Regrets Only (23 page)

She
opted not to mention the eerie feeling she’d had that someone was watching her,
or the man with the spiral notebook who gave no evidence whatsoever of being
menacing. Still, she felt off-kilter for the rest of the evening and had
trouble staying focused on their conversation.

“You
okay?” he asked finally. “I didn’t embarrass you, did I?”

“No,
of course not,” she said. “I’m just really tired, that’s all.”

In
illustration of this point, Suzanne shook her head vehemently when the petite
waitress stopped by to ask whether they wanted another round. “Together or
separate?” she asked.

“Separate,”
Suzanne said firmly, giving Dylan her best uncompromising look. He opened his
mouth to object, and then rolled his eyes, muttering something about stubborn
feminists.

The
waitress returned with a check for each of them, and an extra bit of receipt
paper, on which she had scrawled a phone number. “I don’t mean to be too
forward,” she said, looking at Suzanne. “But if y’all aren’t together—?”

Suzanne
shook her head no. Then she realized what was happening.
Did girls really do
this?

“Okay,
good,” said the waitress. “Well, Mr. Burke, I’m a
huge
fan, and I don’t
know how long you’re in town or anything, but I’m off in an hour and some
friends and I were going out to have a good time. If you’re interested, we’d
love for you to join us.”

“That’s
really nice, sweetheart, but I think I’m going to make sure my friend here gets
home all right and then go straight to bed. Maybe some other time, okay?” He
left the number sitting on the table where she’d put it. The waitress looked a
little crestfallen, but clearly not ready to give up.

“Don’t
be silly,” said Suzanne. “I’ll be fine. You should go. Have a good time.”

Dylan
raised an eyebrow at her, which the waitress obviously took as an encouraging
sign.

“Yeah,
seriously, you should, Mr. Burke. How can you turn down a bunch of hot girls
who know how to party?” Suzanne thought the poor little waitress sounded like a
bad commercial for a phone sex line. Apparently, though, she thought the reason
Dylan hadn’t scooped up her number was that she was
too
subtle. She
licked her lips, leaned over and began whispering in his ear.

Suzanne
couldn’t hear what was being said, but she saw Dylan turn bright red. “Wow,” he
said, when she had pulled back and stood waiting for a verdict. “I tell you
what, sweetheart, I’ll put your number in my pocket, and if I think I can
handle…
that
, you’ll be the first one I call.”

Taking
this as a potential acceptance of what was obviously quite an offer, the
waitress scooted off, arching her eyebrows as she looked back over her shoulder
at him. Dylan reddened again and turned back to Suzanne.

“I
didn’t think you would embarrass so easily,” she said.

“Embarrassed?
Hell. Try
terrified
.” Dylan looked at the disappearing form of the
waitress and shuddered. Suzanne noted, however, that he did not take the number
out of his pocket.

In
the parking lot, he looped her missing scarf around her neck, and lingered at
his truck for a moment, considering. “Will you be offended if I offer to follow
you home? I have only honorable intentions.” He made a little mock bow.

“What,
you think I can’t handle myself? I need some big, strong guy to protect me?”

“Not
you,” he said. “You don’t seem like the type who needs rescuing, Scarlett. I’m
more worried about the poor idiot who’s stalking you. But I know you don’t need
some macho asshole running your life for you. I’ll see you around.”

He
started to get in his truck and she thought about the guy with the spiral
notebook with a slight shiver. She put a hand on Dylan’s arm. “Um, actually,”
she started.

“Yeeees?”
he said.

Why
did this guy insist on needling her all the time?

She
spoke deliberately with no exaggerated accent or batting eyelashes. “I would
really appreciate it, Dylan, please, if you would follow me back to my condo
and make sure that no one is there before going home.”

He
bowed again and tipped his baseball hat. “Ma’am, I am at your service.”

Dylan
not only walked her to the door when they got to her condo, he followed her
inside, making an elaborate show of checking all the closets and even the
balcony. Suzanne couldn’t tell whether he was serious or still making fun of
her, but something about having another human being here with her was
comforting.

“Do
you want anything?” she asked, getting a bottle of water from the fridge. “I
have beer, or I can make coffee.”

“That’s
okay,” he said. “I think I’d better go.”

You
mean you really came all this way just to check my closets?
“You sure? I hate for you to
have come all this way for nothing.”

“You
took your posters down,” he remarked, looking at the dining room.

“Oh,
yes,” she said.
Because I decided to track down the guy I was almost engaged
to fifteen years ago
. The thought struck her suddenly as completely
ridiculous.

“Here,”
she said, handing him a chilled bottle of water. “For the road. If you decide
to call that little waitress, it sounds like you’ll need to be hydrated.”

“Thanks,”
he said, taking it. If she had been hoping this conversational bait would lead
him to illuminate his further plans for the evening, or to deny that he might
call the kinky little waitress, she was disappointed. He looked at her with a
curious expression, and then kissed her forehead. “I gotta go, Scarlett. I’ll,
um…I’ll call you.”

She
closed the door behind him and sank against it until she reached the floor. She
sat there for a while, wondering about the mystery that was Dylan Burke. She realized
it was the first time a guy had told her he’d call and she was neither sure if
he would, or more important, whether she wanted him to.

“Now
you know how we
normal
girls feel,” Marci said. “You know, those of us
who aren’t a perfect size six blonde bombshell with a line of guys around the
block waiting to fall at our cute little feet.”

“Oh,
shut up,” Suzanne countered. “I seem to remember a time in the not so distant
past when you had your pick of at least a couple of different guys. Didn’t He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named
drive all the way from Austin to try to win you back?
Asshole!
”

Suzanne
said, “Asshole!” in this ritual way every time she referred to Marci’s old
flame Doug in conversation, the way superstitious old women sometimes spit to
ward off ill luck.

