Eye of the Tiger

by Melanie Greene

  "She has the binder with her at school. English is her last period of the day."

  His heart wasn't designed to take the batterings of the past couple of weeks. "You implied she threw them out."

  "Well, you deserved to think that."

  He'd practiced his sneers, too, back when Alice had the job of minding him in the hours between preschool closing and their parents getting home. Never perfected them like she had, but Evan felt sure his oldest sister could guess how he felt without seeing his expression. "Happy twelve years of parenthood, A. You're doing a great job. Probably. Unless all the credit goes to Will."

  "I'm amazing. My daughters are blessed to have me."

  "If you say so."

  "And also to have you. Thanks for being the fun uncle. Ben and Danyal are bores."

  "Tell me something new."

  "I might have overreacted this morning."

  He laughed. "Apology accepted."

  "And Lizzy already cut you slack, since she knows you're depressed these days. She said she didn't expect you to think of poetry when you have a broken heart."

  "Brave girl, throwing gauntlets like that. I've got a quarter hour before Brazil wakes up and starts shoving money around. I'll do my best, okay?"

  Alice sounded too proud of her machinations. "That's the spirit. Thanks, Evan."

  Once he hit on the idea of using 'twelfth year' for the central couplet, the poem shaped up quickly. All that practice with Natalie had been good for something.

  He hit 'send' and stashed his personal cell, glad the rhyme scheme portion of his day was in his past.

  The knock was familiar, and Natalie opened the door without checking the peephole. Her reflexes kept misleading her: the combination of yellow roses and navy uniform and smoky aviators propelled her in for a habitual hug before her brain caught up. At least she hadn't kissed him.

  She retreated, hand tight on her half-closed door. "Chris?"

  "Hi, Sunrise. I missed you. Can I come in?"

  When she didn't move, he slipped off the sunglasses and hooked them on his breast pocket. She'd caught him practicing the move once, after the airline had changed the pilots' uniform design. He did it with flair now, although he was wearing yet another style of blazer.

  She watched him stand there, silent and expectant, at her threshold. "New job?"

  He flashed his pearly whites. He liked his teeth to gleam as pure and bright as his freshly-ironed shirt. Natalie once advised her friends to find their own pilots to date, since Chris was better at laundry maintenance than any of their guys. "Yes, ma'am. First officer."

  That, she knew, was a step down from pilot. She'd learned a lot about airline pay scales during the three years of their relationship. When he'd left her, it was with an uninformative note, but even more inexplicable was his abandoning seven years of seniority as captain at the regional airline. Unless.... "You're national now?"

  His grin grew. The first year as a first officer wouldn't earn him much, but after that he'd get a substantial jump and be able to bid on better routes. He'd been looking to move up from regional the whole time they'd dated.

  Chris led with the flowers, and Natalie found herself taking them, letting him into her foyer. She wouldn't play so nice that she'd fetch a vase and fuss over arranging the stems. But he'd disappeared six months before, and back then, back when she cared, she'd tried hard to figure out where he'd gone. The solution to the mystery, she supposed, stood examining her new sofa as if the tufted teal was the intruder in the room.

  "Would you like a seat?"

  "You redecorated."

  She wasn't childish, so she checked her sarcasm at the living room archway. "I did."

  He gave his head a quick shake and faced her. "Sorry, it threw me a second. I had a picture in my head of all this, but the furniture isn't the important part."

  "You had a picture of what?"

  He pulled one of those gentlemanly gestures her mom was so charmed by, escorting her to her own sofa. And instead of parking himself in the side chair, he dropped to one knee and Natalie blinked. She beat back the picture she'd once had of all this: Chris in uniform, his earnest gray eyes, the bended knee and the diamond ring and the roses. Except in her vision the roses were red, because she'd expected--wanted--this proposal on Valentine's Day. Not after Labor Day, and not after being dumped, and not after discovering how wrong her mom was about gentlemanly charm.

