Regrets Only (13 page)

Marci’s
anger turned to a rage Suzanne hadn’t seen since middle school. Her face was
nearly purple. “I. Beg. Your. Pardon.
Settled
? You’re saying that I
settled
for Jake?”

“No,
that wasn’t what I meant. I meant ‘settled’ like ‘settled down,’ not—”

“For
your information, that man in there asleep on the couch is ten times any man
you’ve
ever
been out with. He’s a good person. No, he’s a great person. He
loves me and I love him. And maybe his feet are smelly and our house is boring
and our relationship looks humdrum to you. But he would
die
for me, and
I for him. Can you honestly say that about any of the men on this list? Have
you ever cared about anyone more than you care about yourself?”

Struck
dumb by her friend’s rage, Suzanne could find nothing to say.

“Of
course not,” Marci said. Her voice was softer now, but Suzanne knew it was just
the deceptive blue core of the flame. “You think we’re judging you, Jake and me?
When we say something nice about a guy you obviously like, or at least liked
enough to sleep with? Or we show an interest in you and your life, you think
that’s selfish somehow?”

 Suzanne
shook her head. It was all going wrong. None of this was making sense.

“Meanwhile,
have you asked once how I’m feeling? Have you wanted to see sonogram pictures?
Have you offered to throw me a shower?”

“Shower?
I thought that would be…later? Of course I’ll—”

“Do
you even care that we’re having a girl?” Marci was sobbing now.

“A
girl,” Suzanne said softly, almost to herself. Of course it was a girl. She
didn’t even know they knew. Her tears flowed freely again. She reached for
Marci, who shrugged her off.

“We
found out last week,” Marci said, reading Suzanne’s thoughts. “But with
everything you’ve had going on I didn’t think it was the right time to tell
you. At this rate, though, she’ll be in college before your life is together
enough to care about my boring existence.”

“That’s
not fair,” Suzanne said. “Sit down. Come on.”

“I’m
sorry,” Marci said. “But I just can’t do this right now. I need to be away from
you for a while. Jake will be around if you need anything or if you’re…in
trouble.”

With
that, Marci whirled around and stormed out, dragging a half-sleeping and very
confused Jake behind her. “What’s going on, babe?” Suzanne heard Jake ask on
his way out the door, but she could not make out Marci’s mumbled answer before
the sound of the door slamming reverberated off the walls around her.

She
sank to the kitchen floor, despondent tears wetting her face. She couldn’t
remember the exact time, but she knew it had been years since she and Marci had
fought this way. As close as they were, they could both be horribly stubborn,
which meant a real fight could last a while. Still, somewhere in her mind a
seed was planted. It boded Easter hats and sundresses and pink frills, in all
of which Suzanne would delight, and which Marci would need convincing was
necessary. Princess clothes. Dress up parties. Barbie dolls.
A girl
.

There
hardly seemed any point in going to the office the next day, as Suzanne had
only one client and wasn’t meeting with Kate Burke for a couple of weeks. In
fact, she called Yvette and asked her to send the materials to her condo on
Monday instead of the office. Brave as she tried to be about it, the fact that
someone had been in her office and tampered with the ladder was too creepy for
her tastes. She’d relocate here for a few days. Decision made, she put on her
most comfortable pajamas and curled up on the couch to watch bad TV. She picked
up the phone, but couldn’t bring herself to call Marci. No surprise that Marci
didn’t call her, either.

Friday
evening, she turned down an invitation to play tennis with Rebecca the next day
and ignored a call from her mother. Saturday, she cleaned the entire condo from
top to bottom, including scrubbing the baseboards and dusting the ceiling fan
blades. Sunday she reorganized her closets and makeup drawers, and even with
her vast quantities of personal care items, this only carried her partway into
the afternoon. She called her mother back and pretended to be on her way out
the door so they wouldn’t have to talk about her prospects.

After
surfing through various reality TV programs for the next couple of hours,
Suzanne finally turned off her phone and went to bed early. There her frustration
mounted as she tried to sleep but couldn’t. Her mind raced, and her body went
from hot to cold, to hot again. By two a.m. her pink satin sheets were a
twisted mess and she could barely keep her eyes closed for more than a minute
or two. She gave up trying to sleep and went back to the living room.

Listless,
she picked up the pad where Marci had written all the notes about her previous
relationships. She smiled at the stars and arrows Marci had used to indicate
who she thought were key suspects. As she flipped through the pages, she
glanced more than once at the door to make sure it was dead-bolted.

This
is ridiculous. Hamiltons do not live in fear.
Tonight it was her father’s voice in her head; she
could hear him as though he were standing right there with her, helping her
with her homework.
It’s a problem to be solved, sugar, that’s all it is. You
just got to figure out which tools you need to solve it. Follow your strengths.

She
stared at the yellow pad. Her strengths had always been an eye for beauty, calm
in a crisis, and a strong sense of organization. Beauty didn’t seem to be
serving her well just now, and while she certainly had enough crisis to go
around, it seemed calm had failed her, too. That left organization.

Suzanne
went to her closet and dug out the posterboard, markers, and rulers she kept on
hand for emergency event signage. She poured herself a glass of wine and spread
out in the middle of the living room floor. She was not even sure which problem
she was trying to solve: the stalker, Marci, or maybe her whole damn life. She
knew only that it called for straight lines and color coding. In two hours, she
had taped several sheets of poster board to her dining room wall; neat
gridlines and symbols brought order to the chaos. She went to bed and slept
soundly until the sun was high in the sky.

