Separation Anxiety

by Lisa Suzanne

  And then there was the name and the cross. The cross was a beautiful symbol in itself, its intricate and twining design unique and stunning. I gazed at the red heart with the name in the middle of the cross.

  The symbolism indicated to me that he lost whoever Allison was. Had she broken his heart? Had she died?

  Was he still in love with her?

  Was that why he had such a difficult time getting close to women?

  For the five years I had known him, I’d never seen him in a relationship, even though he talked a big game about the women he was seeing. But in the two days I’d been staying with him, to my knowledge, he hadn’t been with another woman.

  I was snapped out of my thoughts when my cell phone started ringing. I picked up my phone and glanced at the screen. I sighed as I answered. “Hey, Quinn.”

  “Veronica Thomas, I need to see you.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Nothing. Just need my Sunday date with my best friend. I want to talk about boys and drink coffee and figure out what the fuck I’m teaching this week.”

  I didn’t want to miss out on any Jesse time, but I also didn’t want to be that girl that planned my entire life around the possibility of spending time with a man. Even if that man happened to be Jesse Drake.

  “I’m in the middle of planning. Let me get my shit mapped out, eat some lunch, and then I’ll meet you a little later this afternoon.”

  “Three-ish? At the usual?”

  “Perf,” I said, knowing “the usual” meant the Starbucks where we had our typical Sunday planning, grading, and gossiping get together.

  Jesse came in a few minutes later (with his shirt back on, much to my dismay). I was just finishing my weekly outline. I cleared my papers off the table while he prepared us each a salad, asking questions about my preferences as he worked. I had to admit, I was thoroughly enjoying being taken care of by my host.

  We sat together at the table in the same seats we’d been in the night before, right across from each other. I enjoyed the view as I took my first bite of salad. It was that same delicious dressing from the day before. “Jesse Drake’s Delightful Dressing?” I teased.

  He grinned and nodded, taking a bite of his own salad. “It’s my favorite.”

  “Mine, too,” I said. “It’s delicious.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  I couldn’t help but stare over at him, entranced as ever by those eyes. I averted my eyes and glanced out the patio doors. “Quinn called. I’m meeting her in a few hours for coffee and lesson plans.”

  “Okay. You know you don’t have to run your plans by me, right?”

  I nodded, and I felt my cheeks heat up a little in mortification. Of course I didn’t have to. It was such a relationship thing to do, almost like I was asking permission. But we weren’t in a relationship, despite the fact that I wanted to be. I had to remind myself of that, because I was only setting myself up to be hurt the way I was going. I couldn’t expect Jesse to put his life on hold for me, and I couldn’t expect him to wait around for me. His sexy words from the night before floated back into my mind: You’re so goddamn beautiful that sometimes it hurts to look at you and know that I can’t have you.

  I brushed those words away immediately. It had just been the wine talking for both of us, and in the light of day, I knew that.

  I pretended that I was so into my salad that I couldn’t possibly even talk. I found myself shoveling in forkfuls of food, barely tasting it. Shoveling meant not having to respond. Maybe it was immature, but so was my out of control crush on Jesse Drake, and I wasn’t sure what the hell to do about it anymore.

  “No one’s gonna steal it,” he said.

  I stopped chewing and looked up at him. “What?” I asked, mouth full. Attractive of me, I know.

  “Your food. No one’s going to steal it.”

  I furrowed my brow and swallowed my salad. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re eating it like someone’s going to take it away from you.”

  Oh.

  “Sorry,” I said sheepishly, obviously caught. My plan to avoid chatting by eating quickly wasn’t working.

  “Take your time. We only get three meals a day. We might as well enjoy them, right?”

  I nodded. “Absolutely.” I made a point to slow down. “So what are your afternoon plans?”

  “I’ve got a little bit of work to do, and I’d like to work on my table some more.”

  “Did your mom ask for it?”

  He shook his head. “No,” he said. “It’s a gift. She doesn’t know.”

  “That’s sweet of you,” I said, thinking about that old saying that if a man knew how to treat his mother right, he’d treat his woman right.

  He shrugged modestly. “What time are you meeting Quinn?” he asked, ever the expert at deflecting the attention from himself.

  “Three o’clock,” I said, and he glanced at the clock. “I have a question for you.”

  He looked up at me with curiosity.

  “Your note this morning said that you think you have a solution to my problem. I assume you meant my Richard problem.”

  He smiled and nodded. “I think I might.”

  His cell phone started ringing, and his eyes darkened as he listened to a ring tone that wasn’t his usual tone. Something in his eyes told me that this was not a call he was expecting. He scrambled to quickly pull his phone out of his pocket, and then he stole a quick glance at the screen.

  “Sorry,” he said to me, and then he answered his call.

  “Hey,” he said, his voice soft and gentle. I wondered if he talked to all of his women in that tone. It was tender and sensual and something about his deep voice and that tone sent a shot of lust through every nerve in my body. “Everything okay?”

  He listened, his brow furrowing. “It’s okay, Carly.”

  Carly? First Allison, and now Carly? How many more were there?

