Goodbye, Orchid

by Carol Van Den Hende

  “Oh, you own your own tattoo shops?” she asked, amazed.

  “You have how many tattoos?”

  “Your motorcycle has the same design on it?”

  Phoenix cut the salmon filet with his fork.

  Caleb raised one hand for more wine. Gail ate a few bites of crisped spinach and turned to Phoenix. “Tish told me about your accident. How terrible.”

  “Yup,” he mumbled, his fork chasing a slippery sphere of oiled potato around his plate. Orchid buttered bread and placed it next to him. He put down his silverware and acknowledged the gesture with a quick hug around her shoulders. If that was the payment for a roll, she’d butter an unending bevy of them so he’d never let her go.

  Tish and Tom came by with a flurry of photographers and videographers. In hyper-amped hostess mode, she rapidly exchanged personal dialogue with each guest.

  “I’m so happy you came!” she said to Phoenix and then Caleb, as the men stood to kiss her cheek.

  “Congratulations,” Caleb said.

  Tish hugged Gail. “Best seat in the house,” she winked.

  “You remember Orchid, right?” Phoenix said, stepping back from an embrace with the bride.

  Up close, Tish’s makeup was running underneath each eye, giving her the appearance of a Raggedy Ann doll dressed in white. They shook hands, assessing each other with unspoken competition.

  “Congratulations to you both.” Orchid nodded politely towards Tish and Tom.

  “Maybe you’ll catch the bouquet,” Tish mused.

  “Unlikely,” Orchid responded, with a tinge more acid than intended. Tonight is for goodbyes, she reminded herself. Goodbye, Phoenix.

  The photographer, misinterpreting their exchange as an indication of friendship, gestured for Orchid and Phoenix to join the wedding couple for a photo.

  Orchid caught a glimpse of emotion shadow Phoenix’s face. He deftly stepped around her and slipped his left arm behind her. Automatically, she mirrored his action and snaked her arm around his waist. Tish and Tom, conditioned from a nighttime of posing, tucked in close to her to face the camera.

  As the flash captured the toothy foursome, her understanding clicked.

  Phoenix didn’t want his loss to be visible in the picture. He’d positioned himself to hide his arm from the photo lens. Orchid suddenly remembered the way Tish and Phoenix were intertwined at Fashion Week. The way he’d draped his coat over his arm at the holiday party to camouflage his injury. A weight of sorrow threatened to pull her through the parquet floorboards. You don’t have to hide yourself.

  She was still stunned by this insight when the newlyweds moved to the guests sitting on the other side of Caleb.

  Phoenix pulled out Orchid’s chair for her. She looked up into his eyes. Are you okay? she wanted to ask. He studied her expression and his mouth compressed. I don’t want pity, he seemed to say. He sat.

  “How long was your recovery?” Gail asked Phoenix, reaching for another roll.

  Orchid slid into her seat, and shook her napkin on her lap. Phoenix looked cold, closed off. Orchid’s intuition elbowed her. Gail’s headed straight for a touchy subject.

  He gulped the last of his wine. “Three and a half months, including outpatient rehab.” He put up a hand to flag a waiter.

  “You are so amazing, to go through all that. I can’t even imagine. I would’ve just died.”

  Orchid’s mouth gaped open. Gail made it sound as if his life situation was impossibly dire. Phoenix’s eyes narrowed.

  A gentleman in a dark tux came over and refilled Phoenix’s glass.

  “I guess some people are just stronger than others,” Orchid said to Gail, wine inspiring a tinge of haughtiness.

  Phoenix raised his head. His expression cleared and he looped an arm around Orchid.

  Gail looked stunned. “Uh-huh.” Then she turned back to Caleb.

  Phoenix leaned to kiss her cheek, his lips brushing the tender side of her neck as he pulled back, leaving her more flushed than he’d likely intended. “Thank you,” he said.

  “How come people make it sound like your accident is the end of the world?” Orchid blurted in a whispered hush.

  “Happens all the time,” he said.

