The Breakup Doctor

by Phoebe Fox

  Where had he been?

  The answer was so obvious I felt like the world’s biggest fool.

  seventeen

  I realized why they called it “saw palmetto” as I pushed my way through an overgrown tangle of the low-growing palm shrubs. The sharp blades of its fanlike leaves left slices all over my hands, as annoyingly painful as paper cuts, as I forged a path through the overgrowth and across a dried-up drainage ditch.

  Except at the moment, I realized as my foot squelched into its moist, slippery bottom, it wasn’t completely dried up. The sun had been swallowed by ominous-looking clouds when I left my house, and a spritzing mist had turned into a drizzle by the time I got to Kendall’s. I pulled my foot out of the muck, nearly leaving behind my red canvas espadrille. It was ruined now anyway, its braided-rope heel smeared with thick dark Florida mud that looked like chocolate frosting.

  I didn’t know what I intended when I got up from the computer, grabbed my keys, and jumped in my car. I was headed to Kendall’s, but for what? To catch him with someone?

  It wasn’t until I was halfway there that I realized it was Monday.

  Well, in that case, I would gather all my things, I decided resolutely. I could empty everything out as though I had never been there, make the break clean and tie off all my loose ends so I could start getting over it. Over him.

  And maybe I could do a little bit of looking around while I was there. Nothing too intrusive—nothing on a Sasha level. But it had been a day since she’d tossed his house with such alarming efficiency. Maybe now that I was officially out of his life, he’d have left some incriminating evidence lying around—a phone number, a note...a pair of panties lying forgotten on the bedroom floor.

  I pulled into the subdivision’s entrance and swung around toward residents’ parking, and my heart slammed into my ribs as I saw Kendall’s car.

  Before I realized exactly what I was doing, I tore out of the parking lot, my tires slipping a little on the wet pavement. Why was he home from work so early? Had he seen me pull in? Was he looking out the window, noticing my car screeching past, shaking his head at his pathetic drive-by ex?

  Or...was he in there with someone else?

  That was when I’d yanked the wheel into the small, half-deserted strip mall behind his subdivision, left my Honda in the parking lot, and headed for the wall of greenery that bordered Kendall’s complex.

  I finally slashed my way through the last of the thick foliage and came into the complex toward the back, two squat white buildings behind Kendall’s. I raced across the asphalt toward his unit, stopping occasionally to secret myself behind an oak tree or a wall of oleanders, like a bad private dick on a caper. It was hard to be stealthy in three-inch wedge heels, and for the first time ever, I wished I had some of Sasha’s stalker skills.

  I bent to catch my breath behind a Dumpster and looked down at what I was wearing—frayed cutoff shorts and a stained, oversize giveaway T-shirt from some radio event Sasha had covered, both sticking to my body in the rain, and the incongruous red espadrilles that had been the shoes closest to the front door. My hair was half twisted into a plastic claw and I could feel it drifting down in frizzy strands around my face, and I wasn’t wearing a speck of makeup. I was violating one of the foremost rules of post-breakup behavior: Never go out looking anything less than fantastic. You never knew when or where you might encounter your ex—or someone who knew him, and the last thing you wanted was for him to hear about how awful you looked.

  But if all went according to plan—which I’d hatched during my Crocodile Dundee safari through the tropical flora—Kendall wouldn’t see me at all.

  And neither would whoever was in there with him.

  I took one last deep breath of the sour, dank air near the Dumpster, ducked my head against the drizzle, then made my final push, skidding to a halt behind the stucco wall at the corner of the unit of condos that faced Kendall’s across the opaque beige retention pond. I checked his parking spot—his car was still in its usual spot. If I stuck my head out just a few inches, I could see his end unit: the facade, the front door, and the two windows in his living room.

  I peered slowly around, my heart flipping in my chest. In the rainy gloom, golden light poured out of Kendall’s windows, mocking my wet chill. Somewhere inside he was warm and cozy. Was he thinking about me? Did he wonder how I was feeling? Was he doing the same thing I was right now—trying desperately to picture what I might be doing, where I was? (He’d never guess this one, I thought, wiping away a stream of water that trickled down from my hairline.) Was he wondering, like I was, if I was alone or if I had already found someone new?

