“You didn’t imagine things with Matthew. I’m certain that he was just as enamored with you. When I talked with him on Thanksgiving, he reminded me so much of how I was when I met your mother. How he would do anything to make you happy. How he wanted so badly to impress me; just like I wanted to impress your grandfather.”
“Dad, don’t. Don’t lie to me to make me feel better. If he really, truly cared about me, he would have stopped me from leaving. He would have begged me to love him. If he wanted me to be happy, he wouldn’t have left me so miserable.”
“What if he doesn’t think that you are miserable? He never felt like he deserved your kindness. What if he thought your affection was based out of sympathy or pity? What if he thought that you finally got what you wanted from Eric? You admitted as much to him. You were torn that night; you didn’t know what to do. There was still a part of you that loved Eric very much. Would it be so wrong of him to have assumed that you would have picked the path of least resistance? Especially when you told Blake nothing other than you were headed to Indianapolis?”
“Eric came after me. Eric. After he called me a fucking bitch and threw me out of his place. He still came to check on me. And to give me a peace offering of sorts. So what if I pretended I wasn’t at Gracie’s when he stopped by? He still came over. I might as well be dead to Matthew.”
“Which just goes to show that Eric’s not the villain you’ve made him out to be. And Matthew’s not your knight in shining armor. You can’t expect either one of them to be perfect when you’re not.”
I sighed. “I just need to cut my losses and move on. I know I made the right choice about Eric. And I’m not the only one who’s ever had a unrequited crush. It just sucks that I’m learning about all this at twenty-six instead of seventeen.”
Anything he would have said was interrupted by the doorbell ringing. Gracie emerged from her hiding place and we spent the rest of the morning supervising furniture placement. Between a trip to the storage unit and a late lunch, there was no time to think any further about my broken heart or the possibility that it didn’t have to be that way.
That was exactly the way I wanted it to be.
Chapter Eleven
Time heals all wounds. Or at least it provides a numbness that makes it possible to go on. And go on I did, until one day I was able to wake up in the morning and not dread the hours that stretched ahead. To be honest, I never really minded the working hours – just everything that came before and after.
George had finally put his foot down and demanded that I not continue my sixty hour work weeks. I knew he was concerned for my well being. It wasn’t about the bottom line; I was salaried and the bank should be happy on paper for all I gave them. By all accounts I was doing an admirable job. There were even whispers that eventually I may be able to land a job at the true corporate office downtown. You know, the lavishly decorated showpiece that most people I told about my position already assumed was where I worked from. Especially on Fridays, George made sure that I wrapped things up shortly after five, sometimes standing in my doorway and tapping his watch.
Truth be told, I was beginning to enjoy my time off more and more. As winter faded away to spring, my house was becoming a home. Being brand new, I could afford to tackle different projects at a leisurely pace, slowly putting my mark upon it. The furniture had been a big inspiration, providing me with a muse for how I wanted to paint it. Instinctively, I had gravitated towards shades in the yellow family. I guess I just liked yellow houses.
I began spending a lot of time outdoors tending to my landscaping. Being from Indianapolis, it kind of surprised me how quickly I adapted to life in suburbia. There was something therapeutic about getting my hands dirty and planting flowers. Even though it was time consuming work, in the end I had a lot to show for it. It kept me busy and productive and was a way to pass the time when I couldn’t spend it at work. It wasn’t like I was exactly a social butterfly.
Gracie did make a few trips up on weekends to help me with the decoration process. I felt bad about making her drive so far, but she didn’t seem to mind. The look of concern was still etched upon her face each time she saw me but she never gave it a voice. We painted or planted or just watched television together instead. She usually ended up spending the night, dragging me from club to club in a fruitless attempt to make me socialize. The evenings were fun but I had never been the type of person who liked to party anyway. I was pretty certain that I wouldn’t find someone to heal my broken heart in a bar. I would watch her flirt with random guys and attempt to get me to join in, but my efforts were limited at best.
A young couple had moved into the home across the street from me. Their names were Brian and Regina, and they had a eight month old baby boy, Quinn. They had been taking a walk around the neighborhood one evening when I had been outside working on my flowerbeds, and I had swallowed down my resistance to communicate and struck up a conversation with them. This in turn led to dinner at their house and the beginnings of a new friendship.
In many ways, I think the two of them embodied what I had hoped my life with Eric would have turned out like. Except for the fact that Brian and Regina never argued, at least not in front of me. They had the marriage and the house and the adorable baby boy. The true American dream. It was quite obvious they were an anomaly.
Both of them were transplants to the area. Unlike me, they had come from out of state to pursue Brian’s career. Regina was a stay at home mom, primarily due to the fact that she didn’t yet have reliable childcare. Once they were better established, she vowed that she would return to a career in her chosen field of human resources. For now she was enjoying spending the time with her son.
On a whim, I had volunteered to watch Quinn for them if they needed to have a date night or run errands sometime. They had taken me up on the offer a couple of times, and the child and I gotten along famously. He now smiled immediately when he saw me and Regina joked that he liked me better than he did her. I seriously doubted that was true, but I was a little flattered.
