Ripple Effects

by Greene, L. J.

  “Five years. But it should have ended long before it did. That was my fault.”

  She doesn’t respond, just walks carefully down the path, seemingly deep in thought.

  Finally, I break the silence with the question that feels like it’s hanging heavily between us–nearly audible on its own, already.

  “How about you? Are you seeing anyone?”

  I try my best to make it sound like a casual inquiry, but I’m objective enough to know that I can’t entirely claim indifference to her response. I wonder if she can hear it in my voice.

  After what feels like an eternity, she says, “No, we broke up in November. We’d been living together, but it didn’t work out.”

  My entire body relaxes, illustrating the tension I hadn’t knowingly held. I take in a deep breath, remove my Giants cap, and run a hand through my hair.

  “It sounds like it was serious,” I finally offer, replacing my hat.

  “I thought it was until I came home and found him in our bed with someone else.”

  “He cheated on you?” I can hardly believe it. Who in the hell would have a woman like this, and think that there could possibly be anything better out there than her? On the one hand, I instantly despise him. On the other hand, stupidity may turn out to be his greatest virtue.

  “Apparently so,” she replies, again with surprising irony.

  “That guy is a douchebag and an asshole and a fucking idiot,” I tell her, and really, I’m just getting warmed up.

  She starts to laugh, startled by my tirade. “I think you left out cocksucker.”

  “I was getting there.”

  She smacks me playfully on the arm, but in the next moment, the humor disappears and she adds, “It wasn’t all his fault.”

  “Uh, I seriously beg to differ.”

  “No, I mean the cheating was all his fault, of course, but the relationship was far from perfect. It was superficial in the ways that really count. I don’t know if he would have wanted anything more, but emotional intimacy is not something I’m very good at.”

  I see in her face the magnitude of that admission. And I recognize something entirely similar in my own life. Since my parents’ deaths, I’ve struggled to build close relationships of any kind. I have a wealth of casual friendships–I’m not reclusive or isolated in the physical sense–but I find myself not allowing relationships to go deeper than a certain level. Even with Carolyn, maybe especially with her, I was never quite able to open up, and it was a big part of our problems as a couple.

  Sudden loss will do that. It provides a stark reminder of just how easy it is to lose something you value and depend on. Life can turn on a dime, and the relationships that give you the greatest joy become those that can break you most decisively. It’s no way to live, I know, but self-protection is a powerful and instinctual thing.

  I study her for a minute as we walk along in silence.

  “You know what would be perfect right now?” She turns to me quizzically. “Pancakes.”

  §

  Sarah

  We settle on one of my favorite breakfast places called Buck’s. It’s kind of an icon in the Silicon Valley, known for being the place where a lot of finance types and entrepreneurs have met through the years to launch the next big thing. If you don’t get in early, you’ll never get a table. It’s a classic diner–not the kind with red booths and sparkling chrome finishes–but the kind with kitschy artifacts on the walls, and a long bar crowded with regulars having coffee and reading the paper.

  Neither of us even glances at the menu; we’re both starving and have a pretty good idea of what we want. Dan orders pancakes and a side of sausage; I order pancakes, and briefly consider if I want anything with that.

  The waitress, who, like me, is probably in her early twenties, appears far more interested in my breakfast companion than in my order. Smiling flirtatiously at him, she doesn’t seem to be the slightest bit discouraged by the fact that another woman is actually sitting at the same table. To Dan’s credit, he barely acknowledges her; in fact, he seems a little annoyed by her incessant and brazen attempts to get his attention. His eyes, instead, are focused solely on me.

  I clear my throat to pry her notice back to the conversation at hand. “Do you have turkey bacon?”

  “Hmm?” she responds, still focused on him.

  “Turkey bacon,” he says to her sharply, and his accompanying look is many degrees cooler than an iceberg.

