“Grandma!” I’m laughing again because my grandmother has never been much for swearing.
“Well, it’s the truth, dear. He was town mayor once upon a time, wholly unqualified… made a real mess of things.” She purses her lips and shakes her head at the thought.
“Garrett said he used to dress up like Santa Claus for the Winter Carnival.”
Grandma pushes her hand through the air dismissively, disturbing Lucille II enough that she lets out a loud meow. “He was terrible at that too. I just never liked the man, and I’ve known him my entire life.”
I have another spoonful of cereal, then inform her that, “Garrett said he’s living in Phoenix now with his daughter.”
“And good riddance! But we keep getting sidetracked, dear. You have yet to tell me the more personal details of your date.”
I grumble. “It wasn’t a date. Like I said, he just wanted someone to celebrate with. All we did was have lunch and take a walk in Manitou Park.”
She looks down at Lucille II, pets her a few times, then eyes me again. “I saw the way he looked at you when he picked you up here, opening the truck door for your like a true gentleman, making sure you were safely buckled in before he’d even start the engine.”
Yes, Grandma certainly does have eyes, and she’d used them to get an eyeful of me and Garrett.
Finished with my cereal, I set my bowl on the floor. “You make me sound like I’m five.”
Lucille II catches sight of the bowl at my feet, darts off of her perch on Grandma and starts to lap up the tiny amount of almond milk left in the bowl.
“No, I’m just telling you the man cares for you. Your mother thinks the same thing, and Clark even asked if something was going on between the two of you after you’d been so chummy at the wedding.”
“Grandma—”
She puts her hand up, turns her head slightly away from me and even closes her eyes for a few seconds. Then, with her full attention back on me, she says, “I’m an old woman, and if it’s obvious to me, then it should be to you too. He’s a catch. I don’t see what possible problem there could be.”
I can no longer be amused by Grandma’s line of questioning. I sigh and sit back into the couch. The truth is that I’d had a wonderful time with Garrett yesterday, and I would have loved to have held his hand at the park or have maybe even kissed him. My attraction to him is undeniable, and I’m not blind to the fact that he’s interested in me as well. But it just can’t be. I can’t be hurt in the way that I eventually will be if I were to try to be with him.
I’d had to remind myself of that again during the night when I couldn’t sleep. While I was getting tired of abusing the skin on my forearm, I’d still had an entire body to choose from. Last night’s lucky body part was just above my hip where I grabbed hold of a nice bit of flesh and twisted it up until I could practically feel it turning purple, tiny capillaries bursting open like fireworks on the Fourth of July.
I’ve never gotten a thrill out of harming myself, never going so far as to cut long gashes into my skin or damaging myself in some permanent, irrevocable way. But making myself hurt is always just enough to yank me out of whatever foolish hopes I’m having and bring me crashing right back to earth.
“It’s just for the best if Garrett and I are only friends.” I tell her this in a firm voice and hope she’ll simply leave it at that.
Grandma opens her mouth but then hesitates, looking down at Lucille II who is now cleaning herself at my feet. But if I think that I’ve succeeded in quieting her, I realize how wrong I am when she lifts her head and narrows her gaze at me.
“If this is because of that damn MRKH, then I think it’s high time you got over that. It’s the twenty-first century, and any man worth his weight is going to love you and cherish you regardless of whether or not you can give him children.”
“No, not every man… just most of them.” I’m done having this conversation and bend down, pick the empty bowl up off the floor, causing Lucille II to skitter back toward Grandma.
I don’t wait for any responses or arguments, just head into the kitchen to wash my bowl up. My grandma probably means well, but she has no idea what it’s like being me, no idea what I’ve gone through or how my biggest fears about being rejected have already been realized.
“I love you, honey,” Grandma says when I walk back out of the kitchen and head toward the stairs.
“I love you, too,” I say as I’m already climbing the stairs and not looking back.
* * *
Working at Forester’s Grocery is fairly easy, even on a Saturday. It’s the only grocery store in town, Basin Lake still being small enough that it doesn’t make sense for a Wal-Mart or a Fred-Meyer to be built here. I love the fact that I know many of the people who come through my checkout line and that they’re probably kinder to me because of this, even if I’m still getting used to the register and have to take more time looking up the codes for produce that I haven’t memorized.
“Isn’t it crazy having Garrett Hevener back in town? Always was such a big, strong boy,” Mrs. Timmons, one of my more eccentric high school teachers, tells me while I’m ringing up her food order.
“Yeah, I heard he was back.” I find it interesting that she hasn’t seemed to notice that I’ve been missing from Basin Lake for the last two years, but I’m actually grateful for that fact and focus on scanning her cans of tomato soup.
“Now, I think you’ve more than heard about it.” She leans on the small counter people use to write checks on, close enough that I can smell the faint odor of mothballs emanating from her.
When I look up from the scanner, she’s pretty much staring at me. “He was at my sister’s wedding, so yeah, I guess I’ve seen him around.” I offer her a smile but am unwilling to validate whatever it is she’s trying to get at.
“And that’s all?” She’s lifting both brows when I sneak another look at her.