  I mentally chided myself. He could talk to whoever he wanted to. My little (okay, enormous) crush on him didn’t give me proprietary rights over him, and I certainly knew that he had a life before I started crashing at his place.

  “Carly, baby, I’m on my way. Just stay right where you are, okay?”

  What the fuck?

  His voice was soft and soothing, and I suddenly wanted it to be me who he was comforting.

  So we were back to the womanizing Jesse. Just when I thought that I’d read him all wrong, reality hit me square in the face.

  “Hold on, okay, Carly?”

  He listened for a moment, and then he pulled the phone from his ear and sighed deeply. “I’m sorry, V, but I’ve gotta run. Have fun with Quinn and I’ll see you tonight, okay?”

  No. It wasn’t okay. But I didn’t have a choice. I had no hold over him other than my ridiculous attraction to him, and he was free to go see whatever girl he wanted to go see.

  So I nodded, and he shoved one last bite of salad in his mouth and then grabbed his plate and threw it in the sink. “I’ll take care of that when I get back,” he said, picking up his keys and heading toward the door. “Catch ya later,” he called over his shoulder.

  “Catch ya later,” I echoed, but he was already out the door.

  I finished eating, realizing that for the very first time, I was alone in Jesse Drake’s house. I wished that made me feel more excited than it actually did, but thinking about how Jesse just ran out the door after some other girl made me feel a little queasy and a lot jealous.

  Despite the tipsy moment we’d shared the night before, his mind was obviously on other girls. And I had to admit that I knew virtually nothing about Jesse. Every time I started digging for information about him, he somehow turned our conversation around so that I was the one doing the talking again. I wasn’t sure how he managed to constantly do that, but he had a real knack for it.

  I cleaned up our dishes despite Jesse’s protest that he’d be back to clean his stuff up later, and I put all of the salad ingredients back into the fri
dge, hoping I was placing everything where he wanted it since he appeared to be very particular about the organizational pattern of his refrigerator.

  As I put everything away, the thought entered my mind that I could, technically, snoop around. It would be a complete and total invasion of his privacy, but I was so curious to know more about Jesse Drake. I would never do it, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to. I would wait for him to reveal the things I wanted to know. And then the terrible thought entered my mind that maybe he never would tell me those things. Maybe “we” would never happen. Even though I felt a definite attraction between us, maybe we’d never be anything more than friends.

  For some reason, that thought sent a pang of despair through my heart.

  I fired up my laptop and typed some parent emails to send the next day. I worked each task trying to forget about him, but my heart was sad as the thought of Jesse leaving me during our lunch together to go see another woman weighed heavy on my mind.

  It was finally time to meet Quinn, and I found her sitting at a table with her iPad while she waited for me. I ordered a skinny caramel macchiato and sat across from my best friend a few minutes later with my drink.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, sipping her chai tea latte.

  I sighed. “How do you always know?”

  “It’s what best friends do. Well, that, and you look like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders. What’s going on?”

  “I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Everything okay with you and Richard?”

  I chuckled mirthlessly. Nothing would ever be okay between Richard and me again, but that wasn’t why I was upset. I shook my head, feeling the threat of tears behind my eyes.

  “No?” she asked, placing her hand over mine across the table. “Veronica, talk to me.”

  I stared down at the table, knowing that if I looked into the concerned eyes of my best friend, I’d lose it. “Richard and I are getting a divorce.”

  “Oh my God,” she said. “What? What happened?”

  I took a deep breath, held onto it for a moment, and then let it out with a whoosh. “Nothing happened, really. It’s not like one big thing happened and it was over. It’s been building toward this for a long time.”

  “Jesus, Veronica. I had no idea. And here I am saying how best friends always know when something’s up.” She shook her head. “I always thought you two were perfect together. What changed?”

  “He has just become this person I don’t even know anymore. He’s condescending and controlling and manipulative and I am just done with him.”

  “When did you file?”

  “I haven’t yet. I gave him the papers yesterday, but he’s refusing to sign them.”

  “Fucking asshole.”

  I nodded. “Completely. He told me that I’m stuck until he decides he’s ready to sign them.”

  She rolled her eyes. “He’ll sign them.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’ll fucking cut off his balls if he fucks with you.”

  I chuckled, thankful to have such a loyal friend on my side. Leave it to Quinn to figure out the solution. I was briefly reminded that Jesse also had a solution that I never actually got to hear.

  “I’m so sorry, Veronica,” she said, her eyes shining with sincerity.

  “It’s not your fault,” I said. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

  “Sure I do. I introduced you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You didn’t make me marry him, Quinn,” I reminded her.

  “Stay with me,” she said suddenly, her eyes lighting up.

  No fucking way I was leaving Jesse’s now that I was there.

  I realized for about the ten millionth time that I was flirting with disaster, but I didn’t care. I had to see how things were going to play out with Jesse.

