“Ben, what’s going on?” his guest asked.
Good question. I knew I didn’t have the presence of mind to stick around for the answer, so I picked up my pace and focused on getting to the car before I did something even more embarrassing. Like cry.
I cranked the ignition, cursing the loss of my favorite casserole dish to Ben, and fought the instinct to burn rubber in my mad rush to get away. When I safely navigated out of the neighborhood, I found a business park already closed for weekday business and pulled in. I put the car in park and idled the motor, radio turned off, my hands gripping the wheel like it was the blonde’s neck.
I forced myself to relax my death grip after a few minutes and dropped my head back against the headrest. Then I did it again, and three more times for good measure, but the cushion prevented a satisfactory thump. What was I thinking, going over there unannounced? I dropped my head to the steering wheel and replayed the awkward scene in my mind: Me, standing all fresh-scrubbed and eager with a homemade dinner for Ben on a Friday night. Ben, standing there, looking slightly disturbed to see me. Blonde Girl, her pink-tipped claw wrapped around Ben’s shirt sleeve and the disdain in her question, “Who’s this?” And me again, practically throwing the food at Ben and hightailing it out of there.
How humiliating. I started the deep breathing exercises I reserved for getting myself through dental visits, trying to exert control over my emotions. On my third deep breath, the phone rang. A sidelong glance showed Ben’s number on the caller ID screen. I grabbed the phone and sent the call straight to voicemail. It’s not like I could form words at the moment. A beep twenty seconds later told me he’d left a message. I turned the phone off completely. I didn’t want to hear anything he had to say at the moment.
What was going on? I had to give it to the blonde. She asked good questions. I’d love to know the answer to that too. Who was she? She clearly felt comfortable enough with her place in his life to be at his house at dinner time on a Friday evening and to demand explanations about his visitors. Maybe it was his sister, I rationalized. But I knew she was away at BYU–Idaho.
Carie.
It had to be her. No one else would have felt justified in acting so possessive. Not even me, not even after he’d confessed his feelings and the things he’d said had haunted me all week, forcing me to realize how much I liked him. I had no claim on him because I’d been too chicken to stake one.
I drew several more deep breaths before I calmed down enough to drive again. I spent the return trip home in a weird, numb shock. I blessed it because without the numbness, I think a suffocating sense of idiocy would have overwhelmed me. When I pulled into my parking space, autopilot took over, and I found myself pushing through my front door, unaware of even leaving my car.
Sandy glanced up from a bizarre yoga pose in surprise but took one look at me and unwound herself. I walked straight to the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down, staring at my hands on the placemat in front of me. She sat down directly across from me and said nothing for a while. Then she asked quietly, “What happened?”
“He—”
My throat closed up. I cleared it and tried again. “He had company,” I said.
“Company?”
“Yeah. Some girl.”
Her face tightened. “He had a girl over?”
“Yeah. His ex, I think.”
Her face darkened further, but she said nothing before jumping up and heading for her bedroom. A minute later, she returned, a sweatshirt over her yoga tank and a purse in hand.
“Where are you going?” I asked as she charged past me to the door.
“For ice cream. I’ll be back in ten minutes with a big carton of something bad for you.”
“Oh.” I hesitated. “Sandy?”
She turned, pushing the front door back open and poking her head in. “Yeah?”
“Could you find me a really big spoon while you’re at it?”
Chapter 35
AN HOUR LATER, WITH MY stomach full of Jerry’s (Sandy had inked out the “Ben and . . .” part of the carton label before handing it to me), I stewed. It felt better than being a useless lump, which is what I’d been until the ice cream had kicked in. Then I began processing my humiliation.
I had a litany of things I was mad at: me, for going over there; Sandy, for giving me the idea to do it; the blonde, for being at the house; and Ben. He had a whole list of things that made me mad at him. Like, that he was breathing. And those were the rational things I could think of.
