Driven to Distraction

by Olivia Dade

  That answered yet another question Sam had been contemplating the last few hours. To be precise, ever since his sister and four dudes had shown up to his house early that afternoon with beer, pizza, and a cache of superhero movies. “Is that why you’re all here? Because I look like a potential victim of sword impalement?”

  “Not entirely. We like you. We also like pizza and beer.” Wes’s finger poked the green glass bottle on the table in front of him. “But yeah. We saw Grant’s spreadsheets tracking how often you came out with us and your smile frequency rate. Both indicated dangerous levels of self-pity.”

  Sam turned to Grant, who was doing something on his tablet. Something both disturbing and geeky, Sam suspected. “That’s creepy, dude.”

  “I believe in the power of Excel. What can I say?” Grant flashed him a quick, unapologetic grin, then bent back to his task. Probably tracking Sam’s ability to sleep through the night and get out of bed in the morning, which—as Sam could have told him, no spreadsheet necessary—was waning rapidly.

  “You’re looking better now, so we’ll get going,” Wes said.

  He offered Sam a consoling thump on the back, as did Grant and Jack. With remarkable efficiency, the guys disposed of their trash, rinsed bottles for the recycling bin, and gathered their coats. Jack gave his wife a final, quick kiss and led the stampede for the door.

  Penny, on the other hand, didn’t appear to be going anywhere. Instead, she settled on the couch next to Sam and waved as Jack and the other men headed out.

  Sam didn’t know why his sister had stayed behind. But he planned to take advantage of this opportunity to address one of the many, many concerns keeping him up at night.

  “Penny,” he began, “I’m worried about Con. Your friends have invited me out or met at my house three times already this week. She hasn’t been at a single one of those gatherings. She wasn’t at last week’s get-togethers, either. And I don’t want her isolating herself because of me. Shouldn’t you be visiting her instead of coming over here?”

  The first week after their breakup, he’d alternately dreaded and longed for group events. Even though an encounter with Con would rip his heart wide open, he was starving for the sight of her. Ravenous, actually. He needed to make sure she’d completely recovered from the pneumonia. That she was sleeping and eating enough. That she wasn’t running herself ragged with all her responsibilities.

  No one else paid as much attention to her health and happiness as he did. Not even Con herself. And God knew she would try to deny any weakness until the moment she keeled over dead. The memory of her slow-motion collapse into his arms at the Verizon Center still featured in his nightmares. It was part of the reason he couldn’t sleep. Didn’t want to sleep.

  But he hadn’t seen her since they’d broken up. Not even once.

  When she hadn’t shown up for any of the group gatherings, he’d quickly realized what was happening. She was trying to take care of him in her own practical way. Making sure he had a circle of friends, even at the expense of her own support network. And while he appreciated the gesture, the thought of her alone in that too-quiet house cramped his gut.

  Con loved him. He knew she was hurting, whether she wanted to admit it or not. She needed her friends too.

  Penny’s brow lowered. “I’ll address the phrase your friends in a moment. Before that, though, let me ask you a question. You think we’d simply forsake one friend in favor of another? Let Con grieve and rot amongst her greenery while we watched movies with you?”

  Fuck. He hadn’t meant his comment as an insult, but he could see the offense in it now.

  He hung his head. “I’m sorry, Penny. I didn’t—”

  “We figure you and Con will share custody of us until you can face one another again. It’s like a really good divorce, all very amicable and mature. We’ll be with her some days, we’ll be with you others. No problem.”

  “That’s not my experience when it comes to divorce,” he said wryly.

  She exhaled slowly. “Mine either. As you know.”

  “So this isn’t uncomfortable for you? You’re not upset with me or Con for putting you in this position?”

  He remembered Penny’s promise never to abandon him. But after the breakup with Con, a tiny, niggling fear had burrowed back into his heart. Would his sister truly continue to love him under these fraught circumstances? Or would she side with her long-time friend over her newfound brother and leave him in the dust?

