“That’s pretty cold,” Carter agreed.
“I guess I’m naive but…” I turned up my palms. “I still can’t believe Alex would do that.”
“I believe it,” Cesca said.
“So do I,” Carter agreed. “That Harmony is pretty fine.” Then he remembered whom he was talking to. “I mean, not as fine as my beautiful wife, of course, or you, Gwen, but—”
“Oh, save it,” she told him. “Gwen, if the man is going to marry her, I’m pretty sure he’s going to have sex with her.”
“But they weren’t even getting along until two weeks ago at the earliest,” I said.
“Trust me, a man doesn’t have to get along with a woman to want to get with her.” Carter laughed.
Cesca shot her new spouse a withering glare. “Carter, do you want to sleep alone tonight?”
“No, I’m just…agreeing with you.”
“Well, do yourself a favor and stop agreeing.” She turned back to me. “He does have a point, though. It only takes one slipup. One quick attempt at reconciliation. And Alex probably justified it with some platitude about self-sacrifice and community service: ‘I’ve got to bag this hot chick for the sake of the greater good.’”
I had to admit, this line of reasoning did sound like typical guy logic. “So you’re saying that I’m the only one surprised by this little tidbit.”
“In a word, yes. I know it’s hard to hear.” She sat down next to me on the floor. “I don’t want to be the bitch here. But don’t waste too many tears on this guy. Just be glad you escaped. You were right: he’s no better than Dennis.”
“Men are pigs,” Carter added. “Take it from me.”
I sighed and leaned my head on Cesca’s shoulder. “How could I be so stupid?”
“You’re not stupid. You were ‘in love.’”
“You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to.”
23
All right, I admit it—I got my roots retouched before I headed off to the big showdown with Dennis.
Vain and pointless? Yes and yes. But I had my reasons. Tonight was not going to be a repeat of the showdown at The Bomb Shelter. There would be no cell phone throwing. I would stay cool, calm, and collected. I would make him rue the day he let a catch like me slip away. I’d demand some answers. At knifepoint, if necessary.
Then I’d implement Phase II: slip away into the night, burn rubber to Cesca’s house, and consume half a pineapple-and-Canadian-bacon pizza.
I surrendered my car to the Spanish Kitchen valet twenty minutes after the agreed-upon meeting time. Fashionably late, without being (very) passive-aggressive.
But when I strutted into the warm, muted candlelight reflecting off the varnished bar, I didn’t see Dennis.
So he had stood me up again. Again.
The bartender, an erstwhile model-actress in a frilled red blouse and a topknot, smiled at me. “What can I get you?”
At this point, I had a choice: I could walk out, smothered by my own sense of shame, or I could sit down and behave like a sophisticated single girl about town who was confident enough to stake out the bar all by herself.
I sat down. “I’ll start with just a cranberry juice.”
“Thank God you’re still here.” Dennis pulled out the stool beside me. “I was stuck in traffic on San Vincente, and I was afraid you’d leave.”
I gave him a look. “My cell phone didn’t ring.”
He had the decency to flush. “I know, I should have called. But the Yankees game went into overtime, and the guys wouldn’t let me leave…”
I yanked my wallet out of my bag and threw a twenty down on the bar. “You know what? I don’t have to listen to this anymore. Why should I sit here with you and pay twelve bucks per drink when I can go bang my head against a brick wall for free?”
He grabbed my hand. “Don’t go.”
I rolled my eyes but sat back down. “You’ve got five minutes. This better be good.”
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “God, you look beautiful.”
I pointed to the door. “Brick wall’s right out there.”
“I mean it, Gwen.” He folded my hand between both of his. “You were always pretty, but smart-pretty. Now you’re gorgeous.” He paused, soaking me in. “You’re the total package.”
I sneered at him. “Why? Because I’m blond?”
“No. Because you’re sexy and sweet and funny. I don’t know how to say it. I guess no one else ever made me feel the way you did. You were it. The One.”
I could feel my heart thawing out, so I compensated with the iciest sarcasm I could muster. “I see. That explains why you humiliated me in front of my family and friends and took off with Lisa. When did you decide to get back together with her, anyway?”
He stared at the shelves of tequila bottles behind the bar. “I ran into her at the Standard. During my bachelor party. The month before the wedding.”
A month before…?
“You ass.” I slammed my open palm down on the bar.
“I know.” He caught my gaze and held it. “I was an idiot. I got scared. I was confused, I was cracking under the pressure of med school and the wedding, and I threw away the only thing that mattered.”
And the horrible thing was, he was totally sincere. I could see it in his eyes.
I snatched my hand away from his. “Listen. If you were so unhappy…if you were so confused…Dennis, I was going to be your wife. Why didn’t you talk to me about it?”
He shook his head and uttered the phrase responsible for countless relationship casualties. “I couldn’t talk about it.”
“But you could tell Lisa about it?”
“No. Lisa was a mistake. When I was with her, I felt different. But it wasn’t real. It was never like you and me.” He reached over and gulped some of my cranberry juice. I noticed tiny beads of sweat forming across his forehead.
“Lisa broke up with me because I couldn’t stop talking about you.”
