Fooling Around (17 page)

He wasn’t different, though. There was just more to him than she’d realized. Depths that had been hidden. A heart that was bigger and more vulnerable than she’d imagined.

A heart that could be broken. That would be broken if a cure wasn’t found for whatever was wrong with Maddy.

The idea of it broke her heart too.

That evening, after Maddy went to bed, Julie and Eric watched three more episodes of the spy show.

Julie was tired, but there was a trembling energy deep inside her, and it only got stronger as she sat next to Eric on the sofa, as their eyes kept meeting every time something funny or exciting happened on the TV.

She kept trying to talk herself into thinking about him in a purely professional way, but her attempts at mental control just weren’t working anymore.

He was more to her than work. She might have to outwardly pretend that wasn’t true, but there was no sense in lying to herself.

She wanted to be close to him. Closer all the time.

When the third episode ended, she got up to go to the bathroom and pour herself a glass of wine from the bottle they’d opened at dinner.

“Do you want any?” she asked Eric.

“Sure.”

There were just barely two glasses left in the bottle. Not enough for Eric to drink himself into a stupor. Since they’d left Baltimore, he hadn’t seemed tempted to do so again, but she wanted to be sure she wasn’t making it easy for him.

When she sat down again, she ended up a little closer to Eric than she’d been before. “Do you want to watch another?” she asked.

He gave a half shrug and sipped his wine.

“Are you feeling okay? We’ve been cutting back on the pain medication, so sometimes that’s—”

“I’m fine,” he interrupted, frowning the way he always did when he thought he was being babied. “Maybe a little tired.”

She figured it was more than that. He might be exhausted, but it was emotional more than physical—worrying about Maddy. “We can watch more episodes tomorrow, then.”

She switched the television input over to cable, and a familiar sports channel appeared on the screen. She left it there, although she wasn’t particularly interested in watching the endless commentary that seemed to play on some of these channels.

Eric stared at the screen but didn’t seem to be paying much attention.

When a commercial came on, advertising a new game from Eric’s old company, Julie leaned forward to watch. It was some kind of multiple-sport game with very sophisticated graphics. “Wow, that’s something,” she said, turning back to look at him. “Is that one supposed to be big?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think it will be as big as they want it to be.”

“Why not?”

He made a face. “Just a guess. I don’t really know much about it. They started it after I’d already sold out.”

“Are you ever afraid you’ll miss out on something great, because you sold out, I mean?”

He seemed to consider the question seriously. Then he shook his head. “Not really. I’d gotten to the point where nothing anyone proposed sounded interesting to me at all. They were all just retreads of the same old thing.”

“Is that why you decided to sell when you did?”

“Pretty much. I’d done really well with it, and it seemed like the right time to get out at the peak of success. If I’d stayed, it would have…gotten hard to keep the company so successful. Plus, my partner wanted to take things in a different direction. There was no sense in me sticking around just to split the purpose and vision. It would have just made the whole company weaker.”

Julie let her eyes rest on his face for a moment. His explanation made sense, and it felt like him. He’d left while things were still easy, before they’d gotten too hard, before they’d started to take too much out of him, before he’d slid down slightly from the top of the heap. He apparently hadn’t had any qualms about walking away from fifteen years’ worth of work.

That was just him. He got out—moved on—while the getting was good.

She wondered if he’d done it with relationships too.

“What?” he asked in a different tone. “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing.”

“You were thinking something about me.” He reached out to tilt her chin so she was meeting his eyes. “Tell me.”

She could have made up some kind of light answer—just to move them past the moment—but she didn’t want to. So she told him the truth. “I was wondering if you do the same thing with women.”

“Do what?”

“Get out before things get too rough.”

She caught a brief, defensive flicker on his face before his expression transformed to something deep, almost surprised. “I don’t…think so.”

“Maybe not. I wasn’t judging or anything. I was just thinking. What’s the longest relationship you’ve had?”

He thought for a minute. “Kristin’s been with me sixteen years. Tim, fifteen years. And then there’s Maddy, of course. I’m not planning to walk away from any of them anytime soon.”

