him pull out of the driveway and stood there, looking out at the stillness of the street, before I closed the door against the blackness of the night. The house felt quiet and so very empty after so much excitement, and I wondered fleetingly if this was what it was always going to be like—sending everyone home only to be left by myself, alone with the void.

  I sighed against the exhaustion that was quickly closing in, bringing with it all the feelings of hopelessness that so easily win the fight when you’re already too tired to go another round. I flopped down on the guest room bed and picked up the journal I’d moved from Neil’s—my—bedroom, along with my alarm clock and pillow.

  I uncapped my pen and began to write.

  Dear Neil,

  The water heater exploded today. Well, maybe not so much exploded as sprung a leak. I feel so horrible that it happened while you were away, like maybe it was somehow my fault, but Ray seems to think it would have happened even if you’d been here. Something faulty in the lines, or so he says. I don’t know if I can trust a coffee guy to shoot me straight on water heater malfunctions, though. The only things he knows how to fix involve copious amounts of caffeine, foam, and froth, and I have a feeling that this will take much more than simply tightening a loose bolt. Still, as a number-cruncher, I hardly feel qualified to argue with him.

  Since the unit was in your room and not somewhere that it could be taken care of later, we decided that it would be best to replace the carpeting in there right away.

  I hope pink shag suits you.

  The rest of the house, thankfully, seems to be fully functional at this point. I’m keeping an eye on the refrigerator, though, because that thing seems to be on its last legs. It sounds as though it’s going to break every time it cycles off, so that might be something you’ll want to have checked out when you come home.

  Here we go with the laundry list of things to do, right?

  Now for the good news.

  I’ll bet you were hoping there was some of that in here somewhere, huh? Yes, there is some. Ray is going to propose to Kate. He brought over a bottle of wine tonight to tell me all about it and celebrate, but the celebration was waylaid by the broken water heater. I promised to make it up to him by taking him out for a fabulous dinner and buying him a case of cookies.

  I must admit
I feel torn. I’m so happy for Kate and Ray and the life that they’re going to start together. But at the same time, I can’t help but feel something resembling jealousy. Kate is my best friend, and I couldn’t have chosen a better match for her myself. But it somehow seems to drive home what I’ve lost, a fresh reminder that I was once planning a wedding that will never happen. I keep hoping that one of these days I’ll be able to walk past a copy of Brides magazine without feeling like I can’t breathe.

  Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever lost anyone?

  This is one of those times that I wish I knew you, knew something more about your life and who you are than what I can gather from the few personally telling things I’ve been able to find.

  You’re quite the mystery, Neil.

  Ray’s big day is tomorrow. Today, actually, if you want to get technical. It’s Friday, and he’s flying out to Atlanta to surprise Kate with a weekend visit. And, of course, a one-point-five carat princess-cut engagement ring. I still sometimes can’t believe that my two best friends fell in love with each other. Isn’t it funny how life works out? Kate would have never met the man of her dreams if I hadn’t lost mine. I guess that’s one way to look at it, right?

  Well, I think I’d better close now. I’m not really tired, but it’s almost one a.m., and I have to work in six hours. I need to at least make an attempt to get some sleep before I have to drag myself into the office.

  Have a good night, and take care, dear Neil. Wherever you are.

  Zoë

  “Kate!” I boomed into the phone, answering it as soon as I had seen her name flash on the screen.