You

by Nella Tyler

  “That’s down the line,” I said. “I don’t even know if things are going to last beyond the month.” I thought of the fact that Patrick had canceled our date for that night; I didn’t say anything about it to Amie—especially since she was on her way to the manager’s office to fill out paperwork—but I couldn’t help but think that Patrick might have been able to get out of the business dinner if he’d really wanted to. It just seemed too convenient that he found out about the obligation a few hours before our date. You’re being stupid, I told myself. You had to cancel a date with him before; it’s only fair that you give him the benefit of the doubt on one cancelation. Don’t get all paranoid before the relationship even gets serious. I watched Amie leave and went back to trying to decide how to spend my evening off, now that I wasn’t going to be spending it with Patrick.

  Chapter Two – Patrick

  When Mackenzie bought my story about having a business dinner to go to at the last minute I’d hoped that I’d feel fine about it; after all, I hadn’t lied to her for any bad reason. The fact of the matter was that I’d simply had too much to do, and I hadn’t been able to justify spending the night out. Then too, I’d started to think that maybe she wasn’t as into me as I’d originally thought. I’d played her comments about not being sure she was marriage material anymore through my head until I’d psyched myself out—something I wasn’t proud about, but I couldn’t do anything about it after it was done. I figured that I’d get over it fast enough, or make up my mind one way or the other.

  But instead of making up my mind, or feeling better about it after a day or two, I only felt worse. Mack had believed my stupid lie; somehow the fact that she hadn’t even questioned it made me feel like an even bigger tool. I was abusing her trust and we weren’t even in a serious relationship together. I felt like an asshole, and when it came time for Landon’s next appointment with Mack, I couldn’t bring myself to go in with him. “Hey, bud,” I said when I pulled into the parking spot at the Kid Care building. “Can you just tell Mack that I had to hang out and get some work done in my car? I need to make a few phone calls.”

  “Okay Dad,” Landon said, shrugging it off; he had no idea of what an asshole I was being to a woman who was at least a little bit interested in me, either. He went into the building while I watched and I sat in the car, knowing I was being a coward and worse, stewing in the disgusting juices of my own bad behavior.

  I spent the two sessions after that the very same way, feeling more and more like a cowardly asshole. I had convinced myself that Mack wasn’t all that into me, but why should that matter? I could still face her as my son’s physical therapist, couldn’t I? Or was I afraid that she would look uninterested in me, that I’d see it plain as day on her face whenever I went in with Landon? I hated the fact that I couldn’t bring myself to just get through the interactions; I couldn’t even bring myself to send a text message or call her to try and do what I could to keep the relationship going. It was getting closer and closer to Christmas by the day—and closer to the deadline that Landon had set in his bet with me of finding someone to be his new mom.

  Every time I sat in the car, waiting for Landon to finish up his sessions, I thought about the dates I’d been on with Mack. At the time, I’d thought that they had gone so well—each time we’d gone out together I’d felt more and more like I was getting to know her better, and that we were getting closer; right up until the most recent date we’d been on. I thought about our first date, and how Mack had seemed a little on edge, a little nervous. It had been so cute to see her blush, and I could picture it so easily in my mind.

  And then at the second date, when we’d ended up in bed together; as much as I tried to fight the impulse to compare Mack with Joanne in any way, shape, or form, I thought that the sex with her might actually be better. I hated to think it—I hated to think of Joanne as being better than Mack because it didn’t seem fair to Mackenzie to think that, and I hated to think of Mack being better than Joanne, because it seemed to be cheating the memory of a woman I loved.

  Landon brought back the reports that Mackenzie wrote out over the course of the few sessions I couldn’t bring myself to attend, and the sight of her handwriting alone was enough to make my stomach clench. Whether I wasn’t sure of her feelings or not, I was sure that my feelings were way too strong for her. Every little scribble of her notes about Landon’s progress and the next steps that I needed to take with my son was like a silent accusation that I wasn’t holding up my end—even with the little comments at the end that she hoped she would have an opportunity to talk to me again soon, or that Landon was cuter than ever.

  I told myself over and over again that I needed to just bite the bullet and reschedule the date. If Mack really wasn’t interested in me, I should hear it from her lips, and not just assume it. If she was into me, then I needed to do the right thing—for both of us—and talk to her about what an insecure jerk I had been. But I couldn’t make myself do it, no matter how much of a coward I felt like for avoiding her. I was an idiot, I knew it—but I couldn’t make myself do the right thing and just confront the issue. I was too much out of practice when it came to relationships, too scared. I didn’t want to have to deal with my own feeling of disappointment, much less tell Landon that things just weren’t going to work with Mack. I thought—somehow—that if I just kept avoiding Mackenzie until the physical therapy sessions ended, it would just dissolve. I thought on the other hand that I would eventually work up the nerve, and everything would be all right again—but that moment didn’t seem to be coming.

  There were only a few days left until Christmas, and when Landon came back from his session, climbing clumsily into the back seat of the car and asking me for help in getting the seat belt to work with his booster seat, he handed me a little piece of paper—the latest report on his progress. Landon is doing very well, making very steady gains in his recovery…I’d like to discuss his progress in more detail with you one-on-one, when you’re not so busy…I believe it may be almost time to move Landon down to three-per-week sessions, instead of five-per-week. The report was just as neutral as it had always been, and it still stung to read it.

