Unsuitable Men

by Forrester, Nia

  “Good to see you again, Jocelyn.”

  Brendan leaned in to kiss Tracy’s cousin briefly on the cheek.

  “Nice of you to come,” Jocelyn said.

  She was wearing a black dress that was marginally too close-fitting to be appropriate. Brendan remembered what Tracy told him about her acting like “the Black Marilyn Monroe” and tried not to smile.

  “Does Tracy know you’re here?”she asked.

  He nodded slowly. She’d spotted him at the graveside standing next to Riley and her eyebrows had shot up for a split second before she resumed her somber expression. As Brendan scanned the mourners, he noted that besides Tracy, her mother and her mother’s sisters, nearby, but on the other side of the casket were two young women who bore passing resemblances to Tracy. But while they clung to each other while they cried, they didn’t look at or speak to Tracy or her mother.

  Curious, Brendan leaned in and whispered in Riley’s ear, asking who they were.

  “Tracy’s sisters,” she responded.

  Sisters? Tracy never mentioned siblings. In fact, he was pretty sure that when he was talking about being an only child, she had commiserated as though her experience had been precisely the same.

  “Will we see you back at the house?” Jocelyn asked, her expression calculating.

  “I’ll be there,” Brendan nodded. He looked around for Riley who was chatting with a group of women, wishing she would come rescue him.

  “I have to admit, I didn’t believe Tracy the last time you were here and she told me you two weren’t involved,” Jocelyn said taking a step closer to him. “But this time since she brought along her boyfriend, I guess I have to . . .”

  “Excuse me, what?” Brendan gave Jocelyn his full attention for the first time.

  “Jason,” Jocelyn said. “You know him, I assume. He’s from New York as well.”

  “No,” Brendan said, his voice wooden. “I don’t know Jason.”

  “Flew in at the last minute is my understanding,” Jocelyn said. “Anyway, I’m riding with the family, so I’ll see you over there?”

  “Sure,” Brendan nodded.

  So Tracy had a boyfriend. Well, he shouldn’t be surprised. Once you cracked the surface, there was a lot to Tracy that would make a man want to lay his claim on her. Except now he was preoccupied with just how much cracking dude had managed in the last six weeks. Was she sleeping with him?

  “Brendan. You ready to head over?”

  Riley’s hand was on his arm and he turned to look at her.

  “Why didn’t you tell me Tracy had a boyfriend?” he said.

  Riley looked confused for a moment. “She doesn’t.”

  “Her cousin Jocelyn seems to think she does. Some guy named Jason?”

  Recognition entered Riley’s eyes but it took a moment for her to shake her head. “He’s not her boyfriend, Brendan.”

  “But she’s with him.”

  Riley sighed and looked exhausted. “I don’t know what to call it. I’m not sure she does either.”

  “Yeah, I’m familiar with that set-up,” Brendan said nodding.

  “It’s not . . . it’s . . .”

  “None of my business,” he said holding up a hand. “Let’s just go to the house and pay our respects. I might be able to get back home on the red-eye and get some work done tomorrow.”

  No point pretending he wasn’t pissed. But mostly, he was pissed at himself. He’d been hoping for more than a chance to say he was sorry about her father’s death, and that was the truth. So he played himself. Wouldn’t be the first time.

  All along both sides of the street outside Tracy’s mother’s home, cars were lined up, and it took Brendan and Riley some time to find a place to park, which wound up being three blocks over. As they walked back to the house, they joined dozens of other mourners making their way toward the classic colonial. Mrs. Emerson, Tracy’s mother, was greeting them at the front door. As he and Riley drew closer, Brendan saw that Tracy was standing next to her, and behind Tracy, a man he didn’t know.

  Beside him, Brendan could feel Riley’s apprehension but she had no cause for it. It wasn’t as though he was Shawn after all. In his day, Shawn would have had no compunction about starting an out and out brawl if he felt someone was moving in on Riley, but that had never been his style. As shitty as this might feel, he could only assume that at least for this moment in time, Tracy was precisely where she wanted to be, and with the man she’d chosen to be with.

  “Mrs. Emerson,” Brendan took her hand as he entered the house. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you.” She blinked, looking surprised to see him, and then—Brendan was sure he hadn’t imagined it—she cast a worried look behind her in the direction of Tracy’s companion.

  He was wearing a dark grey suit, which Brendan recognized as expensively-tailored, and his shoes were a pair Brendan himself had. Also very pricey. He had a serious, almost stern face, clean-shaven and was a little on the thin side. It was hard not to try to get the measure of this man, his competition. He would have spent more time sizing dude up if he didn’t have to keep the line moving.

  Then he was standing in front of Tracy and if he didn’t know better he would say she looked relieved, and maybe even a little elated to see him. When he held out a hand, she hugged him instead. He wanted to hug her back, but now that he was standing in front of her, he was too angry and felt a revival of the same hurt he felt the night she told him she’d about this guy in the first place. So instead he awkwardly patted her back and stepped away from her, mumbling something about condolences and moving on. Briefly in the back of his mind he wondered where her sisters were, but foremost in his consciousness was how quickly he could get the hell out of there.

  Three hours it turned out.