  “Well, that doesn’t seem fair. You can do everything you want.”

  He looked at her appreciatively. “Not quite everything,” he said, pointing towards his arm with his fork.

  “Well, enough of everything that it’s far from the end of the world,” she whispered in his ear.

  He put down his fork and pulled her closer. “Well, I kind of love you for seeing that.”

  She leaned her shoulder against his. He smelled great. “You know me, I’m team Phoenix,” she said, trying to joke away the emotions gripping her. He means the innocuous kind of love, right? Like ‘love you like a sister, love your point of view, love your apple pie, can I have the recipe’ kind of love? Right? Thankfully, tonight was for goodbyes, because the muscle pumping oxygen through her body couldn’t survive just being friends with Phoenix.

  His cheek pressed to her hair, he issued words above her head. “In a way, I don’t blame Gail for having those sentiments. There was a time when I thought this was the worst thing that ever happened to me.”

  She swallowed. It was the first time he’d volunteered his point of view on the topic. “Past tense?” she asked, careful not to spook him.

  “Now I’m focused on stuff I can still change.”

  She released a breath and looked up at the face she loved. “Me, too. I’ve accepted the assignment. I’m moving to Beijing next month.”

  “Next month?” He let go of her to watch as the DJ called the bride and groom to the dance floor, his expression unreadable.

  “Yeah, they’re getting my work visa now. I’m glad you invited me tonight, so we can say goodbye,” she added, unable to interpret his faraway look.

  “You happy?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’m excited. It’ll be an adventure. Maybe a clean slate’s a good idea for me.” She looked down, struck that Phoenix was one impetus behind her escape. Will leaving the country be enough to heal the ache of what nearly was?

  Servers took their plates and replaced them with chocolate Chambord cake that been cut earlier, during a kitschy interlude that included the requisite smearing of icing onto the groom’s face.

  When the DJ invited guests to join in the dance, Phoenix looked down at Orchid, mouthful of chocolate cake nearly at her lips. “May I have the first dance?”

  She took the bite, wiped her mouth, and nodded. “Absolutely.”

  They weaved through the round tables to the dance floor, this wedding their last opportunity to be together.

  Once they joined the crowd, the music picked up the pace from a slow song to percussion. Orchid couldn’t keep her feet from moving to the beat. She bopped to the rhythm until they found a spot in the increasingly full ballroom. Phoenix, always a bae, still had sexy moves. His style exuded much of his pre-accident sass and attitude. Orchid sensed other women checking out his physique. She threw her head back, staring openly with pride. He was a man not afraid to move his hips. Only because she’d seen him move before, she could detect the slightly more limited range.

  “You’re a great dancer!” she shouted over the music.

  “You too!” He smiled, a beautiful wide happy smile, and for a moment, they were meeting as if for the first time, all tension and drama dispersed.

  “You need the men’s room?” he asked. She laughed.

  The music switched tempo to a slow number and Phoenix paused, looking at her, hand outstretched. She joined him, pressed up close, wanting to be nowhere else. Screw how much this is going to hurt tomorrow. He kissed her hair.

  “I’m all sweaty,” she said.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “You’ll have to dry clean that crazy dr
ess.”

  She buried her face into the side of his neck. “You smell great,” she said. “Would you bottle that for me, so I can have it with me always?”

  He laughed. “Would you like a drink?”

  “Yeah, a drink sounds really good.”

  She took his hand and followed his lead as they weaved through the crowd of couples swaying to the music. “No wine,” she said.

  “Okay, I know just the thing.”

  He leaned in to speak to the bartender. “Patrón doubles. Bud chasers. Two.”

  When the drinks arrived, he handed her one. “Pour vous.”

  “Merci,” she said, taking the shot glass and putting a cool finger under each eye at the memory of their trip to France. It’d be a miracle if tears didn’t spill at some point this evening.

  They clinked glasses and tossed back the shots. The liquid flowed hot and smooth down her throat. Better say goodbye drunk. That was a good idea.