The adult and responsible thing, which I had set out to do tonight (before Blondie’s intrusion had blown it all sky-high), would be to stay calm and find out exactly what was going on. But as a smart girl with math skills, I could add up the facts and find no good outcomes. An irritatingly pretty girl, probably his ex-fiancée, had clearly marked Ben as her territory and acted very at home in his house. Plus, Ben hadn’t felt the need to inform me of said girl coming around. Plus, Ben looked uncomfortable to see me. Not delighted, not excited.
Uncomfortable.
And worst of all, I had left work early to make him a stupid roast chicken for no reason, and I had dropped it on his porch and run away. All that equaled me being an idiot. Again. Well, time to fix that. I hopped up, startling Sandy, and raced over to the fireplace mantle to snatch up the rock sitting there. The words “This is just a rock” were still scrawled across its face, written in my burst of empowerment a month ago. With one Sharpied motto, I had turned it from a souvenir of my failure at love into a statement about my readiness to move on. It was supposed to symbolize that if I let go of that failed relationship, maybe it would lose its grip on me.
I felt the sudden urge to do with the rock what I should have done when I plucked it out of Jason’s hands years ago: toss it in the ocean and not look back. Maybe if I had done that then, I wouldn’t be living in that old shadow, practically repeating the same mistake. I was into a guy who was juggling feelings for me with feelings for someone else. Again.
“I want to go to home,” I announced.
“Um, hi. You’re here already?” Sandy said.
“No, I mean, home home, to California. I want to eat at my mom’s table and have my dad refer me to fifty different scriptures related to this mess, and I want to throw this stupid rock in the ocean and figure out what to do next.”
A knock on the door cut off Sandy’s answer. Since I was closest, I peered through the eye hole, and my stomach dropped.
“It’s Ben!” I hissed at Sandy. “What do I do?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, do you want to talk to him?”
“Should I?”
“I have no idea what you need right now. If it were me, I’d open the door—but that’s me.”
“Jessie, I can hear you through the door. I know you’re home. Can I talk to you, please?” he called.
I hesitated for a moment and then yanked it open and turned around, walking to the sofa. Sandy got up and, after casting Ben an ambiguous smile, headed back to her bedroom. He stood in the middle of the living room, wavering for a moment before moving to take a seat on the opposite end of the sofa from me.
“You’d better sit there,” I said, indicating the oversized matching chair instead.
He nodded and sat where I pointed. He shifted a few times, eyeballing the rock in my hand.
“Are you going to throw that at me?” he joked.
The joke fell flat when I set the rock on the floor but otherwise declined to answer.
“You’re mad,” he surmised.
“No.”
“Okay.” He didn’t believe me; I could tell. Smart man. “So that was Carie at my house.”
“I figured.” I kept my expression blank.
“She surprised me by showing up about a half hour before you did. She wasn’t supposed to be here today,” he said.
His phrasing caught my attention. “You mean, she wasn’t supposed to be here today, but she was supposed to be here at some point, like
on a different day?”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“Oh, that’s fantastic,” I bit out.
“It sounds bad, but it’s not, I promise. I wasn’t expecting her until next week.”
I snorted. “This gets better and better. Next week, meaning after you and I talked so you could let me down gently and be free and clear to pick things back up with her?”
“No! Of course not. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you for days and hammering out this thing between us.”
“Oh, I can save you the trouble. The thing between us now is Carie,” I retorted.
“Jessie, please. I need you to understand—”
“What? That Carie was conveniently on tap for next week if I didn’t show up tomorrow? You had your plan B all worked out until she and I both came up with the embarrassingly unoriginal plan to surprise you tonight?” I realized I was contradicting myself and making no sense, but I hurt too much to care. “You’re so good that you ended up surprising the two of us instead. I hope she bought the whole fellowshipping thing. I don’t want to be the reason things don’t work out for you again.” I lifted my chin and stared him down.
