The Happiness Pact

by Liz Flaherty

  “So how do you happen to be here?” he asked, nodding when Libby held the coffee carafe up in question.

  “Well, about twenty minutes ago, I typed ‘The End’ and have given myself a break before I go back to the beginning and decide which half of what I wrote is trash. You want to be a reader for me, Lib?”

  “Sure do.” Libby could use a dose of the happily-ever-after Holly’s books always promised. Plus the vicarious trips to Regency-period England were worthy of being compared to an adventure with Tucker. “I’ll get your food. Is there enough cream and sugar on the table?”

  She needed to walk away, because thinking of Tucker hurt. As she filled a plate, adding an extra half slice of quiche, regret lodged under her breastbone much as the panic had only a few minutes ago. She laughed out loud, surprising herself. For someone who was healthy as a horse, swallowing was becoming a real issue.

  She owed Jesse an apology, but she didn’t know how to apologize without explaining why she’d gotten angry. And she didn’t think she could. How could she explain her condition to someone else when she couldn’t make sense of it to herself?

  When she carried Holly’s meal back into the dining room, her brother and her friend were holding hands, their dark heads together. Libby stopped in the archway, delight pushing through the panic, anger and regret that had defined the days since she’d stopped speaking to Tucker. As she hesitated, Holly threw back her messy dark head as her laughter rang silvery and loud into the quiet space. For just a second, Jesse looked shocked, and then his laughter joined hers, mingling and lifting until the joy filled the room.

  Libby had to set down the tray of food. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard Jesse laugh aloud. If she hadn’t walked in at that moment and seen it, she wasn’t sure she’d have recognized the sound.

  It was enough to get her through the day.

  * * *

  “I’M TAKING CHARLIE to South Bend this morning to spend the weekend with his grandparents. He doesn’t want to go because he’s afraid he’ll miss something, but he has to. How do you feel about spending an hour and a half in a car with a grumpy twelve-year-old? After we drop him off, we could catch the train and ride into Chicago for the day.” Tucker took a deep breath. “If you’re still mad at me, you don’t have to talk to me.”

  She stood silently, blocking his way into her apartment. Her eyes were large and shadowed in the dim light of the hallway. He’d hesitated before letting himself in downstairs even though he’d texted her first to let her know he was coming up. When he’d tapped on the apartment door, she’d opened it immediately. But she hadn’t let him in. He could see why through the crack in the door—she was wearing a tank top and pajama pants and all the hair on the right side of her head was standing straight up.

  No wonder she hadn’t answered his text—she’d been in bed. He wasn’t going to examine too closely at how that made him feel, but she looked cute with her hair pushed all out of shape like that.

  She pushed the door open all the way, stepping back to let him in. When she spoke, it was in a rush, the words tumbling over each other. Her hands were in front of her, palms up. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know how... I don’t know... I’m just so sorry.”

  “You don’t ever have to be sorry for anything with me.” She knew that. Of course she did. They’d been insulting and forgiving each other their entire lives, all without apology. He knew, without either of them saying it, that this time was different, but he couldn’t begin to define how. All he was sure of was that her pain was so intense he could feel it with every beat of his heart.

  Her arms came around his neck, and she held on. He drew her into him, saying nothing, absorbing the tremble of her body. Feeling each breath she took, the rise and fall of her chest slowing as he held her. It will be all right now. Everything will be all right now. He didn’t say the words but hoped she understood them anyway. Things were changing between them, and it seemed as if they were changing too fast.

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “You want to go to Chicago?”

  “Do I get coffee and breakfast on the way?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sure.” She pulled away, and he let her go, feeling bereft.

  He knew, with that sudden emptiness, exactly how to fill the void he’d been denying was there. He understood exactly why he’d been unable to commit to any previous relationship. He got what Meredith had meant when she said just one when he’d asked her if she had “friends like that.”

  Because there was just one for him, too.

  How had he gone thirty-four years without knowing who it was?

  “Will you take Pretty Boy out while I get dressed?”

  “I will.” He took the leash from its hook inside the entry closet door, and the dog immediately began a dance around his feet. “Arlie said she’d come and take him out tonight and in the morning if we spend the night somewhere.”

  “Oh, good.” Libby looked relieved. “Do you need to go get Charlie or is he in the car?”

  “He’s in the car, hopefully asleep. We’re driving Jack’s SUV, so it will be a comfortable trip for him.”

  By the time Tucker and the dog came back upstairs, Libby was dressed and her hair braided. She had on makeup and was in the kitchen, stuffing pastries into a zippered plastic bag. “He’ll need these for between breakfast with us and lunch at his grandparents’. Kendall told me boys can only go something like twelve minutes between meals.”

  “Kendall’s right. Put an extra one in there for me.”

  He watched Libby move around the apartment and was amazed he hadn’t done it before. How could he have known someone his whole life without really seeing her, memorizing how she moved, how she felt, the scent that was hers alone? If anyone had asked him what she looked like, he’d have shrugged and said something like She has brown hair and gray eyes and freckles on her nose. And she’s short. A little heavy. She smells like soap.

