One Good Thing (22 page)

After several minutes had passed, I gave up looking at the door, and swirled my straw around in the glass instead. Condensation beaded on the outside of the drink.

When a pair of black shoes came into my field of vision, my head lifted.

Evan had come up next to me silently, a tall beer glass in his hand. “You’re here,” I said, which was basically the most inane thing I could have said.

He slid into the seat across from me. “Are you hiding from someone? I almost didn’t notice you.”

“The bartender gave me the evil eye for ordering soda, so I moved back here.”

He glanced at my drink and smiled. “No whiskey?”

I shuddered. “I think I’ve had enough whiskey to last a lifetime.”

“So,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “We’re going to be friends.”

“If that’s what you want,” I replied. “If you’d rather not see me at all, we can do that too.” But my heart was twisting as it rebelled against that possibility. Not see Evan? How could I avoid someone who’d become so important to me? “I can hang a curtain over my cubicle at work,” I said, a lame attempt at a joke.

“I don’t think we need to do anything that drastic.”

I squeezed the straw between my thumb and index finger, staring at that point instead of Evan so he wouldn’t see how relieved I was. “Tell me about your mother.”

“What about her?”

“What she’s like,” I said. Something about the shadow that had crossed over Evan’s eyes when we’d spoken earlier made me uneasy. It was like he was already preparing for the worst. Maybe if he thought about better times that shadow would fade.

“She’s energetic,” he said. “She’s one of those people who can’t relax for long. At some point when I was a kid, she started cleaning houses during the school day. And she still does it. She actually likes it.”

“That’s unnatural,” I said with a grin.

“I know.”

“But I noticed for a guy your house is pretty clean.”

“I keep things picked up but I’m not anywhere close to my mom. Pretty much the longest period of time she’ll sit still for is a Bears game, and even then she’ll get up and do things during the commercials.”

“Are you a football fan, too?” I asked. I didn’t think he’d ever mentioned the sport.

“Not really. My dad’s a huge Bears fan though. He likes to tell people it’s the reason he fell in love with her.”

“And their only child doesn’t like sports? You must have been a disappointment,” I said.

“I was,” he said, his mouth lifting. “When I was in grade school they bought me a jersey and tickets for a game. And they were both really excited about it … and after about ten minutes I asked if we could go to the Museum of Science and Industry. They were crushed.”

I laughed. I could picture him as a child with his parents, bored by football, wanting to learn about science instead; an odd tenderness clutched at my chest. “Did you leave?”

“They made me wait until half time in case I changed my mind.”

“And then you got your way? You must have been spoiled.”

He shrugged. “I’m an only child,” he said, as if it were natural that an only child be spoiled.

“Must be nice,” I said.

“I bet you were spoiled too,” he replied.

I shook my head. “Not by my mom.”

“What about your dad?”

I stared at the little carbonation bubbles rising in my drink. I didn’t want to talk about my dad after keeping the memories of him at bay for so long, but Evan was opening up to me, and it seemed only fair that I do the same. “Yeah, he basically undermined my mom’s efforts at being strict. He would buy desserts for us at a local bakery when my mom decided to cut sugar from our diets. He’d give Sienna and me money to go to the movies, and my mom wouldn’t find out about it until later. It drove her crazy,” I said with a slight smile.

It was the most I’d said about my father to anyone since his death. I realized I was tense, like I was waiting for the sky to fall or my heart to break or something to happen that I wouldn’t be able to recover from. And as the seconds ticked by, and nothing happened, nothing but a dull ache at the center of my chest, my body eased into a more relaxed posture.

I’d relived a memory, and I hadn’t been crushed by the pain. It was there, of course, always in the background—that feeling that there was a part of me missing, a part that was irrevocably gone—it hurt, but it didn’t swallow me. It didn’t shatter me like I’d feared it would.

“What was he like?”

Our gazes caught. “He was … he was always really calm, you know; things didn’t really frazzle him. I wish I could be more like him sometimes. He just kind of took in life as it came.”

“It’s a nice trait to have,” Evan commented.

