12 Steps to Mr. Right

by Cindi Madsen

I nearly bumped into Linc as I stood. He placed our wineglasses on the table and strode away.

  Mason’s brow furrowed. “What’s up with him?”

  “You know how it is when the restaurant’s busy,” I said, although there were only two other tables with people and one older guy at the bar.

  I met Ivy near the back corner.

  “What the hell is going on?” she asked. “Why do you two look all cozy?”

  “I don’t think we look cozy.”

  Ivy cocked an eyebrow—I never really noticed she could control just one, but now I was thinking maybe it was an inherited thing.

  I leaned my hip on the wall. “He… He said that he wants to try long distance.”

  Ivy made a sour face. “That sounds horrific.”

  “I was thinking maybe it was romantic. He said he’s missed me. Enough that…well, I think he asked if I’d move in with him.”

  “You think? Isn’t that something you should know?”

  “Okay, so he did,” I said. “If I visit and like it. But I told him we should see how this week goes before we make any decisions.” I glanced toward the bar. “How pissed is Linc?”

  “He was pretty pissed at you before Mason came into the bar. When he asked me if that was your ex who’d moved away, and I told him it was, he…I can’t tell exactly what his mood is, but it’s definitely not good. You need to talk to him.”

  “I will. Once I get my head straight.”

  “Look, I’m no expert at this, but I don’t think your head is supposed to be straight when you’re in lo—”

  “Don’t say it. I’m not…that.” I really wanted to not be. Ivy didn’t say it, but the eyebrow went up again, and her look called bullshit. “Fine. The past few weeks, and especially the last one we spent together… I won’t deny I feel something for Linc.” I straightened and lifted my chin. “I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control.”

  “Quoting Emma? Really? And remind me, who does she end up with?”

  I let out an exasperated huff. Sometimes it’d be nice to have a best friend who didn’t insist on pointing out the truth all the time. “I need to get back to Mason. I’ll call you later.”

  “Fine. But, Savannah, just…think about what you really want. Without the rules, and despite the past.”

  I promised I would and headed back toward the front of the restaurant. A hand shot out, and I was jerked into the hallway. I barely caught that it was Linc before he opened the door to a room and pushed me inside. Judging by the rows and rows of alcohol, we were in the supply room.

  “What the hell, Savannah?”

  Anger rose to the surface, along with a heavy dose of righteous indignation. “You just handled me like I was a rag doll.”

  “Apparently it’s the only way you’re going to talk to me. You’ve avoided me for days and now you show up with some guy?”

  “And that bothers you? Why? Because you’re going to have to work a little harder for a booty call now?”

  Offense pinched his features. “Is that really what you think of me?”

  “I know you’re not a relationship guy and that you don’t like labels or feeling tied down. I know that you left me alone in a beach house after we had sex for the first time with nothing but a note.” Apparently the big talk was happening now. Even though spitting out the words left me achy and raw, a distant part of me applauded that I’d finally put it out there. Yes, the past was the past, but I couldn’t simply push it away, because we’d never dealt with it.

  Linc’s shoulders deflated as he let out a sigh. “You told me to forget about it. Back on campus, that’s what you said.”

  “Oh, that’s such bullshit,” I said, shoving against his chest. “You avoided me for weeks and I could tell you regretted it—I can’t just forget it like you.”

  “Forget? Do you know how many times I’ve relived that night? How long I’ve spent thinking about the taste of your lips? The way your body felt under mine? The other day, I finally got what I’ve been waiting years for another chance at—and before you accuse me of only wanting the physical and call it a red flag, it’s not all I want. I want to do crossword puzzles, and go to baseball games, and visit every place in Atlanta to help you with your research. Because I never forgot that first time, and I never will. It changed something inside me.”

  Tears pricked my eyes and I tried to blink them back. “That’s even worse. It changed you and you walked away with nothing more than a note.”

