Triple Love Score (16 page)

The breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon helped her hangover, but the buzzing of her phone didn’t. Finally, she pulled it out of her pocket, trying to think of what to text Ronan. Maybe a Merry Christmas and that she would call him later. Only she didn’t want to call him later. She wanted to stay in Connecticut and make gingerbread houses. She wanted to watch Linden and Stanton play the Pretty Princess game Santa brought Lynn. She wanted to finish her conversation with Scott.

But the text messages weren’t from Ronan. It was Danielle. Call me. Over and over and over again. Call me.

“Excuse me,” she said to the others at the breakfast table. She saw Scott wince as she rose, then avert his eyes from hers.

The phone rang its weird overseas ring almost a dozen times before Danielle picked up.

“Miranda,” she said. “Finally. I need to ask you something.”

“Something? Something that required twenty text messages. Are you okay?”

“Yes and no. Just let me ask you. I want one thing to go the way it’s supposed to, okay? Okay?”

“Okay.” Miranda could tell by the watery sound of Danielle’s voice that she had been crying. Not just a little crying, but hours of crying. She could see in her mind’s eye the face of her best friend with red blotches on her forehead and cheeks, her eyelashes framing her eyes in stark, watery relief. “What is it? What do you need?”

“Will you be my bridesmaid? This week?”

At first Miranda hoped she had judged wrong, maybe those weren’t tears of sadness she heard. Maybe it was all okay, just the phone connection overseas. “Yes, of course. But this week?”

“Your passport is good, right? You keep that ready. I know you keep that ready.”

Miranda smiled. Danielle knew her too well. “I do keep it ready. When do I need to get there by? But wait, you aren’t pregnant or something? Omar’s family isn’t making this a shotgun wedding are they?”

Then her friend began to wail. Not cry. Not sob. But wail. Through the breaks in her crying, Danielle struggled to get out the words. All Miranda could make out was growth and uterus.

“Wait, you have something wrong?”

“Yes,” Danielle said. She sucked hard at her breath and sighed. “The doctor says there is something wrong with me, and that in my condition I can’t travel or work for many months. They said I need to go to the American hospital as soon as possible. Omar is marrying me, so that I can stay in the country and get the treatment without losing my job and my visa. He says he loves me and wants to marry me, but I think it is just to be nice. But I don’t care. I can’t care. I’m stuck anyway.”

“Oh, Dani, he does love you. He’s loved you for years. He’s just been afraid of his family.”

Omar’s voice sounded in the background. “See,” he said. “I told you. I love you. I’m sorry about my family. But please, Dani, none of that matters now.”

“See, Dani, none of that matters now. Omar is right. It’s going to take a bit of time for me to get to you. It’s a long flight, but I will see how soon I can get there. When is the wedding?”

“I’m waiting for you. As soon as you can get here, we will have the ceremony.”

“I will try. Let me go, so I can start calling airlines.”

Miranda slipped the phone back into her pocket and turned to go back to the dining room. Avery would have a travel agent or some assistant who could help. She would need to go home to New York first, then drive down to JFK to fly out. Maybe there is a direct flight to Istanbul. So lost in her thoughts, Miranda didn’t notice Scott waiting in the doorway to the dining room. She walked straight into his chest. Instead of pulling away, she started to cry.

“What? What?” Scott said. “What did that guy send you now?”

Miranda could scarcely catch her breath. “It’s not him. Danielle. Dani. My friend. You know her. She teaches English in Turkey. She’s getting married this week, and she just asked me to go. I have to fly to Turkey.” She kept crying, not caring about the snot running down her face.

“Randa, this isn’t making sense. Why are you crying? A surprise wedding is a good thing. A trip is nice. What else is it?”

“There’s something wrong with her, some growth, and the doctor said she can’t travel and needs treatment. She asked me to come.”

Scott took Miranda by the shoulder and looked into her eyes. “Is it cancer?” he asked.