#

Suzanne
got up just after noon, showered, and made fresh coffee. She had spent the wee
hours of the morning putting all the guys she’d dated since high school into a
well-organized, color-coded grid—thirty-four of them, she was a bit embarrassed
to discover. She had painstakingly listed each one in chronological order,
documenting next to each guy his occupation, length of time dated, and the
reason they had parted ways. She was hoping that if it didn’t lead her to the
identity of her stalker, it might at least help her figure out why she couldn’t
seem to find the right guy.

Marci
was right, Suzanne thought, though she was not ready to admit it out loud. For
one thing, when you looked at it in black and white, Rick seemed the likeliest
candidate to be the stalker. This in itself was a little calming. At least
being able to picture Rick with his pudgy white belly in the hotel room made
him seem less threatening. Suzanne thought she could call him, confront him,
and maybe get him to back off, or at least threaten him with a protective
order.

Marci
was also right that some of Suzanne’s reasons for ditching the men she had
dated were frivolous at best. This didn’t mean that she should have stayed with
those men, but maybe that she never should have dated them in the first place.
Suzanne had wanted so desperately to feel the soul-crushing love other people
seemed to have, she looked for it everywhere. Even in the places her instincts
told her she’d be unlikely to find it.

The
answer was William
,
she thought, sipping her coffee. Or at least, William was the question that
would lead to the answer. If Suzanne could figure out what went wrong with
William, she might be able to figure out what had derailed her entire love
life, which in turn had led her to meaningless sex, fighting with her best
friend, and a crazy stalker.

Suzanne
could have pictured herself with five guys—
maybe
—on this whole list. And
one, just one, who she could honestly say she’d loved. William Fitzgerald. If
she could find him, if she could figure out what went wrong, maybe there was
hope for her after all.

The
doorbell interrupted her reverie and reminded Suzanne that someone was coming
to drop off Kate’s wedding stuff today. She glanced down and realized she was
still in her silk camisole and pajama bottoms, even though it was nearly noon. Without
time to get dressed, she pulled her faded cotton robe over her shoulders and
went to the door.
Oh, well, I guess whichever messenger drew the short straw
gets to see me at my best
.

She
was relieved to see the UPS man standing there, rather than a member of Dylan’s
staff. With amusement, she thought that only Yvette would consider the entire
UPS system part of her “staff.” She opened the door and signed for the package
with a brief nod to the driver, who politely looked up at the ceiling rather
than at her state of undress.

The
package was long and narrow—oddly shaped for what she had been assuming would
be a couple of binders full of wedding information. She opened it to find a
similarly shaped box inside with a florist’s logo on it.
Flowers?
Suzanne opened the interior box curiously and found it filled with gorgeous
white calla lilies, her favorite. She could see a card shaped like a smiley
face attached.
Maybe this was an apology from Marci?
It wasn’t Marci’s
style, really, but so few people knew her favorite flower.

Ouch!
Shit!
She jerked back her
hand from the box and blood began to drip from her finger onto the box and the
chair where she had dropped it. She stuck her finger in her mouth and looked more
closely at the flowers, seeing shards of glass intermingled among the calla
lily stems.

Her
finger was bleeding profusely. The cut did not appear very wide, but it was
deep enough to create searing pain and quite a bit of blood. Suzanne ran to the
sink to wrap it in a damp paper towel while she looked for a bandage—a process
complicated significantly by the cast on her other arm. The doorbell rang
again, and she began to wonder whether she might still be asleep, having a very
strange nightmare. When she looked through the peephole to see Dylan Burke
standing there, she was sure.

“It
seems like every time I see you, you’re in some kind of trouble,” he said, once
she had opened the door and he saw her wounded finger. He put the binders—exactly
as she’d pictured them—on her kitchen table and followed her to the sink. “You really
are Scarlett O’Hara.”

“It’s
okay,” she said. “I’m fine. Just a little cut. Please excuse my…my appearance.”

It
was too late to do anything about it now, but her robe had fallen to one side
as she rushed about, and one shoulder was exposed, along with a good bit of
unharnessed cleavage.
Why hadn’t she at least slept in a t-shirt or
something?

“It’s
quite all right,” Dylan said, not bothering to hide either a lecherous stare at
her breasts beneath the lacy pajama top or a sideways grin at her predicament. She
tried to cover herself, but the casted arm wouldn’t cooperate. Dylan reached
out and helped her get the robe back up. She could feel herself going blotchy
with embarrassment, a rare state for her. At least, it had been rare until
these last few weeks. Lately it seemed she had spent half her life in a state
of humiliation.

“Thanks,”
she muttered.

“Ma’am,”
he said, in a mock cowboy tone, tipping his hand to the bill of his camouflage
cap in a salute. “Can I help you with the bandage, too?”

Suzanne
nodded and Dylan reached out for her injured hand. His playful tone
disappeared. “Jesus, what happened?”

“It’s
a long story,” she said.

“I’m
not busy,” he said, rolling the gauze around her finger with practiced skill. “Just
running errands for my baby sister and playing nurse to accident-prone event
planners, as you can see.”

“I
have to say I was wondering about that,” Suzanne said, grateful for a potential
subject change. “I am delighted to see you, of course, but I’m surprised that
you are the staff member Yvette assigned to deliver Kate’s wedding binders.”

“I’m
the highest paid errand boy in Atlanta.” He smiled. His soft Tennessee accent
was different, more casual than her dramatic Georgia drawl. “Nah, really, I
have a few weeks off before the summer tour and I always like to spend time in
Atlanta. I have an apartment here, actually. It’s nice to get lost in the
city.”

“Really?”
Suzanne asked, surprised.

“Well,
that and Kate didn’t trust any of my guys with her stuff. I don’t blame her,
honestly. They’re good guys, but I don’t see them having a deep understanding
of why fabric samples and magazine clippings would be so important to a girl.”

“And
you do have this deep understanding?”