God, I don’t owe her a damn thing, but I still attempt to answer. “I grew up around him, so I guess you could say we’re still friends, Mrs. Timmons. Now, did you want to pay with cash, check, credit or debit?”
She eyes me with suspicion that is so totally annoying because it’s none of her business what Garrett is to me. “I’ll be writing a check,” she finally says, taking her time to pull her checkbook out and even more time to write it. “You know, I’m only curious. I’m always so glad when the young people who have left town come back and decide to start a family. You and Garrett would make a wonderful couple, don’t you think? Just imagine the gorgeous children you’d produce.”
I take her check and smile, even though what I’d really like to do is slap her. Why is it that everyone assumes you’re going to have children, assumes that you can even have children? They don’t know. They don’t have a clue.
“You have yourself a lovely day, Mrs. Timmons,” I say, loading her bags in her cart and watching with relief as she pushes it out of the store.
“She’s a handful,” Ben says, appearing at the end of the checkout line that is empty for the moment.
“I thought she was bad in high school, but out in the open?” I lean against the small partition behind the register and sigh. “But at least everyone else has been great.”
“Yeah…” he chuckles. “Nice thing about being in Basin Lake is that if anyone has a flip out here, the entire town knows about it. Keeps people in line.”
“Except for maybe Mrs. Timmons?”
“Sure… well, she’s mostly harmless, though. More of a snoop than anything else.”
“I guess she’s lonely.”
“Lonely… her?” He shakes his head. “She’s been shacking up with Albert Barnes and Smokey Carlisle for the last two decades. She sure as hell isn’t lonely.”
“Shacking up? With both of them?” I have only a vague idea of who even one of those men is, but I would have thought that if Mrs. Timmons was living with two guys, every single one of her high school students would have known about it.
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br /> “Yeah, nobody much likes to think about Mrs. Timmons having sex,” he says, making a stink face, “let alone her having sex with two guys? It’s best not talked about.”
I’m about to tell him that I wish she would afford the rest of us the same dignity when my phone that I tucked into the pocket of my work apron starts to ring. “Oh, shoot… sorry,” I tell Ben, reaching for the phone to turn it off.
“Go ahead and take it. Aren’t you due for a break?”
“I guess so.”
“Then head on back to the break room. I’ll take over for the next fifteen.”
“Okay, thank you.” On my way to the back, I pull my phone from the apron and answer the call that’s coming from a Seattle area code before it can go to voicemail. “Hello?”
“Please don’t hang up.”
Shawn.
I hold the phone to my ear, open the door and am thankful nobody else is in the break room. Hanging up on Shawn would be preferable, but he apparently needs to hear how over we are multiple times before he’ll finally get it.
“I’m at work. I really can’t talk to you,” I say, sitting down in one of the plastic chairs surrounding a long, rectangular table.
“Come on, Kate… you owe me a few words, don’t you?”
“I don’t think I owe you one damn thing.” His wording should make me angrier, but I’m used to him trying to turn things around on me. “And like I said, I’m at work, so—”
“Then when is a good time to talk?” he persists. “Because I really need to get some things off of my chest, and I’m not going to stop until I do.”
I lean an elbow on the table and close my eyes.
“Kate? Are you there?”
“I’m here, and there’s no reason for you to keep harassing me.”
“I’m in Seattle,” he barrels on. “I’m in Seattle alone… for a regional meeting. Everyone misses you. You were an integral part of the team…”
He goes on and on, and I don’t listen. In the beginning, I’d loved working for HFU and the close connections I made with my co-workers, people who became my friends. And I’d loved it even more when Shawn and I got close. He managed our team, so fraternization was a bit of a no-no, but he and I didn’t allow that to stop us, didn’t let rules keep us from eventually saying we loved each other.
“Kate?”
“I’m here.”
“I’d love to see you. Like I said, you were an integral part of our team, an integral part of my life, and—”
“If I was such an integral part of your life, why did you marry Lillith?” I’m over Shawn, but it still hurts to say the name of the girl he chose over me, the marriage that blindsided me, just when I’d thought he was willing to give he and I a real shot at a second chance.
“We can talk about that.” His voice is low, almost angry.
“No need. Just stop calling me.”
He’s saying something more when I hang up, but I don’t care what it is. With my phone face down on the table, I head over to the vending machine and buy myself a chocolate bar that I feel like I’ve so totally earned.
* * *
Five hours later, I’m at the end of my shift. I’m about to call my mother to see if she wouldn’t mind picking me up when my phone rings again… and again.
It’s Shawn calling from his cell phone. I don’t know why the hell I haven’t blocked him. Maybe I’m just a glutton for punishment or maybe I’m still looking for some kind of final closure with him.
“What do you want?” I make no attempt to sound nice when I answer.
“I drove all the way to Basin Lake. I’m here… in a hotel by the freeway. I need to see you, Kate.”
My chest tightens and my stomach sinks. “You’re here?”
“I am. I came for you.”
Damn him.
“You’re a lot of things, Shawn, but I never pegged you for a stalker.”
He lets out a sound that is something like strangled frustration. “Can you just give me this one thing, Kate? Please? I’m begging you. If you ever loved me, then you’ll give me five minutes. That’s all I’m asking for.”
