“I…” Brooke seemed to be at a rare loss for words. And suddenly flustered, though it was obvious only to someone who knew her so well.
Always flawlessly put together, perfectly composed, impeccable in manners and speech, Brooke Bennett was a woman whose every word and every movement was well orchestrated. She was a woman acting out her own life, who wanted her life to be neat and tidy and perfect and enviable to others.
Angie felt sick. What had she ever seen in Brooke? It was true that when Brooke turned all that dazzling, exquisite, high-octane attention on her, she felt special. Lucky. But when that spotlight switched off? That was when Angie felt alone, lonely, friendless in their relationship. Which was most of the time. She’d lost count of the number of evenings she spent alone reading or attempting to write some fiction while Brooke flitted between social engagements and work events. True, Brooke sometimes asked her to accompany her. She rarely did, however, because she had no patience for small talk, no tolerance for Brooke and her friends alternately talking shop and gossiping. Angie far preferred her own company to that, but she also understood that all that alone time wasn’t the way a relationship was supposed to work.
Brooke tried again. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry it ended this way. We…had some good times, but…well. There it is.”
There it is? Angie resisted a good eye rolling. Clearly, no meaningful apology was coming. And so what. She had been hurt, of course she had, but now she realized it’d mostly been her ego that had taken a beating and not her heart, because Brooke didn’t possess the ability to shred her heart.
“Brooke, why did you choose me?”
A well-manicured eyebrow rose, then settled. “Because you were real.”
“Real? I don’t understand.”
Brooke sighed impatiently. “You didn’t have pretensions, hidden agendas. You didn’t act like someone different than who you were. You never made a promise you didn’t keep, you never said things you didn’t believe with all your heart. You were who you were, and it was a refreshing change.”
Angie swallowed. “And that wasn’t good enough?”
“It might have been. But I couldn’t reach you, Ange. I could never really get through to you. It’s like you would have been perfectly happy to go live on a desert island all by yourself with your books and those notepads you’re always writing in.” Brooke rose, brushing a speck of lint from her blouse. “You never needed me. You never even needed my money.”
All one had to do was look at her seven-year-old SUV in the parking lot to know that last bit was true.
Angie watched Brooke pack up her briefcase in silence and slip out the door. Sadness edged into her heart—not so much for what she’d lost, but for herself. Was it true she didn’t need anyone? That she was happiest alone? She did love nothing better than to sit someplace quiet and read or to dabble with her short stories (she was too scared to start a novel yet). But she loved her family. And she enjoyed her once-a-month billiards and beer night with Vinnie and some of the boys.
Her gaze slid to the window, where a wet snow shower blurred the view. Brooke was wrong. She wasn’t a loner. Thanksgiving was around the corner, which meant time with her family. And she had a proper date lined up for the weekend—dinner with Julie.
There was Vic too, although Vic was sort of the reason Angie was going out with Julie again. Vic and that damned smooth, sexy neck of hers that kept resurfacing in Angie’s mind. Same with the vision of how her mouth turned up when she laughed, the way her eyes looked more green when she was happy, gray when she was sad or upset. And the way she used her hands to express herself when they talked about books. Those were the things she couldn’t stop thinking about. They were also the things she needed to stop thinking about. Seeing Julie again might help her with that.
* * *
Vic didn’t mind working night shifts; they beat the hell out of being home alone. Before bedtime was always the worst; no Karen brushing her teeth, humming Madonna or Prince tunes while washing her face. And then there was the bed, cold and empty. Totally uninviting.
Julie sat at the nursing station, in the process of logging out of the computer and handing things off to Vic.
“How was your shift?” Vic asked.
“Easy peasey. Except for the guy in Five.”
Olivia appeared, so preoccupied with cleaning her glasses that she nearly collided with Julie. “What’s up with Five?”
Julie rolled her eyes. “Thirty-six-year-old male. Wants opioids for his back. Says he fell on some ice.”
