Bedside Manners (The Breakup Doctor Series Book 2)

by Phoebe Fox

  “Mmmm.”

  “And watching Jake—all of it, Brook.” His rumbling baritone was like a lullaby too, I thought as my hectic schedule caught up with me. “I just wanted to tell you...”

  My heart leaped like the single blip of a patient just before coding, and I moved my suddenly weighted head to look at him, forcing my eyes open. “Yes?” I could hear the breathiness of my voice.

  “Thank you.”

  eighteen

  I woke with a start, disoriented, a light in my eyes. I squinted over at it, registering that it came from my phone on the nightstand just as the bed moved and I remembered—Ben. I reached for the phone before it woke him up too.

  Chip. I hadn’t heard from him since last week. Part of me had hoped his declaration of intent had been a spur-of-the-moment thing, and that as the week went on without our speaking, he’d forgotten all about wanting us to date.

  Part of me hoped he hadn’t.

  Guiltily I hit “answer” and pushed back the covers. “Hey...hang on,” I whispered.

  As soon as my toe hit the floor Jake stirred, lumbering to his feet and charging over to my side of the bed. I stroked him as I eased out from under his giant head in my lap, continuing to pet him into submission as he tailed me all the way to the master bedroom door, where I slipped out and quietly shut him inside.

  I glanced at the screen before raising the phone to my ear as I crossed the house toward my office so as not to wake Ben. “Chip, it’s three a.m.”

  “Oh, crap, I forgot—you’re not a night owl like me.” He laughed in soft exhalations that told me he was smoking. “Sorry, Doc. I couldn’t sleep. I keep thinking about you.”

  Heat suffused my body—my naked body—and I wrapped my arms around myself. Talking to Chip like this in the middle of the night had me feeling exposed and vulnerable. And turned-on. And guilty. “Chip—”

  “I don’t want to rush you. But it’s been killing me all week not to hear from you, and I wondered if you’d been thinking over what we talked about.”

  He’d been waiting for me to make the first move? Pride in Chip—he’d come so far in handling his poor impulse control—warred with dismay. I couldn’t keep hoping the decision would take care of itself. I had to choose.

  Ben was lying not a hundred feet away—in my bed. After telling me—maybe—that he loved me. I’d told Sasha that nothing was worth risking losing him, and I’d meant it.

  But making the choice was harder than it should have been.

  I took a deep breath. “Chip, I wish I didn’t have to—”

  “No, wait, Brook—”

  “No—I have to say this.” The words grated out past my throat. “I’m seeing someone right now, and I...I just can’t. I’m sorry.”

  The silence that fell between us was so absolute I could hear the faint crackle of burning cigarette paper as he took in a deep draw.

  Finally his voice came—raspy and hard: “Okay. I get it.”

  I pressed my eyes closed. “I want you to know that you weren’t wrong. There is something between us. In another situation, another time in our lives, maybe, but right now—”

  “I’m a big boy, Brook. I don’t need a consolation prize.” His tone was barbed, but I could hear the hurt underneath it. Chip always covered his vulnerability with anger.

  And knowing that—knowing him so well, knowing I’d been the one to hurt him—sent another arrow into my chest.

  Whenever Stu and I visited friends’ houses as kids, my mom would pack us off with the same dictate: “Make sure you leave things a little better than you found them.” So my brother and I were the dorky kids who made our own beds at sleepovers, or picked up all the toys, or even once—in a gesture that endeared me forever to Bonnie Krupp’s mom—detangled all the mats from their Sheltie dog, Socrates, while Bonnie and I sat on the floor, glued to the TV all night in a Beverly Hills 90210 marathon.

  Twice now I’d failed Chip, first as a therapist and now as a friend—three times, if you counted making out with him and playing my part in landing us in jail. I hadn’t done right by him in the end. Chip was no better off than he’d been from the day I met him—at least, not because of anything I did.