Hearing the word she learned to avoid made it even harder to stop crying. “I don’t know,” she blubbered out.

Scott ran up the hall and returned with a box of tissues from the den. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

“I need a flight to Istanbul, but first I need to go home and get my passport.”

“Do you want me to go with you?”

“To New York?”

“To Istanbul.”

Miranda couldn’t say anything at first.

Lynn’s voice carried into the hall from the den. “Grandpa, you landed on red, so you get the red earrings to wear not the purple.”

“You can’t. You have Lynn,” Miranda said.

“Lynn is going skiing with my parents. Let me come with you. I don’t want you to face that alone.”

It wasn’t until they were on the interstate the next morning that she remembered Ronan. And actually she didn’t remember him. Scott did. “How’s the big fella going to take to this?” he asked. He drummed his fingertips on the steering wheel in time to some top-forty song that came in on the radio. He hummed and swiveled his head from side to side, checking the rearview mirror.

Miranda watched him trying to be nonchalant about the question; it quelled her own minor panic about that thought. Ronan. He would be leaving in two days, and there would be no time for her to say goodbye. No more time for her and Ronan at all. She scanned her body for a twinge of regret. Of something. But nothing surfaced. Scott accelerated around a slow-moving truck. She watched the tension in the muscle on the top of his thigh tighten and then ease as he changed lanes again. The car just glided forward, a rocket over the highway.

“I don’t know. He’s leaving in two days anyway. I’ll call him when we get to my place. I’ll tell him what happened. He’ll understand.” She pulled out her phone and scanned the naughty stream of texts he had sent her over the weekend. Each one more strongly worded than the last. Merry Christmas was her only reply. After everything with Danielle, Miranda lost her appetite for Ronan. It’s like her time with Ronan happened, only it was a very long, long time ago, like a memory of something you read in a book.

Inside her apartment, the cheery Christmas tree waited. Half empty wine glasses stood like sentries on every flat surface in the apartment. The sheets were still tangled across the unmade bed. “Sorry about the mess,” she said, knowing exactly what it looked like. Her cheeks burned.

“No, it’s fine. Nice place. You work close by?”

“Just two blocks that way.” She pointed out the front window with a wine glass in her hand. She gathered a few up and put them in the kitchen sink. “I just need to get my passport and pack some clothes, okay? Make yourself comfortable.”

Scott sat uneasily down on the sofa and picked at the Scrabble board left on the coffee table. “A poem sculpture?”

Miranda remembered it. Her cheeks burned again. “Ambrose asked for valentines.”

“Oh,” Scott said. “That would make for a good Valentine’s day. Or is that night?”

Her cheeks got worse.

“It’s okay, Miranda. Nothing I haven’t seen. Or rather done before.”

“I’ll just be a minute,” she said, slipping into her bedroom and closing the door. After getting her breath back, she slipped her phone out of her pocket and dialed Ronan.

“You’re back early,” he said.

“Yes and no,” she said. “I’m leaving.” She explained to him about Danielle and Turkey.

“But I won’t see you?”

“No, Ronan. I have to go.”

“I can change my ticket. I’ll go with you.”

Outside, snow began to fall. If they didn’t start back soon, the roads would be a mess. “No that’s okay. I’m fine. Really. I’m fine. You need to get back.”

“I’ve been gone for three years. I don’t need to go anywhere. Don’t be like this. You’re at the apartment? I’m coming over.”

“Ronan, don’t come over. Please don’t come over.”

“None of that now. You are being silly. I miss you. We only have a little bit of time, Miranda. We shouldn’t spend that in a silly conversation.”

She could hear him tugging on his coat and pulling the door shut to his apartment. She massaged her temples. “Ronan, don’t come. Scott’s here.”

“Scott? The one from Thanksgiving?”

“Yes.”

“You leave me for two days and come back with the one from Thanksgiving? What is going on here? I am coming over. This can’t happen like this, Miranda. We were supposed to have these days. I love you. I thought you felt the same. Or at least you were starting to feel the same.”