“That
was an exceptional situation,” Marci said. “That kind of stuff happens to
you
all the time.”

They
were sitting in massage chairs at Fab Nails III, a small salon around the
corner from Marci’s house in Alpharetta, soaking their feet in warm water with
some kind of blue stuff in it. Suzanne had followed Jake’s text instructions
and driven to his and Marci’s house first thing that morning, bearing a gift of
blueberry bagels with honey cream cheese, Marci’s favorite.

Their
reconciliation was quick and tearful. It began with hugging and crying and
ended with both of them swearing that they couldn’t remember what they were
fighting about but that they were each positive it had been her own fault
entirely.

Jake
had watched this scene with bemusement. “
Chicks
,” he said, shaking his
head as Marci bawled and Suzanne rummaged in her purse for tissues.

They
had both glared at this misogynist utterance, which apparently reminded him
that he had some footage to edit in his basement workspace right away. He dug
in the paper bag until he found his favorite “everything” bagel and ran away
with this and a large thermos of coffee. Suzanne noticed as he rounded the
corner heading for the basement that Jake was not yet showing any signs of
sympathy weight gain from Marci’s pregnancy. He still looked great, even in
loose jeans and a ratty old t-shirt.

“Ahem,”
Marci had said, clearing her throat and arching and eyebrow. “That one’s mine,
remember?”

Suzanne
stuck her tongue out at Marci, laughing. “Don’t worry, no danger there. Jake
was the only guy I could never win over, remember?” She put her hand lightly on
Marci’s little belly bulge. “He was meant for much better things.”

This
had prompted a fresh round of tears and hugging; so it was another hour before
they had managed to get to the nail salon, where Suzanne was catching Marci up
on all that she’d missed during their time apart.

“Anyway,”
Marci was saying, as she obediently lifted her left foot out of the water for
the pedicurist, “it sounds like you have nothing to worry about. He obviously
cares about you.”

It
might as well have been twenty years ago: the two of them spending a Saturday
together, talking about boys. “Maybe, but…” Suzanne said. “I don’t even know if
I
want
more from him.”

“Yeah,
that would suck,” Marci said, her voice dripping with sarcasm, “to have an
attractive, sweet, rich guy who can sing like an angel show an interest in
you.”

“An
attractive, sweet, rich guy who’s featured in
People
every week, with a
family who’s in the tabloids every other week, who goes on tour for months at a
time and has girls
literally
throwing themselves at him. You should’ve
seen that waitress last night. She might as well have just given him a blow job
right there at the table.”

The
small Asian woman working on Suzanne’s feet looked up sharply. “Sorry,” said
Suzanne. “But seriously, Marci, she basically offered him at least a threesome,
if not more than that, while we were paying our checks. Right in front of me.”

“Yeah,
but obviously he didn’t take her up on it,” Marci argued. “Did he?”

“I
don’t know,” Suzanne admitted. “He still had her number in his pocket, as far
as I know, when he left my place. Who knows what he did next? He can do what he
wants. He’s Dylan Burke!”

The
other pedicurist, now using what looked like a cheese grater to exfoliate
Marci’s feet, looked up now. “Dylan Burke?” she said, and Suzanne was instantly
embarrassed that she’d been assuming the woman didn’t speak English. “I love
his music! What is that song, with the little boy?”

Suzanne
shrugged. The nail tech turned to the woman working on Suzanne’s feet and said
something rapid in Vietnamese. The latter shook her head, obviously not a Dylan
Burke fan. She turned back to Marci for help. “Come on, you know, the little
boy, his parents are splitting up…Ugh! Makes me cry just talking about it.”

“
Duct
Tape Fixes Everything
!” Marci squealed.

Then
she began to sing, “…and when I sat him down to tell him, I’d be moving out for
good, he brought that silver roll to me and said he’d do all that he could…”

Now
the little pedicurist
and
the customer in the chair on the other side of
Marci joined in. “He said, ‘Daddy don’t you worry, Daddy don’t you cry, I’ll
tape you back together, It’s gonna be alright…’”

Other
people at the salon were watching now, as big tears rolled down Marci’s cheeks.
So that’s pregnancy
, Suzanne thought. Then she noticed that the other
women looked misty-eyed, too.
Jeez.

 “Okay,”
she said quietly, once the singing and resulting female bonding had died down
and the other women moved on to a different conversation. “You see? This is
exactly my point. Look at the effect that stupid song has on you, and all these
other women. Can you imagine dating the guy who sings it? How would you feel if
women were crying and swooning at Jake’s football videos?”

“I’ve
cried several times at his work,” Marci said defensively.           

“Of
course,” said Suzanne. “Me, too. But that’s not the point.”

Marci
looked ready to argue this, so Suzanne added quickly, “Anyway, I’ve been trying
to track down William.”

“William
who?” Then Marci gasped. “
William?
Why on earth would you do that?” As
always, Marci did not bother beating around the bush.

“Well,
I’ve been thinking about what you said about how I’ve dumped all these men for
stupid reasons and then I complain about being alone…”

“I
never said that!” Marci snapped.

“Yeah,
Marce, you did. Though I think you might have said ‘idiotic’ reasons. And you
know what? You were right. I looked at the list of all the guys in my past and
I realized that I did have ridiculous reasons for breaking up with some of
them.”

“Now,
wait, you can’t take that seriously. I’m hormonal; I was upset…”

“You
were
right
,” Suzanne repeated. “I can’t keep going along, waiting for
true love, thinking the next guy might be perfect. Maybe not everyone is meant
to have the fairy tale romance like you and Jake.”

“Our
romance was not exactly a fairy tale either,” Marci corrected. Their
relationship had definitely been rocky, including—at one point—a broken
engagement.