  I rubbed my aching temple. “Chip, I’m so sorry that we—”

  “It’s cool, really—don’t worry about it. You take care.”

  He hung up.

  I don’t know how long I sat in the living room, wrapped in a throw blanket from my couch, trying to sort out my thoughts and assuage my conscience, before I crept back into the bedroom, placating Jake into silence with my fingers. I slid into bed next to a mercifully still sleeping Ben.

  It was a long time before I got back to sleep.

  Sunlight illuminating my eyelids woke me, and I opened my eyes and reached for Ben.

  But the other side of the bed was empty.

  I sat up and looked around the room—no Ben, no Jake.

  I got up and retrieved my robe from the back of the bathroom door, pulling it on over my nakedness and walking out into the house, my stomach fluttering with anxiety.

  Ben and Jake were in the kitchen, Jake streaking over to me as soon as my bedroom door opened and sticking his nose in impolite places like a hummingbird at a feeder. I pushed him away, but stroked his head as I watched Ben open a cabinet over the percolating coffeepot and take out a mug.

  I smiled my relief. “I’ll have a cup too.”

  “This is for you, actually. I have to get going.”

  “But it’s Sunday. I thought...”

  Was he just going to leave if I hadn’t come out?

  “I’ve got some stuff to take care of today. I wanted to get an early start. Sorry if I woke you up.”

  I frowned. Something was off. Ben was acting like a guy who’d hit it and couldn’t quit it fast enough, but I knew him better than that.

  Was this about last night? Had he said what I thought I’d heard, and then taken offense when I hadn’t replied? It was too awkward to come out and ask, so I tried hinting.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked. “I mean, last night was...pretty great.” A smile pulled at my lips as I remembered just how great.

  He smiled back, but it wasn’t his usual easy grin. “It was.”

  Nothing. I dangled another line. “I hope my phone didn’t wake you up in the night,” I said carefully.

  His attention was focused on pouring coffee into the mug. “Actually it did.”

  Aha. An unexplained late-night phone call—that I could understand. I didn’t know how much to tell him, and I worried that no matter how I put it, it would sound bad, so I opted for the tip of the truth iceberg: “Sorry about that. It was a client.”

  I thought I saw him close his eyes for a moment as he placed the coffeepot back on its burner. He reached for the sugar canister and dropped a spoonful into my coffee, concentrating on stirring it in thoroughly before he straightened and turned in my direction, his expression as blank and unreadable as pudding. “We’ll talk later on, okay?” He handed me the mug and I cradled it between my palms, wishing it were his face for the good-morning kiss he hadn’t offered. But the man had made me coffee—and remembered how I took it. What was I complaining about?

  I nodded, staring intently into his eyes as if I could read there what he was thinking. “Okay. Just call me when you’re ready to bring Jake back by.”

  “I will. Come on, Jake. Bye, Brook.”

  As I watched him and Jake head to the front door, I shivered despite the heat of the coffee mug I clutched in my hands.

  The second I heard the door close I called Sasha.

  She ignored my first two calls, but finally picked up the third one.

  “Geez, Brook, it’s freaking seven a.m. on a Sunday. Who’s dead?”

  “Jerry Garcia, Janis J
oplin, Jimi Hendrix. But that’s not important. I want to go out on my parents’ boat.” I needed to talk to her—and I needed to uncoil the knot of tension in my stomach. Nothing would do that like a day out on the water with my best friend.

  “Uh, okay. Have fun,” she said.

  “No, fool—I want you to come too.”

  “I can’t. I’m sleeping.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “I should be.”

  I heard my brother’s voice in the background.

  “It’s your insane sister,” Sasha said away from the phone. “She wants us to go out on the boat today.”

  I opened my mouth—I needed to talk to Sash, but I couldn’t with Stu there, not the way I wanted to.

  But this was their weekend too, I realized—I couldn’t just expect Sasha to drop everything immediately for me anymore.

  “It’s okay,” I said, trying to clear my throat of its sudden thickness. “You guys go back to sleep.”