Or maybe just starved for male attention. Whatever.
Though that wasn’t entirely the case, either. I had started going to the break room at lunch instead of holing up in my office – yet another stop on my campaign to end the depression. The majority of the employees went out for lunch, but there was usually at least somebody in there that I could talk to. One such day there had been a sole occupant in the space when I grabbed my meal, a new employee that I vaguely recognized from the requisite tour the managers paraded new hires around on.
I sat down across from him and pulled my sandwich out from my lunch bag. He looked up at me like a deer in headlights. He was younger, probably fresh out of high school, and if I remembered right he was doing some sort of internship in our mailroom.
“You’re Jeff, right?” I asked.
He nodded and his face turned bright red. I felt sorry for him. I could tell he was uncomfortable and from his appearance, I rather unfairly pegged him as the type who would much rather sit in front of a computer and talk to someone in a chat room instead of face to face. Hell, I might have been the only unsolicited contact he’d had with a real live human all week.
“I’m Lauren,” I continued, wondering if I should extend my hand even though it was now covered in mayonnaise. I decided against it and tried discreetly to lick the condiment off my fingers. It wasn’t discreet enough, for his face turned even darker.
“I know who you are,” he admitted, staring down at his own lunch.
“So,” I said, choosing to ignore the feeling that comment produced, “how are you liking it around here?”
“It’s good.”
I nodded and waited for him to expand upon the sentiment, but he never did. We spent the next several minutes in silence as he finished his meal. When he rose from the table, I breathed a sigh of relief. That was awkward.
What he lacked in conversational skills he made up for with perseverance. From that moment on, I got my mai
l delivered to me personally. If he was anywhere nearby when I emerged from my office, I had a built in door opener. He offered to carry things for me even when I didn’t need help. I wondered how to let him down gently. George found it hilarious. So did pretty much everyone else who noticed.
Jeff had just exited my office after delivering a piece of interoffice mail when the phone rang. It was Regina, and she sounded like death warmed over.
“I hate to ask you this, Lauren,” she began in a monotone, “but would you mind taking Quinn back to your place for a couple hours after you get home? I just need to get some rest, and Brian’s working late.”
“Yeah, no problem.”
I consulted my clock. It was about ten after four. I debated what to do; I had a stack of paperwork now courtesy of my mailroom stalker, but she sounded miserable. I knew that George would have no issue with me ducking out early, though I hated to abuse his generosity. As cute as Quinn was, he was the neighbor’s baby, not mine. If I had a hard ass boss, that excuse wouldn’t pass muster.
Regina ended up solving my dilemma for me. “I’ll see you about five thirty then. I really appreciate it.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I insisted.
Admittedly, it was a little sad that I was actually looking forward to having some unexpected baby time. I was really hurting for company. But Quinn was a good listener, and he didn’t complain about my singing.
Unfortunately, my workload didn’t understand that I had a hot date with an eight month old pending and refused to let up on me. Email after email appeared in my inbox, one fire after another to put out. As much I wanted to procrastinate and ignore them until the morning, I wouldn’t be superstar mortgage girl if I did. My own sense of pride and work ethic kept me at my desk until five twenty-five, when I powered down my computer and practically ran out the door. Time had gotten away from me and I felt horrible.
Thinking of Regina lying miserably on the couch while Quinn begged for attention, I considered calling her on my way there and apologizing profusely. I decided against it, figuring that I wouldn’t be more than about fifteen minutes later than she expected. Besides, what if they were both napping and I singlehandedly woke them up? Better to just make good time getting home and beg for her forgiveness. Knowing her, she wouldn’t say a word anyway. She would probably apologize to me for asking the favor.
My guilty conscience had me cursing the late afternoon traffic and each and every light that magically seemed to turn red upon my approach. If it were any other Thursday night and I was simply going home to my empty house, I would have sailed through town. But the one night I had somewhere to be the odds were against me.
I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel impatiently at the final red light before the highway opened up and led out of town. With a glance down at the clock, I confirmed it would be closer to six before I got home. I sighed, glad that I wasn’t yet a parent with this kind of responsibility on a daily basis. If I were, I would likely be the kind of mother at the very tail end of the carpool line. My kids would be in tears, thinking I wasn’t coming.
The light turned green and I accelerated aggressively, flying past the car in the lane to my right. With any luck, I would pull into my driveway within the next ten minutes. But luck wasn’t on my side.
The flashing red and blue lights in my rearview mirror were the first sign of the cop behind me. Where he had come from, I had no clue. But he was there just the same, pulling me over. And I was guilty as sin.
“Shit!” I said as I signaled and slowed to a stop on the shoulder of the road.
The car that I had passed drove by me as I waited for the cop to get out of his car. Embarrassed, I slumped down in my seat. I’d never been pulled over before in my life. Now was a fine time to start, given that I was already horribly late. Regina would at least get to hear a good story out of this situation, and I would probably have to pay a huge fine for the effort. I wasn’t even sure how fast I’d been going.