  “You have no idea how many versions of that note I scribbled—I went through paper after paper.”

  “And you decided to go with Catch you later?” My voice reached shrieking range, but I was beyond caring.

  “The other ones told you too much. I’d liked you for a long time, but I tried to hold myself back, because I knew I couldn’t give you what you deserved. But that night… I meant it when I told you I’d wanted it for a long time. But then I woke up that next morning and I realized just how hard I was falling for you.”

  I shook my head, not sure why he’d make something like that up, but unable to process it.

  “It’s the truth, Savannah. Remember how I told you that my dad always wondered how far he could’ve gone in his baseball career if he hadn’t given it up? I didn’t want to have regrets. I promised I’d never let anything get in the way, and I purposely kept my attachments to a minimum so that nothing would. I didn’t expect you, or how hard I’d have to fight to keep myself from crossing lines.

  “That morning when I woke up, I knew if I let myself, I’d get all wrapped up in you. In the first few letters, I explained that I cared about you, but that I needed to keep my focus on baseball. It sounded so flat on paper, though, and I knew you’d be hurt—and probably even insist we could keep things light…”

  I probably would’ve—I would’ve done anything to try to keep him.

  “In the end,” Linc said, his voice dropping low, “I thought it’d be better to make a clean break before either one of us fell any harder. I already had plans to leave Georgia a month and a half later, and I just kept telling myself I’d regret it forever if I didn’t go for it.”

  A stray tear escaped and ran down my cheek. “Do you have any idea how badly you hurt me?”

  “Shit, Savannah, I’m so sorry.” Linc reached for me and I stepped back. His hand slowly dropped to his side. “The truth is, I only traded one regret for another. I regret that I hurt you. I regret that because of our past, you’re trying to push me away, even though we’re right for each other. For once, I get the label thing, because I want to label you. Mostly ‘mine,’ but I’d settle for ‘girlfriend.’ I want to give us a real shot—more than I’ve wanted anything.”

  For a moment, hope sparked and beckoned. But then I remembered that not following my rules had gotten me into this situation in the first place. That he still had too many red flags. “You’ve admitted that you’ve never had a serious relationship. Right now it sounds like a fun thing to try, but it takes work, Linc. A lot of work.” I sniffed, my already cracked heart breaking into tiny pieces. “It takes more than saying you want it. It takes time and actions that prove you mean it.”

  “Then give me time,” he said. “Just because I don’t usually do the relationship thing doesn’t mean that I can’t.”

  “Statistically speaking, that’s exactly what that means.”

  “I’ve always been above average. For you, I know I can.”

  I shook my head and a couple more tears escaped. “I can’t. You still have too many red flags to ignore. I can’t go teach my workshops and advise my clients to do one thing, and then go against everything I know—everything years of experience have shown me. It’d be setting us both up for failure, not to mention make me a huge hypocrite. It’d put my entire career in jeopardy.”

  Linc’s eyes widened, and I swore there was a flash of panic as he gripped both of my shoulders. “Don’t give up before you even give us a shot. You have so many rules, and I know I fall short—hell, I
could take a year to try to prove it, and try to walk the line, and I’d still fall short. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love you. Sometimes you just have to take a risk.”

  My heart gave such a hard, sharp squeeze that I winced. Love. It beckoned to me, way more tempting than hope. But he fully admitted that he could only “try” and that he’d fall short. That he was a risk.

  As sucky as it was, sometimes love wasn’t enough.

  My throat tightened to the point I could hardly breathe. “I took that risk once already, and it crushed me. I learn from my mistakes, and I’m not going to make the same one again. I just can’t.” I took another step back, because I was afraid he’d reach out for me and I’d lose my fragile grip on my resolve. Even with the extra foot, every inch of my body rebelled, longing to move closer. To pretend for a little while that it didn’t matter.