“Did you check him in the database?” Vic asked.
“Yup. He was here three weeks ago looking for the same thing. His excuse that time was falling off a ladder. And a month before that he was at the ER in Gaylord complaining of a sprained ankle. I was just about to go in and tell him to take some over-the-counter NSAIDs.”
Vic grabbed the patient’s chart off the counter. “I’ll do it.” She could tell Julie was in a hurry to get out of here, the way she was fidgeting.
“Ooh, now I remember,” Liv said to Julie. “Big date tonight with our favorite paramedic, huh?”
Irritation engulfed Vic. She sure as hell hadn’t forgotten about the date. In the hallway at the hospital the other day, Angie had told her about her date with Julie almost as an afterthought. She’d looked slightly embarrassed about it, like she wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but not to the point that she’d canceled it, it seemed. It was a mystery Vic couldn’t quite figure out, or rather, Angie’s vibes were the mystery. Did she actually want to date Julie, or was she only going through the motions, like it was some kind of obligation or dare? What was most puzzling was why she wanted to date Julie when she admitted it was Vic she’d rather kiss. Women, dating, it was all some giant, annoying riddle that Vic couldn’t begin to unravel.
“Yes, and I don’t want to be late.”
“So what are you two doing?” Liv pressed, oblivious to the heat rushing to Vic’s face.
“Just dinner.” Julie glanced nervously at Vic, then away. “And a place where they have some live acoustic music. Nothing much.”
Liv seemed to suddenly notice Vic’s discomfort. “Right. Okay, well, um, behave yourself now.”
Minutes later, the patient in Five sent on his way without a prescription, Vic said pointedly to Liv, “You know, I’m not that delicate. Or precious.”
“Hmm? What do you mean?”
“Don’t play dumb. We’ve been friends too long for that.”
They were alone at the nursing station. Liv collapsed into a chair and pushed her glasses up onto her head. “I’m sorry, all right? I thought…I don’t know, that you might be less than thrilled that Julie and Angie are dating. I shouldn’t have been talking about it in front of you.”
“They’re going on a date, not dating. And what makes you think I have a problem with it?”
“See? That’s exactly what I mean. You’re defensive about it.” Vic started to protest but Liv cut her off. “We’ve been friends too long, remember? You just said so yourself. Now. Tell me why those two seeing each other bothers you, and I know it does.”
Vic hesitated, but she knew how persistent Liv could be. “She said she wanted to kiss me.”
“What? She wants to kiss you? She said that?”
“Don’t look so shocked. And yes, she said that. But don’t worry. We didn’t. We can’t.”
“But you want to?”
Ah, now that was the tricky part. She didn’t actually know what she wanted, mostly because it didn’t matter. Angie Cullen was off limits. Period. And she told Liv as much.
“What?” Vic said after a moment, trying to read the inscrutable look on Liv’s face.
“You’re being way too sensitive about this,” Liv said. “Or maybe moral is the word I’m looking for. You don’t have to be a nun, you know. It’s okay to date. You’re single, and you’ve been single for almost three months.”
“Jesus, I’m not a tub of margarine that’s about to expi
re.”
“I know. Look, sweetie. I want to see you happy, I want to see you move on, that’s all. And for the record, I think you’re being too hard on yourself.”
Vic sat in the chair beside Olivia, raised her arms over her head to stretch out the knot between her shoulder blades. Talking with her old friend, she could already feel a clarifying effect. Liv had a way of restoring her to herself, a deep and intuitive understanding of her nature that she seldom encountered with others.
“I don’t want anyone getting hurt, including myself, that’s all.”
“I get that. But Angie’s a big girl and so are you. If you want to date her, then it’s time to make your intentions known.”
Vic laughed. “That sounds like something out of a Victorian romance novel. ‘Make my intentions known.’ Like give her my calling card or something? Ask a chaperone to set something up?”
Olivia swatted her lightly on the arm. “No, silly. Like shove Julie out of the way and get in line before that one’s taken.”