“He had a German shepherd,” I said suddenly. “There’s a picture of him with it when he was little. I never found out the dog’s name.”

“Does your mom know?”

“Yeah,” I said. “She might. I should ask.” I paused. “I
will
ask.”

“Will you be going back to Springfield for Christmas?”

“Yeah, for a couple of days. Does your family have anything planned?”

He shook his head. “My mom has a treatment right before; she probably won’t feel like doing much. Usually she goes crazy decorating for the holidays, but she hasn’t even put up a tree this year.”

“Maybe you should decorate for her. I could help.”

He propped his elbows on the table. “Do you really want to?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“This isn’t just about you feeling sorry for me, is it? It’s not like we were ever really a couple anyway. You don’t have to make yourself available because you found out my mom is sick.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

He looked skeptical.

“I like being with you,” I said, staring at a point somewhere past his shoulder. “I always have.”

“Can you look at me when you say it?”

I met his eyes. “No.” And then I swallowed. And I forced myself to be honest because I thought he deserved honesty. “If I do I start to think that I might have been really stupid.”

I waited for his next remark, but all he said, after a short silence was, “I’ll call you with a good time for the decorations.”

My lips tilted in a half smile that was both rueful and amused. He wasn’t going to make things easy for me.

*

I brushed my hair in front of the full-length mirror in the hallway as I picked some lint off my black sweater. Alyssa was sitting in the recliner with a mug of coffee, peering at me over the back of it.

“I really don’t get this,” she remarked.

“You don’t have to get it.”

“Are you together or not?”

“No,” I scowled at my reflection in the mirror as I brushed my hair a little too vigorously. A tendril caught and yanked at my scalp.

“So you go from being friends with benefits to friends without benefits?”

“More or less.”

“Why?”

“Because I had a good thing, and I didn’t realize it. And I kept him at a distance when I should have let him in.”

And now it might be too late. He might be too fed up with me to try again. But I didn’t want to voice that fear out loud.

“That still doesn’t make sense.” She slurped her coffee noisily.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “This is about more than us … he needs me, so I’m going to do what I can.”

The slurping stopped abruptly. “I’ve never heard you say anything like that. Are you in love with him?”

I stopped brushing. My shoulders drooped; I seemed to deflate as I watched myself, like a sad little balloon. “Yeah,” I said. “I think I am.”

I missed him. And it wasn’t just the companionship, which was what I’d missed after Drew and I broke up. I missed Evan. I missed the way we’d been before our fight, before he’d pulled back from me—his nerdy jokes and his patience and gentleness, and the way he made me feel, sexy and confident and smart, like I was better,
more
than I’d ever imagined I could be.

Being friends wasn’t the same. It wasn’t enough.

“You should tell him.”

“I will,” I said. I wanted to, at least—I just didn’t know when. It felt selfish to bring it up now, like I was focusing on what I needed instead of what he needed. And he might not even want to get back together—maybe in the time we’d been apart he’d decided I didn’t deserve a second chance.

The intercom beeped and my hand flew to my throat.

Evan was here.

I realized that it was the first time he’d picked me up from the apartment to go somewhere. My stomach fluttered as I moved to the intercom to let him in. It almost felt like a first date.

*

I tried not to drink him in with my eyeballs when I met him at the door, but it was really hard not to. He looked unfairly sexy in that wool coat and those dark fitted jeans.

“Hi,” I said. “You look nice.” I could have slapped my forehead at how awkward I sounded.
You look nice
? And not even said casually, but a little breathlessly. Like I was a sixteen-year-old picking him up for a high school dance.

His lips twitched. “You do too.”

“So, where are we getting the tree?”

“The doctor advised against having a real one. But there’s a department store on the way to Schaumburg that has pretty nice artificial trees..”

“Okay, let’s do it.”

He stepped aside to let me pass. He didn’t take my arm or call me ma’am or make a stupid joke. I knew he would have before the Christmas party. My heart did a nosedive, and I wondered if I would ever have him back or if I’d pretty much destroyed my relationship with the only guy I’d ever loved.

I barely stopped myself from falling against him and wailing about how I didn’t want to lose him.

