I spent almost my entire shift fantasizing about Vicky barging into the radio station and insisting that we have make-up sex in the booth during an extra-long Paul McCartney set. To feed the fantasy, I even played a half dozen of the former Beatle’s big hits, starting with “Silly Love Songs.” A private joke between the real me and the dream Vicky, not that the flesh-and-blood woman across town would know about it.
But I was talking long and hard with her in my mind, explaining that being with her and getting to know her over this past month had changed me. That I understood what Paul and his Wings buddies were saying. That love songs might be sentimental or touching, painful or daydream-inducing but, once a person actually experienced falling in love, the songs weren’t that silly. They weren’t silly at all.
When my shift finally ended, I found myself at my favorite shop in town—Between the Pages—Mirabelle Harbor’s only bookstore. The owner, Jaleina Longoria, was a longtime family friend. More than that, she’d once been my brother Derek’s fiancée and had still managed to stay on good terms with the family. Not an unimpressive feat.
“Blake,” she said with a smile. “Long time no see. Did you finally burn through that stack of mysteries and suspense stories you picked up last time?”
“Just about,” I said. “Haven’t started the California legal thriller yet, but I tore through the others. Been a bit busier in the last few weeks.”
Jaleina raised her eyebrows but didn’t press me to explain. Not that I would have. There was probably some sort of rule about not confiding in a sibling’s ex if you had no intention of confiding in the sibling.
“So, what are you looking for today? Something more historical? More action-adventure?” she asked.
“More international,” I ventured. “European set, maybe. Paris. French Riviera. Something like that.”
She nodded and led me to the section of the bookstore labeled “Fiction in Foreign Lands.” She pointed at the shelves, her index finger tapping on the word France. “We’ve got a bunch of titles here, listed by country. But some of the books we carry with international themes are also mixed in with their literary genres. So just shout out if you don’t seem to be finding what you’re looking for, okay?”
“Okay. Thanks, Jaleina.”
“Anytime,” she said.
As she walked back to the other side of the store, I couldn’t help but notice how good she looked. Gorgeous smile, beautiful breasts, legs that went on for miles. She and Derek were almost the same age, so she was a few years older than me, but I wouldn’t have let that stop me from pursuing her if I were truly interested. No doubt about it, Jaleina was—and always had been—one hot lady. Too bad my tastes had turned to snooty French teachers who ignored me.
I sighed and studied the novels lined up on the shelves. Paperbacks with compelling plots that would have enticed me to buy a handful of them at almost any other time.
But I just couldn’t focus on fiction.
My eyes wandered down the aisle and my body soon followed, stopping only when I got to the set of shelves labeled “International Travel Guides.” I used to spend a lot of time sifting through the books here, but I hadn’t checked them out in a long while.
The ABC Travel Series took up at least half of the section:
All Around Aberdeen
Breathtaking Brittany
Captivating Copenhagen
Discovery Days in Darjeeling
Exploring Everest
And more.
But it was Quintessential Quebec that had me reaching for the guidebook and pulling it off the shelf.
I flipped through the table of contents. Things to do in Montreal. Visiting Quebec City. Rules of the road in French-speaking Canada. Explaining the allure of Poutine.
And somehow I found myself at the cash register, handing a few bills to Jaleina, and trying to make up a semi-logical reason for why I was buying this book instead of what I thought I’d come here for.
“Someone was recently telling me about Quebec,” I said.
“Haven’t been there,” Jaleina replied. “I’ve heard it’s lovely, though.”
“Probably really cold for most of the year,” I felt compelled to add. “But there are people who like that.”
“Yeah,” she said agreeably, but I could feel her very aware eyes on me, studying my facial expressions and deducing things.
“This’ll make a great gift for someone who’s into winter sports or Canadian travel...or other French things,” I concluded.
“Did you want me to gift wrap it?”
“Uh, no. That’s okay.”