  If only that wouldn’t leave me broken in the end—the kind of broken where even a twelve-step program would be useless to repair the damage. The faces of all the women I’d patted on the back while they cried over love gone wrong flashed through my mind, ending with that image of Aunt Velma, one of the strongest women I knew, asking how it could be happening to her again, and reminding me why I’d taken such a strong stance in the first place.

  “Mistake,” Linc whispered, but it still came out with so much weight behind it that it crowded every inch of the room. “Fine. Go back to that guy. But he won’t make you happy. You need someone who challenges you—someone you can’t walk all over just so you can proudly claim you have a happy, calm relationship. Maybe I’m not a relationship expert, but I know the difference between settling and the kind of love that makes you lose your mind. Makes you believe anything is possible.”

  Linc took a large step forward, eradicating the space between us so quickly I couldn’t react, and added, “He doesn’t know you like I do, I guarantee that. He’ll ask you to give up what you love because he thinks his job is more important than what you do, and he won’t even realize that you’re not truly happy being nothing more than his accessory. He’ll take you for granted, because guys like that think they deserve girls like you. I might fall short, but I’d spend every day trying to deserve you.”

  He held my gaze for one torturous beat and then he pushed out of the room, the lights from the bar illuminating the bottles of alcohol for a couple of seconds before the dimness returned.

  The despair left hanging in the air suffocated me, robbing me of oxygen. Try as I might, I couldn’t stop the tears. Once the dam broke, they came, hard and fast.

  I knew that my program worked and that I’d made the decision that’d be best for me in the end. I only wished it didn’t feel like someone had yanked out my insides, wrung them out, and shoved them back in all the wrong places.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I wasn’t sure how I managed to make it through the rest of the evening with Mason. I returned to the table after my discussion with Linc, choking back tears and suffering from a throat so tight I couldn’t swallow, and told him I was sorry but I needed to go home.

  He obviously didn’t understand the direness of the situation, because he took the time to ask for our food to be boxed up. When we returned to my loft, he’d asked if he could come inside to eat, and I’d said, “Of course.” Because that’s what you say.

  I sort of floated through the rest of the evening on autopilot as he ate the crab fritters and talked about D.C. It was one of those nights that seemed like a dream you couldn’t quite break free of. Fuzzy at the edges, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make myself do what I really wanted to do.

  I think I nodded at the right places.

  Pretty sure I even ate a crab fritter, despite the giant lump lodged in my throat that refused to loosen or go away. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore and told him that I’d had a long day and that we’d need to catch up more tomorrow.

  But as I stared at his “Lunch?” text, I didn’t feel any better.

  When Abigail called and asked if I could meet, gratitude filled me. It gave me an excuse to put off Mason. Surely after another day or two I wouldn’t feel like I was going to burst into tears at any moment, right?

  After arranging to meet Abigail at the nasty coffee shop, I pulled my hair into a bun and, after a good five minutes of going back and forth, decided to exchange my yoga pants for jeans. I wouldn’t fall into old patterns. No going back to where I was before Linc reentered my life.

  If I didn’t have my program and the knowledge that good guys were out there, I might’ve given up men altogether. On cue, one of my quotes popped into my head, this one from Winston Churchill. Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.

  I kind of wanted to punch it in the face.

  I stopped in front of the mirror over my dresser. Sleep stayed out of my reach last night, and my puffy eyes showed it. I did a quick swipe of eyeliner and mascara, slicked on lip gloss, and then squared off in front of my reflection.

  Step Eleven: Don’t let your past heartbreaks get in the way of your future. Don’t hold potential guys responsible for the way you’ve been treated in the past—remember you’ve let that go. You believe a guy out there will restore your faith in love. When you find him, drop your walls, open your heart, and don’t be afraid to fully love.

  Other snippets from my steps ran through my head, rapid-fire style, like they were all hopped up on the caffeine I hadn’t had yet.

  Take charge of your own life.

  Decide what you want to be.

  Find hope.

  Get what you really want.

  Believe.

  Open your heart.

