Hearts on Hold

by Charish Reid

  Victoria blinked. “I don’t really have time for vacations these days.”

  He laughed. “Really? You guys get the whole summer off. What are you doing with your time?”

  “Scholarship and course prep,” she said through a clenched jaw. “If I’m lucky, I’m able to attend a couple conferences. I don’t think any teacher, k-12 or professor, gets the summer vacation people think we do.”

  “Easy, tiger,” Matthew held his hands up in defense. “People make plenty of assumptions about me too. Have you ever heard of lawyer jokes?”

  Victoria, who was officially drunk and now past the point of caring, rolled her eyes and made a face. “I’m sure they make you laugh all the way to the bank.”

  He shrugged easily. “I am pretty rich.”

  “Lovely,” she replied.

  “Let’s continue this cross-examination on the dance floor,” Matthew said. “I’m also a fantastic dancer.”

  “Uh...”

  Without waiting for her answer, he took her hand and dragged her to the dance floor where the smooth jazz had changed to a light bossa nova. Victoria followed because he was actually helping her to stay upright. Her head spun as he pulled her close to his body. One of his hands held hers aloft while the other rested on the small of her back, dangerously close to her ass.

  “I don’t think I know this dance,” she said, clinging to his shoulder. The room tilted slightly as they swayed around the other dancers.

  “Just follow me,” he whispered in her ear.

  Victoria followed him as best as she could, breathing heavily the whole way. She was certain that it was the tight bodice. The firm wires and plastic inserts not only kept her back straight, but they compressed her lungs, making it difficult to take a full breath. Her face felt hot and her chest strained against her neckline as she gulped for air. She regretted that last drink. The others put her at a comfortable buzz, but the last one shoved her over the line right into Matthew’s arms.

  “Your mom looks excited,” Matthew said as if he were proud of his handiwork. Victoria glanced over her shoulder, seeking out her mother’s ruby-red gown, and made herself dizzy in the process. She swiveled back to face Matthew and trained her eyes on the American flag pin on his lapel. She used the pin as an anchor and stared at it while Matthew prattled on.

  “Let’s try something else,” Victoria said to the American flag pin. “What kinds of books do you like to read?”

  “Books? I haven’t had to read a book since college,” he scoffed.

  Before she had a chance to voice her disappointment, Matthew did the unthinkable.

  He released her back and spun her away from his body.

  Before she realized she was being spun like a top, Matthew jerked her arm, sending her spinning back to him. Victoria landed with her back against his chest. With the wind knocked out of her, she gasped, fighting for any last scraps of air. He twirled her around to face him just as the edges of her vision blurred and faded to black. Victoria lost feeling in her lips and fingers as her knees buckled under her weight. Matthew wasn’t prepared for her body to crumple in his loose grasp, so when she slipped from his fingers and hit the floor, she hit it with a loud thunk.

  “Oh shit,” was the last thing she heard before darkness enveloped her.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Her father’s face, bathed in a soft light, was the first thing Victoria saw when she came to. Her hearing was fuzzy and her vision was still blurred, but she knew it was him. The same concerned expression knitted his brows just as it had when she fell out of a tree as a girl. Soon enough, her vision cleared, revealing she was no longer at the hotel ballroom. She was in her parents’ home, in her old bedroom.

  “You alright, honey?” Her father was still in his evening dress uniform, metals gleaming in her eyes. He dragged a heavy calloused palm over her forehead, checking her temperature. He puckered his lips as if he didn’t like what he felt. “Here, drink some water. You’re gonna be dehydrated in the morning.”

  Victoria slowly rose up on her elbows and looked around her bedroom. “How did we get home?” she croaked. Her mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton balls.

  Archie brought a cup to her lips and tilted it. Water had never tasted so delicious and satisfying in her life. And she hadn’t been so publicly drunk since college.

  “Oh no, Mom...” she trailed off, remembering her mother’s last words; no more champagne.

  “Shhh,” her father said, giving her more water. “Don’t worry about that. Your mother is still at the party.”