She handed me my change, put the book in a bag, and lightly patted my hand, like I was a kindergartener or something. “I hope whomever you bought it for will enjoy it,” she said softly.
“Thanks,” I said. Then I got out of the bookstore as fast as possible, so I could spend the rest of the day hiding out in my apartment, where no one but Winston would try to read my facial expressions.
~*~
The next morning, I woke up at six a.m., though not by choice.
Shar called. “You didn’t forget that we’re celebrating Derek and Olivia’s anniversary today, did you?”
“Of course not,” I mumbled into the phone. And that was mostly true. I’d remembered we were doing it today. I just hadn’t remembered how early.
“Good. I’m bringing the cake and the flowers. Chance and Nia are bringing fruit salad and hot Greek coffee. You just need to pick up a dozen bagels and cream cheese and meet us at the house at five to seven, okay?”
“Okay, Shar.”
“Don’t. Be. Late,” she warned before she finally hung up.
I groaned and Winston, who thought there might be something wrong with me, came half trotting, half limping over to the bed to check on me.
“I’m fine, little buddy,” I reassured him, rubbing his soft head. “Just my demanding sister and her harebrained ideas of ‘family fun’ again.”
My dog wagged his tail at me, and worked his way over to the door, barking encouragingly. Yes, I could get up. And, yes, I could take him out for a quick walk. He never failed to warm my heart, and his sheer presence made rising at the butt crack of dawn a little easier.
After I got dressed and got Winston outside and back in again, I rushed into the deli for the bagels and cream cheese and then over to Derek and Olivia’s for their surprise breakfast.
Shar had concluded that, since the anniversary couple wouldn’t be expecting their siblings to show up at seven in the morning, it would be the perfect time for all of us to help them celebrate the happy occasion.
“Because, unlike you, they love surprises,” Shar informed me in that superior tone she enjoyed using so frequently.
And she was the one who rang the doorbell, once all of us were gathered outside of the house.
Derek opened the door in his robe. “What the hell?” he said in shock, although as soon as he saw the flowers and all the food he was grinning.
When Olivia came to stand beside him and peered out at us, we all chorused, “Happy twelfth anniversary!”
“Wow,” my sister-in-law said. “What’s all this?”
“We know you both have to go to work,” Shar said.
“And the kids have school,” Nia added. “So we don’t want to disrupt your routine too much.”
“But breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” Chance contributed with a wink.
Derek and Olivia laughed.
“Get in here, you guys,” my big brother said. I was the last one in the house, and Derek slapped me on the back as the others walked ahead into the kitchen. “This was very nice of you, man.”
“Hey, twelve years of wedded bliss with the same woman is something worth celebrating,” I said. “But I probably would have chosen to celebrate it with you a bit later in the day.”
He laughed. “Same here, Bro.” He pointed at the large carafe of Greek coffee Nia was holding, taking turns pouring pure caffeine into indivi
dual cups for the adults. “Let’s get us some of that.”
We spread out all the food on the kitchen table, toasted Derek and Olivia with our strong coffees, and helped ourselves to breakfast in the midst of chaos. My nephews didn’t need a slice of the anniversary cake Shar brought to give them a satanic sugar high—their spirits were already buoyant. But as I glanced around the room, I realized a lot of joy lived here.
“You’re quiet this morning,” my sister said around bites of a cream-cheese-slathered blueberry bagel.
“I’m still half asleep,” I admitted. “Although this coffee Nia made is taking effect. It’s good, but it’s like drinking molten tar.”
Shar laughed. “Yeah, it’s heavily fortified. One cup will do me.”
Just then, our eleven-year-old nephew James came up to us and tugged his Auntie Sharlene away. “You have got to see this game Riley has in his room!” he insisted.
But no sooner had James dragged my sister away than my sister-in-law materialized in her place.
“So,” Olivia said, looking bright-eyed and impish, “what’s going on with you, Blake?”