Ridiculously, she was pleased by this answer—by the kind of loyalty he’d shown to people who worked for him, to his daughter. “Of course. So what’s the longest romantic relationship you’ve had?”

“Eh,” he said, his mouth twisting. “That’s going to take some thought.”

“So think.”

He gave her a little smile as he sorted things out in his mind. “All right. I was with one woman for five months, several years ago.”

Five months. He was thirty-eight years old. That didn’t bode well for having a long-term romantic relationship with him.

Some of the flutters she’d been feeling settled into resignation.

“Who was she?” Julie asked, making sure her expression remained light. “Maddy’s mother?”

“No. I just had a one-night stand with Maddy’s mom. It was stupid. We didn’t use protection. And so we had Maddy.”

“You never thought about something serious with her?”

“God, no. We don’t even really like each other. I mean, she’s fine. We get along as well as we need to for Maddy. But there’s not anything there.”

“So who was the woman you were with for five months?”

“She was the younger sister of a college buddy of mine. I guess I was around thirty when we went out. She was cute. And sweet.”

“So why didn’t it last?”

He did his usual half shrug. “Things were starting to fizzle.”

“What does that mean?”

“It was fun and exciting at first, but then it wasn’t.”

“And you didn’t think there was enough between you to get through the less fun and exciting times of life?”

She shouldn’t have been asking him about his personal life, but she really wanted to know, and he didn’t seem to resent her questioning.

“I guess not. Shit.” He lowered his eyes and stared down at his cast. “Maybe I do up and run anytime things get hard.”

Despite the fact that he was just recognizing what she’d already sensed about him, she didn’t like that he sounded so disappointed in himself. It might be true, but it wasn’t true enough to really encompass who he was.

She put a hand on his arm. “It might be true in some things,” she said, “but it’s not true in everything.”

“You have no evidence of that. I told you once that you run when things get interesting, but at least you don’t run when things get hard.”

She remembered that previous conversation—it seemed like ages ago now—and she felt another flicker of connection with him. Like maybe they weren’t as fundamentally different as they seemed. “I do have evidence. You haven’t walked away from Maddy, and I bet she’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done.”

His face tightened briefly. “Yeah. She is.”

“So you can commit. You can stick around when things get difficult. It’s just a matter of what you choose to commit to.”

His eyes warmed as he smiled at her. “You think so?”

“Yes. I do.”

“We’ll go with that, then.”

They were silent for a few minutes, lost in their own thoughts, until Julie realized that she was still touching his arm. She gently pulled her hand away.

“What’s wrong with Maddy?” she asked, deciding there was no reason to keep holding back the question.

“They don’t know. It’s some sort of neurological thing. Her brain isn’t working quite right.”

“She seems okay.”

“Yeah. Sometimes she’s fine, but sometimes she can’t even get out of bed. She gets terrible headaches, and then other times she can’t move her arms or legs. Sometimes she can’t remember what happened the day before. They say it’s slowly degenerating her brain cells. One doctor said she has less than a year.”

“And there’s nothing they can do?”

“In the last two years, they’ve thought it was three different diseases, and they tried treatment for all of them. Every time, we get encouraged, hoping it’s going to get better, but it never does. It’s something else. Because they can’t diagnose it, they don’t know what to do. It’s hard to treat a disease when you don’t really know what it is. They can treat some of the symptoms, but that doesn’t take care of the problem.”

“What does the doctor at Johns Hopkins say? Was he who you were talking to this afternoon?”

“Yeah.” He slanted her a look. “How did you know?”

She dropped her eyes, feeling foolishly shy. “Just a guess. You looked…like you weren’t happy about the conversation but were trying to hide it.”

“I was. He doesn’t have any better answer than the doctor at Duke has. He did say he has an idea for treatment, even not knowing what’s causing it.”

Julie felt her heart unclench. “Oh. That’s good. If it works, it doesn’t really matter if they don’t have a name for the disease.”

“I guess. I mean, yes. It’s something. It’s better than nothing. I just don’t understand why they can’t figure it out, with all the medical capabilities they have now.”