  “Paris was a beautiful trip,” she said, sinking into a bar stool to tip her beer bottle to his and take a long draw.

  He sat next to her. “Yes, it was. You remember how much you loved that underground market?”

  “We went two nights in a row.”

  “No one believes us when we describe how unusual that place was.”

  “Well, we know,” she said. Sadness gripped her chest at having just this one last night for reminiscing.

  He put his bottle down and touched her under the chin. “You okay, hungry bird?”

  He was killing her with his endearments, looking so handsome, and being so thoughtful. She wanted to remember everything with him before she left, even though seeing him was pummeling her gut from the inside.

  “Yeah, I’m okay. It’s just we have so many memories,” she said, sniffling.

  “Yup, some kind of crazy roller coaster all right,” he said, handing her a cocktail napkin for her nose, then putting up his hand for another round of booze.

  He toasted her again and they threw back the second set of Patrón shots.

  “Remember coming here for the Effies?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I had a great time that night, even though we didn’t win anything. At least, the agency didn’t win any awards. I won having a beautiful woman agree to come to a triathlon with me.”

  Okay, now he’s trying to make me cry. “The triathlon was where Caleb told me about how you left Tish.”

  “You know, she came to see me in rehab and was so horrified, I thought if tough, mouthy Tish can’t deal, there was no way you were ever going to be okay with this. Or if you were, you’d be fooling yourself.”

  “I’m not fooling myself.”

  “Look how happy she is now,” he said, glancing over at the general direction of the dinner tables. “Told you it wasn’t me; it’s finding the right person,” he said, referring to their early conversation denying Caleb’s aspersions on his relationship with Tish.

  “You think she found the right person?”

  “Tom seems like a nice guy. But I thought we were talking about us.”

  “Us?”

  “Yeah, like our happy memories. The club, down the shore, Paris.”

  “That was great, and that was what, nine, ten months ago?”

  “Yup, and we’ve made happy memories recently, too. Like tonight.”

  “And then there was that whole mess in the middle of those happy memories,” she said.

  “Mess, like you thinking I was dating my assistant?”

  “Mess, like us not talking, and you not calling me back. And don’t forget about falling through your glass case and you thinking I’d date Caleb and all that. That mess.” Now she was laughing, kind of crying too. Ciao. Au revoir. Zai jian. Goodbye.

  He looked up, and then stood to take her in his arms. Holding her tight, cheek pressed against her hair, he laughed. “No more messes, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said. “Six thousand miles between New York and Beijing should do the trick.”

  His gaze drifted to an empty spot above them, like he was lost somewhere inside. “You tried so damned hard to get us together. You’re amazing, you know that?”

  “Is amazing a euphemism for stupid?”

  He trailed a finger down her arm, bare below the plaid sleeves, tracing a line of longing. “Hardly. You had faith in me. Even when I’d lost sight of that and not because of you, but because I didn’t think I could be enough.”

  She searched her mind for possible interpretations of what he was saying, trying to slow her hopefulness in case it was going to be obliterated. Again.

  “And then you told me the most amazing thing. That you’d fallen in love with me and hadn’t stopped.”

  “Well, that was last week,” she joked.

  He looked at her, measuring the meaning in her eyes. “I hope it’s not too late to tell you something. Because I’m learning from you. I’m learning to be courageous. Courageous enough to tell you how I’ve felt all along even though I’ve been scared shitless of being rejected for not being . . . enough.”

  “No chance of that,” she said, memorizing the planes and contours of his face.

  “You know, I thought you being sensitive, squeamish Orchid meant you’d never be able to deal.” He ignored her intake of breath as she prepared to defend this tired argument. “But actually, you being sensitive means you have more empathy than all those people who say they’d never be able to make it through what I did.”

  Orchid wasn’t sure she could speak. He brushed his lips against her ear.

  “I love you.”

  The shock of the words required her to replay them in order to absorb his meaning. Her hand over her mouth when she didn’t remember raising it, the tears she’d predicted came. Hot, salted droplets cascaded heavy like liquid metal, one for every moment apart, for every stone of his suffering, for each missed opportunity. She threw her arms around him. He returned the embrace, no buttered rolls needed.

