Best Medicine, The

by Brogan, Tracy

  He looked out over the grass. “What do I think? I think it’s very nice. Nice ceremony. Nice place. Nice people.”

  He smiled at me, but I couldn’t shake the feeling he was holding something back. It wasn’t just the fatigue of having worked the night before. It was the same awkward guard he’d had up since the day I moved.

  “And what a nice, neutral answer,” I said. I guess I couldn’t blame him. He knew marriage was a goal of mine. That being the case, it was bold for him to even be here, and so far he’d done a good job of avoiding that whole deer-in-headlights look I’d been expecting.

  “It is nice, though,” he added. “It’s amazing that after so many years your parents got back together.”

  “I guess it is. For me it’s very strange, but I’m trying to adapt.”

  He tugged on the cuff of his shirt. “Adapt. Yeah, speaking of that. You know how we’ve talked before about plans, and how sometimes they don’t go like we expect?” He didn’t look my way when he said this, and my stomach flipped like a pancake.

  “Yes.”

  He paused, and the pancake flipped again. “Well, I guess it’s no secret that this business with the boat dock has been a total clusterfuck—”

  I’d wanted to wait until later. Later when we were in our room and had some real privacy before I told him, but the secret was burning inside and I had to blow it out. I had to make that sad, sad look on his face go away. Just like he’d done for Scotty, I was going to rescue him from this mess.

  “I know it has been,” I interrupted, “but I have something really good to tell you.”

  He looked at me. There it was. The deer-in-headlights.

  I reached out and took hold of both his hands. “You have been so selfless and amazing taking care of your family that you inspired me.”

  He frowned. He should start looking happier any second now.

  My nerves twanged, but I kept on talking. I needed to get this out. To make him feel better. “I know what an incredible person you are, and what an amazing paramedic you’ll be. It’s not fair that you should have to wait because of other people’s mistakes, or even because of just fate, in general.” I gestured to the area around us, where fate resided.

  He leaned back. “Evelyn, what are you talking about?”

  Breathe in, breathe out.

  “I paid your bills.”

  His face blanked, but the pulse in his neck sped up. “Which bills?”

  “Your medical and legal bills. Everything that had to do with the boat dock and Jet Ski is taken care of. You have a clean slate. I’m giving you a do-over.”

  He stared as if I’d spoken Portuguese. I hadn’t, had I?

  “You know,” I said, talking a little louder as if that would make everything more clear. “Like in a game. A do-over. If anyone deserves one, it’s you.”

  He stood up and walked toward the railing of the porch.

  I waited, my heart pulsing like a strobe light. He finally turned back to me.

  “Are you kidding me with this, Evelyn? You paid my bills?” His voice was quiet, and far too serious. Frown lines became caverns across his face. But I was expecting the dimples. I was expecting joy. Where was the jubilation? Where was the happy? He just looked . . . pissed. Thoroughly and utterly pissed.

  But I smiled anyway, to prove my point that this was a good thing. Because it was. A good thing.

  “No, I’m not kidding, and I’m so glad I did it. You deserve this break, Tyler. Now you’re free and clear to take the paramedics course and not have to worry about the other stuff. Those debts are gone. Erased.” I swished my hand to the side. Swish. Erased. “And they’re saving a spot for you.”

  “Who is?”

  “The people at the paramedic training center. I put you on the list. You don’t have to do it, of course. If you decide not to for some reason. But I wanted you to have a place if you were . . . you know . . . ready.”

  Judging from the pulsing vein at his temple, that last part might have been overload.

  He turned on his heel and walked away from me, his posture stiff, his hands fisted, and I realized I’d screwed this up. Either in the doing or the telling, I’d made a mistake. A second passed, and then another. When he turned back, his face was grim, even more grim than before.

  “This is unbelievable. Do you see what you’ve done, Evelyn? Now I’ll never catch up to you. God, do you realize how long it’ll take me to even pay you back?”