  “Dad, are you mad at Mack for something?”

  I finished fastening Landon’s seatbelt and gave it a tug to make sure it would stay where it was. “No, bud. Why do you think that?”

  “Well, before you were always going into the sessions with me,” Landon said, frowning. “You never had to do work in your car before.”

  “Things are busier than usual this close to Christmas,” I told my son, starting the car and taking the gearshift out of park. “We’re going to have a lot of days off together, and I want to make sure that I don’t leave anything hanging before I get my vacation.”

  “Oh!” Landon considered that. A little flash of doubt—and concern—flickered through my brain.

  “Did Mack ask about it?” I pulled out of the parking spot and turned around, wanting to get away from the clinic as quickly as possible without looking like I was running away.

  “No,” Landon said simply. “I just wanted to know.” As I drove away from the clinic, I found myself thinking once more about Mack. I had felt so good with her—so at ease, so comfortable. It had been totally unlike the random set-up dates that I’d had with women in the early years of Landon’s life after Joanne passed away. I had had hopes that I could bring Mack into my life with Landon in a way that I hadn’t thought possible with any other woman that I’d met. I smiled to myself, thinking that even Joanne would have liked Mack.

  It had been a different time in my life when I’d met Landon’s mother; I’d been younger, more willing to give into the hope and the optimism. I hadn’t even really thought about getting married, one way or the other. Things had just seemed to fall into place with Joanne at first. Everything was smooth sailing, and everything happened naturally. We dated for a couple of years, and then eventually we ended up living together almost on accident—we figured out that we had an
equal amount of our things at each other’s places and decided that it just made sense to have them all in one place. When I’d proposed to her, I had done it because it seemed like the right thing to do, because I was convinced that we would spend the rest of our lives together. And for Joanne it was true; she had spent the rest of her life with me.

  With Mack I wasn’t nearly as certain of myself. Landon had told me, a few days before—just in passing, out of the blue—that he wished he had a younger brother or sister. It was the day before school let out for the winter break, and he’d seen his friends’ siblings in the classroom, seen their presentations about what gifts they were giving their family members. I’d told Landon that I’d have to find him a new mom before I could make any kind of guarantees about siblings, and Mack’s words about not being sure that she was marriage material, about not being sure if she would ever be in a position to have kids, had floated up in my brain.

  As I made my way to the house, I thought about the wager that Landon had made with me, and the Christmas shopping I had already done. It seemed to me that with the way things stood, I was probably going to have to set aside a good bit of money after the beginning of the year to buy my son a second Christmas. I wasn’t sure which aspect of it bothered me more: the fact that I’d been dumb enough to wager almost a week’s pay on being able to find Landon a new mom, the fact that I was almost certainly going to have to play with the budget more than usual in the first month of the year, or the fact that my first real try at finding a woman to bring into my life with my son was failing so miserably. Let’s go with all three, I thought sourly. I pushed the thought aside as Landon asked whether or not we would be able to go sledding that weekend, telling myself that there were more important things in the world to worry about—including the basic needs my son had. I should be grateful that the accident that had caused his injury hadn’t been worse, and I should be grateful that he’d given me the kick in the ass to put myself out there once more. Anything more than that was just gravy. If I couldn’t be happy with Mackenzie, then I would find another woman who was a better fit, and I could pay up to my son—and give him more toys than any kid could possibly play with—with good grace.

  Chapter Three- Mackenzie

  As I watched Landon hurry out through the waiting room, darting as fast as his injured leg would allow into the cold winter air on his way to Patrick’s car, I sat down at my desk and frowned. I couldn’t quite shake the voice in the back of my mind that insisted that Patrick was going out of his way to avoid me; I could understand being busy heading into the week or so of the holidays—I was doing everything I could to make sure all of my patients were caught up, their files updated and everything the way that it should be—but it seemed more than a little strange that he would stay out in his car, taking calls and doing work, for three sessions straight. It seemed even stranger to not get any real response to the text messages I sent to him. All I got from him was that he missed me—or that something I’d said was funny. I had people in my life who I barely considered friends who had given me warmer responses to messages.

  I racked my brain, trying to figure out what I could have said—what I could have done—to drive him away. Had I been too demanding? Had I said something bad about Landon? No matter how I tried to figure it out on my own, I couldn’t come up with anything. I couldn’t ask anyone else either; I didn’t quite trust Amie—in spite of the fact that she was my best friend in the office. I couldn’t talk to anyone else in the office, either. And I certainly couldn’t talk to my family about Patrick. As Amie had pointed out, they would take the situation way more seriously even than I was taking it.

  I couldn’t think of anything that I might have done to make Patrick mad; thinking about our dates together I couldn’t even remember a time that he’d looked upset. We’d had sex together a few times, and every time it had been amazing. We’d gone on fancier dates and more casual ones, and every date had seemed to be going even better than the last…right up until they’d stopped. I didn’t know whether I should be taking Patrick’s ghostlike behavior as a sign that I should just drop it, or if he was testing me to see if I was really interested in him—interested enough to make a move, to be proactive about seeing him.

