Undone

by Kelly Rimmer

  “And the hand holding?” She’s looking at me suspiciously, but my emotions are nicely under wraps today—even so, I’m not really sure what I’d do if she expressed disapproval at the idea that Jake and I might be together. I can hardly blame her for that comment on Saturday—she had so much going on, and she must have been feeling like crap.

  But I adore Abby and knowing that she does think Jake is too good for me stings. Best to cut her off at the pass before she rubs salt into that wound.

  “It was a strange weekend, babe. He was a godsend, to be honest, but that’s all there is to it.” I layer my tone with finality, hoping she gets the hint. She does not.

  “If . . . if you and Jake were ever to . . .” she starts to say, so I raise my chin and try a blunter approach.

  “Abby, stop. Jake and I are not happening. Now, tell me everything. How are our little Jessie and Clem?”

  Abby releases my hand and, in a heartbeat, she’s reached for her phone again.

  “Brace yourself. I have ten thousand photos, and as aunt, you have a moral obligation to look at every single one and oooh and ahhh at the appropriate times.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Jake

  I DIDN’T THINK I’d get to catch up with Isabel and Paul again this trip, since they’d locked themselves away to celebrate their new nuptials yesterday, and they fly out for New Zealand tonight. But once Paul heard I was still in town, he texted me and asked me to have lunch with them before they leave.

  They’ve just come from the hospital and they’re both giddy with excitement for Marcus and Abby, as well as, I suspect, giddy with dreams of their own. It’s an unexpected bonus to spend this time with them, but I’m startled to find that, maybe for the first time ever, I’m actually jealous of Paul.

  I know that he feels about Izzy the way I once felt about Jess. They’re just lucky enough to be in a place where they are able to promise one another forever.

  From there, I go shopping so I don’t have to wear the same two shirts all week, then head over to Chelsea and visit Dad and Elspeth. They’ve recently moved into Dad’s apartment together, and they drag me along for their regular Monday afternoon walk along the High Line. I’ve met Elspeth over Skype during my regular calls with Dad but spending time with her in person is a genuine bonus.

  My mom got sick when I was a senior in high school, and she died when I was in my second year of college. I still feel her with me sometimes, and I still think about her all the time. I remember most her brilliant wit, her commitment to her career and her incredible generosity of spirit. I’d had my sights set on med school since I was a kid, but Mom’s suffering and the helplessness we all felt as she battled breast cancer inspired my choice to specialize in oncology. And I don’t doubt that the beautiful relationship she and Dad shared has shaped my own thoughts on relationships. I know a lot of young guys go through a commitment-phobic phase, but that was never me. I always wanted to meet the right person—I always craved the kind of devotion my mom and dad shared to one another.

  But despite a few long-term girlfriends over the years, I never experienced a patch on that kind of connection until Jess and I started dating. I know that if she was willing to give a relationship between us a real shot, we could share the kind of love my parents shared. The kind of love I’ve always wanted to find.

  It’s taken my dad decades to love again after Mom—as far as I know, he hasn’t even dated since she died. Not until now. But he’s clearly besotted with Elspeth, and it’s actually pretty great to see him so happy again.

  “Did you meet my little darling, Jake?” Elspeth asks me as she and Dad file back into their apartment after the walk. I’m not going to stick around this afternoon, so I linger in the doorway, watching as a blue-gray, shorthaired cat saunters across the living room. The cat surveys me, then turns its tail as if it’s going to walk away. Elspeth chases after it, then scoops the cat into her arms and beams. “Say hello to Jake, Meowbert.” I chuckle at the name, and Elspeth explains, “My grandchildren named her. But it suits her, don’t you think?”

  “Hello . . . Meowbert,” I say, reaching to pet the cat’s head. Meowbert raises a paw as if she intends to scratch me, and I hastily drop my hand.

  “That’s not nice, Meowbert,” Elspeth scolds.