  Of course he wasn’t. It had been less than forty-eight hours—and I wasn’t the one who’d bugged out of the relationship.

  The more likely scenario filled my head. Kendall came home for a little “afternoon delight” with his new flame. He was probably lying on the sofa inside, bathed in that warm golden light I saw filtering out his window. His shoes would be off, neatly lined up beside the sofa, but his socks would still be on—he always wore them, even in the hottest weather, because he didn’t want to ruin the cream carpet. (“Feet sweat, Brook,” he would say, looking pointedly down at mine.)

  Suddenly the comforting drone of Taking Stock or Mad Money or Squawk Box would be cut off, the picture snapping to gray, and Kendall would look up as a woman slinked up beside the sofa.

  “I can think of more enjoyable things for you to watch,” she’d purr, slipping one silken strap of her plum-colored lingerie off a tanned, smooth shoulder.

  I could hear Kendall’s throaty laugh as he reached for her, pulling her toward him, closer, down on top of his tall, muscled body. “You’re right. This is better than any silly finance show. You’re the only woman I’ve ever known who’s more interesting than Jim Cramer.”

  The vibrating in my pocket snapped me out of the stockbroker porn in my head, and I reared back behind the building and fumbled for my phone, hating myself for wishing with all my heart it was Kendall. Then terrified that the woman I was imagining rubbing herself along Kendall’s body upstairs had seen me out here and was somehow calling me.

  I looked at the screen. Sasha. She’d stopped calling me every thirty minutes late last night when I blasted her that I wasn’t on suicide watch and wouldn’t get two seconds of the sleep I so desperately needed if she kept burning up the phone lines every time I started to drift off. She agreed to stop only if I checked in with her today every hour on the hour. I had to answer.

  “Hey, Sash.”

  “You didn’t check in with me last hour.”

  “Sorry. I’m... I was writing my column.”

  “What’s the sitrep?” Sasha took breakups very, very seriously.

  “Nothing. I’m fine. Same as yesterday. Nothing to report.” I pushed my wet hair off my face and tried to scrape away mud from one shoe with the edge of the other.

  “Are you sure this isn’t denial? Or shock? Have you been drinking? Should I come over? Do you want me to go over to his house and get your things? You need a clean break. As long as his lock isn’t a Schlage I can pick it and—”

  “Sasha! Jesus, no! That’s breaking and entering...or trespassing, or burglary or something—at any rate, a felony.” My head suddenly cleared. What was I doing here? I wasn’t Sasha. I was a therapist, for God’s sake. I was the one who counseled people against behavior like this.

  I wiped moisture off my streaming face and smoothed my crazy hair out of my eyes. “I just finished the column, actually,” I told her—a white lie only, depending on how you defined “just.” I told her about the hole in my living room wall and the unidentified leak that needed investigating. “That’s what I’m planning to tackle next—don’t worry; I’m keeping busy.”

  It took several more reassurances that I was fine, coping well, and didn’t need anything at the moment to get Sasha to hang up.
A case I somehow made to her even while standing with my feet half buried in sludgy Florida mud and with rain plastering my ratty clothes to my body. As soon as she ended the call I eked my phone back into my damp pocket and leaned around the corner again.

  Kendall’s apartment light was out, and his car was gone from his spot. Dammit. Had someone been with him?

  There was one sure way to find out. Sasha herself had actually planted the seed. She might be an expert with lock picking, but I didn’t need that kind of skill.

  I still had a key.

  eighteen

  My hands shook as I fitted the key into the cobalt front door of Kendall’s condo and turned the knob to the left.

  The door swung open too easily, as if the house itself were inviting me in. It should have stuck, should have been hard to turn, so that I had a moment to stop and think about what I was doing—violating someone’s personal space, breaching the bounds of propriety, shattering whatever trust still remained between Kendall and me.