“It’s not like that, Ronan. Please don’t come. I am leaving as soon as I pack. I need to go to Danielle. She is like a sister to me. Please don’t do this.”

“Don’t do what, Miranda? Don’t be in love with you? After the last few weeks, what did you think I was playing at?”

“But you already had your plane tickets. What were you playing at?”

“I thought it would change things. I thought leaving wouldn’t matter. I could come back.”

“But you never mentioned that. You always said this was all it was. Just a few weeks.”

“But what if we stayed together? Wouldn’t you want me to come back? Wouldn’t you want to be together?”

“Ronan, I never looked at it like that. You said you were leaving. I believed you.”

“I also told you I loved you, Miranda. Didn’t you believe that?”

“People always say that. They don’t mean it. It doesn’t stop them from leaving.” She could feel her voice getting louder.

“Randa?” Scott knocked on the door. “You okay?”

“I’m okay,” she said, “just packing.”

“What’s that? You’re okay? Are you talking to him? You can’t even talk to just one of us at a time? Maybe I was wrong about you, Miranda. I never expected you would be the type to use a person like this. And not just any person. A student.”

“A student? Ronan, it’s not like that. You know it. You said so yourself.”

“What’s it like then?”

“It’s like … nothing.”

“Miranda, nothing doesn’t hurt like this. I love you. Please tell him to go and let me go with you. We can forget these two days and just go on. Can’t we do that?”

“Ronan, I don’t want to forget these two days any more than I want to forget the last few weeks. Right now I just want to get to my friend. This isn’t about you and me. I need to go. Be fair. Your plane is in three days. Don’t do this.”

“Too late, Miranda. We already happened. Good luck on your trip.”

Then the phone went dead. She held it in her hand, staring at it. She saw her tears bubble up on the screen before she realized she was crying. She hadn’t heard herself crying either, but Scott did. He opened the door to the bedroom and wrapped his arms around her.

“It’s okay,” he said. “You’re okay here.”

“It doesn’t feel okay, Scott. He was upset.”

“But how do you feel?”

Miranda paused at the question. Feel? She never really considered it.

“Don’t wrinkle your forehead. Just stop and check in with yourself. How do you feel?”

“Check in with yourself? When did you get replaced with a hippie? What would your old Wall Street friends say?”

“It’s something we do with the kids. Don’t be sarcastic. Just try it, won’t you?” He stepped back.

“Honestly?” she asked.

“Yes, honestly. Have I ever led you astray?” He winked at her.

“Do you want me to answer that?”

“No, I want you to take a deep breath.”

Miranda closed her eyes and took a deep breath. At first she felt weird, like there was an itch all over her skin. Then she took another breath. She heard Ronan’s voice in her head. But it disappeared. She remembered Scott’s hug. And Danielle’s voice on the phone. How did all that make her feel, though? Resolved, she thought. She felt resolved. There were steps to be taken and a plane to catch. Scott. Ronan. They didn’t matter, at least not at this moment.

After a minute or two, Scott asked, “How do you feel?”

She considered his question before answering, scanning her thoughts a few more times. “Fine,” she finally said. “I feel really fine. Let’s do this.”

“Good answer,” Scott said. “Where’s your suitcase?”

W
ITH THE BAGS ALL LOADED in the trunk of Miranda’s car, the three fathers stood around the driveway of Avery and Stanton’s house the next morning.

“Looks clear to me,” Stanton said, peering at the weather app on his cell phone.

“Airline says on time,” Linden said.

“Looks like there’s snow in Vermont,” Scott said.

Lynn and Miranda just stood there, bouncing a little to keep warm.

The men did another round of comparisons.

Miranda finally broke in. “Daddy, it’s just a short trip.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Stanton said. “We were just checking.”

“I know.” Miranda straightened the lapels on his coat and kissed him on the forehead. “We will call when we land. Miss Lynn, will you escort these gentlemen back into the house?”