  I stood up and walked over, as fast as my dread would allow. “I don’t want you to pay me back. It’s not a loan. It’s a gift. That’s the whole point.”

  His expression grew darker, stormier with every breath.

  “A gift I can never equal. No matter how hard I work, it’ll never balance out. I’ll never match your education. And I’ll never be able to give you anything that compares to what you can afford to buy yourself. Like that house you’re living in now.”

  “My house? What does my house have to do with anything?” What was he even talking about?

  He stepped closer. “Financial equality. It was right there at the top of the list.”

  “What?” My stomach plummeted like a canoe over Niagara.

  “The list, Evie. The husband requirement list. I saw it. Advanced degree. Economic equality. Intellectual compatibility. I read the whole fucking thing, and other than being a man, I didn’t qualify for any of it.”

  “Oh my God, Tyler. That list was stupid. It was for the Bell Harbor Singles profile. Where did you even see it?”

  “I found it when you moved. It was folded up on the floor under your couch. I only opened it because I thought it might be important.” He scoffed and scowled. “I guess it was.”

  On the floor? My mind raced backward. Gabby had the list in her pocket when she came over to tell me about breaking up with Mike. I thought I’d thrown it away.

  “That list is irrelevant. It means nothing.”

  The air around him seemed to pulse. “It means everything. It’s what you want in a man. And the stupidest part is you tried to tell me. Over and over. Those first few times I hit on you, you kept trying to tell me I wasn’t good enough for you. But I ignored you because, God, I wanted you so bad. From that very first minute I saw you.”

  He scrubbed his hand over his jaw, and I wanted to stop him from talking. I wanted him to stop before he said more and I felt even worse, but Tyler Connelly had more to say. He paced as he spoke.

  “Here’s the problem as I see it, Evelyn. No matter what you do, no matter how many bills you pay or classes you sign me up for, I’m never going to be the guy on that list. That’s what you want, and I’ll never measure up. I realized that when I saw your house, but you doing this just makes me certain that I’m right. And we’re all wrong. This is never going to work out between us.”

  “No, we’re not wrong. I don’t want you to be one of those guys. I want you to be yourself. Tyler, I never said you weren’t good enough. I said you weren’t old enough. That’s completely different. And this thing with the bills, I was just trying to help.”

  His pacing sped up, and I started to sweat. My heart was slamming so hard against my ribs I thought one might crack.

  “I don’t need help,” he said, finally stopping, and glaring at me as if I’d done something unforgivable. “I’m not a kid, I’m not a victim. When my dad died, I stepped up. Me. My older brother took off, but I stuck it out. When my family needs me, I take care of them. I don’t need someone else to bail me out. God, I can’t believe—how did you even do that? Pay my bills. Who knows about this?” He started pacing again. “Jesus, the whole fucking town is going to know what you did, and they’ll think I talked you into it. It’s bad enough everyone believes I stole the Jet Ski, but at least that was my decision. Now they’re going to think I seduced my way into your bank account.”

  Everything inside
me twisted, kicking the breath from my lungs. This was not how this was supposed to go. This was supposed to be a good thing. But all the air around me compressed, as if I were being sucked into a tornado while the trees around me stayed motionless.

  “Hardly anyone knows,” I said, blinking back a useless tear. “Delle in my office, but she’s been sworn to secrecy, and I trust her. And your lawyer.” And Delle’s friend in the hospital billing department, but under the circumstances, I wasn’t going to mention her.

  “My lawyer. You talked to my lawyer?” His voice rasped.

  “Here’s the thing about that, Tyler. He’s a friend of mine. Well, he’s married to a friend of mine. So he’ll keep this all on the down-low. No one has to know.”

  He stared at me, his expression so flat I knew it was only the calm before a storm. He stepped toward me, towering. His cheeks flushed, his voice burning in my ears as it rose. “Everyone will know. It’s bad enough that Scotty can’t find his ass with both hands, Carl wanders around in a bathrobe, and my mother steals jewelry from Tilly Mason, but now all of Bell Harbor is going to think I’m just as pathetic. God. I had a plan, Evelyn. I had a plan to get myself out of that legal jam, but you beat me to it, and now I’m more behind than ever.”