The cop took quite a while getting out of his car and I wondered if he was running my plate through his database. Or did that come after he asked for my license and registration? I didn’t know for sure. It would seem more efficient to do all of that at the same time. Maybe he just wanted to make me sweat. It was working.
When he finally sauntered up to my window, I noted that we were roughly the same age. I rolled down the window, wondering how I should play this. Should I start crying? Should I flirt with him? Should I just act as professional as possible and not like I was about to freak out?
“Do you know how fast you were going?” he asked in lieu of greeting.
I supposed it wasn’t protocol for him to treat me like a friend, but he could have said hello first. Him jumping right into the heart of the matter reminded me of Eric and how he had always skipped the pleasantries. That had always really annoyed me about him.
“No, sir,” I said, opting for the professional tone. It wasn’t a lie.
“I clocked you doing eighty. You do know this is a fifty-five mile an hour zone, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
Damn. Twenty-five over. Stupid me. That probably meant defensive driving school, points on my license, and a hefty insurance premium on top of whatever the ticket cost. I bit my lip so hard that I threatened to break the skin.
“License, registration and proof of insurance.”
I gathered what he asked for and handed them over, my hands shaking. He took the items from me, giving a quick glance at the things from my glove box. He stared longer at my driver’s license, looking up at me as if to confirm it was really me in the picture. I was kind of proud of that picture; my hair had grown out a little since then, but I thought it was a pretty good likeness of me.
“Sit tight, Lauren, I’ll be back in a couple minutes.”
I jumped at the use of my first name, totally not expecting that from the cop who had been so by the book seconds ago. I noticed him take a second peek at the license, then he shook his head and walked back to his car.
He took more than a couple minutes as evidenced by the clock on my dashboard. I wondered how late Brian was working tonight. At this rate, he may get home before I did. Some friend I was.
The cop came back to my window after a few more minutes of me berating myself. I was so angry at myself I could barely see straight. I knew it wasn’t his fault; he was only doing his job. Still, it took all I had not to snap at him.
“So,” he said as he handed me back my things, “everything checks out like it should. Doesn’t look like you’ve ever had a violation before.”
“I haven’t,” I admitted, “but when I screw up, I do things big.”
He laughed. I hadn’t intended for it to be funny, but if he found humor in it maybe it would help my cause.
“I’ll tell you what, Lauren,” he said, placing his hand on the roof of the car and leaning slightly closer to the window, “I’ll let you off with a warning if you promise to do something.”
This caught my attention. So that was what was going on. He was hitting on me. Using my name, giving me special treatment. It made my stomach roll. If he asked me out to avoid a ticket, would I do it?
“What?” I whispered.
He laughed again and lifted his sunglasses so that I could see his eyes. “Promise me that you’ll be careful from now on. You don’t realize how important you are to some people. This could have ended up very differently, and you’re lucky that it didn’t. I’d hate to have to be the one to tell somebody that you got hurt in an accident.”
I stared at him, the color draining from my face. That wasn’t at all what I had expected. I couldn’t argue with most of his words. I was pretty sure that I knew how important I was to my dad and how it would destroy him to hear something like that. Gracie would obviously be affected, too. After that, maybe Regina and Brian but my list ended there unless I started adding in people at work. I was confident of where I stood with most everyone there – what was with the cryptic message?
&
nbsp; He held my gaze, letting the words soak in. I was unable to look away. He finally broke the connection, rising to his full height and patting the top of my car.
“Be safe, Lauren,” he said before turning away and retreating to his car.
I was shaking even harder now than before.
Chapter Twelve
Thankfully it was Friday. After the run in that I’d had the previous night with the cop, I hadn’t been able to sleep. I’d driven the rest of the way home well within the legal speed limit, showing up at Regina’s door almost an hour late. She was still grateful for the help and didn’t even ask me where I’d been; obviously assuming I’d gotten tied up at work like usual. Sometimes I forgot that she lived right across the street and could see my comings and goings. I’d been too rattled to share the true story with her and besides she’d looked as though she could barely keep her eyes open.
Brian had come over to collect Quinn about nine at night. Fortunately the baby hadn’t noticed how distracted I’d been and even if he had, it wasn’t like he could blab. As I sat on the floor with him and played, I’d racked my brain trying to remember if I knew the cop from somewhere. Had he been a client at work? I rarely saw customers; maybe he had recognized my name from some mortgage paperwork. But even if that had been the case, it wouldn’t explain what he had said.
It would have been a whole lot easier if he’d just asked me to dinner. I doubted I would have accepted the proposition, but at least his motives would have been transparent. He’d have gotten angry with me and let me have the whole wrath of the law once I’d declined, but I couldn’t argue that I didn’t deserve it. Instead, he’d let me off with a verbal warning and something a whole lot more difficult to decode.
Since when would a guy, even a cop, around my age lecture me like my father without some kind of vested interest?
Jeff was being uncharacteristically chatty at lunch, oblivious to the fact that I kept muffling yawns behind my palm. Or maybe not.
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