  Victoria wiped her mouth and met her father’s gaze. “How bad was it? Honestly.”

  Archie straightened up and placed the water on the nightstand. “Honestly? That boy, Matthew, said you took a dive like the mob had paid you off. Someone nearby, who didn’t know you were drunk, said that it was probably your tight dress. Hell, it looked like it was cutting off your circulation. Some young cadet rushed in with a saber to cut it off and all the women screamed. Then Jeffrey volunteered to cut the back of it with the Bowie knife he always keeps on him. Your mother got into a shouting match with him over the cost of the dress, but Robbins won in the end because you were still unconscious.”

  Victoria cringed, but after a quick check, she noticed that she was still wearing the dress and had full lung capacity. She rolled over slightly and felt the back. Her fingers found a jagged cut of fabric along her spine. “Good lord,” she murmured.

  “So Jeffrey and I flipped you over like the suffocated fish you were, and freed you. I mean that dress was tighter than a tick. As soon as you were able to breathe, you woke up coughing and then you threw up.”

  Victoria flopped down on her pillow. “Oh no,” she moaned.

  “At that point, your mother damn near passed out herself. But don’t worry, you threw up on Matthew’s shoes. He jumped around crying about Italian leather and ran off before anyone could help him. Jeffrey told your mother that this was the best retirement party he’d ever been to and she told him to go to hell. Honestly, he was right. It was pretty entertaining.”

  Victoria’s gaze slid over to his. “Dad...”

  “As far as everyone else was concerned, the dress was trying to kill you. No one knows you overdid it on whiskey and bubbly.”

  She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m never going to hear the end of this,” she muttered. “Mom is going to wear me out.”

  “When are you and your mother going to come to an understanding?” Archie asked, resting his elbows on his knees. “I swear, y’all been at it since the’80s.”

  Victoria opened her eyes and shot up from the bed. Another wave of nausea hit her as she righted herself. “Oof.” After another gulp of water, she pointed an accusatory finger at her father. “We’ve been at it? It’s always been a one-sided fight, Dad, and you know it. Absolutely nothing I do is good enough for her. I’m never ladylike enough, I’m not organized enough, I can’t find a husband. She’s been at me.”

  “Okay, okay, then when are you going to assert yourself?” Archie asked. “You wore the dress and you met her idiot blind date; how did that work out for you?”

  “Acquiescence saves us from the unnecessary arguments,” she said in a stiff voice. “If I battled her on everything, I’d never get anything done.”

  “Like I said: How’s that working out for you?”

  Victoria opened her mouth and then snapped it shut. He had her there. In her anxiety, she drank to calm her nerves. To avoid conflict, she wore the dress and got propositioned by a creepy lawyer. Victoria was the one who bore the brunt of her mother’s demands, and it rarely worked out in her favor. “I need to get out of this dress,” she said.

  “Sounds like a plan,” Archie said as he rose from his chair. “Your mom ought to be back in an hour or so, would you like me to hold her off?”

  “If
you can, that would be nice.”

  As he exited the room, her father paused before closing the door. “Maybe you can come up with a plan of attack for tomorrow morning. You need to tell your mother that you’re a grown woman.”

  From her bed, Victoria nodded. “Sure, Dad.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Just as her father said, Victoria was indeed quite dehydrated the following morning. It was around eight in the morning when she pulled herself out of bed and dragged herself to the bathroom attached to her bedroom. She drank directly from the sink until her belly was full, washed her face, and returned to bed. She would need to gather her strength if she was to go downstairs and confront her mother, who was still probably livid about last night’s events.

  Victoria went into her weekend bag and pulled out her laptop. No doubt, emails were piling up since she last checked. She decided to send off a few before getting dressed and facing the music like a grown woman. She absently deleted spam, campus-wide maintenance alerts, and events before one message caught her eye. She clicked on it and narrowed her eyes in confusion.

  “Friends of the Farmingdale Library, you’re cordially invited to the Halloween Masquerade Ball...” she trailed off and squeezed her eyes shut. “Oh, come on.”