  "Natalie East, you are my sweet Sunrise, and I love you. Will you walk into the sunset hand and hand with me? As my wife?"

  The best thing about her new sofa was how long it was. She could slide away to the other end, out of range of his labored metaphors. Her voice sounded like it was coming from an even further distance. "Chris, you told me to move on. You left. Flew off who knows where, no notice, dead phone, unpaid parking tickets. I burned your shirts."

  Now he sat in the side chair. "You burned my shirts?"

  She waved a vague gesture. "A couple of them. We set up the fire pit at Serena and Dillon's house."

  "I didn't know she had a fire pit." He cocked his head. "Wait, who's Dillon?"

  If it weren't so bizarre, she would just walk away. The absurdity kept her sitting, chatting about inconsequentials, despite the platinum band in the black box in his hand. "Dillon's her partner. They first hooked up the night you left me, actually. Left town. We thought maybe witness protection? Rachel suggested you'd been running drugs and were in trouble with your supplier. Gillian thought you were too big a coward to end it so you fled. Point is, you've been gone long enough for Serena, of all people, to let a man move in with her, so how are you walking in here now and proposing instead of explaining? Where did you go?"

  His gaze skittled around the room, as if her antique console table or her entertainment armoire held the answers. Before looking her way again, he pocketed the ring, which let several cubic feet of air back into the room. "Phoenix."

  It had been a frequent stopover city for him, with the old job. She'd never been. "You moved to Phoenix."

  "No. Not exactly."

  "It's not Twenty Questions. Tell me or just go, okay?"

  He flashed his teeth. "I love how direct you are. Terri was never like that. She was always sneaky."

  "Chris." There were things she could be doing. She had roses to arrange. Or compost. "Terri?"

  "Terri is my ex-wife. She lives in Phoenix."

  Definitely compost. "You have an ex-wife?"

  His nod was definitive, firm. "Now I do."

  "Now? Now as in just now?" She folded her legs up to her chest. "In six months you got married and divorced?"

  His negative shake couldn't have disturbed many molecules of air. "Just divorced."

  He did not elaborate. No matter how hard she stared at him, he did not elaborate. She took in a slow breath. "And when did you marry Terri?"

  "Natalie. Sunrise. It was essentially over long before I met you."

  "We were together for three years."

  "And we had an open marriage. It was almost always an open marriage."

  "I thought we--you and I, I thought we were exclusive."

  "I was exclusive, with you. Except for Terri."

  Except for Terri. Right. "Are you proposing an open marriage with me?" He started to shake his head more vehemently, but Natalie rubbed her forehead and interrupted him. "You know what? Never mind. Just explain the part where you left town without a word."

  Chris sank back in the chair and loosened his tie. "I'm sorry about that. I wanted to keep you out of everything. I couldn't let Terri use you against me in court. We had this mediation coming up, and I told you how sneaky she is, so it was to protect you from getting dragged into everything, really. It was safest--for you--that we cut off all contact."

  She felt like a bobble-head, oscillating while she sought equilibrium. "And your divorce is final now?"

  "Completely. Signed and sealed. Now she's out of our lives, and I have this new job. I'm even based here, so we can move in togeth
er. Get married." He seemed to be trying to gauge her, but she couldn't imagine he was getting any clear read on her reaction. She certainly couldn't name the various emotional components free-floating through the space where her brain used to be.

  Instead of answering him, she looked at the upholstered buttons on the back of the sofa. They were unhelpful.

  "Probably you need to think about it? I know this is news to you, sweet Sunrise. I'm sorry I couldn't contact you until everything was final. You thought witness protection? Really? What did your mom say? How is she?"

  Gathering some of her wits and all of her resolve, Natalie stood. "I've got to get to work."

  He pulled back his cuff and glanced at the heavy platinum watch. Natalie wondered if he'd picked the ring because it matched. "It's not even nine."

  "You're not the only one with a new job." Not that it was any of his business.