  He hadn’t noticed any signs of estrangement thus far. But he’d become a desperate man in recent days. He’d take all the reassurance he could get.

  “I’m not upset.” She lifted a shoulder. “Do I love doubling my number of social occasions per week? Not especially. Do I wish the circumstances were different, for everyone’s sake? Certainly. Is it awkward sometimes? Of course.”

  His eyes squeezed shut. “I’m so sorry.”

  “How long will I continue to see you two separately, if that’s what you both need? Indefinitely.”

  By the time he’d wrestled back the tears he didn’t want to shed, Penny’s face was inches away from his, her brown eyes soft. She gave his cheek an affectionate pat.

  “Do you want to talk about what happened with Con? Because she hasn’t said a word about the breakup. Maybe so she can pretend invincibility, maybe so she can maintain your privacy. Or maybe it’s just too painful for her to discuss.”

  “Con…” The right words were important here. Like Con, he wanted to maintain a certain amount of privacy for them both, which meant he was nixing any discussion of her fallopian tubes. But he didn’t think she’d mind him sharing the basic reasons for their impasse. “She doesn’t want children, with me or anyone else. Ever. And I want a family, Penny. A big one.”

  She tugged at a short strand of her brown hair, looking thoughtful. “How do you define family?”

  “A wife. Lots of kids.”

  “No.” She gave a decisive shake of her head. “I mean, what do you want from a family? What would that family be like? What would they do for you?”

  Leaning back against the sofa cushion, he stared sightlessly at the ceiling and thought about it. “I want people around me. Always someone to talk to, day or night. I want to be needed. I want noise and life and a guarantee I won’t find myself alone again.”

  Something about those words rang oddly in his ears, even though he meant them. A guarantee? Was that really what he wanted, rather than a child?

  “How do you think I felt when Mom didn’t come to my wedding?”

  He rolled his head on the cushion so he could see her. “You seemed happy, but I don’t know. Didn’t you want all of your family there? Not just me and your dad?”

  "Sam..." Penny leaned back against the couch too and turned toward him. "I had all of my family there. You. Dad. Jack. Angie and Con and our other friends. Mom gave birth to me, but that doesn’t make her my family. I expect family members to do more than simply share a genetic tie or a family name.”

  In her own gentle way, his sister was arguing that a family didn’t require legal or blood ties to be real. That he could have one without children. That he could get what he wanted without giving up Con.

  And he understood. He really did. But…

  “I know what you’re trying to tell me. There’s a problem with that argument, though.” His thoughts had undoubtedly become muddled from lack of sleep. Nevertheless, he could see the obvious bug in his sister’s code, clear as day. “Those people—everyone who came to your wedding, Con’s hospital room, and my house today—they’re your family, Pen. Not mine.”

  “Ah. And now we return to the whole your friends bullshit.”

  “I suppose.”

  Penny gave a soft snort of derision. “Why do you think all of us keep visiting you? Even though you haven’t exactly been amazing company in recent days?”

  Easy question. “You’re coming because you love me. The others are coming because
they love you and Con, and both of you want me to have company. Or because they feel sorry for me and fear my imminent death by sword impalement. And I hate to think of people volunteering their time to cheer me up out of some misguided sense of pity.”

  “Bullshit,” she said again.

  He clucked his tongue at her. “Tsk, tsk. Should you really be swearing around your younger brother?”

  She rocketed to an upright position on the couch, her jaw tight. “Is pity the reason Jack insisted on a guys’ night this week, even though he’d rather lop off a toe than socialize? Is pity the reason Angie helps Grant with his Sam’s Sadness Statistics spreadsheets, even though Excel makes her break out in hives and turn to her vibrator collection for comfort?” Penny added, “Although, to be fair, Angie turns to her vibrators on pretty much every possible occasion.”

  Sam did his best to wipe that bit of data from his mind.

