Change anything?
“No, of course not.” She pretended not to be furious. Pigheaded idiot. How many chances had she given him over the years? How often had she pined for him? How often had she been rejected exactly the way she was doing to him now, only ten times worse because they’d supposedly been serious about each other? Now that she was declaring them completely over, had told him about the men she was meeting the next week, he was expecting her to come running back because they’d screwed each other. “It changes nothing.”
“I’m going to start therapy.”
Bonnie gaped at him, her skirt halfway up her thighs. She couldn’t have heard that right. “Therapy? Why?”
“Because I need to find out...” He pressed his lips together, making an obvious effort to finish the sentence. “Why I can’t be with you.”
She pulled her skirt the rest of the way up and stood for a moment, monitoring her emotions. The old Bonnie would have thought, “Oh, gosh, he really does love me,” and she would have melted back to him, her battered hope alive once again.
The new Bonnie was beginning to understand that Seth was like a bacteria or virus, which kept mutating so it could still infect and/or damage its target host no matter what medications were invented to wipe it out.
“Seth, why hasn’t it bothered you for the past several years that you couldn’t be with me?”
He hung his head, gave her a sheepish smile. “Bon, if I knew that I wouldn’t need therapy.”
She sighed, then gave in and laughed. “Okay. Well, good. I’m proud of you. I know that’s a huge step.”
“Thanks.”
Deep breath. She had to make sure he understood. “But nothing changes for me. I’m still dating and still trying to find a man who wants me right now. If you get your shit together, fine, we can talk. But until then...”
Seth gave a single nod. “Fair enough.”
“Good.” She gave his body a wistful once-over. “Put some clothes on, would you? A woman can only take so much perfection.”
His grin spread again. He picked up his jeans and dragged them on. “Yes, ma’am. And I’ll double check with Matti, but she sounded enthusiastic when we first talked.”
“Thank you.” Bonnie stepped toward him, kissed him quickly, squeezing his arm. She hadn’t felt on such an even keel with Seth since they’d been dating and happy together in college, before Seth freaked and moved on. She liked this about herself. She liked it a lot.
And if she had anything to say about it, she wouldn’t ever go back to the way things used to be.
14
JACK WALKED INTO THE Come to Your Senses common area and headed for the refrigerator, feeling as if he were hauling around giant blocks of lead in his chest. He was out of beer in his apartment and didn’t have the energy to go and get more.
Seth sat on the worn green couch, elbows resting on his knees, the brown glass top of a beer bottle visible in his right hand. “Hey, how’s it going?”
“Good.” Jack scanned the contents of the refrigerator. Apparently it was going to be a Miller Genuine Draft day. Seth must have finished the other brands. “You?”
“Good.”
Jack sank sideways into his favorite chair, draped his legs over the worn armrest. “Long day.”
“Same here.”
They drank in silence.
“Wanna listen to tunes?” Jack asked.
“Machine’s busted.”
“Oh.”
More silence, except for the glug of swallowed beer. Amazing how much guys could say without words. Jack knew exactly what was bugging Seth. “Trouble with Bonnie, huh?”
Seth laughed bitterly. “Is there ever not?”
“I guess no.”
“It’s my fault. I’m not...” He blew a raspberry. “Whatever. Trouble with Melissa?”
“Yeah. My fault, too. I’m not—” Jack imitated Seth’s raspberry “—either.”
Silence. An apartment door opened, then closed down the hall. Footsteps headed away from them, toward the elevator.
“We should go out,” Seth said. “Hear some music.”
“Yeah. This is bullshit.”
“It is.”
Neither of them moved. Their beers were dutifully consumed.
“Where’s Bonnie tonight?” Jack asked. “I saw her leaving a few hours ago, all dressed up.”
Seth shrugged as if he didn’t care. “She’s got a date.”
“A date with a guy?”
Seth gave him a withering glare. “No, a date with a gerbil. Geez, Jack.”
“Right, sorry.” He was torn in half, proud of Bonnie and sick for Seth. And for himself. Melissa would start dating again, too. Probably soon. She’d be snapped up in half an hour. Maybe less. Undoubtedly less.