  But he’d done that, I reminded myself, firming my backbone. Not me. All I was doing was following his lead. I left my muddy shoes on the stoop and stepped inside.

  I wasn’t sure what I was expecting once I crested the top of the stairs and took in the open living space of the condo—maybe a trail of sexy, slinky underthings like the ones I never bothered with. Should I have? If I’d greeted Kendall at night wearing only a corset and thigh-high stockings with a pair of fierce and impractical spike heels, would I have been the one he skipped out on work for in the middle of the afternoon to come home to?

  But there was nothing littering the off-white carpet of the living room. Of course. Sexy foreplay was one thing, but it was no excuse for Kendall to tolerate a mess.

  I made a quick circuit of the living area, my chest constricted. It felt so odd to be scared of being caught roaming Kendall’s home. How on earth could I no longer have the right to be here? Forty-eight hours ago this was on the verge of being my home, too. Now I was an intruder. My eyes felt hot and I blinked fast.

  Nothing was out of place, everything just as it had been when I’d last seen it, as it had been every single day that I’d come home to this place exactly like this—except that then I was happily waiting for Kendall to come home, and now I was terrified of it. If he walked back in now—if he forgot something, if a neighbor had called to report that he’d better get back quickly, because his crazy ex had just let herself inside—there was nothing I could say to justify my presence. I was doing exactly what I counseled every client I worked with against—violating someone’s privacy and engaging in borderline stalking behavior.

  But I couldn’t stop now. I was already in, after all. I might as well look around a little.

  Sasha had tossed the place pretty thoroughly the other day, so I doubted there was anything I might find that she hadn’t sniffed out. But if he had come home to meet someone... I headed down the hall toward his bedroom, the door of which was closed. My chest squeezed so tightly it was hard to breathe as I reached out, turned the knob, and pushed it open.

  The bed was as neatly made as always, not the rumpled, twisted mess of sheets I’d expect from an afternoon quickie. But that didn’t mean anything—Kendall was anal-retentive enough to ask the girl to help him make the bed after even the wildest session of lovemaking. There was only one real test. I flipped back the duvet, ripped the sheets down, and lowered my head, taking a deep, full sniff.

  Nothing. Laundry detergent, and maybe a slight whiff of my own scented lotion. No musky, earthy smell of satisfied stranger. Not even the smell of Kendall’s sweat. I hastily made the bed back up the way Kendall liked it—sheet folded down over the cotton blanket, comforter pulled up over it.

  In the bathroom everything was in order—even my own toothbrush, still standing in its holder like a watchful soldier.

  He wouldn’t have left my toothbrush and toiletries out if he’d had another woman here already. Would he?

  I reached down suddenly and snatched up the trash can, diving a hand into the wadded-up tissues and used Q-tips, looking for evidence I desperately didn’t want to find—like a discarded condom I hadn’t had anything to do with. There was nothing. I shoved the wastebasket back in place and washed my hands, grimacing.

  I yanked open the bathroom drawer, remembering Sasha’s advice—always count the condoms. Why hadn’t I listened to her? There was still a string of them where they had been before, but who knew if any were unaccounted for?

  I chewed my lip. Maybe no slinky, slutty stranger had been here—yet. But that didn’t mean there was nothing to find. All my scruples when Sasha had wanted to probe into Kendall’s personal business seemed distant and trivial now. Now I had reason. I headed down the hall to Kendall’s office.

  His computer was turned off, and without letting myself have time to talk myself out of it, I powered it up.

  I waited, forgetting to breathe, until his wallpaper finally popped up—a background photo of the New York Stock Exchange. And then, fingers trembling, I hovered the cursor over his email icon.

  What was I doing? How was this any different from what I’d just berated Lisa Albrecht for not twenty-four hours ago? I had no right to invade Kendall’s privacy like this—no matter what he’d done.

  But even as I gave myself that lecture, I clicked the icon. His password window popped up—with asterisks already in place in the password box. One click on the “enter” button and I was in.