  He wouldn’t have mentioned the silkiness of her hair—it was so smooth it slipped right out of her braid if she didn’t spray it with stuff. He wouldn’t have told anyone else about the blue sparkles in her eyes that she insisted weren’t really there. She was five foot five—short only because he was over six feet. She wasn’t heavy, either, just shaped so that her hips had more curve to them than she liked.

  She was the one, as she said herself, whose name people forgot when they looked at pictures from days past. She was the survivor of the prom night accident who bore the fewest scars, either physical or otherwise. She’d been good old Lib all their lives before and had wakened from the coma as good old Lib again. By her own definition, she was neither beautiful nor talented.

  How could he not have seen the beauty and the heart and the generous spirit that was the real Libby Worth? She’d been his best friend since the minute of his birth, they’d loved each other that long, and he’d never once seen the person she truly was.

  And why had he been so blithely sure she didn’t have any scars?

  Anger toward himself wasn’t something Tucker indulged in very often. He did his best to be a problem solver instead of a problem causer and never failed to take credit for his own transgressions, but he also forgave himself for them.

  He wasn’t sure how soon he’d be able to do that this time—if ever.

  “You look great,” he said.

  She gave Elijah a farewell pat and shot Tucker a narrow look. “You don’t have to be that nice to me, Llewellyn. I may have thrown a tantrum of sorts, but I’m not a delicate flower.”

  He grabbed her purple overnighter and went down the stairs ahead of her, thinking that even if she wasn’t a delicate flower, it wouldn’t hurt to treat her like one once in a while.

  In the car, she tossed the pastries back to Charlie, who’d wakened when the
door opened.

  “You’ll have to share with your uncle,” she warned.

  “We’re going to Chicago while you’re at your grandparents’,” said Tucker, backing into the street. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow night, so your period of torture will be short.”

  “I’d rather go with you. Libby likes having me around, don’t you, Libby?” Charlie’s smile, laden with braces though it was, was as charming as his uncle’s.

  “I do,” she agreed, “but putting myself in your grandmother’s shoes, I’d want you to hang around, too. Because she was one of the people you scared to death by running off in December, and you need to be a really good grandson to make up for it. You should probably even offer to wash her car today or do something equally helpful. When she pinches your cheeks, you shouldn’t complain, and when she calls you Chugga-chugga-Charlie, you should just smile and pray you outgrow it or she does.”

  Tucker choked on laughter. “I’d forgotten all about Chugga-chugga-Charlie. Thanks for the reminder.”

  “Yeah, Lib, thanks a lot.” But Charlie was laughing, too.

  Tucker felt the tension leave him as they drove. They ate breakfast at a truck stop, with Charlie finishing off his uncle’s pancakes and stealing bacon from Libby’s plate. This is what it would be like with a family.

  Back in the car, he looked over at Libby, trying to gauge her mood, but she was playing Name that Tune with Charlie. She was laughing, and had been all morning, but was it forced? Was she trying too hard to convince both him and herself that all was well between them?

  “You can’t possibly use any songs that have come out in the last five years,” she said when she lost a round. “They don’t even have tunes!”

  “You’re dating yourself,” Tucker warned, “but you can get him next time. Remember when Gianna beat all of us by naming ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ on one note after we laughed at her for not knowing our stuff?”

  They left Charlie at his grandparents’ house with warnings to behave. The boy hugged Libby, and the look in her eyes made Tucker’s heart ache.

  He’d always believed her when she insisted she didn’t want kids. He’d understood when she said she was single because she’d never found anyone worth giving up her independence for—he felt the same way, after all. Or he had until recently.

  They didn’t lie to each other. That was one of the unspoken, unbroken rules of friendship. It went along with keeping secrets if they had any and having each other’s backs no matter what. Their pacts were different—they broke them way too easily to take them very seriously. Not so the rules of friendship.

  But had she broken that rule? Had she been less than honest when they talked about kids and families? Did she have a lot more baggage left over from the accident than she admitted to?

  And finally, there was the question that had been eating at him ever since the other night: Why had she gotten so angry?

  * * *

  “I DON’T THINK I’ve ever been to Chicago when I wasn’t either on a field trip with chaperones or being a chaperone on someone else’s trip. Are we going to the museums?” Chicago had great museums, but Libby didn’t want to go to them.

  “Not unless you want to. I only have one place in mind. After that, the rest of the day is up to you. Remember we can’t stay in Chicago, though—we left our bags in the car back at the train station in South Bend.” He grinned at her, but the expression in his eyes told her something was still off between them. Her apology hadn’t smoothed the rough edges her unreasoning anger had placed on their friendship.

  She had to be more careful. She’d been controlling the depression for half her life—she couldn’t let it control her now.

  She also didn’t have any idea how to spend the day. She didn’t know how to be a tourist without a premade schedule.

  She was surprised when they got off the train at the Museum Campus station. “I thought we weren’t going to the museums.”

  “We’re not going to the ones we’ve been to before.” He pointed ahead in the direction they were walking. “We’re going to that one.”

  “Oh.” She stopped midstride, her hands clasped in front of her as she stared up at the dome of Adler Planetarium. “I’ve never been to a planetarium before. Tuck, did you know that?”