  Admittedly, I do feel a little bad for her–it’s hard to fault her interest. You could probably walk through a thousand shopping malls and airports and never see anyone as handsome as he. But I’ll also admit that there’s a certain pleasure in spending time with a man who seems intolerant of anyone being dismissive of me in his presence.

  The contrast in that way between Dan and my ex is stark. John would have had a completely different response to the attention; he would have milked it for all it was worth. He loved that sort of thing–loved it even more when I was present to witness it. If I wasn’t, he loved to tell me about it later.

  “Turkey bacon is not bacon, by the way.” Dan says as she leaves the table.

  All trace of his earlier edge disappears like magic. He looks warmly incensed with my breakfast order, and is shaking his head for emphasis.

  “Of course it is. And it’s a lot healthier than sausage.”

  “But it’s fake,” he says with disgust.

  “It’s not fake. It’s bacon. They wouldn’t call it turkey bacon if it weren’t bacon.”

  “Bacon comes from a pig. Not a turkey. Turkey bacon isn’t any more bacon than root beer is beer.”

  I stare at him for a beat. “I find you exhausting,” I reply with a huff of exasperation, and a dramatic eye roll for good measure.

  Danny erupts in a deep, gravelly belly laugh that warms me to my core. It may just be the best sound I’ve ever heard. His playfulness, always unexpected, is my weakness, and I remind myself once more to keep my brain in check.

  §

  Sitting across from him at the table while we eat, though, I finally have a chance to just look at him. Seriously, wow. His face looks like something out of a magazine. Almost unreal in the way his features are drawn to perfection. Those eyes alone could stop traffic. Yet he’s not pretty; he’s exceptionally masculine. His angular jaw is set off by a defined Adam’s apple that I never realized could be so sexy. It seems to announce that this is a man, not a boy, not a guy. He’s removed his hat, and his hair is a sexy, wild mess. He wears it a little longer, so you can see the waves and the many subtle colors that run through it. It’s decadent, that hair. And it looks so soft that the temptation to run my fingers through it is almost unbearable.

  That would be weird, right?

  His bright green eyes are animated, flawlessly reflecting his youthful smile. He’s left his sweatshirt in the car, and the white t-shirt he’s wearing fits snugly across his lean, muscular chest and arms. He was a basketball player in college, I recall suddenly. He has the body for it; well over six feet tall, with a broad chest, and a slim waist. He’s certainly retained his athleticism.

  As he plows through his pancakes, I watch his throat move with every swallow. I’m so distracted by these thoughts that I’m not paying close attention to his question as he asks it.

  “Hmm?” I ask him, when he looks at me oddly. I realize he’s probably been waiting too long for me to answer, and I blush reflexively, knowing I’ve been caught staring.

  A look crosses his face momentarily and then disappears. He repeats, “Who would you say you are more like, your mom or your dad?”

  Refocusing my brain, I consider his question. I have thought about this frequently through the years, mostly because I don’t want to believe I’m much like the mother that my mom became after my father died. But the truth is, I did get certain things from her; and they’re not all bad.

  “I look like my mom, and I probably get pig-headed stubbornness from her but, I think overall, my personality f
avors my dad. He was into sports and music, and he had a rather sarcastic sense of humor that not everyone appreciated.”

  I smile because I know for a fact that Dan seems to not only get, but also enjoy, my inherited sense of humor.

  “I can see that,” he nods, eyeing me intensely like he does.

  “How about you?” I ask him in an attempt to deflect the look he’s giving me.

  He leans back in his chair and drags the nails of his left hand back and forth across his head, leaving his already tousled hair even more disorderly. The fact that he seems unconcerned about that is charming.

  “I like to think I’m more similar to my mom. We were close. I don’t look like her, but she was warm and funny, and she never took herself too seriously. She just had this zeal for life that was contagious. I hope I’m that way.”

  “Are you like your dad at all?” I realize he’s never mentioned his dad in more than a passing way and I’m suddenly curious to know why.