“Maybe they will,” she murmured, reaching over to put her hand on his arm again, wanting to make sure he knew she was feeling for him. “And maybe this treatment will work.”

“I know. I’m not giving up hope. I’m doing some research to see if there are any more specialists I can take her to.” Despite his words, he sounded glum, resigned.

She couldn’t stand to see him hurting so much. She slid a hand up to gently cup his cheek. She had no idea what to say, so she just touched him.

He met her eyes. “I never thought having a kid would be easy, you know. But I never knew it would rip you up like this.” He lifted a hand to cover hers on his cheek, and held it for a long moment.

Finally, Julie pulled her hand away. “That’s exactly right,” she said, leaning back against the sofa. “What family does, I mean. It puts you together and then rips you apart. Over and over again.”

Eric leaned back too, but he turned his head so he was still looking at her. “Is that what happened with your parents?”

“Yeah.” She felt a familiar wave of grief. Not as intense as it had been before, but still just as sharp and aching. “Not quite, of course. Parents aren’t the same as children in something like this. But it was six years for me. Of slowly being ripped apart.” Her eyes burned unexpectedly, and she turned her head so he wouldn’t see the tears.

He reached out and turned her head so he could see her face. “They were lucky to have you.”

“Not lucky. They’d been good to me all my life. The least I could do was be good to them too.”

“Were you relieved at all? When it was finally over?”

She took a raspy breath as a surge of emotion and recognition overwhelmed her. She hadn’t even known it was true before, and it was absolutely horrible to admit. “A little,” she choked. “I was.”

He reached over and wrapped an arm around her, pulling her into his chest. She didn’t cry, but she shook against him a few times—feeling known, valued, comforted in a way she couldn’t ever remember being.

“I shouldn’t have been relieved,” she said at last, not yet pulling out of the grip of his arm.

“I think it would have been impossible not to be. They were suffering, and you were suffering with them. You gave them your life for all those years. So now is your time to take it back.”

She cleared her throat, suddenly terrified by his words. Not just that he knew her so well but that he was suggesting something she wasn’t sure how to do. “That’s not so easy. I don’t even know what I want.”

“So you figure it out. And then you do it.”

She gave a huff of amusement. “As easy as that?”

“Why not?” He leaned over to nuzzle her hair. “I wonder if we’re really as different as we seem. We’re just two sides of the same coin. You don’t know how to make things easy on yourself, and I don’t know how to make things hard.”

Never in her life would she have dreamed she was anything like Eric Vincent. She tilted her head up so she could see his face, and she gasped at the fire in his eyes.

Before she could say anything, do anything, a voice came from the other side of the room. “Daddy?”

They both jerked and straightened up. “What’s the matter, kiddo?” Eric asked, seeing Maddy standing there in her pajamas. “Can’t you sleep?”

“No.”

“Do you have a headache?”

“No.” The girl was looking carefully between her father and Julie, and Julie was almost sure a little smile started at the corner of her mouth. “Can I come and watch with you for a while?”

“Sure.” Eric patted the couch beside him, and Maddy ran to climb between him and Julie. Julie switched the channel to something kid appropriate while Maddy pulled a fleece throw over her, flapping some of it over to Julie so she could share.

When Eric repositioned his arm, it was around both Julie and Maddy.

Julie had never experienced anything like it before—that sense of warmth and companionship and affection.

But she loved it, and she was in no hurry for it to end.

When Maddy fell asleep on the couch, Eric said, “I guess we should get her into bed.” He wished he were mobile so he could just get up and carry the girl. He hated to wake her.

“I can help her,” Julie said, gently putting an arm around the girl and helping her stumble groggily back to her bedroom.

Eric waited for a minute until Julie returned.

“She’s okay?” he asked.

“Yeah. She didn’t really even wake up.”

Eric had the strongest yearning as he looked at Julie, tousled and gentle and fond as she gazed down at him.

He wanted to be with her again. He didn’t want to let her go.

He’d never opened up with anyone the way he had with her, tonight and other nights before. He’d never wanted to know anyone as deeply as he wanted to know Julie. And he couldn’t stand the thought of having to go to bed when she was so far away from him.