  “Meowbert is our guard cat,” Dad explains. He gives the cat an affectionate head scratch. The cat glares at him. “The downside is, she thinks my drapes are her scratching post.” I glance to the drapes and my eyes widen—the bottoms have entirely been shredded. Dad’s a fastidious kind of guy when it comes to his apartment, and I’m stunned that he’s seemingly so at ease with the wanton destruction of his homewares.

  “I’ll bet your Clara would never be so naughty,” Elspeth sighs ruefully. I laugh weakly and assure her, “Then you’d be surprised.”

  “I was never a pet person, was I, Jake?” Dad muses, scooping Meowbert from Elspeth and nestling the furiously protesting cat high in his arms. “Funny how things change.”

  Dad’s gaze drifts to Elspeth, and the two share a quiet smile.

  “It sure is,” I say softly.

  “Come for lunch tomorrow,” Dad says. “I expect to see you at least once within every forty-eight-hour period before you leave. If you average ninety minutes with us every second day for your extended visit here, we’ll have had about 7 percent of your effective daytime hours during the visit. That’s an appropriate ratio of parental to free time, given how rarely I see you in person.”

  It’s fair to say Dad and Paul are pretty similar. Elspeth rolls her eyes at him.

  “Jake, you just visit us when you can. We don’t need to keep a detailed timesheet. If you do want to come for lunch any day, just let me know an hour or two in advance and I’ll get Martin to whip something up.”

  “I’ll see you guys tomorrow,” I tell her, chuckling. “Try to get him to make us bologna sandwiches. That was his favorite meal to ‘cook’ when we were kids.”

  I leave and head back to my hotel to get ready to pick Jess up. I really don’t have a plan for these weeks in New York, beyond spending time with her and hoping she’ll see our potential. In the back of my mind, I am a little nervous that I haven’t thought this all through—it really was a wild impulse to miss that flight. It’s just that if there’s one thing my job has taught me, it’s that life is brutally unpredictable. I’ve seen countless patients die over the years, and over those sad moments, I’ve heard more than my share of stories of regret.

  People rarely regret the chances they took, even if the chances don’t pay off. Those deathbed stories are almost always about the times they failed to try.

  Looking back at my life so far, the one regret I have is that Jess and I couldn’t find a way to make it work. I don’t believe in “love at first sight” or “soul mates,” but for years I’ve felt like Jess and I were meant to be. Maybe I need to give this one last shot, even if just to prove that’s nonsense.

  Still, now that I’m officially in the city for longer, I am a little nervous. I mean, Jess did break my heart two years ago. The way we ended hurt in a way I’d never experienced before, and although I convinced myself I was over her, that might not be the case.

  I have to be smart about how I do this. The last thing I want is either one of us getting hurt again and leaping feetfirst into a full-on physical relationship with Jess is a recipe for disaster. A superfun, superpleasurable disaster, but a disaster nonetheless. I just have to figure out how to avoid it. I don’t want to announce straight out of the block that I won’t be sleeping with her, because her next logical question will be why, and then we’ll have to have a chat about the future right away. That’s obviously not going to work. I need another plan, and fast.

  I arrive at her building just before eight and the guy at the security desk calls up to let her know I’m there. When she appears in the lobby a few minutes later, my breath catches in my throat. I just saw her this morning and she’s been at work all day, so she looks tired, a
nd her black suit and cream silk shirt are a tiny bit crumpled. Even so, she looks stunning. Jess is wearing her hair down today, styled in loose waves around her face, and her makeup is flawless as it always is.

  I love you.

  I’ve never said the words to her, but I’ve thought them countless times. They’ve danced on the tip of my tongue on all kinds of occasions—every time she made me come, every time she spontaneously showed me affection, every time she put me in my place and I adored her for it. I might never get to say those words to her, but I’m pretty sure that I still know them to be true, even after all of this time.

  “Hey. Do you mind if we eat in at my place tonight?” she asks as she approaches. “I can cook, or we can get takeout. I’m just beat.”

  “Do you have the stuff for that tarragon chicken I used to make? If you like, I can cook, you can drink wine and put your feet up.”

  She loops her arm through mine and we start walking back toward her apartment as she laughs softly, “You trying to get into my pants, Winton? If so, you’re going about it just the right way.”