  “We’re all a product of both parents,” he answers in a tone I can’t place. “My dad was a really honorable man, the smartest person I’ve ever known, and a really hard worker. He was all about education; I definitely got that from him.”

  But? I’m waiting for him to finish the thought because his tone and his words don’t match. But he doesn’t continue. Instead, he abruptly changes the subject.

  “It’s getting busy in here,” he says, looking around. “I guess we should probably give up our table.”

  Okay. I guess we’re done.

  He starts to reach for the check, but I’m faster. He bought me dinner the other night, and I’ll be damned if I let him pay for this, as well.

  “Don’t even try.”

  I point a finger in his direction and give him an arched look for emphasis. He grumbles something about this being his idea to begin with, but eventually acquiesces, albeit reluctantly. I grab my wallet from my backpack and remove enough cash to cover the check and tip.

  “Thank you for breakfast,” he says. He looks like I just fed him snails.

  “You’ll get over it.”

  Chapter 5

  Danny

  MEL IS BUILDING A STAR Wars Lego set at the kitchen table with the boys when I walk in.

  “Uncle Danny!” Shane shouts, and wraps himself around me. “Come look at our Millennium Falcon!”

  The kid is a hugger. I kiss him on the top of his auburn hair, and move around to give a similar kiss to his 9-year-old brother.

  “What did you bring for us?” Paddy asks me, eyeing the bag of supplies and equipment I’m holding.

  “I’ll show you in a minute, but you have to change into some old clothes first, so your mom doesn’t make that mad face at me.” I make a greatly exaggerated mad face with bug eyes and a scary mouth.

  The boys giggle, and Mel shakes her head at me in annoyance. As the kids pile out of the kitchen to change, I give Mel a wink. She looks tired.

  “You staying for dinner?” she asks.

  “What are you making?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Hell no, I’m in. She knows me well. Jamie and Mel got together when Jamie and I were about twenty-two, so I’ve known her a long time. She’s a lawyer by trade, but her full-time job, aside from raising two rowdy boys, is managing the band. She’s very good at it. She’s tough, and a killer negotiator–petite, but a real powerhouse. She has this no-bullshit vibe that I’ve always respected. Plus, being a woman and a mom, I like that I always get a different perspective from her than I would from a guy.

  “Where’s the band tonight?” I ask, lifting a lid off a pot on the stove.

  “Detroit. Then they go to Kansas City tomorrow. Home next week.”

  I try to check in on her and the boys as often as I can when Jamie’s on the road. They’ve been married a long time, and they’re happy, as far as I know. But I’ve always felt that Mel carries a lot of the weight of the choices they’ve made. It’s a lonely life for both of them in many ways. Jamie knew what he wanted to do from the time we were kids, and never had a plan B. He’s an artist. It’s who he is, and there’s no way to separate the man from his profession. But for Mel, it was a decision. And though she loves their life together, sometimes I know it’s hard for her.

  “What’d you do today?” she asks me as she begins scooping Legos back into the box.

  “I went hiking with a friend.”

  I grab a beer out of the fridge, and sit down on the leather barstool with my feet resting on the floor.

  “Tom, you mean?”

  I hesitate for a moment. “No, just that girl that I’m helping with the scholarship application.”

  “Oh, Sarah?”

  Hearing Sarah’s name come out of Mel’s mouth is strange. It feels startlingly nice, and equally unsettling at the same time. So much so that I don’t immediately respond.

  “Was this a date sort of thing?” Mel asks. “I didn’t realize you two were doing things outside of the project.”

  “No, it definitely wasn’t a date. Definitely not. No.” I’m shaking my head for emphasis, but I’m doing a piss-poor job of convincing myself, let alone her.

  Mel looks at me skeptically. “That kind of sounds like a date. Did you want it to be?”

  “No, it’s not like that,” I say with a long sigh. “It’s just…”

  “Is this about Carolyn?” She sets the Lego box down on the table, and gathers up the open instruction manuals.

