Lucky Catch

by Deborah Coonts

  “Would you like to give us another shot?”

  How I wished I had a definitive answer to that. My head said no way in Hell, my heart wasn’t so sure. On top of the fact that body parts often betrayed me, now they were fighting among themselves. Not only was I out of synch with the world, now I was out of step with myself. I felt manipulated, as if all those close to me didn’t trust me to handle my own life, my own heart, my own hurt. Frustration and anger boiled over. “You know what I’d like? I’d like to turn back the clock. I want the life I had six months ago. The life we had before you left, before you told me you didn’t love me anymore, before you chose a life on the road over a life with me.” Oh, I know, probably a really stupid litany to hand him.

  Everyone told me I should act indifferent, should play the game, but games just weren’t my thing.

  Teddie leaned forward, his eyes a dark, serious blue. He leaned on his hands, closing the distance between us. “We can have that back. I want it, too.”

  “We can never go back.” I didn’t even try to hide the defeat in my voice.

  “Why not?”

  “You lied.” Simple words. Horrible reality.

  “I promise you, I never lied to you.”

  How I wanted to believe him. “You told me you loved me, then you told me you didn’t. One had to be a lie. Which one?”

  “When I said them, I thought they were true.”

  I picked up my fork and poked at the raw fish. If he had a point, I didn’t want to hear it. I chewed on my lip as I thought about how far I really wanted to go with this.

  Teddie waited. He knew me so very well. I’d have to be more careful before I gave a man that kind of advantage again. A little cynicism for self-preservation purposes seemed highly advisable.

  Decision made, I set the fork back on the table, carefully aligning it with the edge of the tray before I looked at Teddie. “Do you know what a broken heart feels like?” When he opened his mouth to speak, I silenced him with a shake of my head. “Let me tell you.” Memories flooded through me as I opened myself, tore down the walls I’d hidden my heart behind. Every fiber of my soul vibrated under the assault. “First, you can’t believe it’s real, you go completely numb. You know your life is shattering—you can feel the shards as they rip through you—but you can’t process it. You can’t believe it’s happening. Your heart dies.” I swallowed hard, fighting the tears that, since Teddie had left, had taken up permanent residence behind my eyes, waiting to burst forth at the first hint of weakness.

  Teddie reached a hand across the table. “Lucky . . .”

  Before he touched me, I jerked my hand out of harm’s way. “Don’t.” I crossed my arms, telegraphing my vulnerability, but I didn’t care. I needed to do this, and he needed to hear it.

  “Unable to feel, your brain takes over. Maybe it plays old tapes, maybe logic kicks in, I don’t know. But reacting is rote.” I paused, reading his expression. For a moment, I thought I saw my pain reflected there. “Remember after you told me you didn’t love me, I took you to my office and cleaned you up—you’d had that horrible fight with your father?”

  His eyebrows snapped into a frown. He remembered.

  “Then I insisted on taking you to the plane and watching you go.” I drew a ragged breath. “I don’t even remember exactly what I did after that. I drove, I know that. But for how long or where I went . . .” I shrugged. “I do remember my father found me at that special place you and I used to go near Red Rock, but the rest of it is gone. If only it had stayed that way.” I looked at him and tried for a sardonic grin. I don’t know if I succeeded—his face remained stoic, passive, yet I could see the raw edges of pain, which made me feel a bit better. “Reality, it sorta sucks, you know?”

  “It doesn’t have to.”

  “No, and it really doesn’t anymore. It sure did, though.” I felt like picking up my knife, but I resisted—holding a sharp object in my hand at this juncture seemed a bit unwise. “You know what the worst part was?”

  Teddie didn’t say anything—he knew a rhetorical question when he heard one, he always had. I liked that about him, still did . . . despite my best efforts.

  “I had to go home. I had to sleep in the bed we had made love in the night before.”

  “One last fuck before I left, I remember.” Hurt resonated in his voice. “I didn’t intend it to be that way.”

  I could tell he meant it, but that didn’t lessen the betrayal. “But the sleeping part wasn’t the worst part—I could take pills that made me sleep the sleep of the dead, no dreams, no memories. No, sleep was a welcome escape, but the waking up part?” I let out a ragged breath. There were no words to describe the pain, or if there were, I couldn’t summon them. “Oh, yeah, the waking up part. First, just as you’re shrugging off sleep, you remember the happiness, the unmitigated joy of the life you thought you had, the love you thought you shared, which brightened every moment, every thought. The warm blanket of joy, wrapping us both in the ecstasy of the present and the promise of the future. Then, you open your eyes, and reality hits you like a spear through your chest, opening a sucking, gaping hole. You can’t breathe. And for a long time, breathing is all you concentrate on—it takes everything you’ve got.”

  “I know,” Teddie whispered.

  I narrowed my eyes. “You don’t know.” The words were hard and flat, angry. “You left. It was your choice. Don’t play me, Teddie, don’t ever play me again.”

  “I didn’t . . .” He was wise enough to stop and let me continue.

  I drew in a deep, refocusing breath. “So, you breathe. And you try not to feel. But you walk around a corner, you hear a song, a snippet of conversation,, and a memory assaults you. You try not to cry. Sometimes you do. Other times, you feel defeated. Then you have conversations with yourself, wondering, speculating as to what went wrong, where did the dream get lost? How could he say he loved you, then one day, he just didn’t anymore? One night, you’re planning the future, savoring the day. The next, it’s all over. Who does that?” I looked at Teddie, and this time, my question wasn’t rhetorical. “What kind of man makes that kind of decision without any discussion, without any attempt to figure things out?”