  How was I going to tell her this one? Did I even want to tell her about Jesse? The answer was clear in my mind: fuck yes I wanted to tell her. I wanted to talk to somebody about it. I was dying to tell her – well, I was dying to tell anyone, really – about the “so goddamn beautiful that sometimes it hurts” comment. I knew I’d told myself it had been the wine talking, but he’d still said it. Even though he’d run off to see another woman, I could still convince myself that he meant those words when he said them to me.

  “We’ll have so much fun together! We can gossip all night; we can carpool to work. It’s perf!” She was still going on about me moving in with her when there was no chance of that happening.

  I didn’t have the heart to burst her bubble. I loved Quinn to death, but the thought of sharing the same space with her for days on end was a little overwhelming; she was loud, she could be raunchy and irreverent and obnoxious, and from what she told me, she had a lot of sex. Sounded like an even bigger recipe for disaster than shacking up with Mr. Drake.

  “I actually left Richard yesterday morning. I’m staying with a friend,” I said, skirting the details.

  “Who?” she pressed.

  “Um,” I took a sip of my coffee followed by a deep breath. “Jesse Drake,” I said with a sigh. I didn’t even mean to sigh when I said his name. It just happened.

  “What?!?!” she screeched. Like, literally screeched. Heads turned in our direction at her volume. “You’re living with Jesse fucking Drake?”

  I shushed her. “I’m not ‘living’ with him. I’m just crashing at his place for awhile.”

  “In his bed?” she asked, her voice still a little louder than I would’ve preferred.

  “In his guest bed. ‘Guest’ being the operative word.”

  “Right. How long’s that gonna last?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said, feeling my face heating up.

  “You’re fucking blushing, Veronica! You want him!”

  “Shh,” I whispered. “Take it down a notch, please.”

  “Fine,” she said in a loud whisper. “You want to sleep with him. Don’t deny it.”

  “I’m not sleeping with anybody until my divorce is finalized,” I said, my voice low.

  “You didn’t deny it,” she said.

  “Because there’s nothing to deny. He’s fucking gorgeous. Who wouldn’t want him? But I can’t just jump into his bed because I’m leaving my husband. It doesn’t work like that.”

  “Oh, Veronica. So innocent and pious and prude. He invited you to stay in his house, a detail we will get to in a minute after I’ve convinced you to fuck him. My sweet friend, men do not ask women to ‘crash’ at their place without wanting more.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. He doesn’t like me like that.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “I saw the way he was flirting with you at the bar on Friday. Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt, my friend. I think he likes you like that.”

  I rolled my eyes, but something inside of me hoped that she was right.

  “Okay, so if you’re going to avoid that topic, at least tell me more about Dreamy Drake.”

  I grinned. “He is pretty fucking dreamy,” I said.

  “Shit, I was jealous that you got to ride in his truck, and now you’re living with him. Jesus, that body.” She sighed dreamily. “So what’s his house like?”

  I giggled at her rambling.

  “His house is beautiful. The outside is perfectly landscaped, like he really takes good care of it. And the kitchen…” I trailed off, closing my eyes in appreciation for that perfect dream of a kitchen.

  “The kitchen?” she prodded.

  “It’s like one of those kitchens you see in Architectural Digest or something. It’s ridiculous.”

  “I don’t give a flying fuck about the kitchen,” she said, resting her elbow on the table and her chin on her palm. “I want the deets on his bedroom.”

  “He’s got this gorgeous bed that somehow looks bigger than a king,” I started, and her grin widened. “What?” I asked.

  “So you’ve seen h
is bed.”

  “Oh my God, Quinn. Not like that. He gave me a tour of his house.”

  She nodded and winked as I took a sip of my coffee. “Sure. Okay. So how many women do you think he’s fucked in that lucky bed?”

  “None,” I answered immediately, and then I wanted to kick myself. His confession about his house just being for him seemed like the sort of thing that he probably wouldn’t want shared between friends, but it was too late.

  “None?” she asked. “Yeah right.”

  “He didn’t say much, but he sort of indicated that he goes where the fun is.”

  “Interesting. Does Jesse Drake, bad boy extraordinaire, have a soft side?”

  “It would appear so.”

  “Yes it would.”

  “Don’t forget the fact that he works with teenagers. He can’t be too bad a boy if he’s doing that.”

  “I beg to differ. I’ve slept with my share of the male teachers around town, and they can be some very, very naughty boys.”

  I giggled.

  “Tell me more.”

  I thought about telling her about the tattoo. Maybe she could shed some light on it. And I thought about telling her about the woodworking. But both of those things seemed private somehow, like he didn’t want people to know that side of him. I thought about all the times he’d grabbed a shirt when I caught him without one in just the past two days that I’d been staying with him. I thought about the dedication he had to that table he was working on in the garage. Those “deets” seemed like details of Jesse at home, not the Jesse we knew from work. And it wasn’t my place to tell Quinn about those things. If he wanted to reveal them to her, like he had to me, he would.

  So I kept my mouth shut.

  But I had to give her something. She’d stop at nothing to get it out of me.

  “He likes to cook,” I said.

  “Is he any good?”

  I nodded. “He makes this homemade salad dressing that’s just about the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”