“Nothing unusual,” I lied. And I could tell she knew it, too, because she slanted me a look that said, Dude, I’ve know you for more than a dozen years, don’t bullshit me.
Her actual words were a little gentler. “You just seem to have a lot on your mind. Everything okay at the station?”
“Yeah. Same old, same old.”
“With Winston?”
“He’s improving every day.” That mutt of mine had a spirit that couldn’t be easily broken. Thank God. “I’ll be taking him into the vet for another checkup early next week, but he’s definitely on the mend.”
“That’s so good to hear,” Olivia gushed. Then she went in for the kill. “So, it’s about a woman then, right?”
“Um.” I tried to gulp down some coffee, but the thick potency of it caught in my throat and just made me cough.
She lowered her voice, said, “C’mon, Blake,” and tugged me to the corner of the kitchen, as far away as possible from the rest of our relatives without creating suspicion. “You can tell me what’s really going on.”
I studied her face for a moment—her expression was curious but very kind. The courtship she and Derek had a dozen years ago had been very short but, much as I’d always liked Derek’s ex, Jaleina, I knew the second I saw him with Olivia that the two of them belonged together. With some people, the connection was obvious.
“Okay, yes,” I confessed. “It’s about a woman. But—” I paused. “She and I aren’t some perfect match. Not like you and my brother. Things with us didn’t just fall into place the minute we met. It’s been...freakin’ weird from the beginning.”
Olivia tilted her head and squinted at me. “You think things with Derek and me just ‘fell into place’ effortlessly? Like there wasn’t any work involved?”
I shrugged. I kinda did, yeah, but I got the sense that this wasn’t the right answer.
My sister-in-law leaned closer to me and hissed, “Let me make this easy for you—you’re insane if you think so.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
She laughed. “Blake, I know it was a long time ago. You were in college then, and Chance and Chandler were only sixteen when Derek and I got married. But there was a lot of tension. Tons of things your big brother and I had to work through. And not just the fact that I’d been in a serious relationship with someone else before we’d met, and he’d had a fiancée. For the first few years of our marriage, that fact still came up when we had fights.”
My jaw dropped. “What? You mean Derek brought it up? He blamed you for breaking up his engagement?”
She shook her head. “No. I brought it up. I reminded him that he’d once changed his mind about marrying someone. Someone who was very sweet, and who I’d probably be good friends with if I hadn’t messed up her plans for the future.” She swallowed. “I was insecure about the whole thing. I thought he might change his mind about me, too, someday. Plus, I was wildly hormonal.”
We laughed briefly about that. Olivia had been more than two months pregnant with James on their wedding day, but neither she nor my brother knew it until after the honeymoon.
“Derek felt, and not unjustly, that I didn’t completely trust him, and he wrestled with those emotions.” She rested her hand on my forearm. “So you see, we might’ve seemed perfectly matched to other people, but we still had a lot of issues to work through between us.”
“But it turned out for the best,” I managed to say. “I can’t imagine he ever regrets now that he and Jaleina broke things off. You don’t think so, do you?”
She shook her head. “No more than I regret breaking up with my boyfriend at the time. I’m just saying that all couples go through rough patches. All couples have to figure out if they’re both willing to take a leap of faith. Despite their doubts. Despite their fears.”
“Maybe I’m not cut out for that. For being part of a real couple for the long haul. Maybe she’s right to have doubts about me. I think what I’m feeling is...love, maybe...or at least the beginning of it. But how the hell can I know for sure, let alone try to convince her?”
“Oh, Blake,” Olivia whispered. “You’re more than capable of love. You demonstrate your love of your siblings and of your nephews and of me every time you’re with us. You’re loyal. You show up when we need you. And I remember you with your parents. No one could have cared more. Worked harder to make them comfortable during their final days.”
“But that’s family. Everyone loves their family.”
She shook her head again. “No. Not everyone.”