  He tilted his head back to trace a thumb over her cheek, reading her right. “I’m sorry I hurt you. Forgive me?”

  He held his breath waiting for her answer. She nodded, her throat too tight to speak.

  “Tell me we can try again. Long distance, or I’ll find business in China.”

  He’s willing to go around the world for me. Tears welled, spilling off the precipice. She burrowed into the safety of his shirt.

  His voice rumbled through her. “It’s only fair to warn you not everything’s going to be easy being with me. It’s not going to be the same as before the accident, but do you want to try?”

  Unable to resist the rush of the improbable tipping towards reality, she tiptoed up to touch lips to his soft, full mouth. Holy scent of soap and spice. “It has to be easier than not being with you.”

  His lips curved up at the corners over straight, white teeth, brightening his face. He pulled her closer, his chest against hers. “How I’ve wanted this.”

  He bent and touched his lips to hers until every subatomic particle bloomed to its fullest glory. He tingled her skin with a kiss like no other, one that evoked thoughts of an expanding universe and the study of numbers beyond infinity.

  “Me, too,” she said.

  He tightened his hold on her. Time ticked forward to unearth each lost intersection, devotion and affection.

  He was hers, and she was his. Not a thing missing.

  NOTE TO READERS

  Dear reader,

  I’ve always loved happy endings. Phoenix and Orchid worked hard for theirs!

  And you’d really make mine if you’d consider sharing your thoughts in a book review. Simply write a review on Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Target.com

  Or tag me from your blog or social media post.

  Think of it as free goodwill, and a much-appreciated kindness!

  Also,
I’d love to hear from you. Sign up for my newsletter on my website at www.carolvandenhende.com, or look me up on most social media platforms.

  Happy reading,

  Carol

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Who knew that books are a team sport? Goodbye, Orchid, wouldn’t exist without the conviction and support of family, friends, and dedicated professionals, many of whom have become friends. First, thank you to those who serve in our military, and inspired me to write a hero who, despite his injuries, is more than whole. This book will raise funds in your honor. Infinite gratitude to those who helped shape Phoenix’s experience, especially my sensitivity readers: Purple Heart-decorated veteran Sgt. Bryan Anderson who role models his motto “live, love, thrive;” disability advocate Heather Abbott who raises money for victims of trauma, and lifelong friend and plastic surgery Chief Dr. Lynn A. Damitz. They deserve credit for the accuracy of Phoenix’s recovery; any errors are mine.

  Huge appreciation to those who shepherded this manuscript to publication, including the talented team at Koehler Books who recognized the potential for Goodbye, Orchid to change minds and lives: publisher John Koehler, executive editor Joe Coccaro, designers Kellie Emery and Skyler Kratofil. There isn’t enough chocolate in the world to thank my earliest supporters: literary agent and publishing advisor Larry Kirshbaum who unfailingly believed in my story, and in me; editing partner Ellie Maas Davis whose brilliance helped shape the story from the start, and then concocted the book’s title over a Zoom brainstorm; bookstore entrepreneur Shari Stauch, who connected me with Ellie and Koehler Books; and Springboard Global Enterprises’ CEO Nadine Vogel, an ardent disability advocate who introduced me to Heather.

  An unexpected benefit of writing is joining a community of authors. There are more people who’ve touched my writing than space permits me to name. To start, thank you to NJRW (Nancy, Miriam, Shirley, Vicky, Stacey and many others who’ve offered your knowledge and support), Women Who Write (especially my critique partners MaryLee, Genie, Lynn, Mary Kenny, Alice, Kathleen, and also longtime supporters Ginger and Dana), editor Deb Cooperman, the writers’ organizations where I’ve taught and learned, and the many who’ve shared marketing advice, like Sourabh Sharma, Ann Dayleview, Casey Hagen, Karin Tanabe, Steve Ginsberg, Justin Coble, Derek Murphy, and Laura Rosenberg.