Perfect Pairing

by Rachel Spangler

  “Fine.” Quinn exhaled forcefully and folded her arms across her chest. “If you feel that way, I’ll respect your wishes. I don’t like them, I don’t agree with them. I feel like we could have something special together. We could build something special together, but if you disagree, I am not going to push you.”

  The words were right. She’d affirmed her, let her know she wanted her, but also respected her right to say no. She gave her the power, and Lord knows that wasn’t something Quinn did easily. So why did Hal still feel like shit? The choice was hers. She had to at least feel good, but she didn’t. Why?

  Who was she kidding?

  She knew why. She’d always known why.

  The right to choose was an illusion, because she was left once again with the same shitty choices she’d always faced. She could accept her place at someone else’s table, or she could sit at her own . . . alone.

  “Hal?” Quinn asked softly. “Are you pulling away now?”

  The truck gave a little lurch. Just a small stutter most people wouldn’t even notice, but it caused the hair on Hal’s arms to stand up. She automatically eased off the gas a little and then pressed on again. Nothing snapped or caught fire, but she thought she heard the engine working harder than usual, just a hint of a note higher, something slightly off key, the kind of difference only a trained mechanic would hear.

  “Hal,” Quinn asked, “are you not even speaking to me now?”

  “No. Shh!”

  “Shh?”

  A loud ding echoed through the truck, or at least through Hal’s ears, as the battery light flashed on the dashboard.

  “Shit.”

  “What?”

  “The battery.”

  “Of the truck? While you’re driving? Isn’t that unusual?”

  Hal gave Quinn a little nod of respect for at least knowing that much about how engines run. “Yeah, which leads me to think it’s not the battery and more likely the alternator. Shit, shit, damn, hell.”

  “What does this mean?”

  “Do you smell something burning?” Hal asked.

  “No.”

  “Fuck it. I have to pull over.” Hal flipped on her hazard lights as they neared an exit ramp. God, she was already too frazzled. She didn’t need a mechanical breakdown on top of the emotional one she feared.

  Quinn grabbed her phone. “You want me to Google a garage?”

  “Yeah, but nothing’s going to be open on the Sunday morning of a holiday weekend.”

  They rolled to a stoplight and looked around: a gas station, an Arby’s, and an adult video store. “Not much to see here.”

  Hal pulled into the parking lot of the gas station and killed the engine before hopping out. Quinn followed more slowly.

  “Do you want me to call a tow truck? Can a tow truck even carry something this big?”

  Hal lifted the hood and fastened it into place before she started to poke around. “I don’t want a tow truck. They cost a fortune, and I think I’m going to need a new alternator. Damn, yeah, and maybe a new belt, too. I do not really have the money to drop on a low-bed tow-truck ride.”

  Fuck fuck fuckity fuck. Just another failure. Another break down. Another reminder of how insecure and unstable everything in her life could be. Why couldn’t things just go the way she needed them to? Oh right, because that’s how her life worked. Why had she let herself forget that? She rested her head on the front of the truck, closed her eyes, and thought of another long string of cuss words.

  “So . . .” Quinn said as she shuffled her feet across the hot asphalt. What she had to say next was going to be received either really well or really badly, but she didn’t see any other way. “I have a platinum card.”

  Hal stopped her tinkering and stepped back from the truck. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I can open some doors, and I’m happy to do so.”

  “You’re happy to do what, exactly?”

  “Pay for the tow. Pay for the higher rate for someone to come out here and fix the truck today—”

  “I can fix my own truck.”

  “I don’t doubt that.” She tried to tread carefully. “You’re a very capable—”

  “Then keep your card in your pocket.”

  “Hal, please. You haven’t let me pay for anything on this trip.”

  “I was going to make this trip with or without you. There’s nothing you need to pay for.”

  “I know I don’t need to, but I want to. I don’t like the idea of being a kept woman any more than you do.”

