by Maxene Novak
“Okay,” she said, laughing. “I dated two guys once, but they were totally okay with it. They were best friends, and they didn’t mind sharing, especially since I was already married to my work.”
“Ah, so you are open to nontraditional arrangements.”
“Ruger,” Tassie said with a warning in her voice.
“What?” he asked innocently.
“What kind of scheme are you dreaming up?”
“Nothing, I swear.” He grinned. “It’s just good to know these things about people.”
“Yeah, sure,” Tassie said sarcastically. “And my name is Consuela Van Helsing, queen of Transylvania. Come on, spill. What’s going on?”
He looked from one to the other. Belle was watching him curiously, and Tassie was latched on to the question like a dog with a bone.
“Okay,” he sighed. “I proposed something to Colt last night that he was completely against. He told me it was totally unrealistic and I shouldn’t even try. He said if I talked to you, you’d agree with him.”
“What did you propose?” Belle asked.
“I proposed a sort of relationship three-way… you, me, and him.”
“Oh,” Belle breathed. “Oh, gosh.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Come on in, Colt!” Annabelle Lee, his old therapist, opened her door cheerfully.
“Thanks,” he said, taking a seat on the imitation alligator leather couch.
“It’s been a long time,” she commented, grabbing a notepad from the stack she kept on the filing cabinet.
“Yeah, yeah it has,” he agreed.
“So what brings you in today?”
“I… feel like I’m on the brink of making several bad decisions that will completely screw up everything I’ve worked for, and I’m not sure how to manage it.”
“Hm. What decisions are you trying not to make?”
“Well… there’s this girl, she’s a client, and I’m ridiculously attracted to her. In my line of work, you know, I have to get close… really close, physically, to the people I work with, and usually I can just kind of turn that off? But for some reason, this time… I can’t. Or I don’t want to. I don’t know, it’s like my barriers are gone. And I kind of think it’s Ruger’s fault, and I don’t want to blame him for my own lack of self-control, but he’s been pushing this idea and… I don’t know… it’s kind of appealing, and I can’t seem to stop thinking about it.”
“Ruger… the same Ruger who broke your heart last time you were in here?”
“Yeah. He’s been back in town for the last couple years, and things have been fine… shallow, but fine… then this girl comes along, and he gets it in his head that the three of us could be lovers in spite of everything.”
“And you don’t think you can be.”
“Well, I mean, no. Because first, there’s the whole human element, I mean, wouldn’t there be jealousy and stuff? Doesn’t seem like it would be real low-drama. And there’s the fact that she’s my client. I’ve taken care of that temporarily, I’ve got some other people handling her care for the moment… honestly, I don’t trust myself to touch her… and of course there’s the fact that I can’t really trust him, and he doesn’t really trust me, and it just seems like it’s all going to come crumbling down if I don’t do something, but I don’t know what to do.”
“What do you want to do?” she asked.
“That’s not really the point, is it?” Colt said, exasperated.
“What do you mean?”
“That’s what Ruger keeps asking me. What do you want, what do you feel… and I don’t think it matters.”
“It doesn’t matter what you want?”
“Well no, not really. What matters is, what is the right thing to do.”
“Hm. Well, the answer to that is sort of dependent on your answer to the previous question.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What’s right… that’s fluid. Dependent on the situation. If you aren’t comfortable with a non-traditional relationship, then the right thing to do is to manage your client… like you have been… and either choose one of them, or choose neither of them and go about business as usual. If, however, you are comfortable—or at least curious—aboutpursuing a non-traditional arrangement, then the right thing will be different. See, what matters is that you—and your friends, but they aren’t in my office right now so I want to focus on you—are taken care of. Emotionally, physically, financially. That you’re in a position to live your life fully, without taking advantage of anyone or being taken advantage of. That’s the goal, anyway. Your internal life, your mental and emotional health, that’s what I’m concerned with right now. So tell me, what happened between you and your client, and you and Ruger, that has you in this emotional crisis right now?”
“Between me and her… nothing. Nothing concrete, anyway. It’s just that when I touch her, or I’m around her, I want her. Desperately. Beyond anything I’ve felt since Ruger. And Ruger….” Colt sighed dropping his head in his hands. “I slept with Ruger a couple nights ago, on the condition that we talk about all of this in the morning. When I woke up, he was gone.”
“Avoidance,” she mused.
“Looked that way, anyway. But the other night… god, it was like coming home. I remembered all of these things, about him, about us… for a second, it seemed like everything was okay. Every bit of hurt and anger just washed away, and for those few minutes it was just him and me again, the way it used to be.”
“What’s your dating life been like since the last time we talked?” she asked.
“Virtually dead,” he sighed. “I take someone out on a date once a month or so, but it never goes anywhere. I stopped sleeping with random people years ago. Just can’t seem to find the enthusiasm anymore. People come on to me, and I do my thing, take them out so they can show off to their friends—I don’t know why, it’s a thing—and that’s it. If I enjoy their company, maybe I’ll hang out with them a couple more times, but it never goes anywhere. I had myself convinced for a long time that I was just incapable of sustaining a relationship.”
