For the Love of a Lush (Lush No. 2) (30 page)

I
T TAKES
me nearly twenty-four hours before I get up the guts to tell Mel. We’re in the private sitting room of a bridal boutique while she waits for the attendant to bring in some more gowns.

"I need to talk to you about something," I tell her.

"Okay. What is it?"

"I haven’t been feeling well lately, you know?"

"Of course you haven’t. You’ve been through hell in the last few months, Tam." She reaches over and pats my hand. "It’s going to get better, I promise. Now that you’ve finally made a decision, things will settle down. I know it’s hard, but God, you’re beautiful and smart and young. You’ve got this fantastic future ahead of you. There’s someone out there waiting for you, Tammy. You’ll find him."

I sniff as tears spring to my eyes. Fucking hormones. "I think he might have found me already. Or
she
might have."

"What?"

"I’m pregnant, Mel." I watch her, waiting for her reaction. Terrified of what she—the very first person I’ve told—is going to say.

"You’re… Oh my God. Is it? I mean, there hasn’t been anyone else, has there?"

"It’s Walsh’s of course," I reply.

"When? You never told me!" She’s stunned to say the least.

"One time. We’re both so used to me being on the pill that we didn’t think of it. I probably would have remembered the next day, but that was the morning we found him passed out in the park. He’d gotten drunk, then he left me, and I was so torn up, I went to Austin and started working on Jenny’s tour. I just completely forgot that we hadn’t used birth control. God, I’m such an idiot."

Mel’s eyes are big and surprised. Her skin has gone a little pale as well. "What are you going to do?"

"I’m going to go to Texas and tell him. Then I’m going to come home and figure out how to be a mom."

She scoots closer to me on the loveseat and throws her arms around me. "I’m here," she whispers against my ear. "I’m here for you. Always."

Walsh

I
T’S DAY
fourteen since Tammy left, and I wake up for no reason at five a.m. Something is different. I don’t know what yet, but something’s going on. That feeling of the seismic shift I got the night Tammy told me we were done is back. I sit up in my bed, alert, listening to every little sound. The birds are doing their early morning thing outside, and I can hear the heavy clicking of the big grandfather clock that sits right above my bedroom. Colin is snoring from his room next door, and somewhere downtown, a truck accelerates.

I’ve never been particularly spiritual or religious, but since starting AA, I’ve learned to trust that there’s something bigger than we are out there. Something that exists in a never-ending swirl with us. We influence it and it influences us, and round and round we all go. Joss spent a bunch of time working with an energy therapist while he and Mel were split up, and he said that the universe is full of energy—we give it and receive it. When you hold on to negative energy, it affects everything—your body, your mind, your life.

My anger at Tammy and Joss was definitely negative energy impacting my life, and I’m surprised to find, as I think about it at five a.m. on a May morning, that I’m not angry anymore. I spent time with Joss. He’s not the same guy I grew up with—none of us are the same—but he’s still, at the core, my best friend. That probably won’t ever change. Even if we never saw each other again in this life, Joss Jamison would still be my best friend.

I also admit to myself that I haven’t been mad at Tammy for a long time, maybe even since before she came to Texas. I love her so much that it takes a lot of negative energy to be mad at her. But I’ve been mad
about
her—about the fact that we split up, about what I drove her to do, about losing faith in her, in our relationship. And mad about loving her—that I can’t seem to get over her, to let her go like I should. It’s infuriating to be so trapped in another person that you can’t see a life beyond them.

And here I am at five a.m., two weeks after Tammy left me, and I’m waiting. Waiting for something to happen, because the energy or whatever it is out there in the world is humming like a giant machine of change, and it’s coming for me. I can feel it.

I
SPEND
most of the early morning driving around the far east acreage, checking on how many cattle are still unbranded. Branding is a huge operation in the spring, and we spend several weeks checking and rechecking to make sure we’ve caught every new calf so that we’ll know how many head we have for auction when the time comes.

I’ve taken the quad so I can get to places that the trucks can’t. I’m heading back in right before lunch when my phone in my pocket vibrates. I pull the four-wheeler to a stop and take the phone out. It’s a Portland number, but not one I’m familiar with, so I take a deep breath and answer.

"Hello?"

"Is this Mr. DiLorenzo?"

"Uh…yeah." I don’t know who the hell this is, but if it’s going to get me more information to be Mr. DiLorenzo, then I will.

"This is Charlie at Rose City Movers. We just wanted to confirm that we’re doing the pickup this afternoon? One truck to storage and one truck to Austin, Texas?"

Holy fuck. A moving truck? She said she was going to move out of the house, but I didn’t think she was serious about doing it this fast.

"Yeah, man. What time did you say you’ll be there?"

"Four o’clock. 2733 Windcove Drive, right?"

"Yep, that’s right. And uh, how did you guys get this number?"

"It was the one in our records from your last move. Did you want us to change it to something else?"

I smile grimly, my mind coming to life in a way it hasn’t in months. "No, this is the number you need. Call here if there’s anything else."

"All right, Mr. DiLorenzo. We’ll see you this afternoon."

"Yes, Charlie, you will," I promise as I disconnect.

I look at the time, and then I thank God for the West Coast being two hours earlier. I’ve got about six hours. I start the quad back up and literally fly across the grazing land back to the ranch house.