  “Is pity why Mary keeps asking whether she should bake you more brownies? Is pity the reason she’s managed to recruit a cheering section for your hockey games? Even though most of us think batting around a rubber disc with a stick in the freezing cold is a stupid, stupid activity?”

  “Hey,” Sam protested. “Don’t insult—”

  “Various guys from your hockey team have been calling to check on you. Chris, our laconic man-beast, has taken you under his enormous, muscled wing. Sarah delivers the occasional burrito to your house in between dodging evil raccoons. Helen has been leaving superhero action figures on your desk to cheer you up. Wes willingly hangs out with you, even though you’re the only other man who’s slept with the love of his life. As Angie puts it, Helen’s sexual history is basically a Sam sandwich. Where Wes provided the bread, and you provided the meat.”

  Sam recoiled.

  “Which is really disturbing and gross, I know.” Penny wrinkled her nose. “I can’t believe I even repeated it. I’ve been trying to wash that image out of my brain for months now.”

  For good reason. Ugh.

  Before he could say anything, Penny shook off her disgust and kept rolling. “My point is that pity only goes so far. Those people—my family—love you. When Con got sick, we arrived so quickly because we wanted to help both of you, not just her. And when you started upchucking everywhere while she was recovering, didn’t we get you applesauce and Gatorade?”

  “Yeah.” The memory of that day—Con’s tenderness, her faith in their relationship, her proposal—slayed him. Haunted him. “You did.”

  Penny’s voice softened from outraged determination to sympathy. “You’re clearly miserable without her, sweetheart. Have you even talked to Con since you broke up?”

  Every day, he watched from his office window as Big Bertha pulled out of the library garage. If he could see through the windshield, he knew he’d spot Con in the driver’s seat. A casual question or two aimed at Tina had established that.

  Maybe not as casual as he’d hoped, given the way Tina kept patting his arm. Her recent sock choices had ranged from a gray teardrop pattern to sprays of hearts split into ragged halves. They were the most fucking depressing socks he’d ever seen in his life.

  He hated that Con was spending the chilly days of early spring working on board Big Bertha instead of recovering from pneumonia indoors. He hated that she was dealing with her garden alone, even after he’d promised to help her with it and she’d let him choose so many of the seeds. He hated that she returned to the library late at night to do her paperwork.

  Because of him. All because of him.

  The paperwork, at least, he could do something about. Sybil and Iman didn’t mind his presence in the Bookmobile office during his lunch hour every day. They didn’t begrudge him the use of Con’s scanner and desktop computer, either. As far as he knew, the two women hadn’t said a word to Con about his daytime efforts at her desk. And to this point, she apparently hadn't noticed that the pile of documents and reports on her desk was much, much smaller than it should have been.

  So while Con came back to work most nights, at least she didn’t have to stay long.

  But he continually wondered how hard she was driving herself. How many migraines she’d fought alone. How many pleading phone calls she’d accepted from Pru, Chas, or Christian without anyone else helping her. Without her letting anyone else help her.

  Christ Almighty, he missed her. So much. Without her, he felt like he was shrinking into nothing. A speck of dust in the universe. The tiniest possible piece of a broken satellite, battered and useless.

  Con, in contrast, was a galaxy sprawled across an open sky. Unfathomably distant, even when she appeared so close. Wondrous. Endlessly fascinating.

  But he couldn’t say any of that to his sister. So he simply told her, “No. I haven’t talked to Con since the day we broke up.”

  “I won’t violate her privacy.” Penny sucked in her lower lip for a moment as she considered what to say. “But you should know I’ve never seen her like this.”

  Maybe it should have elicited some sense of triumph, the confirmation that he’d affected her so deeply. That she loved him so much she couldn’t hide her grief from her friends.