  Although he was pretty much ready to go the minute after he’d made himself known to the family, Riley was not. She’d known many of Tracy’s family members for years, and hadn’t seen them in awhile, so she spent long minutes talking with each one, catching them up on her life, getting them caught up on hers and showing off pictures of Cullen. Brendan hung on the outskirts of these conversations, gauging from each one just how much longer she was likely to be.

  Once or twice, he considered leaving her, but knew he wouldn’t. Even though she was among people she knew well, Shawn would not take kindly to his wife being ‘left’ behind anywhere. The entire afternoon, apart from following Riley around, his remaining focus was directed at avoiding Tracy. She had a shadow of her own. Wherever she was, Jason was there as well, a supportive hand on her back. Rather than break the hand off, Brendan decided it might be better to just not look at them.

  Finally, at dusk, Riley was ready to go, and only because she needed to go back to the hotel and relieve herself with her breast pump. Just when he thought they were home-free, she turned in the foyer remembering “just one more person” she needed to speak to. Brendan stood waiting, juggling the keys to the rental car, looking eagerly out at the street.

  “We never got a chance to talk,” a voice said behind him said.

  He turned and looked at Tracy, taking her in fully for the first time. She was wearing a conservative black suit and low-heeled black pumps with dark pantyhose. In her ears were simple pearl earrings and around her neck the matching necklace. She had pulled her hair back into a bun and wore only minimal make-up. It was hard to look her in the eye.

  Brendan could feel her wanting something from him, a response that he was obviously failing to produce. She kept trying to hold his gaze even as he looked over her head, searching for Riley, wishing she would hurry the hell up.

  “You’re still angry with me,” she said.

  He looked at her. “I was never angry with you.”

  “Really?” she asked, skeptical. “So that last night we were together? What was that about?”

  “I was angry,” he admitted. “But more at myself than at you.”

  “What for?” she asked, her voice barely audi
ble.

  “For lying to myself about what you and me were about.”

  “What did you think we were about?” she asked.

  Brendan looked over her head again. “Tracy, this isn’t the time or the place. You just lost your Dad . . .”

  “He wasn’t my ‘Dad’,” she said, her voice hard. “Not by a long shot. And I want to know.” She held his arm. “Tell me what you thought . . .”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore does it?” Brendan said. “You’ve got somebody and he looks . . . he looks like a good guy.”

  “I don’t have somebody, as you put it. And Jason is a good guy. I guess. Just not . . .”

  “Okay, so are we ready?” Riley was back. She looked from Tracy to Brendan and then apologized. “I can come ba . . .”

  “No,” Brendan said quickly. “I’m ready.

  And he was. It was already too much—all the back and forth of emotion; it was exactly what he didn’t want. What with the dead father, the new boyfriend and her interminable ambivalence about him, he was fucking exhausted. His life never used to be like this, marked by sharp lurches of feeling, up and down, forwards and backwards.

  It used to be that he was the happy-go-lucky guy, who nothing got to. Well, she’d fucked that all up. Or he had. But either way, it was time to get his shit straight again. Brendan decided right then that when he got back to New York he would have left all this behind him. And the next time he showed up at Shawn and Riley’s and Tracy was there, looking the way she did, he would absorb the emotional blow that seeing her would undoubtedly produce, and then he’d just keep on stepping.

  “Brendan . . .”

  “It’s okay, Tracy.” He touched the side of her face, and attempted a smile. “It’s all good.”

  During the car ride back to the hotel, Brendan could feel Riley wanting to say something. He stayed silent, hoping she wouldn’t, but at the same time wishing she would. His hold on this new resolution to stay away from Tracy was tenuous at best, and all it would take was one encouraging word from the person who knew her as well as Riley did before it would crumble and disintegrate entirely. He waited, but she said nothing and at the hotel, they paused in the lobby.

  “You okay for dinner?” Brendan asked her.

  Riley nodded. “I’m a little tired so I’ll probably do room service. You?”

  “Same,” Brendan nodded.

  “You’ll call me before you decide about leaving early?” Riley asked.

  “Already decided, Riley. You want to get on the same flight?”

  “No, I’ll stick with the one in the morning.”

  Brendan hesitated. Shawn would not appreciate him leaving Atlanta to run away from a woman and leaving Riley alone to take an airport taxi at seven a.m.

  “Y’know what, I could use some sleep too,” Brendan said. “I’ll meet you down here in the a.m. like we planned.”

  “Okay.” Riley smiled at him and squeezed his arm before heading for the elevators. He wasn’t sure how he felt about all the sympathy being lobbed his way. He would drink himself silly tonight and tomorrow would be a new day.

  “Are you going to open the door?”

  Brendan sat up in bed and listened for a moment as it began to dawn on him that Tracy’s voice wasn’t in his head, but in the real world where things were considerably fuzzier since he’d polished off almost all the little bottles in the mini-refrigerator. At the peak of his drunkenness he had laughed aloud at himself, remembering how he’d watched Shawn go through this same mad dance, and felt sorry for the dude. This was his punishment.

  “Brendan? You’re making me worried now. If you don’t open up, I might have to call hotel security.”