  “I did know that, and I feel like a real idiot because I never thought of it before.”

  “Do you know what they’re like? All I’ve done is read about them.”

  “I’ve been to Dyer Observatory at Vanderbilt. It’s pretty cool.” He caught her hand and pulled her forward. “Come on. It’s farther away than it looks.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “I did.” He hesitated. “Although other than looking through the telescope with you telling me what I’m looking at, I’m not much of a sky person.”

  She’d known that, of course. “Why don’t we go somewhere that you’ll enjoy, too?” she asked. “Adventures don’t always have to be all about me.”

  He laughed. “We’ve been to a Louisville Bats baseball practice, a Pacers basketball game and a Colts football game. I don’t think any of those were about you, do you?” He tugged at her braid.

  She was so enthralled with all the exhibits the planetarium had to offer that she lost track of him for fifteen-minute periods, only to turn and find him standing at the back of a group watching her or sitting at a table in the café with a man with a walker, sharing coffee and laughing out loud.

  When it was time to go into the auditorium for the Skywatch Live program, Tucker appeared at her side. “Dan said he fell asleep when he brought Alice and the kids here, but they loved it,” he warned. “You already know so much about the sky I don’t know if you’ll like it or not, but I’m going for the nap.”

  They made themselves comfortable in the reclining chairs inside the auditorium and went on a guided tour through the sky. She loved it, and so did he. It was the last exhibit they visited, and they talked about it all the way to the taxi line, on the ride to Navy Pier and while they waited for pizza in the first restaurant they found.

  “So, as adventures go, this was a good one?” he asked.

  “It’s been perfect. I can’t thank you enough.” She smiled at him, feeling more like herself than she had in days. She didn’t even have to force the expression or fold one of her hands into a fist to keep herself from trembling. “Now, if we can just find you a gi—”

  “We’re not looking anymore,” he interrupted. His voice was abrupt, but not angry or cold. Just...firm.

  “We’re not?” She wasn’t about to examine the leap her heart took with his statement. “I know we haven’t been as successful as we’d hoped, but don’t give up.” She reached to push his hair out of his eyes—it grew so fast that it needed cutting every few weeks. “You’re cute, Llewellyn, and you’re one of the good guys. It will work out.”

  “Actually, we have been successful.” He caught her hand before she could pull it away. “Meredith was perfect. Cindy was fun. Risa was better at algebra than Arlie and good at volleyball—she was great. Allison’s a terrific girl. Even Sandy...well, no, that wouldn’t have worked. But there was nothing wrong with any of them, and there’s nothing wrong with me, either. What’s wrong is trying to do the equivalent of shopping for a wife at the supermarket.”

  “We weren’t doing that.”

  “Yes, we were.” He nodded as if to make his point. “Do you remember what Gianna said after the accident? No, of course you don’t—it was while you were still in the coma. We met in the hallway outside Arlie’s room one night and Gianna said, ‘I keep going into rooms and they’re empty because he’s not there.’ I want to love someone that much. I want someone to love me that much.”

  Libby met his eyes across the table. They were summer-sky blue, the lashes so impossibly long that she’d begrudged him having them all their li
ves. She used to tell him if he’d put on mascara, he’d look like he had an alpaca’s lashes. Those eyes were always bright, always laughing.

  Except now. Now they were dark and serious.

  “I want that for you, too.” And she did—it wasn’t even hard to say the words. The next ones didn’t come so easily. “I wish I could have helped you find it.”

  “Who knows?” He rubbed his thumb over her fingernails. “Maybe you have.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “HOW DO YOU think it’s going?” Libby stood with her hands on her hips and looked around the ground floor of the carriage house. “Is it what you had in mind?”

  “I think it’s perfect.” Neely Warren beamed. “I never thought I’d be happy again when I got divorced after all those years, but I have to say, Libby, this makes me happy. It’ll be great for the lake, great for us. There’s no downside.”

  The mortgage payment made Libby think there was a downside to her business expansion, but that had been her choice. Besides, the revenue Nate’s golfing associates had just brought in during the soft-opening week had taken a great deal of the pain out of that particular bottom line.

  “What’s up next?” She went to the calendar at the reception desk near the French doors that provided entry into the facility.

  “The class of ’87 is Saturday night.”

  “Servers and menu all set? Who’s catering?” That had been the topic of a big discussion when they’d talked about opening the event center. Neely had wanted Seven Pillars to do all the catering, especially since there was a good kitchen in the venue and another in the upstairs apartment, but Libby hadn’t agreed. One of the things that made businesses in Miniagua successful was that they supported each other.

  “Anything Goes, with the Amish bakery doing desserts.” Neely didn’t sniff, but Libby thought she wanted to.

  She grinned at the other woman. “We need a name for the center, a Cole Porter title—I’m still in trouble with the chamber of commerce because Seven Pillars is a place on the Mississinewa River instead of the name of a song. Got any new ideas?” She’d pitched calling it the Beguine after the song “Begin the Beguine,” but a visit to the dictionary had taught her the beguine was a dance, not the delightful respite of the mind she’d always assumed it to be.