  I tried to hold those thoughts in, but suddenly Linc’s face flashed through my mind.

  Shit, shit, shit. Everything he’d confessed rose up again, and I plugged my ears and hummed to keep it out. I couldn’t do it. If I let myself think about him, I’d slip again, and I’d already slipped way too far.

  “I want a relationship that’ll go the distance.” The advice I’d given over the years would point to giving Mason another chance. Maybe he didn’t have a great sense of humor like Linc, but he had the other qualities that I needed in a partner. He was ready for me to move in with him. He had real Mr. Right potential.

  I reached for my earring, like I needed rescuing from the conversation I was having with myself. Only Ivy wasn’t in view. And I couldn’t call Linc anymore.

  The darkness whispered to me, telling me to let go and let it pull me under. But the thought of Abigail waiting for me brought me back and held my head just above the surface.

  Now was no time to make a decision about Mason.

  But eventually, I was going to have to figure out what to do.

  …

  “He invited me to go with him to his coworker’s birthday party,” Abigail said the second I stepped up to her table. She never did start with the typical hello, and she always assumed I knew who she was talking about. At least this time, I did.

  To ensure we were 100 percent clear, though, I laid it out. “Reid invited you to his coworker’s birthday party?”

  Abigail nodded and pushed her glasses up her nose.

  I sat on the chair across from her, frowning when it was harder than I expected. “First off, that’s a great sign. He wants you to meet his friends.” It was especially important after the last guy treated her like his dirty little secret.

  She nodded again and then bit at her thumbnail. “But, like, I just got comfortable talking to him. Add other people to the mix, and what if I say something stupid? What if I spill drinks all over myself? Or over his friends? What if they tell him he should dump me? Oh, and he would have to dump me. He asked me to be his girlfriend last Saturday.”

  “Abigail! You have a boyfriend that you’re crazy about. Let’s just take a moment to celebrate.”

  A smile spread across her face, chasing away the worry that’d been there a moment ago, and it buoyed my mood, too. I took a sip of the latte I’d or
dered—I’d hoped adding milk would make it better, but seriously, who would pay for this sludge?

  Besides me, of course. But I had my reasons. Maybe every person here was avoiding their usual coffee shops. Guess I should pass out my card and tell them I could help, even if I couldn’t follow my own advice.

  My spirits sank and I told them to knock it off—we had a job to focus on.

  Abigail took a sip from her coffee cup and wrinkled her nose. “Why aren’t we meeting at the Daily Grind?”

  “Just thought I’d change it up. Might have to change it up again.” Like maybe by moving to D.C. Yes, I’d miss my family and Ivy, and my clients here, but women in D.C. needed help, too. I’d leave Atlanta with a list of where to meet singles—

  A fresh wave of pain slammed into me. Why had I thought making a list with Linc was a good idea? Now everything on it—and even the list itself—reminded me of him.

  Another point for moving to D.C.?

  But then I heard Linc’s voice in my head. He’ll ask you to give up what you love because he thinks his job is more important than what you do, and he won’t even realize that you’re not truly happy being nothing more than his accessory.

  Mason hadn’t thought twice about what moving would do to the program I’d worked so hard to build here.

  That just means he has faith I can do the same in D.C., I told myself, but something about it didn’t ring true.

  I gave Abigail a few tips for surviving party scenes and meeting friends of your boyfriend. “You’ll do great. I know you’ve been hurt before, but Reid is clearly crazy about you. Now that you’ve taken charge of your own life and learned the difference between a jerk and a guy who’s in it for more than a hook up, let those walls down, open your heart, and don’t be afraid to fully love.

  “Don’t mention love or anything like that quite yet,” I quickly added, because a declaration of that too early was also a don’t. “But enjoy this fun beginning part. I honestly think you’re ready. If you need me, don’t hesitate to call, and I definitely want to hear how that party goes, but my work here is done. Now just trust yourself and your heart.”