  Yeah, I’m going to have to do some rapid-fire thinking about that, and if the gleam in Jess’s eye is any indication, I’m going to have to do it sooner rather than later.

  “YOU STILL WORK eight to eight, huh?”

  “Most weekdays,” Jess says, then pauses. “Some weekends too. But I do still like to let loose on Friday and Saturday nights, so my weekend work is often around a scheduled hangover.”

  She’s sitting up on the bench top sipping a glass of wine while I cook us dinner. The suit is gone, and now, she’s wearing skin-tight jeans and an equally tight tank top. The new outfit doesn’t look much more comfortable than her work clothes did, but I’m just relieved she didn’t emerge from her room in that tiny dress she was wearing when I came here Friday night.

  I want Jess. Desire throbs under our every interaction. But even as I cook in her kitchen and we hang out together innocently, I’m convincing myself that I can’t give in to the magnetism between us. She actively tried to avoid emotional intimacy with me on Saturday night by trying to seduce me, and emotional distance is the last thing I want over the next two weeks.

  Besides, if we tumble back into bed together right now, sex will mean very different things to each of us. That’s an awful footing to start a relationship on, and a relationship is ultimately what I want.

  “I really thought you’d scale your crazy hours back once Brainway had taken off,” I tell her. “And it’s definitely taken off, right?”

  “I have big plans so I have to work big hours, Jake. And I love my job. It’s my life.” She shrugs.

  “I get that better than most, but even so, it’s rare for me to work those kinds of hours these days.”

  “Good thing for Clara,” Jess laughs softly.

  I stretch to pick my phone up from the bench, unlock it and load a photo, then slide it toward Jess.

  “Reba the dog-sitter sent me the cutest photo of Clara today on their walk.”

  “Oh God, not you too,” Jess groans, but she’s reaching for my phone anyway. At my curious glance, she explains, “Abby. I visited her at lunchtime and she made me look at two hundred photos of the girls. They’re two days old! They can’t do anything yet! How does she have two hundred photos already?”

  “You went by yourself today?”

  “Jake,” she sighs quietly. “I’m fine.”

  “I know,” I say. And I do believe she’s okay—she’s tough as nails. But I saw the pain on her face when we were at the hospital yesterday. It was palpable—the kind of psychic agony a person doesn’t just swipe away in a day. “I’ll come with you while I’m here, if you want me to.”

  “I knew you were staying in New York just to babysit me,” she mutters, but then she sees the photo of Clara and she bursts out laughing. “I wouldn’t say that’s cute, but it is funny.”

  Clara is wearing her harness, and she’s lying flat on the sidewalk, legs on the ground, looking up at Reba’s camera and flatly refusing to move another inch.

  “She saw a truck,” I explain. “Clara has canine anxiety. She’s scared of pretty much everything—trucks, mice, when the TV is too loud, being left alone too long. The shelter staff thought she was probably abused by her previous owner.”

  “What on earth inspired you to adopt a dog? Especially . . .” Jess sets the phone down and says delicately, “Especially one like that?”

  “Ah, it was a particularly impulsive decision, to be honest,” I admit, a little self-consciously.

  “You? Impulsive?” Jess says, eyebrows high, and then I frown at her, and she bursts out laughing. “Remember when you bought that convertible? You didn’t even have anywhere to park it.”

  “It was a total bargain. Besides, I had some good times in that car.”

  “You only owned it for two months!”

  “They were a glorious two months, Jessica,” I chuckle. I don’t remind her that I had to sell the car purely because I had nowhere to park it. Total impulse decision—I was thinking about ways to get out of the city on my days off, saw an ad for the car the next day and bam! The rest was history.

  “And what about when you let that guy from the hospital move in with you.”

  “He was a radiographer. A medical professional. He holds people’s lives in his hands every day. It seemed safe enough to let him stay in my spare room.”

  “You met him for two minutes and didn’t even get references.” Jess is laughing so hard she’s nearly in tears now. “If I remember correctly, you woke up the first morning and he was in the process of stealing your wallet from your nightstand.”