I was not going to pretend that this admission wasn’t a little gratifying.
“Gwen.” He downed the remainder of my drink and went for broke. “I love you. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anybody, and I need a second chance. I know I don’t deserve your trust, but I’ll earn it back.”
The joyful, frenetic beat of salsa music blaring through the restaurant’s speakers was so inappropriate against the strained, stale pause that followed that I almost laughed.
“Dennis…” I sighed. “No.”
“I’ll never give you reason to doubt me again,” he pledged. “And I still love you as much as I did when I asked you to marry me.”
Tears burned my eyes, but I didn’t blink as I shook my head.
The look on his face when I shook my head flayed my heart raw. “Please. I’ll do whatever you want. Counseling. You name it. We can fix this.”
“But I don’t want to,” I said softly. “I’ve moved on.”
He crumpled up the damp napkin next to my drink. “You’re seeing someone else.”
“Actually, I’m not. I’m alone. All by myself.”
“You’re lying to spare my feelings.” His eyes were bleak. “I can tell there’s someone else. You’re smiling.”
“I wouldn’t lie.” I shook my head. “A girl can smile when she’s by herself. Because it’s better to be alone than attached to the wrong man.”
And with that, I hopped off my stool, put my feet on the ground, and closed the door on that chapter of my life.
Two weeks later, as I sat in my clinic office, poring over client notes and nursing a giant cup of coffee, I heard a woman’s scream down the hall, a series of muffled thumps, and then a light rap at my door.
Oh no. Dr. Cortez had finally snapped and murdered Heather, and now he’d come for me.
Another tap at the door. “Miss Gwen?”
I opened the door to find Leo beaming up at me from under the brim of his Spider-Man cap. His outstretched hands were cupped together, and his little pink tongue darte
d in and out of his mouth in an attempt to wiggle what appeared to be a loose tooth.
“Leo.” I peered down the empty hallway. “What a surprise! How did you—”
“Miss Heather saw a fider in her office. I caught it to show her, and she screamed.” He looked inordinately proud of himself.
“I heard her,” I said. “Where is she now? And how did you find my office?”
“I remember from before. And besides.” He pointed to the wall placard bearing my name and title. “I know letters. G is for Gwen. And goose.”
“That it is,” I agreed. “But don’t you think Heather is wondering where you are?”
He shrugged and strolled into my office, stopping to marvel at the state of my desk. “Wow. It’s messy in here.”
“I think you may have mentioned that before.”
“Wanna see my spider?” He parted his hands and deposited an enormous brown-and-white-striped arachnid on my desk. “Lookit. It’s a zebra spider. They eat moths.”
“Oh my God.” I backed up against the window. “Why don’t we put him back outside where he can be with his other spider pals?”
“Zebra spiders don’t like other spiders. If they see one”—he twisted his face into a fang-baring grimace—“they attack!”
Staring at the spider trying to scale the side of my Styrofoam coffee cup, I could understand why Heather had screamed. The thing looked like it should be hiding out in the Amazon jungle somewhere, exploding out of the underbrush and eating unsuspecting missionaries.
I snatched up the empty UCLA coffee mug perched on my bookshelf, turned it upside down, and clapped it over the eight-legged monstrosity. As soon as I hustled Leo out of the room, it was curtains for this freakish beast.
Leo, perhaps sensing my murderous intent, stalled for time as I ushered him toward the door. “Miss Gwen…um…I have to tell you something…”
“Yes?” My voice was tinged with the tiniest hint of impatience. I kept one eye on the inverted mug, half expecting the spider to push it off the desk and lunge at me.
“Um…” His eyes darted from side to side as he tried to come up with a conversational hook. “Do you wanna come to my birthday party?”
“Your birthday party? Kiddo, your birthday was last month.”
“Yeah, but Mommy got back from Mexico and said we could have a big party. So Daddy’s taking me and Gilbert and Patrick to Disneyland.”
I couldn’t help but smirk, picturing Alex spending hour after hour standing in line under the afternoon sun with three five-year-olds, all overstimulated and begging for churros. “Well, tell your dad I said good luck with that.”
“And he said I could invite one more person.” Leo doffed his hat and scratched the back of his little neck. “So I’m asking you.”
“Oh, sweetie. I think your dad meant one of your friends from school. I’m sure he didn’t mean me.”
“He said whoever I want. It’s my birthday. So I can ask you.”
I shook my head. “Sounds like fun, but I can’t. Now let’s get you back to Heather. We can talk about this later.”
Desperate to delay the inevitable, he went for broke. “And, um, you know what else? Someday soon, I’m gonna be a big brother. I’m gonna have a baby sister.”
I stopped shooing him toward the hallway. “A baby sister?”
“Yuh-huh.” He nodded vigorously. “Mommy wants to name her Paisley.”
I coughed. Twice. “Really. And what does Daddy have to say about that?”
“Daddy who?”
I stared at him. “You know. Your daddy. The guy who lives with you? In your house? With your mommy?”
“I have two daddies now. My real daddy and Daddy Paul.”
I sank down into my office chair. “You have…”
“And when Paisley gets here, Daddy Paul’s gonna be her daddy.”