He jammed his fingers through his hair, frustrated. “Jessie, listen. I agreed to see her because—”
“Stop!” Suddenly I didn’t want to know. “I don’t have time for this. I came over tonight instead of tomorrow because I’m going out of town, and I didn’t want you to think I was standing you up.” Well, the going out of town part was true as of that moment. “And I need to be getting on the road soon, so you should go.”
I got up and walked to the door, a clear invitation for him to leave. He sat for another moment, looking like he wanted to argue. Then he sighed and stood up. “Will you call me when you get back?”
I didn’t answer.
Looking defeated, he shoved his hands into his pockets and walked out.
When the door shut, Sandy walked back into the living room.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“So what did he want?”
“To explain.”
“And?”
“I don’t know. It was his ex-fiancée. He was expecting her but not today.”
“Wow.”
“I don’t even know what to think about that,” I blurted. “He admitted that she came so they could talk. How many girls does he have to define his relationship with anyway?”
“Uh, I can name at least two.”
“Very funny. Not.”
“Okay,” she said. “How do you know it wasn’t all her idea?”
“I don’t, but it doesn’t matter,” I responded. “If he’s willing to let her get on a plane and fly all the way up here to see him, that already tells me a lot.”
“So . . . what next?” she asked.
“I’m taking a road trip, I guess.”
“To your parents’ house?” she clarified.
“Yep.”
“I can’t believe I’m going to ask you this, but what about work?”
I shrugged. “Dennis Court as good as told me to take a vacation. I’ll shoot him an e-mail and let him know I’m taking advantage of that for a few days. He’ll probably do a hooray cheer.”
“Dennis Court? I don’t think he cheers.”
“Okay, he’ll say, ‘Excellent plan, Ms. Taylor,’ and start in on another spreadsheet. But believe me, he won’t care if I’m out of the office for a few days.”
“All right! California, here we come!”
“We? Not we. You have to work.”
“Jess, you don’t think I’m going to let you have all the fun, do you? I’m not shivering in my long johns here while you’re soaking up the sun at the beach.”
“Not to burst your bubble, but it’s not exactly beach weather in January, even in California.”
“Fine, but at least it’s not Seattle. Besides,” she grinned, “it turns out I have a couple of sick days to burn. Susannah can’t fire me because there wouldn’t be anyone likeable left in HR.”
“Can you be ready to leave in an hour?” I asked.
“An hour? Who taught you to pack for a spontaneous road trip? I’ll see you out here in thirty minutes.” And she flew back to her room.
I shook my head and went to dig my cell phone out of my purse. When it powered back up, I saw eight missed calls from Ben. Ignoring them, I hit speed dial number two.
“Mom?” I said when she answered. “I’m coming home.”
Chapter 36
I STUMBLED INTO MY PARENTS’ kitchen for breakfast Sunday morning. Sandy already sat at the table with a steaming plate of scrambled eggs in front of her.
“Good morning, sweetie,” my mom said from the stove, where she stood monitoring the progress of another frying pan. “Would you like an omelet or squiggles?” she asked.
“Squiggles?” Sandy echoed.
“That’s what Jessie used to call scrambled eggs,” my dad explained from the doorway. He wandered over to the table and dropped an absentminded kiss on the top of my head before he sat down and disappeared behind the Sunday paper.
“That’s so cute,” Sandy cooed.
“Shut up,” I grumbled.
“Be nice, Jessie,” my mom admonished me.
“Yeah. Be nice,” Sandy parroted.
I picked up a fork from the place setting in front of me and rotated it methodically in my fingers.
My dad watched me over the folded corner of the paper for a moment. “You’d better move,” he told Sandy. “I think she’s going to stab you.” He disappeared behind the local section again.
He knew me well.
Sandy grinned but scooted her chair another foot out of reach. “So, Jessie was like this back in the day too?” she asked.
“Only if you ask her to function before she eats,” my mom confirmed.