It would kill him.
“Where’s Melissa?”
Jack shrugged as if he didn’t care. “Probably helping set up for the wedding tomorrow. Rehearsal dinner, something like that.”
“You going tomorrow?”
“I’m working it.”
“Ooh.” Seth winced. “That’s not going to be fun.”
“About as much as you waiting for Bonnie to come home tonight.”
“Uh-huh.” Seth tossed his empty bottle into the recycling bin, got up and got himself and Jack new ones. “Sometimes I wonder what the hell I’m doing, you know? What is wrong with me? Why can’t I just say ‘yeah, okay, she’s what I want and let’s go’?”
“Because you’re a moron?”
Seth’s eyebrows rose. “Dude, I’d like to think it’s a little more complicated than that.”
“It has to be.” Jack tossed his beer toward the bin the way Seth had. Only he missed. “Or I’m a moron, too.”
“Yeah? Let me guess. She wants more than you can give her. Am I right?”
“Not that simple, either.” Melissa had never pressed him for anything more than naming what was already happening between them. She’d been right that Gretchen’s wedding was just a party. It even made sense that she’d expected him to be her date. “The irony is that she wants exactly what I want. But it’s like I don’t know how to let myself have it.”
Seth lifted his head. “Yeah. Yeah, exactly.”
“How do you explain that to someone when it doesn’t make sense?”
“Dude.” Seth shook his head mournfully. “You can’t. Or we would have.”
They subsided back into silence.
“So, um.” Seth fidgeted on the sofa. “I’m, uh, thinking of going to talk to someone.”
“Bonnie?”
“Professionally.”
“A shrink?” Jack stared at him. This was like a vegan applying for a job at a slaughterhouse.
“Yeah. Yeah, maybe someone can figure this out. Like it all stems from not getting breast-fed or wanting to kill my father or something.”
Jack snorted. “Yeah, I can think of a few times in my family when that last one seemed like a good option.”
“No kidding.” Seth hunched his shoulders. “That piece probably has something to do with it. Men and their fathers, all that stuff.”
“Probably does. So you’re going to dig up all that crap again?”
“I don’t want him to win.” Seth’s voice rose. “My whole life he had all the power in the house, over all of us. His moods, his behavior, everything was up to him. Whether we were happy, sad, safe, every freaking thing.”
Jack had to try twice to produce sound. “Dude, I hear you.”
“I left as soon as I could, but he’s still effing me up, even this far from him, across the whole country. It pisses me off. I can’t let him win, Jack. I can’t let the son of a bitch win. Especially if it means hurting someone I love over and over.” He laughed bitterly. “Then I’m no freaking better than him.”
Jack’s blood went cold. He put down his beer. Hurting people he loved. Not being there for them, withholding affection, withholding time and any sense of security. All relationships conducted on the bare surface of what there c
ould be.
Just like dear old Dad.
Jesus. While Jack was busy swearing he’d never be anything like his father, he’d turned right into the bastard.
“I don’t know about you, Bonnie, but this looks like the most depressing party I’ve ever been to.”
Jack and Seth jumped and turned. Angela and Bonnie were standing in the doorway, Demi behind them.
“Seriously.” Bonnie flounced into the room, looking beautiful in a green draped minidress that was making poor Seth grit his teeth. “Who died and where are our beers?”
“Whew.” Angela flopped onto the black-and-white couch. “I’m beat.”
“Where have you been?” Jack asked.
“We went dancing.” Angela fanned herself. “Serious dancing.”
Seth glanced at Bonnie. “We who?”
“Well.” Angela lifted her hand and let it smack down. Unless Jack’s intuition was malfunctioning, she was feeling no pain. “I was coming back from Daniel’s early because he has to get up at the crack of dawn for some meeting and I bumped into Bonnie, who’d just escaped her date from hell. We both bumped into Demi and dragged her with us. However, we wish we hadn’t because she totally showed us up on the dance floor.”
“Oh, come on.” Demi had color in her face, was laughing, animated. What a difference.