“I see,” I said, not seeing at all. “So if Paul is going to be…Paisley’s daddy, then who will be your daddy?”
He gave me a condescending look. “My daddy is always gonna be my daddy.”
“Right. Okay. Just checking.”
He smiled, and I saw a glimmer of the happy, confident child emerging from the anxious, moody little boy I’d first met. “My daddy loves me sooo much. And my mommy loves me too. No matter what.”
“That’s right. But let me ask you this—”
“Gwen!” Heather appeared at my door, buttoned up and exasperated as always. “What are you doing with my client?”
Leo gave her a syrupy sweet smile. She quelled him with her ornery schoolmarm look and ordered him back to her office, shutting the door behind them.
I hadn’t managed to work out all the logistical details yet, but one thing was certain: if Officer Paul had been introduced to Leo as “Daddy Paul,” then some big changes had gone down over in the hills. Which left Leo and Alex and Harmony…where?
My usual impulse under these circumstances would be to speed-dial Cesca or even Alex himself. But not today. Today I decided to handle the turbulence in my life on my own.
I tipped my head back and let the warm summer sunlight filter through the window and onto my face, trying to ignore the mutant bug clamoring against the confines of a coffee mug. Then I shrugged and got back to work. And I didn’t call anyone at all.
24
When I got back to the apartment that evening, I discovered that I had left my house keys at my office. Retrieving them would necessitate trekking back through the bowels of the underground garage, fighting rush-hour traffic, and returning to the clinic, where I would probably run into Heather and/or Dr. Cortez, both of whom would be eager to load me up with a few extra journal articles to read or grant proposals to review.
Off to have a word with the building superintendent, then.
I was giving the doorknob one last, futile twist when Alex walked around the corner in his suit and tie. He stopped for a moment when he saw me, then resumed his pace.
He wasn’t smiling. In fact, he looked like a stockbroker preparing to tell his client that the market had bottomed out and their portfolio was no longer worth the paper it was printed on.
“Oh good,” he said. “You’re here.”
“I’m here. But I’m locked out. Hey, maybe you can do that trick with your car key again?”
He dropped his calfskin briefcase on the carpet. “Stand aside.” He jiggled the lock, then stepped back to scrutinize the construction of the door. “What’s with you and Leo and the locked doors?”
“What can I say? We like a challenge.”
He frowned, which emphasized the tension etched across his face. “I probably could get this open for you, but it might ruin the paint job.”
“Then forget it. I’m not about to forfeit my security deposit. I’ll just go ask the super for the spare key. So. Anyway…” My voice trailed off in a question mark.
“You’re wondering what I’m doing here.”
“Well.” I leaned back against the wall. “Yeah.”
He waited until I glanced back at him. “I have to tell you something. To your face, not over the phone. I don’t want you to hear it from anybody else.”
I nodded. His voice told me everything I needed to know. “Harmony’s pregnant.”
He didn’t seem surprised so much as exhausted and defeated. “Yes. How did you know?”
“She told me at the benefit ball. And then I ran into Leo at the clinic.”
He rolled his eyes. “That kid is worse than Page Six with gossip.” He returned the full force of his focus to me. “But yes. Harmony is pregnant.”
I puzzled over the defensive edge in his voice, and then realized that he was waiting for me to unleash hell. So I simply asked, “Who’s the father?”
He looked stunned.
I waited.
Finally he asked, in tones of deep suspicion, “Don’t you think I’m the father?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”
“But how…?”
“When you told me you weren’t sleeping with Harmony, I believed you. Well,” I amended, “I believed you for a while; then I just thought you were a lying scumbag. But I sat down this afternoon and thought it through. Being a researcher, I thought it was only fair to look at the actual data. And realistically, even if you guys have been having sex, it still wouldn’t be enough time for her to be sure she’s pregnant. Never mind find out the baby’s gender.”
“But…” He opened his briefcase and dumped out a stack of legal documents covered in microscopic print.
“I know. Nancy Drew would be proud, huh?”
“But I was prepared to take the DNA tests and file all sorts of official…”
I furrowed my brow. “Why?”
“Because I didn’t want you to think I would, you know, mis-represent myself.”
I laughed. “You mean, you didn’t want me to think you were a cheating pathological liar even though we broke up?”
His expression was embarrassed but determined. “That about sums it up.”
“Well, I do appreciate all the effort you were prepared to put into this.” I leaned against the wall. “But it’s really not necessary.”
“So you believe me? You’re actually going to take my word on something this preposterous?”
“I just can’t seem to stop giving people the benefit of the doubt. It’s a curse, really. Besides. You are hopelessly honest.”
“I can be inscrutable,” he insisted.
“Hopelessly honest. Sorry to disappoint you.” I raised my eyebrows at him. “Still engaged?”
“Harmony is. To Paul.”
“What?” My eyebrows arched still higher. “Damn. That was fast.”
“Apparently, he’s been pining for her since they first met. They were dating right before she and I got together. And after all that work she’s done on improving her relationship skills…she wants to put them into practice with him.”
“Ah, the irony.”
“Ever since you sat down with her in Vegas, she’s gotten much more grounded. More…”
“Sane?” I suggested.
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