  "Sunrise! This is a surprise. So do you have normal hours now? That will make a nice change, for one of us to have a routine schedule. It'll make it so much easier for us to plan around my segments. Hey, you'll like this one captain, Swenhaugen, I flew in with her last night. We should have a cocktail party or something. Celebrate the engagement. Get all dressed up, show everyone how happy we are to spend the rest of our lives together. I have to be allowed to brag, right? For having the sense to fall in love with a great woman like you?"

  She backed so far as he talked that she ended up against her front door. She opened it. "No."

  "No party? Come on, you'll enjoy it. If we move that couch out now, everyone will have plenty of room to mingle, and we can bring in something more suitable afterwards. Something we pick together, perfect for us to cuddle on while we watch our shows."

  She wondered if he'd finished the previous season of Scandal without her. After months of her avoiding spoilers until he was around to watch with her, she'd been free to watch the last four episodes live. She'd never considered having to make room for him when the show returned in the fall. And screw him if he didn't like her superb blue sofa.

  "No party. No engagement. Chris, go. You didn't tell me you were married, you didn't tell me you were divorcing, you didn't tell me about having a whole other life in Phoenix. But you did tell me to move on to a life where I'm valued. And I took that advice to heart. I figured out how to value myself, and that's what I'm doing. Go. Don't return."

  Chris slid a hand into his trouser pocket, where the ring rested. Three years of deception notwithstanding, Natalie could read every emotion in his body. The squared shoulders he settled more firmly into his blazer. The polished toe of his shoe pressing into the floor as he cocked one knee. He was grounding himself, letting the anger wash through him, but he had no place to place his hurt. It settled in his mouth, his uncertain lips sinking into downturned corners.

  "Natalie, I love you."

  She smiled, because it was pleasant to hear, circumstances aside. And she opened the door wider.

  "But where has he been? I don't understand."

  "Mom," she said. She'd wrestled herself into making the call at all, knowing her mother would have at least as much trouble processing the situation as she had. And Mom wouldn't run any pro/con lists about what to do. Her response would be definitive. "Arizona. Married. Divorcing."

  "So he's single now?"

  "Like I said. He wasn't; he is now."

  "But what does he mean by an open marriage?"

  "It's supposed to mean that the spouses have an arrangement letting them date or sleep with other people, within whatever rules they've agreed on. I don't know if that's what Chris had with his wife, but since he cut off contact so his relationship with me wouldn't impede his divorce, I think it means he figured he could get away with cheating, and found out he couldn't. And I was the other woman." She wondered if her mom would read Dan Savage if she sent links. Doubtful.

  "Isn't that like swingers?"

  Now she was a sexual anthropologist for her mother. Just what she always wanted. "More like key parties."

  "So what are y'all going to do?"

  If she sounded firm and matter-of-fact, maybe this conversation could end. "Nothing. I'm not interested in his excuses. I told him to go away."

  "Why would you want him to go away? He proposed, Natalie. This is what you were waiting for! You can finally get married."

  She shouldn't feel it like a kick to her kneecap. Mom was never one to indulge in a lot of subtext. But she’d hoped for a little understanding about why she wasn't interested in Chris's crass offer. "Mom. I can't possibly marry Chris. He spent three years lying to me. I can't believe you would want someone like that to be your son-in-law."

  "He explained that to you. You're always talking about the importance of communication. Why can't you just communicate now that he's told you what happened? You don't have to break it off with him. Evan's gone, sweetie. If you reject Chris, I don't know if you're ever going to get married. You have to stop being so particular and open yourself up to the possibility that Chris has become the kind of man you seem to be holding out for. Or that you can make him that kind of man once you're married. Marriages change people, you know, Natalie. It has to. You can't grew old together, if you can't grow together."