“Do you still think that?”
“Not really,” he admitted.
“Why not?”
He pulled at the stray threads peeking out from the corner of the cushion. “Because I can see a future now,” he said quietly. “With Belle, or with Ruger. I can see it turning into something real, and not because I’m working at it… just because it is. Belle, she’s… she’s so accepting. Life slams her with things and she just rolls with it. She doesn’t seem to get shocked or flustered or judgmental. She doesn’t treat people like projects, she just sort of lets them be. She’s curious and insightful, and I could completely envision myself having a crisis of self and her just sitting there, letting me have it, being steady when I’m not.
“And Ruger… he’s sort of the opposite. He makes things happen, one way or another. Where I’ll be muddling around trying to make life work with what I have, he’s out there getting stuff done. He feels things first and thinks second, which has always helped me move on past the thinking part to the feeling part. He’s like a beacon, you know? I’ll be pondering something to death, and he’ll just be there like Hey! Your emotions are this way! And when I follow him I always feel better, everything’s clearer afterwards… usually… except for the other morning, when he sort of just left me in the lurch.”
“If you had to guess, why do you think he did that?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Colt said thoughtfully. “Maybe he wanted me to stew in the emotions. Maybe he was afraid of the conversation. Maybe he got what he wanted and split, mission accomplished.”
“You know him pretty well,” Annabelle pointed out. “Which of those is the most likely?”
Colt sighed. “If this was six years ago, I’d said it was the second one. But now… I don’t know. I think he knows he pushed me the other night, right out of my comfort zone. I think maybe he wanted to keep me there a while. We didn’
t actually set up a time or anything for the conversation, so it’s entirely possible that he just wanted to let me think on it on my own for a while.”
“And in response, what did you do?”
“Threw myself into my work.” Colt laughed bitterly. “Which turned up a whole slew of other problems, because my work was Belle.”
“I see,” she said thoughtfully.
“So… what do you think?”
“I think you’ve been very lonely and very hurt for a very long time. I think you’ve been feeling just enough to purge, and then moving on to the next item you can control. I think that this girl, who is so accepting of you, and this boy, who is so fiercely emotional, are showing you parts of yourself that you’ve suppressed for entirely too long.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
“What do you want to do?”
Colt laughed. “It always comes back to that, doesn’t it?” He shook his head. “I want… I want to feel like I did when I was in bed with Ruger. I want to feel like I did when I was holding Belle. I just want to feel again. It seems like it’s been forever since I’ve had a rush like this, and I don’t want it to stop.”
“Then maybe it’s time to get out of your comfort zone,” Annabelle said.
“Even though she’s a client?”
“Well, that’s a more practical sort of pickle. For that, you have two options. You could fire yourself now, and get her more objective treatment; or, and I’m more in favor of this option myself, you could finish the program with her—if you can possibly restrain your animal lusts—and get to know her as a person for the next however many weeks or months until she’s better.”
“Six months,” he told her.
“Six months is plenty of time. Not only to learn about her, but to learn about yourself. If your attraction to her is purely physical, it’ll wear off by then. If not, well… friendship is a much more stable foundation for any relationship, and especially important for one of this nature. Besides, it’s probable that she is feeling a bit… betrayed by your sudden and unexplained absence. It would give you time to prove your reliability to her. Because of all the things they have to offer you, you have plenty to give in return. You have to trust yourself. Do what you need to do, stay true to your most honest self, and see what happens.”
“Clichés, huh,” Colt teased.
“Hey, don’t knock the cliché. Takes a long-standing truth to earn the title.”
“Fair enough,” Colt smiled. “Thanks, Annabelle.”
“My pleasure. Be sure to stop by sometime and let me know how it goes.”
“Will do. Have a great day.”
“Thanks, I’ll try. Got my bipolar group in about half an hour, so the day could go either way,” she said, giving him a wink.
Colt left on a gutful of laughter and climbed back into his truck for the thirty-minute drive back to town.
He was going to have to do some damage control, he decided. He’d disappeared Wednesday, and it was Monday. He’d put in for the time off at the gym, so that was settled. But Annabelle was right, he had sort of abandoned Belle. Ruger certainly wouldn’t be too happy about that, even if he wasn’t too upset for his own sake. It wasn’t as if they’d made any kind of solid plans.
Colt breathed a heavy sigh and stopped for coffee. He wasn’t going to be able to face this without some kind of liquid strength, and it was entirely too early to drink liquor. Coffee in hand, he hit the highway, rehearsing conversations in his mind.
Chapter Nineteen
Once Colt had showered, shaved, and changed, it was nearly one o’clock. Ruger would still be at work, he imagined, but Belle would be home. Might as well face them one at a time, at least at first. He wasn’t due back at the gym until the next day, so he had hours to sort this out. He hoped it would be enough.
The day was warmer than it had been for a while. Trees dripped and gutters ran with semi-frozen sludge. Colt decided to leave his truck at home and walk the mile to the cottage. The neighborhood was virtually silent, and he heard the thunderous cracks as the creek began to thaw. The clear air helped him clear his mind, and by the time he jogged up the steps he knew precisely what he wanted to say.