“Yeah, that’s the same,” Sandy said.
I couldn’t find the words I needed to say, like, “Stop talking about me like I’m not here. I’m cranky because I’m hungry. I’ll be fine once I get food,” so I growled instead.
My mom brought the skillet to the table and slid some scrambled eggs straight onto my plate. “We’d better not wait for an omelet,” she said.
I dug in and, after three mouthfuls, said, “Thank you.”
“Of course.” After letting me finish a few more bites, she took the empty seat beside me. “Are you going to church with us?” she asked.
“Yeah. What time do you guys meet?”
“Nine o’clock. Your dad has meetings after church, but I don’t, so you girls can ride with me if you want, and we’ll come straight home.”
“Sandy won’t—” I was about to say, “be coming with us,” but Sandy cut me off.
“Sounds good, Sister Taylor,” she said. “I’m not in a hurry to get back into Jess’s car anytime soon. Eighteen hours between Friday and yesterday is enough.”
Even leaving within the hour on Friday night and cruising comfortably above the speed limit all the way down, we hadn’t stumbled through my parents’ front door until midafternoon yesterday, bleary-eyed from sleep deprivation and road weariness. Office gossip and iPod disagreements had filled the first ten hours. The last few hours had passed in quiet as we took turns sleeping and driving.
“We’ll be ready,” I said.
“Good girl.” My mom hopped back up and headed for the sink with my empty plate. “There’s something you should probably know before you go to church. I meant to tell you this before you came down for your next trip, but you surprised us with this one.”
I dropped my head to my hands. “I have a feeling I know what’s coming.”
“Jason is back,” she said. “He’s living in his parents’ house while they’re gone.”
Brother Stewart had been called to serve as a mission president in Chile almost a year before.
“I wouldn’t worry,” she said. “They’re in the other ward now. But I thought you should know.”
“
It’s okay, Mom.” I got up and hugged her. “More okay than I thought it would be. Thanks for the heads up.”
“Good.” She patted my cheek. “You go on up and shower, honey. You smell like road trip.” We’d spent most of Saturday afternoon catching up on sleep and watching old movies in my parents’ den while they attended a high priest group social at the church. With all my movie-watching and wallowing, showering hadn’t made it on my list of things to do yet.
Sandy grinned. “Yeah, you stink, Jessie. Go wash while I help your mom.”
When she joined my mom at the sink, Mom took the dirty plate Sandy held in her hand and said with a smile, “I think you’re wearing the same road trip perfume. Why don’t you go on ahead too. We have a big hot water heater.”
It was my turn to grin when Sandy looked amused and trailed me out of the kitchen.
“Your mom’s pretty cool,” she said. “I can see why you would want to come home.”
“Yeah, she kind of rocks,” I agreed. “Do you have anything to wear to church?”
“I think I shoved a skirt in my bag somewhere.”
“Okay. I’ll meet you downstairs in half an hour?”
“Sure. But you need to learn to do your makeup faster.” My jaw dropped as she said this, moving past me to the guest bedroom down the hall. Sandy was the mirror jockey in our condo. Scowling at this latest jab from her, I hit the shower to finish waking up. Since I skipped a hair washing (I’d scrubbed it thoroughly before heading off to see Ben), I made it down to the living room ten minutes early in a simple gray merino wool wrap dress and black tights with black high-heeled Mary Janes. As I finished off my dad’s discarded business section from the paper, Sandy made an appearance in a tweed pencil skirt and a chocolate brown turtleneck. On me, it would have looked frumpy. On her, it looked sharp.
“How long have you been sitting here?” she demanded.
“Half an hour,” I said.
“Then you got ready in negative five minutes because we weren’t even upstairs that long.” She squinted at me. “You even did your makeup,” she said. “I went as fast as I could, and you still beat me.”
“I had to fight four sisters for bathroom time growing up here,” I said. “Must be my genetic memory powering me through.”
Twitterpated Page 23