  Natalie refrained from asking where exactly her mother gained this wisdom, since her only marriage had barely made it into a second year. And while she was thinking along those lines, she wondered if her fling with Evan was some kind of psychologically-dubious recreation of her mother's relationship with Duncan, the only father figure she'd lived with for more than a weekend.

  And even though her bio-dad had left her mom at the chuppah, and even though he'd never taken his only daughter on the jaunt to the Grand Canyon he'd promised since she was four, Natalie had changed her whole career path in order to be in town when he needed help recovering from his heart attack. She'd worked her way through that career to a job she loved now, a job she was proud of getting. And her bio-dad was infinitely better at being friends with her as an adult than he had been at parenting her, so those months ferrying him to PT and follow-ups had built a foundation she could never begrudge.

  No, she might have trouble admitting she'd fallen in love with Evan, but she hadn't confused him with either of her mother's men. He wasn't charm without substance, or the appearance of reliability with no follow-through. His charm was the gilt on his deep ambition, his energy and drive and intelligence. His polished exterior was a reflection of everything inside his heart: his goodness, his authenticity, his deep care for and understanding of the people in his world. The only problem? His overfull heart wasn't in a commitment-minded place, which meant she had to clear out of his orbit or let her own heart be crushed.

  She'd only just learned to inflate her heart with trust in herself, so crushing it seemed like a rotten idea. Even if the one crushing it would be the same one who taught her that trust in the first place. She'd grasped how big an impact he'd had on her while babbling on to Serena about the Houston Health and Housing position. Serena had said, "I'm glad you're spared whatever belittling puns your not-a-tiger would make." Nat's knee-jerk denial of Evan as a destructive force made her realize his confident, cheerful acceptance she could become a housing counselor had bolstered her throughout the job search. And his support wasn't facile or facetious. His faith in her rewired her brain so she fully embraced all he said about her. He was a force of building up, not tearing down.

  "You'll be at services on Sunday?"

  "Hmm?" She blinked herself into focus on the call. Elaine had taken her silent reverie as a prompt to change the subject. "Services. Sunday night."

  "Right. Yes, of course." It was Rosh Hashanah, the start of the High Holy Days. Natalie wasn't as observant as her mother, but she was more than ready to dip her apple in honey and start a sweet new year. "Do you want me to pick you up?"

  They disconnected on good terms, but Natalie didn't fool herself: she hadn't heard the last about Chris's return. She just hoped she'd heard the last of it from Chr
is himself.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  "Natalie East speaking."

  "Natalie, dear, it's Marisa. How are you?"

  She walked out to her balcony so she could watch the trees sway in the pre-storm wind while they chatted about her new job and current events. Evan's mom didn't let the small talk go on long before orchestrating the conversation.

  "Your mother told me about Chris's return."

  Of course she did. Nat was going to have to work diligently to leave bitterness in the past when she and Elaine were at the Oneg celebrating a sweet new year. "Is there any chance she didn't mention his proposal?"

  Marisa chuckled. "None at all. But she didn't tell me how you reacted."

  That was something. She could just imagine her mom's overinflated tales of Chris on bended knee, catching her as she swooned into his arms, tenderly drying her tears. "For the most part, I didn't react. Except to tell him to leave. No matter what Elaine thinks, I'm not eager to forgive and forget three years of lies. False pretenses. Whatever he calls it."

  "Well, of course you're not. You were right to send him packing. Just because my son didn't take your relationship seriously, you can't stop looking for a partner who's right for you. Someone not so capricious. You shouldn't settle for the likes of Chris."

  Danger, danger, she warned herself. She and Evan had agreed to tell their families that they were looking for different things in life. If that message had translated to Marisa as her wanting to settle down--if not to settle--she should swallow it and move on. But it was one thing to set aside details about what had really happened between her and Evan. It was another thing entirely to bite her tongue about the way his family characterized him.

  "Marisa, I know how much you love Evan."

  She must not have sounded as well-disposed to him as she'd thought, because Marisa jumped in to say, "Oh, don't tell me anything terrible."