  Hal gestured to the fast food joint across the street. “Then go buy us some cheeseburgers or something, but you aren’t buying anything for my truck.”

  “Really?” Quinn asked. “You’re going to pick this fight right now?”

  “What fight?”

  “The your-money-my-stuff fight?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Bullshit, Hal.” Why did she keep pretending she didn’t have issues in this area when they both knew she did? “It’s the same fight we’ve had since the day we met.”

  “So why do you think it would end any differently now?”

  “Because it’s not just you stuck here. We’re in this one together.”

  Hal sighed. “We’re not far from Boston, maybe half an hour. There’s got to be a commuter train stop around here somewhere. If I can get into the city, I can start looking for the part.”

  “How long will that take? And if you actually find a place open, and by some miracle they have the part you need, do you have the tools to fix it?” She mentally tried to reschedule their trip. She had to be back tomorrow. She’d already been away too long at an important time. Why couldn’t Hal see her side for once? She’d bent over backwards to respect the things she cared about. Why didn’t she deserve the same in return?

  “I might need to find someone else to come out with me,” Hal shrugged. “I’m not sure how I’m going to pull it off yet, but if I can—”

  “There are so many what-ifs in that scenario. Just let me pay for the return trip, and we might actually get home before Monday morning.”

  Hal slammed the hood. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re freaking out about missing your big meeting to replace me?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You gotta get back to find the next big thing. Makes sense. Why waste any more time with me when replacements are so easy to come by?”

  Quinn opened her mouth, then closed it again. She had no words, and even if she did, she wasn’t sure she could’ve found the air needed to give them voice.

  “Here’s an idea,” Hal said, a hint of sadness undercutting the tension in her voice. “Why don’t you use your platinum card to get yourself a cab to the airport?”

  “Please don’t.”

  “Don’t what? Be honest? We had a great trip, but it’s clearly over. We’re back in the real world now, and in the real world, you and I are never going to work. So maybe it’s time for you to go on your way and let me stay where I belong.”

  The words hit her like a slap. “You don’t mean that.”

  “It’s what you want, Quinn. You want to move forward with someone else. Go on.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I don’t want anything.”

  Quinn reached for her arm, desperate to reconnect. “Don’t go back to that, Hal.”

  Hal shook her off.

  “Fine,” she snapped, “if you won’t say what you want, I will.”

  “You don’t know what I want.”

  “Yes I do, because you want the same thing I do. You want to build something strong and lasting, something you can depend on in the way you never got to depend on anything in your life. But you’re scared, so you’re going to keep telling yourself you don’t want anything more than this broken-down truck. You’ve come to depend on the undependable to the point that you don’t even believe anything can last anymore.”

  “You don’t know me.”

 
“I do. I know you better than you will admit to knowing yourself. This little meltdown isn’t about the truck, and it’s not about my money. It’s about you being terrified you’ll lose out again like you already lost too many things in life. And you don’t like being reminded of that.”

  “I don’t want to hear anything else.”

  Hal headed for the driver’s side door, but Quinn followed her. If they had to have this out, they’d get everything out now.

  “For someone who won’t admit to wanting anything, you sure do have a long list of things you don’t want.”

  “I don’t want to keep having this conversation with you.”

  “Shocking. Well guess what? I do.” Quinn didn’t even try to hide her frustration anymore, and it boiled into flat out anger. “You don’t want me to go forward without you, but you don’t want to go forward with me? I’m damned either way.”

  “Why do you even care what I want?”

  “Because I want you.”

  “My turn to call bullshit,” Hal shouted as she wheeled around. “You don’t want me. Not really. You want some vision of me you’ve created in your mind.”

  Quinn shook her head. She wanted the real Hal. Why couldn’t she make her understand?

  “This is me. I break down. I fix my own stuff. I don’t try to pay away my problems. I can’t be bought, and I will not be sold. I am my own person, and I won’t sacrifice my freedom for whatever set of golden handcuffs you lay on the table.”