  “No, we’re coming.” I heard Sasha yawn. “But don’t expect me to sparkle.”

  “No, really, Sash, it’s okay—I know you and Stu—”

  “You woke me the hell up; you have to entertain me now. We’ll be at your parents’ dock at eight. Bring doughnuts.” She hung up.

  Two hours later the three of us eased the Joie de Viv into the cove on the lee side of Picnic Island, a small comma of land at the mouth of where the Caloosahatchee opened up into the Gulf of Mexico, and I dropped the anchor while Stu backed us up till it caught. Sasha lay stretched along the bow, watching me.

  I eyeballed her roughly ten acres of perfect tan skin in the world’s smallest bikini. “You make it very hard to be friends with you.”

  “You can be the smart one,” she said, smirking.

  “You’re an asshole.”

  She reached out one long thin leg and kicked me.

  “Ow! See?”

  Sasha sat up, wrapping her arms around her bent legs. “What’s wrong?” she demanded.

  “Nothing, except the contusion you just gave me.”

  “Don’t play games, Brookie. What’s the matter?”

  Before I left my house to grab the doughnuts Sasha had demanded, I’d texted Ben: Headed out to Picnic Island today with my brother and Sasha. Any chance you can join us?

  He hadn’t responded.

  I’d tried to laugh and engage in our usual banter, Sasha methodically licking the powdered sugar off the doughnuts and Stu eating the rest of each one as we motored down the river and into the bay, but the lump in my belly lay like lead. And Sasha could always read me.

  I shot a glance back to the cockpit now, where Stu was fine-tuning the set of the anchor. “We’ll talk later,” I said. “It’s girl stuff.”

  She shot to her feet. “Hey, Stuvie,” she called out, picking her way like a daddy longlegs over the bow and back into the boat. “Brook and I are going to go sunbathe on the beach for a little while. Do you want to stay here and fish?”

  Stu gave her a skeptical look, then made a show of peering over the gunwale and into the three crystal-clear feet of water that bore no evidence of sea life. “Fish for...?”

  “Compliments, you hottie,” she said, and leaned over to plant a kiss on his mouth. “We won’t be long.” Stu slapped her ass as she turned around.

  I was almost getting used to it.

  We waded to shore, and within ten minutes Sasha and I were lying on the beach, the way we used to do as kids: no towel, just stomachs flat on the sand, heads pointed toward land and feet in the water. Gentle waves surged up our bodies every few seconds.

  The last time I’d been here was with Kendall—the last day we’d been a couple, actually. It had been a perfect day, I’d thought—right up until the end of it, when I’d finally accepted his offer to move in, and instead he’d bugged out.

  I hadn’t come back since partly out of sheer busy-ness, but I think I’d also feared Kendall had ruined my island for me, the place I’d been coming—usually with our family or just Stu and Sasha—as long as I could remember.

  But as the warm gulf water lapped at my legs and I felt myself sinking deeper into the cool sand with every wave, I realized he hadn’t spoiled anything. Picnic Island was my happy place—anything by the water was. My worries seemed to wash away with the outgoing tide.

  “Oh, I needed this so much, Sash,” I said with a sigh. “Thanks for coming. Sorry I horned in on the two of you.”

  Sasha rolled over onto her side so she was facing me, propping her head on one muscular arm. “Let me tell you something, Brookie. I’m pretty crazy about your brother. But I need you as much as I do him. Maybe more—just don’t tell him that. You had me at hello. You complete me.”

  A grin stretched my salt-tight face as I reached out and pushed her over on her back. “You’re an idiot.” But her words were like ointment on a wound.

  “Now tell Auntie Sasha what’s the matter.”