“But she’s Brooke’s ex, for God’s sake.” She didn’t need to spell out that there was something icky, something incestuous about the idea of dating her ex-wife’s current girlfriend’s ex. “It’d be…weird.”
“Oh, get over yourself, Vic. That kind of thing happens all the time in the lesbian dating world.”
Vic wasn’t ready to concede. “But it’s my dating life, not the entire lesbian dating world we’re talking about. I don’t care what other people do.”
Liv snatched her reading glasses from the top of her head and put them on, then turned her attention to the computer. She shot Vic a final, impatient glance.
“What?”
“If there’s chemistry between you and Angie—and I know there is—then go ahead and explore things a little. You don’t have to move in with her or even sleep with her. You can simply see how things go. Hell, you might even discover you have nothing in common except your exes, and then you can move on with no what-ifs.”
Things should be so simple, Vic thought. She didn’t fear that she and Angie had no common ground. What she feared was making a fool of herself, of Angie rejecting her. Again. Dating Julie was a safe option for Angie and not the minefield it would be if she and Vic dated. Why would Angie want to subject herself to the kind of trouble that dating her would surely bring?
Vic dropped her face into her hands. Asking Angie on a date was a dumb idea. And moot anyway, because she was dating Julie. Man, this was some complicated shit!
Chapter Thirteen
Angie was too nervous to do much more than pick at her chicken Alfredo. By the time she and Julie hit the café where two musicians sang softly with their acoustic guitars under dim lighting, she was ravenous. Of course it was too late then; coffee and biscotti would have to do.
“They’re good, aren’t they?” Julie said as the musicians, two women in their twenties, stepped off stage for a short break. They’d covered James Taylor, Carole King, Adele—their harmonizing spot on.
“They sure are.” She was enjoying the music. And the distraction. But she couldn’t entirely eradicate from her mind Brooke’s remarks to her at the lawyer’s office the other day. She let them lash her all over again, the sting only slightly duller now. “I could never really reach you. I could never get through to you.” It was those words Angie chose to dwell on, rather than the part about her being real, authentic, the fact that she didn’t put on airs. Because Brooke had spoken them, she wanted to focus on the negative.
“Julie?”
“Yes?” Hazel eyes scrutinized her with a curiosity plainly anchored in attraction. She leaned close enough for Angie to smell her gardenia-scented perfume, angling her cleavage to a more advantageous view, a move that couldn’t be more intentionally seductive. The staginess of it made Angie a little dizzy, like she’d suddenly stepped into an old black-and-white romance movie. She was flattered, but that was all.
“Do you ever…I mean, have you ever…would you ever get involved with someone who was really hard to get close to?”
Julie arranged her expression into one of bemusement. “Probably not, no. Do you mean someone who’s emotionally inaccessible?”
Isn’t that what I just said? It wasn’t the first time Julie had taken something she’d said and rearranged it into something more complex in a superior sort of way, as though she could say it better, more cleverly. Perhaps it wasn’t intentional, but it reminded her too much of the way Brooke spoke to her. Vic, now she would have given her a straight answer. “Yes,” Angie added. “Someone who holds things back.”
“Well, if they hold back important things, like feelings, then that’s definitely a problem. If they’re holding back how they can’t decide between black tea or herbal tea, then, no, it’s not a problem. Is this an academic question you’re asking me?”
“Yes. Of course. Hypothetically. How would you handle someone like that?”
“Simple. I wouldn’t.” Julie screwed up her face like she’d eaten something distasteful. “The problem is, you’d keep thinking that person would change, that you might finally be able to break through.” She sighed and sat back in her chair. “But they wouldn’t and so it’d be a waste of everyone’s time.”
Angie pretended to wipe something from her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. It seemed Julie had become a relationship cynic already. “People can change,” she added benignly. What she really wanted to say, because it was so crystal clear now, was that Julie was wasting her time with her. I’m one of those people who’s hard to get through to, one of those people you’d be wasting your time with, can’t you see that?