  How could he be seeing everything, everything so differently? No one was going to judge him. Bell Harbor loved him. They’d be happy he finally caught a break. How had I misjudged this so badly? How had I messed this up? Why was he so mad?

  My aunt Sally’s voice called out as she stepped onto the patio. “There you are, Evie. Your mother needs you. Can you come in?”

  I looked at Tyler, but everything about him seemed unfamiliar. A stranger in a dark gray suit.

  “We have to go in,” I whispered.

  “No, I don’t have to go in. I need to take a walk. We’re all done here, Evelyn. Do you understand what I’m saying? We’re all done.”

  He turned, grinding his heel against the stone, and stalked away into the dark.

  Chapter 32

  “WHERE’S TYLER?” MY MOTHER ASKED when I came in from the patio.

  “He’s not feeling well, but he’ll be inside in a minute.” I gave her the biggest, brightest, happiest fake smile I could muster. Sure, my parents had ruined a few of my birthdays and most of my childhood, but I was not going to ruin their wedding reception because Tyler Connelly had just dumped me. At least I think he’d dumped me. God, it felt like he’d dumped me. It felt as if he’d ice-skated across my chest. My heart was broken in so many pieces even my parents couldn’t stitch it back together.

  “Oh, that’s too bad. I hope his stomach’s not upset from the lobster ravioli. Your father said it was too rich. We should have gone with the beef Wellington. I should have listened.”

  “Let that be a lesson to you, Dr. Rhoades,” my father said, coming up beside us. “If you’d listened to me twenty-three years ago, we could’ve been together all this time.”

  “What? And give up that yearly gorilla-gram to celebrate our divorce?”

  Both my parents chuckled, awash in the joy of their rediscovered love affair. And I burst into tears at the demolishment of mine.

  “Evie, Evie, what’s the matter?” My mother turned me by the shoulders to face her.

  Please let someone invent teleporting right now. Please have them zap me to another space and time. I was not standing with my parents right now, crying like a sixteen-year-old girl over a thoughtless boy. I couldn’t be.

  And yet, I was.

  “Where’s the kid?” my father said, patting my back none too gently, as if he was trying to burp the tears out. I assumed by kid, he meant Tyler.

  “He’s taking a walk,” I said, gulping in a mouthful of air and trying to compose myself.

  “Come on. Let’s go sit down.” My mother led me to the tiny room she’d changed in before the wedding, and the three of us sat down on the tiny couch. My father’s ice clinked in his glass.

  “Evelyn, tell us what happened,” my mother said. Her voice was no-nonsense, as if she were taking a patient history.

  I shook my head and pressed my hands to my face. “I’m not really sure. Except I did something I thought was going to be a great thing, but it turns out it was a terrible thing.” I still didn’t understand how I’d ended up the bad guy in this scenario.

  “But what was it?” she pressed on. “What did you do?”

  “I paid his bills.”

  “His bills?” my father said.

  I reached over and took his glass of Glenfiddich. This occasion called for a drink. “Yes, I paid off some of his debts so that he could afford to take a paramedic training course. Horrible of me, huh?” I took a sip. This scotch was officially mine.

  “Well, I don’t know, Evelyn. Did he ask you to?” My father brushed a lock of hair back over my shoulder. I tried to recall the last time he’d done something like that. I think my mother had finally succeeded in tenderizing him.

  “No, of course he didn’t ask me to. He’d never ask me to pay for anything, and now he’s afraid everyone in town will think he’s pathetic and needs my help.”

  “Ah, pride. That’s a tough one. It takes a mighty strong man to show a little weakness. I think you might have insulted him.” My father tried to take his scotch back but I held on tight.

  “How is it insulting to help someone?” I asked.