He knocked twice and opened the door. A trio of voices engaged in passionate singing greeted him. The song sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t place it. It sounded like an opera or a musical; he wasn’t well-versed in the style, but he tried to place it as he kicked off his boots and hung his coat.
The sight that greeted him when he walked into the living room nearly broke his heart. Belle stood in front of the TV, singing along with all her heart as tears streamed down her face. The screen told him the song was “All I Ask of You.”
“Say you’ll stay with me, one love… one lifetime,” she sang through her sobs.
He wanted to go to her, to hold her in his arms and promise he’d stay… but he knew she wasn’t singing to him. Oh, how he wished she was. She leaned heavily on her gaudy cane and swayed to the slow beat, lost in her grief, wrapped up in the music. He understood that from his core; music drove his life, and for her, it was more than that. It had been her partner through the years, she’d lived it. Breathed it. Moved in it day after day, and now all she could do was match it with her powerful voice.
He’d had no idea she could sing like that.
The song ended before he’d come to his senses, and he was just starting to back out of the room when she opened her starry eyes.
“Oh!” she cried out, startled.
“I’m… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to….”
“No, no, it’s fine,” she said briskly, switching the TV off.
She reached for the tissues on the table and overbalanced, falling to the floor. He rushed to her then, heart bursting with sorrow. She hadn’t tried to get back up. She’d just laid there, sobbing into the carpet. He did the only thing that felt right. He lay down beside her and wrapped his arms around her, letting her curl into him.
“Are you hurt?” he asked gently.
“My leg’s fine,” she sniffled.
She broke down again, gripping his collar as she buried her face in his chest. He held her for a while, rubbing her back and whispering soothing, meaningless phrases. He felt helpless and indispensable all at once, and he kicked himself for being away from her for so long. Her sobs quieted, and he reached for the tissues.
“Thank you,” she mumbled as she wiped her face. “God, I feel so stupid.”
“No, no, not stupid, sweetheart. You’re in mourning. It’s completely natural.”
He climbed to his feet and helped her up.
“That’s just what it feels like,” she confessed, voice quivering. “Like a death. A death of everything I ever wanted or dreamed, and I’m useless at everything else, just completely useless.”
He led her to the couch and sat her down beside him. “What do you mean, useless?” he asked gently, sweeping a stray strand of hair out of her face.
“I took this class,” she sniffled, “on Saturday. It was a pottery class. I used to be good at sculpting, Colt, really good. At least I thought I was. But then… this….”
She gestured helplessly at a mug on the table. He hadn’t noticed it before, but it was strikingly dissimilar from the other dishes in the house… or other dishes, period. One side had a peculiar angle, as if it were trying to be square-shaped, while the other side was quite rounded, though it drooped significantly in the middle. The twisted handle was three different thicknesses, in places that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. He wondered briefly if it would hold water, then he realized that there was a puddle of coffee drying on the table where it rested.
“And then,” she continued before he could comment on the cup. “And then, I wanted to cook today. I used to be good at that too. And I… I… I ruined scrambled eggs!” she wailed.
“Oh, honey,” he chuckled sympathetically and drew her into his shoulder, hugging her tight. “You’ve been out of practice for a while, that’s a
ll. Nothing’s perfect the first time.”
“Ballet was,” she said miserably. “My mom had this video of me… I wasn’t even walking, Colt, I had to hold onto the coffee table… but I’m doing pliés with perfect form, watching the TV. I was born to do it, and dammit I was good, and now I’ll never be that good at anything ever again.”
“You will,” he promised her firmly. “You will, Belle. It’s just going to take a little more work than you’re used to. Those of us who weren’t prodigies have had to practice everything that we’re good at before we’re good at it. Most people are disasters at first, it takes time to learn something new… or even re-learn things.”
“I know,” she said miserably. “Like, in my people brain, I know that. I just… I can’t feel it. I fail at things and I feel like a failure. It’s like this damn stupid cup is a reflection of my damn stupid self, and I can’t seem to get past that.”
“There’s only one thing to do, then,” he told her.
“What?”
“Make more damn stupid cups until you make one that you kind of like. Then make more and more, until you make one you’re sort of proud of. Then make more and more and more until you make one that you’d cherish forever or give as a gift to someone who’ll say, Oh this is a fabulous cup, where did you get it? Just so you can look into their faces and say with all the pride in the world that you crafted that cup, out of your own two hands.”
“Kind of sounds like an adventure when you put it that way,” she said.
She sounded steadier, so he decided to keep talking.
“It is! Self-improvement is absolutely an adventure. And you know what? You can do the same thing with eggs. Make eggs every day. Make all the eggs. Master scrambled and move on to fried, then boiled, then over-easy, until finally you’ve made a plate of eggs Benedict fit for a queen!”
Belle giggled at that, and he gently released her.
“Feeling better?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, wiping her eyes again. “Thanks. I’m sorry you had to see me like that.”