  Instead, he wanted to curl into a ball and die in disgrace. At the shame of hurting the woman he’d tried his damnedest to love and care for. At the humiliation of knowing she’d have been better off without him, if he was only going to force himself into her life and then leave when she couldn’t give him what he wanted. What he’d never told her he wanted, and something he should have realized she wasn’t willing to offer.

  At the moment, though, he couldn’t even articulate what exactly he did want. Was it children? Or something else?

  Fiercely intelligent as always, Penny seemed to read his thoughts.

  “You have the right to want children. To hold out for a woman who can give you those children, if that’s what you need to be happy. I’ll love and support you no matter what you decide or what woman you eventually marry.”

  When she stood, he followed suit. She got up on tiptoe to press a kiss to his cheek. “But Con loves you so much, Sam. She’d never, ever leave you. Not willingly. Not if you wanted her to stay. And if you can’t see that you already have a big, noisy family who’d move the earth for you…”

  Grabbing her purse, she walked toward the door.

  “Yeah?” he asked, trailing behind her.

  “Look again, sweetheart.”

  25

  The door had barely shut behind Penny when Sam’s cell phone rang.

  After a frantic hunt, he located it beneath a pile of empty pizza boxes a millisecond before the call would have gone to voice mail. Not enough time to check who was calling.

  Which, as it turned out, was probably a mistake.

  “Hello?” The person on the other end of the line would have to forgive his breathlessness. A man couldn’t immediately shift from heart-wrenching despair and confusion to tossing greasy cardboard boxes around in search of a chirping rectangle. Not without suffering the consequences.

  “Hi, Samuel.”

  The saddest part: He didn’t even recognize her voice. The women who called him most frequently these days belonged to his Nice County crowd, and it took him a moment to figure out he wasn’t talking to Helen, Angie, Sarah, or Mary. Con or Penny, of course, he’d have identified immediately.

  So he was confused, especially by the use of his full first name. But when he checked the cell display, he saw who was calling him.

  Joan Watterly. The last name didn’t ring a bell. Had she divorced and remarried again since Penny’s wedding? Was that even legally possible?

  Hopefully his mother had aged out of her childbearing years by now. He didn’t like to think of more children conceived and shunted to the side, like him and Penny. The long trail of grieving ex-husbands she left behind, men stunned by the sudden betrayal of their beloved wife, was bad enough.

  His father had died young. Too young. And maybe it was unfair, but Sam cou
ldn’t help assigning some of the blame to her. Without the broken heart Joan had inflicted on her second ex-husband, would he have suffered such an early death?

  “Mom.” Sam offered the word in greeting, without any idea of what to say next or why she’d bothered to call.

  She filled in the blanks. “Your sister texted me a couple of weeks ago to say you’d gotten engaged. I had a free minute, so I thought I should offer my congratulations. Who’s the lucky woman?”

  Forgiveness clearly came more easily to Penny than it did to him. He hadn’t planned to inform their mother about his brief engagement. Joan wouldn’t care. She certainly wouldn’t have attended his now-cancelled wedding. So why bother telling her anything?

  Still, she was on the phone with him right now, and good manners required that he answer her question. At least in broad strokes. He cleared his throat. “Her name is Constance Chen. She’s a librarian.”

  “How nice. Penny didn’t tell me much, but she did say your fiancée is a lovely woman who adores you.” His mother sounded genuinely happy for him, which came as a surprise. “Make sure to enjoy the engagement, Samuel.”

  “I will.” Could he thank her and end the call yet? Or did they need to make more awkward conversation?

  “It goes quickly. Too quickly.”

  “Okay.” He knew he shouldn’t, but he couldn’t stop himself from asking. “Why do you say that?”

  His mother’s voice suddenly turned quiet. Became old and thin in a way he’d never heard before. “Things change once you get married.”

  Not everything. Not the way you keep pursuing other men. He bit back the words dancing on the tip of his tongue. They might be true, but they were unnecessarily cruel. And who really gave a shit anymore? She was barely a blip in his life at this point.

  His mother. Not family, as Penny had said.