  “Freedom? Being stranded on a roadside? Not being able to pay your bills? Having to bend the law and stretch your resources to survive? Being stuck? Not being able to go forward or back? Is that your freedom? I hate to break it to you. That’s not freedom. It’s poverty.” Quinn shook her head sadly. “Freedom is an illusion.”

  “So is control,” Hal shot back. She’d had enough. If Quinn wanted to deal in hard truths, she had a few of her own she needed to hear.

  “What?”

  “The almighty control you think your business suits and your nine-to-five job and your platinum card give you—they won’t buy back your family, Quinn.”

  She winced and took a step back. The great and powerful Quinn Banning finally backed down, but Hal wouldn’t stop now. Something inside had broken again, and this time it couldn’t be healed with a few kisses.

  “You can’t reopen your dad’s plant. You can’t rebuild your parents’ marriage. You can’t rehab all the neighborhoods. You can’t remake Buffalo into some silly childhood image you’re clinging to, and even if you did, you won’t get a do-over on the childhood you lost.”

  “That’s not what I—”

  “Yes it is. You want to make up for all the stability you never had, but it won’t work. No matter how strong your strategic planning skills, no matter how much money you make, no matter how many businesses you save, you can’t control people.” Hal took a deep breath and hung her head. “People will always disappoint you.”

  “So what? So we just give up? You want to just stop trying?”

  Hal didn’t have an answer. “I don’t want anything from you.”

  “Yes, you do,” Quinn shouted, “you want me to just . . . stay here, forever. You want me to be stranded on the side of the road with you indefinitely, and I don’t want that life, Hal. We both got screwed as kids, and maybe you’re right, maybe I’ll never make up for that, but I have no intention of spending the rest of my life wallowing.”

  “No one’s forcing you to,” Hal snapped again. “No one even asked you to. We both knew this was coming eventually. Why drag things out? Just go.”

  Quinn stared at her long and hard, but Hal wouldn’t cave. The walls she’d built against this kind of disappointment may have been breached, but they had obviously not been broken.

  “Just go call a cab, Quinn. I’ve got work to do.” She strode quickly toward the gas station, refusing to so much as look over her shoulder as she went.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Quinn pushed open her front door just past midnight. She’d taken a cab to the airport, paid an unreasonable sum of money to fly standby, waited while five full flights left without her, then caught a back-of-the-plane seat on the last plane of the night into the Buffalo Niagara airport before catching another cab through the quiet city streets to her own dark home. And she’d been pissed off the entire way.

  She’d been angry with the first cabdriver who drove too fast and charged too much. She’d barely kept her frustration from boiling over at the massive amounts of people who stood before her in line at the airport. She’d had murderous fantasies about the flight attendants who chattered loudly and kept bumping their beverage cart into her seat, and don’t even get her started on the people who queued up waiting to flush the airplane toilets loudly behind her. Finally, the cabdriver in Buffalo incurred her wrath by driving too slowly and having the gall to try to make conversation with her at this time of night. The only person she hadn’t allowed herself to feel angry toward in this whole scenario was Hal Orion.

  Silly or not, she wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of knowing she’d struck a nerve. Sure, there was no way Hal would ever know how Quinn felt, as she was likely still sitting on the roadside five-hundred miles away, but Quinn would know the truth. No, she wasn’t upset about Hal or any of the things she had said. It was just every other moron in the world who happened to light her fuse tonight.

  “Fuck,” she said for absolutely no reason at all as she dropped her bag just inside the doorway and flipped on the lights to her foyer. Then she screamed, “Fuck,” with a very legitimate reason as two people popped up from the couch, scaring the living shit out of her.

  “Hey, Quinn. Sorry. It’s just me,” Ian said in his most soothing tone. “Me and Megan.”