  Another ball.

  This time, John would be in attendance.

  Victoria dragged her fingers down her face and groaned. She never wanted to go to another ball, gala, or black-tie party as long as she lived. Hadn’t her mother already set aside enough parties for her to pass out at? She looked down at the email again. Monday night? That was only the day after tomorrow and last she checked, Victoria didn’t have a costume for a masquerade ball.

  Should she go or should she stay away? Victoria was technically a Friend of the Farmingdale Library; she had the tote bag to prove it. She would have to have the messy conversation with John one day, there was no putting it off for weeks on end. Farmingdale wasn’t a large enough town for them to simply avoid one another. A fleeting memory of the short dance she’d shared with Matthew last night told her otherwise. In that moment, when she’d been in another man’s arms, she had desperately missed John. Her head tilted back against the headboard with a dull thud. She needed to talk to John, she needed to see him. She had to apologize for her behavior.

  Her gaze left the ceiling, where there were no straightforward answers, and landed on the wall near the door. The nearby bookshelf caught her attention. Victoria cocked her head to the side and squinted her eyes. No, it couldn’t be...

  She shoved the computer from her lap and slipped from her bed.

  Are you kidding me?

  A book sat amongst the literary criticism and theory books that she hadn’t touched since her PhD days. A small worn paperback with lines tracing its old spine. As she knelt to examine the shelf, Victoria’s hand flew to her mouth.

  “G.D. it.”

  There, in all its glory, sat For the Duke’s Convenience.

  * * *

  Fully dressed and ready to go home, Victoria marched downstairs with her weekend bag on her shoulder and a tawdry paperback romance in one hand. Her parents were in the dining room drinking coffee, when she stormed in and announced, “I’m going home.”

  Archie looked up from his morning paper, reading glasses perched on his nose. Katherine’s pursed lips hovered over her coffee mug. She was still dressed in a silk robe and satin bonnet. “Excuse me?” she said, setting down her mug. Archie’s chair slid from the table.

  “Stay where you are, Dad,” Victoria said. “I’ve got something to say to the both of you.”

  Her mother gathered her robe to her neck in disdain. “Archie, you better tell your daughter to watch her tone.”

  “Aw hell, Katherine, she’s your daughter too,” her father said, taking off his reading glasses. “What is it, Victoria?”

  “You see this book, right here?” She waved For the Duke’s Convenience in their faces. “This book is emblematic of how much of an idiot I am. This book proves what kind of stick-in-the-mud, prudish tight-ass I’ve been all these years. There’s a man, a beautiful librarian, in my town, who has been hounding me for the last couple weeks over this book. I was so hardheaded and stuck in my ways that I convinced myself I couldn’t make a mistake. But in reality, I don’t return library books on time because I’m a normal person who’s allowed to fuck up.”

  Her mother gasped and her father cleared his throat. “Young lady—” Katherine started.

  “No ma’am, that’s part of the problem. I’m not a young lady anymore.” Victoria glanced at her father who gave her a slight nod. “I’m a grown-ass woman who is allowed to think for herself. And for the first time in thirty-four years, I’m finally understanding that. John Donovan is back in Farmingdale waiting on me to commit to a relationship and I couldn’t because I was worried about you and your demands.”

  “Who the hell is John Donovan?” her mother asked.

  “The beautiful librarian,” Archie said.

  “I was so worried about being perfect for everyone, in every situation, that I managed to drive off the one man who likes me when I’ve got him in a sweaty arm bar. I could have brought him here to meet you, but I was worried about what you’d think of him. Moreover, I worried about what you’d do to him,” Victoria said, pointing at her mother. “If I couldn’t stand up to you, I didn’t want to subject anyone else to you.”

  Her mother’s eyes watered up with alarming convenience as she turned to her husband. “Am I that terrible of a mother?” she asked. “Have I not done everything I could to ensure she was a successful woman?”

  Her father chose not to answer. Instead, he placed his hand over hers and turned to Victoria. “Continue.”