Giving him even thirty seconds on the phone has been too much, and I can’t believe I’m about to agree, but maybe him seeing me again in person, seeing how apathetic I am about he and I now, maybe that will finally keep him from calling or texting me in the middle of the night.
“Fine,” I say. “You’re going to have to pick me up. I’m at Forester’s Grocery. You can Google it.” And then I hang up.
* * *
I’d wanted to talk in the hotel lobby, but he’d begged me for the privacy his room would allow. Begrudgingly I accompany him up the elevator, and he leads me to his room. It’s clean and well kept, as it should be considering Evan’s mother has run this place for years and has always seemed to care about her career and this hotel more than her three children.
He goes right to the bed, sits at the edge and pats the empty space next to him.
“I’m not going to sit there,” I say, walking right past him and sitting in one of the two upholstered chairs by the window.
A sound of annoyance escapes his lips, but he follows and lowers himself into the chair opposite me.
There is a very small part of me that still finds Shawn attractive with his dark hair that is graying ever so lightly at the temples. He is clean-shaven and wears the same glasses he’s worn since I first met him, glasses he’d always had to push back up the bridge of his nose when they slipped, a small movement I found endearing. I shouldn’t have been attracted to a man who the other girls called nerdy, who was nearly thirty when I was still only eighteen, but he was kind and considerate and could be funny when he wanted to. It took him forever to ask me out, and once he did, he was fine with taking things slow, never pressured me to do anything other than kissing.
It took me a while to realize that he was so patient with me because he wanted our courtship to last and to be memorable, to be the perfect buildup to an eventual proposal and marriage. Shawn had apparently decided to turn himself all old-fashioned after a string of girlfriends when he was in his twenties, several of whom he’d apparently lived with, none of whom had met his expectations in what he wanted in a woman—at least that’s what Bailey, one of the managers at HFU told me when she noticed Shawn and I were dating.
“I don’t care about his past,” I’d told her, but I should have. I should have realized that Shawn wanted me to be perfect.
“Thank you for agreeing to this,” he says, taking his glasses off and wiping at his eyes before sliding them back over his nose.
I shrug. “If you need closure, then let this be it, okay?”
He swallows hard. “Can I get you something to drink? We could order up room service?”
“I’m not hungry, Shawn. Just tell me what it is you feel like you need to hear so we can end whatever this is.”
He reaches toward me, but I pull away.
“I need another chance,” he says. “I made a terrible mistake, and I just need… I need some time, but giving you up was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. I mean, look at you… you’re gorgeous, Kate. And look at me? What a fool I was.”
There was a time I’d have loved to hear these words, would have been overjoyed to see Shawn groveling like this, a time I might have even given him the second chance he didn’t give me—but now?
“Yeah, you were a fool. I loved you with all of my heart—I would have given you anything.”
His eyebrows gather in. “And you don’t love me… not at all anymore?”
I shake my head. It’s true. I can’t love a man who could turn his back on me the way he did.
“Please see it from my perspective, Kate. That secret you unloaded on me threw me for a loop. I’d had so many plans for us, and that made it really difficult for me to see past it.”
I bite at the flesh inside my mouth to stave off emotion. Damn him for making me think about the day I’d finally told him I couldn’t have children
and how I’d hoped he’d understand. I’d gathered all the pamphlets I’d ever been given by my doctors as well as printed out a bunch of research I’d done on my own about IVF and surrogates. If Shawn was concerned about being able to have a biological child, I figured I could counter that with facts.
But I hadn’t expected him to be so angry, to accuse me of lying to him for “nearly two god damn years.” And I would have never expected him to dump me so swiftly. I was hurt and confused, and that led me to taking him back a week later when he said he wanted another chance. But then two months after that, he was married to Lillith, a girl I’d worked alongside for the better part of six months, a girl who I’d heard was pregnant now.
“You had plenty of chances,” I tell him, standing up, not willing to continue to cry over a man who doesn’t deserve my tears.
“I just need one more!” He says this frantically and follows as I begin to make my way toward the door.
“You don’t deserve one more. You made me feel like dirt, Shawn, like I wasn’t worthy of your love because I couldn’t have kids. Well, guess what? You aren’t worthy of my love now… feels pretty shitty, doesn’t it?”
“That’s not fair!” he grabs onto my arms and pulls me toward him, pressing his lips against mine before I push free of his grip. “Kate! I need this one last chance!”
He’s still holding onto me, and I’m fuming. “You want a chance? How fucked up is that considering your precious Lillith is pregnant, huh? What are you going to do with her, leave her?”
“You know I can’t do that right now,” he pleads, his eyes over-bright. “But you and I… you and I can still be together. Just give it a few years. I’ll marry you once…” He shakes his head, perhaps finally hearing his own words and knowing how messed up the thing is he’s trying to convince me of.
“I’m not going to be your mistress. I’m not going to sit by while you stay married to a woman, while you treat her like a breeding cow until she’s produced enough children for you so you can dump her. What kind of woman would I be to love a man who would do that?”
Unbroken by Love (The Basin Lake Series Book 4) Page 7