  That spurred him to move a little more quickly and he swung his long legs over the edge of the bed and went to open the door. Tracy was standing there in jeans and a t-shirt, her face clean of make-up.

  “You’re flattering yourself,” he said as he walked back into the room.

  “I wasn’t implying you would hurt yourself . . . because of me,” she said.

  “Not for any reason,” Brendan said. “I happen to be one of my favorite people.” And with that last sentence he knew that he was still pretty fucking drunk. By the tiny smile on her face she was trying to hide, Tracy knew it too.

  “You’re one of my favorite people too.” She shut the door behind her and sat on the edge of the bed next to him. “I didn’t like how we left things.”

  “Which time?” he asked.

  “None of them,” Tracy said after a moment.

  “So you need closure?” Brendan asked. The word didn’t roll off his tongue as easily as he’d hoped. “Whatever the fuck that is.”

  “I’m not trying to close anything,” Tracy said.

  The stubbornness in her voice made him look at her, and she looked right back at him her chin tilted slightly upward, the way she did when they argued and she refused to back down.

  “Y’know Tracy, to be the prettiest woman I ever knew, you sure have a lot of ugly inside you,” he said.

  The effect of his words was immediate. She blinked as though he’d punched her in the gut and tears sprang to her eyes. And then he felt like a shit for making her cry.

  Brendan sighed and reached out, pulling her against him, burying his face in her hair. “I’m sorry,” he said, and because he was too drunk to censor himself he went on. “I’m hurt so I’m hurting you, and I’m sorry.”

  Her head snapped back and she looked at him, her eyes strangely hopeful.

  “You’re hurt?” she asked.

  “Fucking crushed,” Brendan admitted. He used his nose to nuzzle hers. “Wasn’t it obvious?”

  “I knew you were angry.”

  “But only because I was hurt. I thought we were okay. I thought we were . . . starting to get each other. And then out of left field, you tell me that shit? That you want to date?”

  “I didn’t know what to do.”

  “About what?”

  “About you. About everything. I didn’t know what to do. It was just too much. It wasn’t what I expected.”

  “What did you expect?”

  “Not to feel anything.”

  That knocked him back a little.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means,” Tracy said slowly. “That I’m used to not feeling anything. With men. That’s what I’m used to.”

  Brendan struggled to wrap his alcohol-addled mind around that, not sure he understood what the heck she was talking about. Tracy, probably seeing his confusion, stood and went to sit on one of the armchairs a few feet away so that they were opposite each other and could look each other more easily in the eyes.

  “I want to tell you some things about me,” she said. “Things that only Riley knows. And when I’m done, you have to promise me that you won’t try to respond. At least not now.”

  Brendan was even more confused, and Tracy read that on his face too.

  “I know it doesn’t make sense yet. But when I’m done, maybe you won’t want to see me again. Or you will. But I want you to promise not to try to give me an answer tonight.”

  She looked terrified. Even in his inebriated state, he could read that expression. Whatever it was she wanted to tell him, it was clearly not something she shared lightly. Brendan could feel sobriety battling for supremacy in his brain because he wanted to hear and understand what Tracy said, even though another part of him dreaded it.

  “I promise,” he said.

  Tracy’s chest heaved as she took a deep breath and began speaking.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Tracy would never have thought in a million years that Brendan would fly all the way to Atlanta for Malcolm’s funeral. After all, he had never met him, and even if he had, things hadn’t exactly been left on a high note between them. And Riley, in true form, hadn’t breathed a word. But seeing him there at the graveside, in his black suit, wearing a tie—Brendan in a tie— had been the sweetest thing. And as she stood there, listening to the pre
acher intone, she realized that all the “sweetest things” anyone had ever done for her, he had done. In the few months they had been together, the list seemed endless.

  What she had known for at least a month came crashing down on her again in that instant. She loved this man. She loved him and she didn’t care one whit about what her mother or anyone else might think. She loved him, and she was pretty sure he might love her too. But there was the reality of Meghan who he’d begun dating again, and Jason who had breezed into town, looking like he expected a medal for showing up.

  Over the last few weeks of dating Jason Miller half-heartedly and more out of inertia than anything else, she had figured him out. He was the Prince of the Grand Gesture. He wanted to take her to the best, most expensive restaurants, in the newest luxury car, and to the exclusive-run ballet where tickets were impossible to get for mere mortals. And it all felt a little contrived, as though he didn’t enjoy doing these things for her so much as he enjoyed how doing these things for her made him look.

  Even coming to Malcolm’s funeral had been a big showy thing. He’d gone to great pains when he was in New York to apologize with flowers that he couldn’t be there, and then at the last minute chartered a jet to fly him in, because he just “needed to be there” for her, “no matter the inconvenience.” She’d almost rolled her eyes when he said it. For heaven’s sake, they’d only been on about five or six dates; a nice card and a wreath would have sufficed.

  But her mother of course had loved the whole bit, and looked approvingly at him when he explained his ordeal getting there. My god, Tracy thought, can she not see through this guy? He’s everything she thought Brendan was! And the way he stuck to her throughout the reception was nauseating, acting the part of the solicitous boyfriend, basking in everyone’s approval.