  “Are you enjoying this?”

  “So much,” she assures me. “And then there was the time you decided you’d get dual tattoo sleeves.”

  “You have to admit, tattoo sleeves would totally have suited me. I’m tough and manly. And edgy.”

  Jess is howling with laughter now. She holds her stomach with one hand and wipes at her eyes with the other.

  “Tattoos are for men who smolder. You don’t smolder, Jake. You smile. And besides, as I understand it, people traditionally get a single tattoo before they commit to a whole sleeve, and then maybe a sleeve on one side before they do both. You were booked in for twelve hours in the parlor for four fucking days in a row! If I hadn’t made you wait a week to be sure it was what you wanted, you’d look like Adam Levine by now.”

  “Isn’t Adam Levine hot?”

  “He was hot,” she corrects me. “But that was four hundred tattoos ago. There is such a thing as too much ink, and on someone as clean-cut and virtuous as you, one tattoo would have been ‘too much ink.’”

  I grin at her. The tattoo sleeves were an insane idea. I can’t remember what inspired that particular venture, and I’m very relieved she talked me out of it.

  “So what was the story with the dog? Just you being impulsive again?” Jess asks me.

  I wince, then turn back to the stovetop. We’ve been laughing together for a few minutes, but my answer to that question will change the tone of this chat completely.

  “Something like that,” I say. I’m hoping she’ll leave it at that, but I’m not surprised when she pushes me for more.

  “What happened?” she asks. Jess has read something in my body language. Her tone is immediately serious, and when I turn back to her, I find she’s watching me closely. I sigh and give her a sad smile.

  “I lost a patient. He was seven years old . . . He had a type of tumor called a glioblastoma.”

  “You lose patients all the time,” she says, not unkindly, and, of course, she’s correct.

  I turn my attention back to the stovetop before I explain, “I care about my patients. Too much sometimes.”

  “I know you do.”

  “Rafael was particularly special. He had recurrent brain cancer . . . glioblastoma. His prognosis was terminal but no matter how sick he was, no matter how much pain he was in, he was always hopeful. His spir
it was so vibrant. That day, I saw him on morning rounds, and we had a long chat about his two favorite subjects . . . dogs and baseball.” I chuckle softly at the memory, but then tense at what came after. “I fist-bumped him and told him I’d see him the next morning. A few hours later, he suffered a massive brain hemorrhage . . . just a freak incident, no one could have seen it coming, nothing I did or didn’t do could have changed the outcome.”

  “I’m really sorry, Jake,” I hear Jess murmur from behind me, but I don’t turn to face her yet. Instead, I stare down into the pot I’m stirring. Dealing with death is a part of my job, but losing Rafael hit me hard. His innocence and his optimism had worn off on me. I’d almost convinced myself that his meds regime would buy him time, and with time, I’d somehow find a miracle for him.

  “When a nurse of Rafael’s ward called to tell me what had happened, I had just enough energy and composure to go and spend some time with his parents and brother, then I took the rest of the afternoon off. I was driving home when I found myself at the dog rescue center, and when I left there half an hour later, Clara was in my back seat.” I turn back to Jess at last, and add with a sad smile, “She chewed through a seat belt on the way home. Clara definitely began her life with me as she intended to continue.”

  Jess is staring at me thoughtfully.

  “Surely every time you lose a patient like that, you’re thinking about your mom.”

  “Not always. But . . . well, sometimes. Sure.”

  “Why do you do this job?” she asks me, bewildered.

  “It’s a calling, Jess,” I tell her gently. “I know exactly what it feels like to wish and pray and hope for just one more good hour . . . one more good day. My mom died too young, but I know she would have wanted some good to come from her death, and it really has. I love my job. I make a difference to people’s lives. Sometimes my patients recover. Sometimes I’ve bought them precious time, and believe me, in these situations, time is everything. The day Rafael died was just a low point, and yes, adopting Clara was probably impulsive, but I don’t regret it. She’s a handful, but she also brings me a lot of joy. And . . . It’s hard to explain, but knowing she’s waiting for me at home is actually a comfort.”