  So I did, starting with the fact that Ben and I finally had sex—which elicited a whoop of glee and a fist bump, followed by a ruminative frown as I continued a play-by-play of what I thought he might have said afterward, and the evening’s odd, unsettling finish. I recapped the phone call from Chip—which met with a stern look of displeasure that flipped into an approving smile when I told her I’d ended things. Then I related the stilted exchange with Ben this morning before he left and took his dog, and my unanswered text. When I finished she commanded, “Okay, tell it to me again, and give me inflections—I need nuance.”

  This was one of the many reasons Sasha was always the greatest person to parse out dating problems with. With the endless patience of Job, she would listen to every tiny detail, paying close attention, asking for clarification and elaboration, having you go back over the troubling parts over and over and over as she helped try to analyze what it could have meant. Maybe it wasn’t the healthiest approach to dissect every little detail so carefully, but there was no such thing as feeling rushed when you were hashing out a problem with Sasha.

  “So what does it mean?” I said after the second recitation. “Do I ask him if he said what I thought he said last night and look like an idiot if he didn’t? Do I ignore it altogether, and send the message that I didn’t want to hear it, if he did say it? Do I say it and see what he says in response?”

  Sasha frowned. “Do you love him?”

  I sat up to ponder that, digging my fingers into the sand and watching the holes fill up with water with each wave. “I don’t know. I think that’s part of the problem. I don’t know if I trust myself enough to know what love is anymore.”

  “Oh, honey.” Sash sat up beside me and leaned close enough to touch shoulders. But she didn’t feed me false comfort or platitudes—another reason I loved her. “Well,” she went on after a moment, “do you want him to have said he loved you?”

  “I don’t know. We were taking it slow, and that was going great. But when I thought he said it, this pang shot through me. A good pang, I think.”

  “‘Taking it slow’?” Sasha shot me a look. “Does he know you’re taking it slow?”

  “Of course he does. I told him—remember?”

  Sasha shook her head. “But you changed the rules. You pretty much have custody of his dog—whom you are training. You visit his mom. And he spends almost every second he’s in town with you. Look how far you’ve come into his life, Brook—you’re practically his stay-at-home wife, taking care of everything on the home front while he’s off at work.”

  I stared at her, poleaxed. “Do you think he thinks that?”

  Sasha threw up her hands. “Who knows? If we knew how the damn creatures think, we wouldn’t have conversations like this one.”

  I laughed with her, and after a few moments I heard her sigh.

  “Is it weird if I miss thi
s?” she said.

  “Dating?” A little alarm flashed in my head. My biggest fear about Sasha and Stu was what would happen to our lifelong threesome if they ever broke up.

  “Yeah. I mean, I don’t miss dating—I am dating. It’s just...as psycho as all my relationship stuff could be before your brother, I always loved talking out all the crazy parts with you. It almost made it all worth it.” I peered over at her and saw her smiling wistfully into the clear blue sky. “With Stu, there’s no crazy. And I love that. But I miss talking to you.”

  I scooped up a heavy clump of wet sand and patted it onto her calf, then another one, smoothing it out like a clay mask, the way we’d done when we were kids. “I’m sorry I’ve been so busy lately,” I said quietly.

  “You’re building your business. I know that.” She joined my efforts, adding sand to her other leg until they looked like the long gray stalks of a heron. “It’s not forever. Anyway, I know it’s my fault too. Now that I have a boyfriend.” She singsonged the word.

  “I know. It’s sort of weird that you have this really healthy relationship and I’m the one coming to you for advice.”

  “And I love it so much,” she sang out, falling backward onto the sand with her arms thrown wide. “It is the culmination of my life.”

  I grinned at her antics, adding sand to her belly.

  “We need to know if he’s called you, or texted,” she said after a while. “Where’s your phone?”

  I tipped my head toward the cove. “Boat.”

  Sasha shot upright and scrambled to her feet, sand dropping off of her in clumps. “Stu!” she screamed out toward the water, waving my brother down where he sat in the captain’s chair with his feet on the dash, reading a magazine. The few other people moored in the cove and walking along the beach snapped their gazes over to my delicate flower of a best friend. “Land ho!”