“You did. Don’t deny it.” Bonnie, while not exactly oozing affection, at least wasn’t sneering at her.
“Let the party begin.” Seth tossed his empty beer bottle over his head. Incredibly, it went bang, without breaking, into the recycling bin to cheers from the crowd. He jumped up, grinning, and ran to the refrigerator to dole out more. Funny how the phrase date from hell had revived him.
“We were waiting for you.” Jack swung his legs to the front of the chair. “It’s tough being men alone.”
“Yeah.” Seth handed Bonnie a beer. “We don’t know what to say after, ‘How about them Seahawks?’”
Jack caught the bottle Seth tossed him. “Now we can just sit back and listen to you.”
“Bonnie, we especially want to hear all about your date.” Seth popped the top off his beer and toasted her smugly.
“Bastard.” She sent him a well-deserved glare, but because Bonnie was Bonnie, she grabbed center stage and started in.
Jack heard something about breath she could smell across the table, and OBG—which she defined as Obsessive Golf Disease—before his thoughts drifted, his mood further buoyed by the laughter and camaraderie around him. Good friends. Good people.
Tomorrow afternoon he’d show up at Gretchen’s wedding, ready to take pictures. He’d also be wearing a suit and be ready to dance that first dance. Ready to tell Melissa they belonged together, and that even though she might need to be patient with him, he’d do everything in his power to prove he believed it.
His gaze landed on Angela, shrieking with laughter next to Demi, who wasn’t shrieking, but smiling widely. Something was kicking in the back of his mind. Something about Angela and Daniel, and how they’d initially committed to each other.
Yes. There it was.
Tomorrow afternoon he’d show up at Gretchen’s wedding with his photographer’s hat on.
Tomorrow morning he’d be doing something else entirely.
* * *
MELISSA STOOD NEXT to her sister, Ted on the other side of Gretchen, their dad on the other side of Ted. They were all smiling. At Jack.
Before this she’d been standing next to her sister and Ted and Ted’s best man. And she’d also been smiling. At Jack.
Before that there had been other pictures. In all of them she’d had to stand there, her emotional guts being hauled out of her body with giant grappling hooks as she smiled at Jack.
The ceremony had been a beautiful, simple service held in her father’s backyard on this absolutely perfect day, breezy, sunny and warm, but not too warm. Gretchen was the perfect bride, stunning in the dress she’d made, baby’s breath and cream-colored sweetheart roses tucked into her hair. Her bouquet was more sweetheart roses, some of which matched the pale pink dress Melissa wore.
Bonnie was a genius.
Angela’s tiers of cream- and pink-frosted chocolate cupcakes stood ready, as did the butter cake she’d made for Gretchen to decorate with swirls of subtly colored frosting that matched the embroidery on her dress and more of Bonnie’s roses. On the table were pans of lasagna, bowls of salad and loaves of French bread that Gretchen, Bonnie and her friends had pitched in to make. Chilling in ice-filled tubs were bottles of reasonably priced French sparkling wine—Seth had recommended the brand, and he knew his stuff—beer, regular wine and sodas.
Everything about the occasion had turned out ideally. And Melissa had never been so torn. On the one hand, she was deliriously happy for her sister. Gretchen and Ted’s love for each other was so powerful it was palpable, infecting the party with the type of joy that only came from a match everyone was thrilled about.
On the other hand...
She missed Jack. Terribly. Watching a man commit the rest of his life to a woman with such ease and certainty made it pretty hard to swallow that Jack couldn’t commit to so much as a dance.
And yet. If he couldn’t, then he wasn’t the right man for her. And when the bleeding stopped from the gaping wound in her heart, she’d try again. Because she knew now what she really wanted and needed in her life. Not what Barbara said she wanted. Barbara, who was now her ex-boss, fired for routinely informing female hires of the salary gap between them and their male counterparts.
Melissa still wanted to be strong and independent, but thanks to having met Jack, she realized she could be strong and independent alongside a man. She and her future mate didn’t have to turn into Gretchen and Ted, or her mother and father. There were other ways.