  Kendall’s email inbox spread open in front of me like the pearly gates of heaven—or the seductive, beckoning gates to the Underworld. I jerked my eyes frenetically over the names in his inbox—Ricky...Kendall’s mom...and a string of my own name. Nothing suspicious. I checked his sent mail, where there were more names—a lot I didn’t recognize. I opened any of them addressed to what could be a woman’s name—including Pat Evans and Alex Givens. But all of them appeared to be clients, the emails full of dry, mind-glazing financial information.

  Frustrated, I checked his trash file, methodically opening every single deleted message, even the ones that looked like spam. Nothing. Not one email that even gave a hint as to why my boyfriend who wanted to move in with me a few weeks ago had suddenly backpedaled all the way out of my life. Irritated, I shut down the computer.

  And opened the file drawer next to my knees.

  Say what you want about someone who is compulsively neat—it sure makes following his paper trail a whole lot easier. I pulled out the files marked AmEx, cell phone, and receipts, spreading them open one by one on the desk. I checked every single scrap of paper, looking for anything unusual: credit charges from a hotel, or a jeweler, or a florist, or a travel agency. Receipts for valet parking at a romantic restaurant, or from a lingerie store. Cell phone records to a woman’s name on a regular basis, or even a 1-900 call line. I had no idea what I might find—I just desperately needed to find something.

  But there was nothing.

  I returned the last piece of paper to its correct spot and replaced the file folders in alphabetical order, sliding the drawer shut.

  Goddammit, Kendall. What happened?

  I realized when I finally looked up and took in my surroundings again that the light had changed color, turning an overcast gray that heralded the coming dusk. In the winter months the sun set early—it couldn’t be much past five o’clock—but even though Kendall had never made it home earlier than six thirty most of the time we’d been dating, I couldn’t take any chances. I needed to get out of here.

  My lungs seemed to fill only partially, not enough for me to breathe easily. One word kept repeating over and over, plaintively, pathetically, in my head: Why?

  Why didn’t Kendall love me anymore? What had happened between one moment and the next to turn that off as if it had never existed? I pressed my eyes shut hard—I would not cry. There was one last thing I needed to do before I left.

  I kne
w where to find Kendall’s Visine—in the “eye drawer,” of course, next to his saline, contact cases, and rewetting drops. Emptying it inside his orange Gatorade did give me a twinge of conscience for a moment, but Sasha was right—there was a lot of satisfaction in it.

  As soon as I got in my car I started to shake and couldn’t stop. What had I done? Who was the woman rifling through Kendall’s private records and snooping into his correspondence? Let alone what I’d done to his digestive tract before I left—the memory made me cringe.

  Worst of all, I’d had two Breakup Doctor clients scheduled for the day and I’d blown them off completely. I hadn’t meant to—I just forgot. It wasn’t just bad business to stand up a client—it was bad therapy. Really bad. I called each one and crossed my fingers as I made up a story about a family emergency and gushed apologies; their understanding responses made me feel even worse.

  Then I called Sasha. I needed my best friend around to restore me to sanity, to remind me who I was.

  “Are we in the sweatpants phase?” she said as I opened my front door, fresh from showering off the filthy feeling that was only partly due to the rain and mud. “Sweetie—you look like shit.”

  I was getting tired of hearing that. “No, no, the pleasure’s all mine.”

  “Sorry, Brookie. Hey, I brought supplies.” She hoisted the bags in her arms a little higher, then walked past me toward the kitchen. I followed behind her.

  She set the groceries on the counter and started unloading them: bags of Doritos and Cheetos and—ugh—Combos, a hideously guilty pleasure. Two pints of Haagen-Dazs. Several boxes of chocolates, and a magnum of wine I eyeballed warily. “Phase one,” she explained at my look. “So what’s the latest? Any word from the douchebag?”

  I shook my head despite the swell of guilt in my chest and reached for the Combos.

  We sat on yoga mats in the devastated living room on my bare-concrete floor with junk food and the wine arrayed out before us like the Last Supper, and I popped Sliding Doors into the DVD player, a movie that never failed to make me feel hopeful.