“Yes. I suppose they can. But I’d rather talk about something else.” Julie leaned toward her again, the suggestion of sex in her eyes.
Ah, now she was getting it. Julie only wanted a fuck buddy and not a serious relationship. A relief, it should have been, because she wasn’t in the market for a relationship either. Not with Julie, anyway. And yet it rankled being treated like meat, even though she’d preached to Vic that this was exactly the elixir for moving on from Brooke and Karen.
“I want to kiss you,” Julie whispered, her breath minty from the Tic Tac she’d snuck into her mouth.
“Wait. I…I’m not sure about this, Julie.”
She arched an eyebrow. “It’s just a kiss. And maybe more, I won’t lie. But I’m not looking for a serious relationship. And neither are you, if I’m not mistaken.”
Angie’s mouth was impossibly dry, the ability to adequately express herself having deserted her. “No, I…I’m not, but—”
“I promise you, it doesn’t matter to me if you’re emotionally inaccessible.”
But it matters to me, Angie wanted to scream. It matters to me that I’m only good for a good time. As in, ask Angie Cullen on a date because she’s good in bed but lousy at relationships. Did they gossip about her this way at the hospital, where they gossiped about everybody? That she was a relationship fuckup, damaged goods, but she could probably do casual sex?
“Excuse me,” she said, pushing her chair back and standing up. “I really think I need to go. I’m sorry, Julie. You have your own car here, right?”
“Yes. Look, I’m sorry if I said the wrong thing.”
“You didn’t.”
She left the café defeated. She was tough, hardened inside by her two tours of duty and her years of working on the street as a paramedic, so it wasn’t a mystery to her that she was like a plant on a rock that didn’t need much water or light to survive. But this instant, just for now, she wanted to be so much more than that. She wanted her roots to go deep and she wanted to bloom. Wanted the nourishment her soul was afraid to crave.
When she hopped into her car, it was only a couple of minutes before she did a U-turn and headed in the direction of Vic’s house.
* * *
Vic plunged her hands into the soapy water and got to work scrubbing the pot she’d neglected before heading to work late this afternoon. The remaining spaghett
i sauce had congealed and it was proving more obstinate than a broken femur that resisted setting. The last thing she wanted to do after work, even though the shift had been unusually light, was deal with this damned pot. It was almost midnight. She should be in bed with her book. The pot could wait until morning, but she knew the pattern all too well. As soon as she slipped into bed, she’d start thinking about Karen and everything that entailed—trying to dissect what went wrong, wondering how much of their relationship had been one big lie, worrying about what the future held for her. No. Far better to scrub this pot to within an inch of its life and put off her self-inflicted torture for another few minutes.
The doorbell startled her. She rarely got visitors since Karen’s departure and certainly never this late. Even Liv had a habit of calling before she stopped by.
Leaving the chain attached, she cracked the door an inch. “Angie! What are you doing here? Are you all right?” She hurriedly released the chain and opened the door.
“Sorry for coming by unannounced. I’m fine. Did I interrupt anything?”
“Yes,” Vic said severely.
Angie’s face tightened. “Oh shit. Sorry.”
Vic laughed. “It was very important. I was scrubbing a pot and hating every damned minute of it. Come in. Wait! Aren’t you supposed to be on a date with Julie?”
“I was, yes.”
Angie followed her into the kitchen, where Vic wordlessly poured them each a glass of wine. Wine from Angie’s family estate. She felt guilty if she bought any other kind. “Well…did you have a good time?”
“No.”
Vic motioned for Angie to join her at the small, round kitchen table. Their knees lightly touched as they sat. “That’s all I get? A one-word answer?” Something must have happened for Angie to show up on her doorstep this late.
“I’m not going to see her again.”
Vic’s heart thudded as she realized she was happy about the news. She shouldn’t be, but she was, dammit. “I see. Her decision or yours?”
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