Obvious, maybe, but sometimes when your heart was so close to a truth it was very, very hard to see it. A little part of her still hoped Jack would realize that in time.
“Okay, that’s it, thank you. Enjoy the party, and congratulations again.” Jack stepped back from the tripod and sent Melissa an intense glance that seemed to say this isn’t over.
Or maybe it said, bye, babe, thanks for the sex. She wasn’t that great at reading intense glances. Since he’d already started packing up his gear, it seemed to mean he was leaving.
She drifted toward the party, then without meaning to, she looked back and found herself standing there watching Jack stride away, taking a piece of her heart with him. She’d grow it whole again, yes, but Jack Shea would always have that piece.
He turned down the driveway and she eventually lost him behind the cars lining the hilly street.
Gone.
Melissa joined the crowd already enjoying assorted beverages and the informal hors d’oeuvres they’d supplied—pretzels, chips, cut-up vegetables and Gretchen’s beloved blue cheese dip. More of Bonnie’s stunning flowers graced the buffet table and the five tables set up on the lawn. Even though Jack was no longer here, everywhere she looked, the contributions of his Come to Your Senses friends reminded her of him.
Come on. Melissa shook herself out of her mood. This was her sister’s wedding. She’d managed not to break down so far; this wasn’t the time to start.
Holding a glass of ginger ale she hoped would look like champagne, she tried to decide where to begin mingling. The champagne looked delicious, but she didn’t trust her emotions if she got tipsy. And she refused to be the relative crying into the potato chips at the end of the wedding.
Unfortunately the sensible plan backfired. She’d gotten stuck talking to—er, listening to—a childhood friend of Ted’s named Ned, who had finished making jokes about Ted and Ned’s Excellent Adventures in elementary school and was now telling her every grisly detail of the death of his marriage and his divorce, both of which had been totally his ex-wife’s fault. Alcohol would have made him easier to tolerate or easier to be rude to. Either would help.
“So then, while I was out one night, working
the same job, earning the same salary that paid for her to stay home and do nothing all day long but spend it, she goes out and—”
“Excuse me.”
Melissa’s heart went into overdrive at the deep voice behind her. Jack. She’d thought he was long gone. Had he forgotten something? She turned, trying not to look too eager.
Oh, my God.
He’d changed. Into a suit. In which he looked good enough to dip in blue cheese and eat.
“Hi.” Ned stuck out his pudgy hand. “I’m Ned, friend of Ted.”
Jack shook his hand, taking Melissa’s arm. “I’m Jack, we’ll be back.”
He strode across the patio and into the yard, past the tables, dragging Melissa with him, leaving Ned ha-ha-ing madly over the joke.
“Why are you dressed like that? Where are you taking me?” She pulled free and faced him. “What is going on?”
“You looked like you needed rescuing from Ned who is friends with Ted.”
“Before he bored me dead.” She gestured to his suit, laughing along with him, missing him so violently retroactively that she nearly cried while cracking up. “So this is your superhero costume?”
“This is my wedding guest costume.”
“Oh.” She folded her arms across her chest, not because she was angry, but because hope was making her unbearably vulnerable. “I see. So you are...”
She didn’t know what he was, but she was too nanny-goat chicken-wattle scaredy-pants to finish the sentence. She wanted him to say it.
“I’m here as your date.”
Melissa swallowed. Okay. This was good. No, this was wonderful. But...what else did it mean? That he’d shown up today for her, but then he’d disappear? Or that they were a couple?
Ha! As if.
“My date for the wedding?”
“Right.” He gave her a look. “This wedding right here. The one we’re at. I’m your date.”
“No, I know, but then...” She broke off helplessly, not sure she wanted the answer to her question.
“And I was thinking, if you want to do something tomorrow, I could be your date then, too.” He moved a step closer, smiling his unbearably sexy smile, brown eyes warm enough to melt ice. “The day after that might work, as well. And hey, you know, I hear the day after that is an excellent date day, and I’m pretty sure the following week is full of possible nights I’d like to be part of, also. After that, let’s keep at it.”
Light Me Up Page 18