  Victoria took a deep breath, and with a clear head, she addressed them both. “I love you both very much, but there is a reason why I haven’t seen you in ten months. I can’t be myself around you and that has to change if we’re to have a real relationship. Mom, you have to stop dictating how I dress, how I stand, and who I date. It’s got to stop. No more tight ball gowns, no more divorced lawyers.” Victoria finished her tirade by kissing them both on the cheek.

  “So, you’re not coming to brunch?” her mother asked, stunned by her lecture.

  “Absolutely not,” she said, hitching her bag on her shoulder. “I’ve got 48 hours to get my librarian back.”

  “Go get ’em, baby,” Archie said with a fist pump.

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Archie, are you really going to let this girl leave here—”

  “Katherine, let it go. She’s got her own life and she’s got to try living it.” Her father picked up his paper and flipped the page. “Didn’t you hear her? She’s got a beautiful librarian to catch.”

  Her mother was a gaping fish. For the first time, in her own household, no less, no one sided with her in a dispute. She looked from child to husband, puzzled by the idea that she’d lost an argument. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “We can talk about it when I get home,” Victoria said, taking her mother’s hand. “Just know that I love you no matter what, but you’ve got to stop running my life. Some of your decisions led me to vomiting at a retirement party.” She gave a tender squeeze before releasing her mother’s hand.

  “Be careful getting home, baby,” Archie said with a wave.

  “Will do, Dad. I’ll see you guys later.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “You should be Spider-Man,” Becca said, pointing to the panel on the wall. She slung the bag with her Wonder Woman costume over her shoulder as she perused the adult costumes with keen interest. “We can be superheroes together.”

  Something about the spandex bodysuit didn’t necessarily appeal to John. Chris, who stood beside him, must have read his mind and shook his head. “Nope.”

  “I don’t think I’ll feel comfortabl
e,” John said.

  “But Spider-Man is the best,” she argued.

  If it wasn’t for Becca and the Friends of the Farmingdale Public Library Halloween party, John wouldn’t spend a Sunday in a crowded party store looking for last minute costumes. Unfortunately, Director Wegman required every library worker’s participation, in full costume, to celebrate the community, the board of directors, and patrons. Becca just loved Halloween. Chris had come along to offer assistance, but John knew he was just curious about the latest gossip concerning Victoria.

  He didn’t have much to spill. It had been two full days since he’d last spoken to her.

  “Why don’t we go with a literary theme and do Sherlock Holmes,” Chris suggested. “They’ve got the hats over here.”

  John shook his head. “No.”

  “How about Captain Ahab? We could wrap cardboard around your leg.”

  “How about Zorro?” Becca asked. “Since you have to wear a mask?”

  John paused to think. “That’s a possibility.”

  Chris sidled up beside him and asked in a low voice, “Will Dr. Reese be there?”

  He sucked in a breath and ignored his friend. “Becca picked the perfect costume. I’ll go with Zorro and it can double as that guy from Princess Bride.”

  “What’s Princess Bride?” Becca asked, grabbing a cape and sword.

  “She’s obsessed with Alanis Morissette, but Jessi never taught her about Princess Bride?”

  “Another reminder that we’re getting old,” John muttered.

  “So what about it, man?” Chris tried again. “Is she going to be there or what?”

  “I don’t know,” John growled under his breath. “I haven’t spoken to her.”

  “So that’s it? You’re just going to let her get away?”

  What he couldn’t get his friend or his family to understand was that it wasn’t up to him. At the end of the day, Victoria had the last word. As much as he wanted her, needed her, in his bed and by his side, she had to make up her mind. He had the patience of Job when it came to the ornery children in his department and he had tried to extend that same patience to the woman he desired. Victoria had shit to work on. She had to come to grips with her obsessive need to control everything in her life. In the meantime, he just had to wait. It didn’t mean he was especially lovely to be around, but those were the facts. He was going to be a surly asshole until he knew that path was completely closed off. He just wished Chris would stop hassling him about it.