  “No. It’s not Carolyn.” Rolling the bottle between my two palms, I let my head and shoulders slump down in thought. How do I articulate this? “I wish I’d never known Sarah before.” I look up at Mel for understanding, but she seems to need me to complete the thought. “Because then she could just be this amazing woman that I met at Charlie’s a couple months ago. And there wouldn’t be this…”

  “Perception.”

  I nod, setting the bottle on the counter. “In every way that matters, I feel like I did just meet her. I never had any occasion or inclination to get to know her before. When it comes to my job, I’ve always been adamant about distancing myself from my students; that was especially true at McKinley. I went to great lengths to avoid even the hint of impropriety.”

  “But you know how it is, Danny; it just takes one bad police officer to incite the mistrust thousands of great ones. It’s unfair. And your profession is no different.”

  “But I’m not like that.”

  “Of course not!”

  I rub my eyes in frustration. “I should just walk away from this.” But it feels more like a question than a declaration of fact.

  She pulls a chair out from the table and sits down, leaning sideways against the back of it. She just watches me sympathetically, well accustomed to the way my mind works.

  “So why don’t you walk away?”

  “I guess because… I like her.” It’s really that simple, or complicated, depending on your perspective. “She’s smart, and she’s fun, and she calls me on my shit.”

  Mel smiles softly, as though that last bit is reason enough in her book to be a fan of Sarah.

  “In my experience, we never fall for the obvious choice. Or the convenient one, for that matter. We fall for the one who makes us think differently–who makes us reconsider our own grand selves.”

  “I’m eleven years older than she is, Mel.” That’s not really the question, but a prelude to it, certainly. I look up and meet her eyes straight on. “And our past,” I say, shaking my head. “Is it wrong?”

  I need the truth. And I appreciate that I always get it from her.

  She processes me for a moment, and then answers solemnly. “No. It’s not wrong. You’re both adults, Danny. But that doesn’t mean it would always be easy, either.”

  “Perception, you mean.”

  She nods. “What’s the saying? ‘What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.’”

  I laugh without humor. “True in theory, I think. But when did that ever matter?”
>
  Chapter 6

  Danny

  I SPEND THE BETTER PART of the next week at an offsite planning meeting for the Taft Middle School faculty. As the department head for both math and science, most of my time is spent in budget meetings, trying to figure out how to squeeze yet another drop of blood from a stone. It’s depressing knowing that we’ll never get the funding we actually need, let alone the funding we want to make our program great. Such is the state of education in California. And it gets harder every year.

  By Thursday night, I’m sick to death of looking at spreadsheets covered in red ink, and all I want is to do is head home for a long run. I’ve felt restless all week, and I suspect it might have something to do with my war of emotions over Sarah. I’m so distracted at work, when that is never the case for me.

  But tomorrow I’ll see her at the volleyball tournament in Half Moon Bay, and that’s what I try to focus on as I practically run myself into the ground. I’m drenched in sweat by the time I get back, and so goddamned tired that I might actually be able to sleep.

  Sarah and I traded a few texts while I was away, but other than that, we haven’t had any contact since I acted like a dick at the restaurant when she brought up the subject of my dad. That’s not to say I haven’t thought of her often, though. For the sake of my own sanity, I need to do something soon.

  §

  Sarah

  It was one of those points you love to watch in a sand volleyball game: the one where the player makes a hail-Mary dive, arms outstretched, body flying sideways as if in slow motion. And miraculously, she gets her hand on the ball, just in the knick of time, and just before hitting the ground in an explosion of sand and sweat. The ball sails effortlessly over the net, and the crowd leaps to its feet in utter bewilderment.

  My last shot of the day was just like that. Except that the ball hit the net instead of going over, and bounced back rather unceremoniously into my team’s side for the loss. The utter bewilderment was mine. And the cheering crowd, not mine.