  “Because it implies weakness, Evie,” my mother said, patting my hand. “I used to think every time your father tried to help me it was because he thought I couldn’t do it for myself. And I’d get so mad, but he was just trying to be gallant. Isn’t that right, darling?”

  My father nodded. “I was so gallant she once cut all my ties in half.”

  “Shh. That was for something else. Don’t ruin this moment.” She patted my hand again.

  I snuffled back another sob. “Tyler makes these grand gestures for his own family all the time, and I do this one thing and he can’t see how it’s the same? He kept his brother out of jail, he makes his mother’s house payments, he brought me soup when I was sick. He does stuff for people all the time. It’s what will make him a great paramedic.”

  “So where is he now?” my father asked.

  “I don’t know. We just had this fight on the patio and he took off.”

  I heard my mother scoff. “Oh, goodness. That doesn’t sound so bad. Your father and I have had bigger fights over where to squeeze the toothpaste. I bet he comes back any minute.”

  My father nodded. “Yes, I’m sure your mother is right. She usually is. And even if it takes him a while to come around, there are worse flaws than pride.”

  “Hey, I have some pride too, you know. It’s not fair that he’s mad because I tried to do something nice.”

  “Of course, darling,” my mother said, smoothing out the chiffon of her wedding dress. “You have a right to be mad, but don’t let it turn into a twenty-three-year argument. If he’s important enough to you that you’d pay off his debts, I hope he’s important enough for you to work through this.”

  My father put his arm around me. “Do you need us to sit here with you until he comes back? Because we will if you want.”

  My mother took my glass and sipped the scotch. “Of course we will. If you need us, we’ll sit here all night.”

  Who were these two? These warm, compassionate, sensitive parents? Apparently the aliens had gotten to my father too. But I was grateful. Still, this was their wedding night. They shouldn’t have to spend it babysitting me.

  “I’m fine, you guys. Thanks. Go on upstairs. I’m sure Tyler will be along any minute.”

  “Are you sure?” my mother asked, handing back the glass. I felt adored by their attention. Maybe them getting back together was a good thing after all.

  “Yes, I’m sure. Go on. Pleasant dreams.”

  They stood up, each squeezing one of my
shoulders, then walked out of the room hand in hand, like a couple of high school sweethearts. Adorável.

  I sat in that little room until I’d finished my father’s drink and finally wandered into the lobby to wait for Tyler. Because surely he’d be back any minute.

  Only he wasn’t.

  Eleven o’clock came and went. I talked to every person still downstairs, until it was just me and my drunk uncle Marv.

  Midnight turned today into tomorrow, and still no Tyler. I couldn’t decide if I was tragically wounded by his absence or ragingly furious. It was about forty-nine to fifty-one right now, except that I had to throw worried into that mix. I had no idea where he was. He could still be walking, I supposed. Maybe he’d planned to stalk all the way back to Bell Harbor. If that was the case, he’d be soaking wet now, because it had been raining for the last half hour. Or maybe he’d been eaten by a bear. If that was the case, I was kind of rooting for the bear right about now. Or maybe Tyler had wandered into a nearby tavern and was drowning his sorrows in a bottle of whiskey.

  Or maybe he was up in our room.

  Why hadn’t I thought of that sooner? Maybe he’d been up there this whole time watching pay-per-view porn. That had to be where he was. I said good night to drunk Uncle Marv and headed upstairs. I got to our frilly, romantically decorated room.

  No Tyler.

  And no luggage either. I realized then we’d arrived so late that we’d never brought it in from the car.

  This night was a bust. A horrible, awful, ass-kicking bust. All I wanted to do was climb in that bed and dream this day had never happened. But I wanted my toothbrush. And my fuzzy slipper socks. I couldn’t sufficiently wallow in my self-pity without my slipper socks. I was going to have to go to the car. I found my keys, went back down to the lobby, and headed out into the drizzling rain.

  I got halfway to the car when he said my name, and I nearly jumped out of my skin, spinning around and pointing my keys outward to jab my assailant. But of course, it was Tyler.