  Quinn’s startled gaze swung quickly from her baby brother’s flushed face and dark lips to the young woman whose lipstick he seemed to be wearing. She blinked a few times, her heart rate lowering to something that wouldn’t quite induce cardiac arrest as she struggled to make sense of what could possibly be happening here. All signs pointed to a scenario that involved Ian making out with a girl on her couch.

  “Hi,” the girl finally said, shyly. “I’ve heard a lot about you. I, um, I’m sorry we scared you.”

  Quinn nodded to the girl, Megan apparently. She was cute, in a punky kind of way, with her shaggy cut hair clearly dyed to a dark auburn and her jeans purposefully ripped. “Hello, Megan.”

  “Hi,” the girl said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear only to have it immediately fall out once more, “again. I already said that, didn’t I?”

  “You did, but what else is there to say, really?” Actually she could think of a few things to say, or at least ask, but she had neither the energy nor the inclination to embarrass Ian right now, so she’d save the inquisition until the morning. “I’m very tired. I’m going to bed.”

  “Oh, okay,” Megan said. She smiled nervously. “I should probably go, too.”

  Ian’s frown, combined with the accusatory look he shot Quinn, drew only the smallest sigh from her.

  “No, please, don’t let me interrupt, your, um . . . evening.”

  “Sleep tight,” Ian said, not unkindly, but clearly not sad to see her go.

  “Nice to meet you,” Megan added.

  “Likewise,” Quinn said with the most polite smile she could muster and added a mumbled, “I’m sure,” on her way up the stairs. They probably didn’t hear her, judging by their whispered giggles.

  Giggles?

  Ian was giggling . . . with a girl . . . on the couch . . . in the dark. The same couch where she and Hal had—no. She had to slam the door on that train of thought. She didn’t need those memories, and she certainly didn’t want to think about Ian’s romantic prospects for the night outmatching her own.

  Ian. Really? A week ago he’d practically flipped out at the hypothetical prospect of asking a girl to dance, and now she got the sense he was minutes away from having sex on her couch. She loved her
brother but, ew. She liked their roles much better when they’d been reversed.

  She’d felt as if the whole world had been slightly off-kilter since early that morning. Now she suspected it might have flipped upside down completely. She bypassed the bathroom, not wanting to see herself in the mirror, and, kicking her shoes off, climbed straight into bed, clothes and all. She didn’t have it in her to undress or brush her teeth or even get all the way under the sheets. Curling around a pillow, she tried to pretend she didn’t care about how cold and empty she felt without the heat of Hal’s body beside her. She was simply too exhausted to go on. Yes, only exhaustion weighed on her limbs and her mind, numbing her senses and driving her to close her eyes tightly against all the horrible images threatening to overtake her. She didn’t hear the echo of shouted voices either, didn’t feel the sting of words that couldn’t be taken back. All she felt now was tired. Only, as she drifted off, she realized this kind of tired happened to feel an awful lot like sadness.

  “Ha!” Hal said triumphantly as the engine of Cheesy Does It roared to life. “I told you I could do it.”

  She said it to herself, only not to herself. She’d been talking nonstop since Quinn left, partially because she couldn’t stand the silence, and partially because the only thing worse than silence was the echo of all the things she wished they’d kept silent about in the first place. Still, sitting there behind the wheel of the only thing in life she’d ever really called her own, she wished she could’ve said the last “I told you so” loud enough for Quinn to hear all the way back in Buffalo.

  At least, she assumed she’d made it back to Buffalo last night. She’d obviously gotten no text or phone call to let her know she’d caught a plane or gotten home safely, but Quinn generally got what she wanted, and she couldn’t imagine something as insignificant as holiday traffic or even the FAA getting in her way. If she had to lay money on Quinn’s whereabouts, she’d wager even the truck itself that Ms. Banning had gracefully returned to her role as banker and even now commanded the full attention of the underlings trying to replace Hal. Then again—she glanced at the clock—it was nearly ten a.m. Maybe they’d already replaced her.