We were silent as we got in the car, and as we pulled onto the street and headed north. For a while, I thought we’d spend the whole day without talking to each other, but then Evan spoke.

“It’s not just the chemo,” he said.

I glanced away from the traffic in front of us to look at him. His fingers were tight on the wheel. “What do you mean?”

“She’s not reacting very well to it, but there are some days that are better than others. But even on the days that are better, she doesn’t act like herself. She’s scared or depressed, I don’t know. It’s almost like she’s afraid to do the things she normally does because she’s afraid to hope too much. Like she’s waiting to die.”

I didn’t speak for a minute as I soaked that in. I didn’t know what I could possibly say that would make him feel better. “Can you blame her for being scared?”

“No,” he said flatly. “But I’d like to think she’d fight it. For us if not for herself.” And then he shook his head. “That’s selfish, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know if that’s what I’d call it. You don’t want to lose her.”

“But being angry with her isn’t going to help anything.”

“You’re too hard on yourself,” I said. “It’s understandable to feel that way.”

“When your dad was in the hospital, did you feel that way?”

I forced myself to think back to those horrible hours when we’d waited and waited for something to happen, with all the machines hooked up to him beeping under the artificial lights, and Sienna’s quiet crying mingling with them into one noise. “No. I tried not to think about anything too much at all. I felt like if I let it all in, it would break me. And maybe it would have.” I looked down at my feet, pressed them closer to the heat vent for warmth. “My mom wanted me to see a therapist. She didn’t think my avoidance was healthy. But now I don’t know if I agree with her.”

“Why not?”

“I think at the time it was the only way I could deal with it. By not dealing with it. Does that make sense?”

“It makes sense to me.”

“And now … now that I’m far enough removed from it, I can look back without the pain overwhelming me. It’s there; it’s always there; but it’s not so … acute. I didn’t realize that until I started talking to you about it.”

Evan, without even trying, had opened my eyes to a lot of things. I’d been avoiding the possibility of loss for years. And I didn’t want to do that anymore. I didn’t
need
to do that. I might not have worked through my father’s death the way people thought was the right way, but I’d survived it.

All these years I’d assumed I was too weak to really confront what had happened. But now I could remember my father without breaking down. His loss hadn’t been the end of my world.

Life moved on, love moved on. It had happened without me even being aware of it.

And I didn’t want to be immobile while they swept past.

Especially not if it meant losing Evan.

I needed to tell
him
all of this. But I couldn’t just blurt it out on the way to his parents’ house, could I?

“What I’m trying to say,” I continued, mustering a smile, “is that everyone deals with things in their own way.”

“I know,” he said, oblivious to my inner musings. “I’m trying to be as supportive as I can.”

“Then it’s enough. Evan, having you there, knowing how much you care …”
How wonderful you are
(which I didn’t say, even though I was thinking it) … “You can’t do any more. You’re doing more than enough already.”

He glanced at me before he turned back to the road, his mouth curving. “Thanks.”

“For what?” I didn’t feel like I was doing much of anything except pointing out the truth.

“For making me feel better.”

“Oh.” I smiled, ridiculously pleased. “You’re welcome.”

We picked out a tree. The box didn’t fit in the trunk, so Evan tied it to the top of his car. And while we drove to his parents’ house, I kept glancing back, worried that it would slide off and cause an accident and there would be no Christmas cheer for anyone this year.

“My knots are perfect,” he said when he noticed.

I shot him a glare. “How do you know? Were you a Boy Scout?”

“Nah, I wasn’t really into all that outdoors stuff. But my obsession with bondage really comes in handy.”

A bad joke. I would’ve thrown my arms around his neck if he wasn’t driving. “You never tied me up.”

“You never asked me to.” He grinned, and I blinked, imagining being tied to Evan’s headboard, while he …
hmmm
.

I settled back in my seat for the rest of the ride, positive I had a really stupid smile plastered across my face. I let my mind wander. If we were together, really together, this was what it would be like on Christmas, we would pick out a tree together and joke in the car, and we would go home and decorate. We would make love and fall asleep next to each other. Wake up next to each other.