  As I wrapped up for the day, I thought about the problem in front of me. I couldn’t talk to anyone else about it; and I had exhausted all of my own ability to figure out what could have gone wrong between Patrick and me. The only thing left for me to do was to try and talk to Patrick directly.

  I waited until I was out of the building, heading to my car, and I took my phone out. What if he doesn’t answer your call? What if he just keeps avoiding you? I sighed and pulled up Patrick’s number anyway. If he kept avoiding me—avoiding my calls, and even the text messages I sent—then I would know that he had lost interest. I would just give up on him, and move on with my life. There was way too much good going on in my life for me to beat myself up over losing a guy.

  I unlocked my car and climbed in, but instead of starting up the car, I took a deep breath and tapped the call icon. I held the phone to my ear, shivering a bit in the cold, stale air, and listened to it ring: once, twice, three times. It’s going to roll over to voicemail, I thought with a sigh. At least he didn’t decline the call outright.

  But instead of the voicemail prompt, I heard Patrick’s voice.

  “Hey, Mack.”

  My heart beat faster in my chest and for just a second I wasn’t sure I would be able to say anything at all—my brain froze. “Hi, Patrick,” I said finally, taking a quick breath and swallowing against the dry feeling in my throat. “I’ve been—I started to worry about you, since I haven’t been seeing you come in with Landon.” Great job, Mack. You’re really coming down on him hard. “Is—is everything okay?”

  “Oh—yeah,” Patrick said, his voice hesitant. “Yeah, everything’s okay, I’ve just been really busy. Busier than usual. Lots of work to do before I go on vacation for the last week of the year.”

  “I figured as much,” I said, smiling nervously even though Patrick wasn’t even there, and wouldn’t see me. “I just was starting to kind of…wonder if things were…you know, okay with us. Because we were supposed to have a date…” I trailed off.

  “Yeah,” Patrick said. “I’m sorry about that. I’ve totally dropped the ball—I meant to reschedule with you and then everything sort of…piled up.” I pressed my lips together; I wasn’t sure if even Patrick believed his story. “I’m really sorry I’ve let so many days pass without getting in touch.”

  “I understand,” I said, my smile frozen on my face. “I guess—I mean—if you’re too busy to see me…”

  “I think I can make some time for you,” Patrick said. “Are you doing anything tonight?” I scrubbed at my face.

  “I was just going to get some last-minute shopping done,” I said with a shrug. “Nothing special.”

  “I’d love to keep you company,” Patrick told me. “If you’d have me?”

  “Sure,” I said. Don’t sound so eager, I added in my mind. “Give me like twenty minutes or so to get home and change out of my scrubs, and let’s meet somewhere.”

  “How about 900 North Michigan? That way we can find something to eat too,” Patrick suggested. I thought about it for a moment.

  “That sounds good,” I said. “I’ll see you there in maybe like—thirty minutes?”

  “I’m looking forward to it,” Patrick said, and in spite of how skeptical I felt I had to admit he sounded like he at least was being honest about that. I finished the call and hurried home, weaving around the rush hour traffic and trying to decide what I could wear for a date like this. I didn’t want to dress up the way I would for dinner or a movie or going to a play; but I didn’t want to look like a slob either. I also wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t freeze my ass off getting to the mall, while not sweating like a pig once I was inside.

  I hurried up to my apartment as soon as I parked, wondering what was going on with Patrick and w
hether it even made sense to go on this date with him. I made a mess of my room going through my clothes as quickly as possible and finally settled on a pair of jeans, a fitted sweater with a camisole underneath it, one of the nicer scarves I owned, and a pair of ankle boots with thick socks underneath to keep my feet warm. I brushed my hair and tucked it into a cute wool cap that covered the tops of my ears, and put on just a little bit of makeup; enough to make me look clean and natural and polished.

  I hurried back down to my car and made my way into downtown, jittery and nervous at the idea that I might be late to meet with Patrick at the entrance of the mall. Why am I sweating this so much? It’s not like we’ve been dating for months. We barely know each other. But I didn’t want to let things go without giving it at least one last, final chance. I kept glancing at my face in the mirror, wondering if I’d gone too casual, if I looked too fresh-from-work. I told myself that Patrick knew that I was going to be meeting him almost immediately from work, that he couldn’t rightly expect me to show up looking as though I’d spent an hour on my outfit, hair, and makeup, but I was nervous anyway.

  I had to wonder just how much sense it made for me to be this attached to Patrick this soon. We’d gone on maybe five dates over the course of less than three full weeks. That was unusual—before Patrick the most I had seen someone was twice in one week—and it made the way that he was avoiding me even more frustrating. If he’d lost interest, wouldn’t it just be easier for him to let the conversation happen, or tell me that he was too busy to see anyone, or something like that? Or if he wasn’t brave enough to actually end things, at least he could have let it fall by the wayside completely. I replayed the phone conversation in my head so many times I thought I’d never be able to forget it.