"I need a few days off," I huff out as I find Ronny in the chicken coop, where he’s adding new nesting boxes.

He doesn’t even look up. "What’s going on?" he asks while he keeps stretching wire and tapping it down with small nails.

"I’ve got to go stop Tammy from making a huge mistake."

He finally quits hammering and turns to me. If I were to describe his expression, I’d say that it’s bemused. "You finally going to get her?"

I can’t help but grin. "Yeah, man. I’m going to go get my girl."

He goes back to hammering. "Good. See you when you get back."

W
HEN
I bought the house in Portland for Tammy, I told myself that it was all about her. I wanted to know that she had a roof over her head. It made me feel like the bigger person because, even though she had cheated on me, I cared enough to take care of her. It helped me plant myself in the martyr seat I’d built for Walsh the Betrayed. That house, even more than the money, made me feel better about myself, helped me think that I’d had nothing to do with the destruction of my relationship with Tammy even though I’ve always known deep down that it takes two to ruin any good relationship.

But when I got that call from the movers, it all became clear to me. I didn’t buy that house for Tammy—I bought it for
us
. I bought that house because I wanted Tammy to be there in it waiting for me when I was ready to come back. Only Tammy being Tammy, she changed the game on me by showing up in Texas then losing patience with my fucked-up ass when I couldn’t man up on her timetable. She’s always been impatient as hell, and I’ve always been a drifter, slow to come to decisions, willing to accept the status quo.

But I don’t have the luxury of time anymore, and it’s imperative that Tammy doesn’t move out of that house—
our
house—because I’m coming home.

I
PULL
up to the place at three fifty-five p.m. No moving truck is in the large circular front drive, and neither is Tammy’s Mercedes SUV, which I bought her for her twenty-seventh birthday. I leave the rental car on the far edge of the drive and jog up to the front door. I ring the bell and wait. Nothing happens, so I pull out the keychain I haven’t used in nearly a year and slide it into the lock. It still fits, and my heart beats out a little dance of thanks.

I walk quietly into the foyer, the black-and-white-checked marble on the floor gleaming in the late afternoon sun. I shut the door behind me and call out, "Tammy? You home? It’s me."

After a couple of minutes of no response, I take a moment to look around. The place is full of boxes. They’re stacked in the corners of the foyer, the hallway beyond, and the slice of living room I can see from here. Most are labeled "storage," but I see a stack in the hall that reads "Austin." I go to that batch and tap the lids. The sound is muffled, dense. I lift the top box and am surprised to find that it’s very light. Clothes. The Austin boxes are clothes. Everything else is going to storage.

I barely have a moment to process this when the doorbell rings. I swing it open and find myself faced with two guys in Bayside Movers shirts.

"Hi," the first one says, holding out a clipboard and a pencil. "You ready for us to start loading up the batch for storage?"

"Actually," I say, my smile growing wider, "there’s been a mistake. We won’t be needing your services after all."

"You sure?" He looks at me skeptically.

"Yeah, but I really appreciate you coming over." I take a hundred dollars out of my wallet. "Here. For your time. Maybe you guys can go grab a beer or something?"

"Right on. Thanks a lot," he says, grinning.

"Sure thing."

The guys go back to their truck and start it up. I close the door and stand there wondering where the hell Tammy is and what I’m going to say to her when she turns up.

It’s only a few moments before I hear the door in the kitchen shut and footsteps coming in my direction. She walks into the hallway and starts setting down her keys and purse. I watch her, not saying a word. She’s wearing a sundress with little straps and a skirt that hits her a few inches above her knees. It molds to her gorgeous breasts in just the right way and flows around her legs, skimming over that golden skin like a whisper.

Her hair is in a messy bun on top of her head, and her wrists jingle with stacks of silver bracelets I got her in India when we performed there a few years back. It’s when she removes her sunglasses that my heart does a double take though. There are circles under her eyes, deep smudges marring the otherwise perfect quality of her skin. Her lids droop and her shoulders sag. I can see how very tired she is, and it slices through me like a knife. I did this, and now it’s up to me to make it right.

"Tam?" I say softly.

She yelps and jumps back, spinning toward me, her eyes big and scared.

I move toward her. "Shh, shh, it’s okay. It’s me."

"Fuck, Walsh!" she exclaims. "You scared the crap out of me."

"I’m sorry, sweetheart. I really am," I answer, moving closer to her.

She folds her arms over her chest and juts her chin out. "What are you doing here?"

I put my hands in my front pockets so I won’t touch her. I have every intention of touching her a whole hell of a lot very soon, but I’m hoping to get her a little more amenable first.

"I got a call from the movers this morning, so I decided to come up and see for myself what’s going on."

"Well, you don’t need to worry. I’m not taking anything except my personal stuff—clothes, books, that kind of thing. You can check if you’re worried about it. And I wonder where the hell the movers are anyway. They’re supposed to be here by now."

"I sent them away," I tell her.

"What?" She scowls.

"I sent them away. See, Tam, we’ve got a problem here—"

"Oh no you don’t." She moves toward the living room, and I follow. "You can’t act like you don’t give a shit about all this for months and then show up at the last minute and interrupt my plans. If you’re that worried about your crap, you can check every box before it goes out the door, but I’m calling those guys and they’re going to come back and move my stuff—today."