And I remembered too late that, in Olivia’s case, she’d had a mother who’d abandoned her and her father when she was a teen. She almost never talked about it, but I knew the pain of that betrayal had never left her.
“Sorry, Olivia.”
She waved away my apology. “No worries. You Michaelsens are so bonded to each other that sometimes you don’t see that this isn’t always the case with the rest of the world. But, anyway, it’s not just with family that you show your love. You adore that dog of yours with a fierceness and a wholeheartedness that a woman wants and needs.”
I felt my face heat up a little. “Well, for God’s sake, don’t tell anybody that. I’m pretty sure no woman would want me to say, ‘Hey, I love you like I love my dog.’”
Olivia grinned. “Only a woman that really knows you, Blake. Then that’s the only thing she’d want to hear.”
~Vicky~
This week was never going to end.
Tomorrow night was the Homecoming dance, though. I just had to make it through one more full day and, then, life would get back to normal. It had to, didn’t it?
I muttered soothing phrases to myself in French. Me telling me that everything was going to be all right—tout va bien se passer—which always seemed to ground me in the present and calm me down. Foreign languages reminded me that the world was larger than just this little corner of Illinois. That what was happening here wasn’t happening everywhere. That the universe was bigger than what was going on in my insignificant little life.
I tossed my school bag in the backseat of my car, but I couldn’t bring myself to go home just yet. It was October first and a beautiful fall afternoon, approaching evening. The trees were beginning to turn colors. Some much more determinedly than others, I noticed.
Why were some things—and some people—capable of changing more quickly than those around them? Why did some people get over old relationships and jump into new ones more easily than...well, me?
I was pondering this and wandering aimlessly, or so I thought at first. But it turned out I knew exactly where I was going.
The junior high building was just across the street from the high school. I spotted Shar’s car from halfway across the parking lot, which meant she was still here. I found myself checking in at the office and walking down to Shar’s classroom before I could think twice.
“Hi there, stranger,” my friend said when she saw me. “What brings you over to this building, home to crazy junior high teachers and rugrats alike.”
“You,” I admitted with a smile. “Need any help?” Shar was tacking up a jack-o-lantern border on one of her classroom bulletin boards. It looked like she had stories written by her eighth graders that she planned to display.
“Sure. Grab this edge.”
I held one end of the jack-o-lantern border in place while she stapled it securely to the board. When she finished all four sides, she put down her stapler, grinned at me, and said, “What’s been going on, Vicky? I know something’s up.”
I nodded. “Yeah. I haven’t wanted to talk about it because—” I hesitated and ran my fingers through my hair to buy time.
“Because?” Shar prompted.
“Because it’s about your brother.”
“Aw, crap. Has Blake been pestering you again? Do I need to have another talk with him?”
I shook my head. “He hasn’t been pestering me. He’s—uh—he and I have, um...” I couldn’t quite figure out how to say it without just blurting it out. “We’ve been kind of seeing each other. Casually. Very casually, and recently. Really recently.”
My friend grimaced. “No wonder he looked so cagey this morning. I should’ve guessed he was back to his old wild behavior.” She sighed heavily. “I’m so sorry, Vicky. Has he been impossible to reach now? Since your ‘date,’ that is?” She said the word like it had air quotes.
“No.”
“Has he been pretending that he was getting back together with an ex-girlfriend—a flight attendant named Kimberly, perhaps?”
“What? No.”
She snapped her fingers. “Has he been coming up with odd-sounding and entirely fictional illnesses to keep from meeting you when you want to talk?”
“Not yet, Shar. It’s, um, really not like that.”
“Then, what’s it like?”
I took a deep breath and launched into the whole story. How he’d been acting so much like a playboy at first—inappropriately propositioning me and constantly fooling around. Then there was that day of Winston’s accident and how our relationship just changed. How we got closer after that. Started talking. And kissing. And having meals together, including our date in Chicago...and then going to my apartment afterward.
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