  “I just thought it was the right thing for me.” Teddie floundered. My question clearly had him back on his heels.

  “I don’t know what the word ‘love’ means to you, Teddie. Well, actually, right now, I have a pretty good idea. It meant you wanted me.”

  “That’s not true.” His expression held righteous indignation, but his words didn’t pack the same punch.

  “Whatever it meant, you didn’t love me enough to even try. And that’s what hurts the most.” There, I’d said it. I’d finally admitted the truth not only to him, but to myself as well.

  Lost in our own thoughts, neither one of us said anything for a bit. For me, saying these things out loud helped establish emotional order. For the first time in months, I felt the glimmer of hope, of possibilities, of strength . . . and it felt good.

  “You know,” I said, picking up the thread I’d abandoned. “After I got pretty good at breathing, I thought I’d be okay. But I wasn’t. I kept believing that somehow, someway, you’d realize what a mistake you made, and you’d come home.”

  “I am home.” Teddie’s voice ached with my sadness. “If I could erase my leaving, my bad choices, I would.”

  “I know. But you can’t.”

  “Why not? Let me show you, Lucky. Please?”

  One of those carefully mended cracks in my heart opened just a little, letting loose a drop of hope, of misguided wishful thinking. “We can’t go back. Words, once said, can never be unheard.”

  “Can you forgive me?”

  “Of course. I did that a while back. But I don’t know how to rebuild trust. As you know, overcoming disappointment, rising above betrayal to trust again, is not my best thing, Teddie. Besides, I don’t think I can risk the pain again.”

  “You have to risk it, that’s the only way
to live.”

  This time, when he reached across the table, I didn’t pull away. When his hand closed over mine, the connection blew through me.

  I thought of Jean-Charles. “Maybe.”

  “Do you love him?” Teddie pressed, as if my thoughts were his.

  I thought about that for a moment. The trust between Jean-Charles and me was still building—we were learning each other. With Teddie, the two of us had been best friends for so long that I knew him inside and out . . . or I thought I had. I’d warned him. Elevating friendship to romance risked leaving us with neither. And there we were.

  Teddie waited for an answer. I could see the guardedness, the hint of fear in his expression.

  “Jean-Charles?” I drew a deep breath. “I love him enough to try.”

  Even though right now the whole trust thing was a bit of a challenge . . . but I didn’t voice that part.

  What is love without trust?

  Chapter Five

  “Men really are pigs.” I snorted.

  Talking to myself, I drew a few bemused smiles as, battered and floundering in the aftermath of a storm of emotion, I wandered the lobby aimlessly.

  God, sometimes I hated it when I was right. My theory had sort of begun as a tongue-in-cheek effort to get a laugh. Now, it wasn’t so funny.

  I’d abandoned Teddie sitting at the table in Neb’s staring through the window.

  Our confrontation had left me somewhat disconcerted, and oddly free. Unburdening myself had lightened the load for sure. Of course, I hadn’t told him the whole story, not really. I hadn’t told him that with him all my walls had come down; I fell fast and hard and completely for the first time in my life. So the hurt was immense. But, knowing him, he probably knew how I felt better than I did. Given that he was an expert on me, I’d sure like to ask him how I could’ve been so wrong.

  But my men being pigs theory was proving oddly accurate. First Teddie, then Dane, another former friend with a secret, and my father . . . sort of. And now, Jean-Charles wasn’t exactly stepping up to the plate.

  Mona found me staring, mouth open, eyes raised, trying to get my bearings under the Chihuly hummingbirds and butterflies. At this time of the afternoon, the day usually quieted, with many of the guests choosing to nap or relax before going out—the calm before the chaos.

  “Lucky! There you are.” The woman was like a shark, able to sense the fresh blood of an open wound.

  “I am so done with men.” I didn’t lower my gaze. Instead, I remained focused on the arced flight above me.

  Not missing a beat, Mona stepped in next to me, her shoulder grazing mine. “Honey, have I taught you nothing? Take a lesson from their playbook: use them for sex and occasionally, if you find one who can think, an interesting dinner or two, but really, that’s pushing their limits.”

  I gave her my attention. “Does Father know about this theory of yours?”

  Mona puckered her lips as she gave me the that-is-such-a-stupid-question look. “Of course.”

  I had absolutely no response. None. Glibness had fled, fast on the heels of rational thought.

  My mother gave me an accusatory frown. “Where have you been?” Her voice lost the bounce of banter, taking on a sharp edge.

  I didn’t even flinch. I was either numb or dead. Neither was optimal, so I tried not to think about it. “I am here, where I always am, just a rabbit in a cage.”

  “Don’t be silly.” Mona put a hand on my arm. “You’re not in a cage. You can leave anytime you want to.”

  I swiveled my eyes to hers. “You really think so?”

  She gave me a quizzical, distracted look. “You were supposed to go with me to the doctor.”

  The cloud lifted. My thoughts coalesced. Pulling out my phone, I punched the button and glanced at the time. Way late. “I’m so sorry. I forgot.” I gave her a quick once-over. To be honest, she didn’t look herself. In fact, if I had to say, she looked a little off-kilter—unusual for my mother, the laser-guided human missile. “Did you go? Are you okay?”

  “Why did you mention rabbits?” Her voice had gone all fluttery, never a good sign.

  “What?” I tried to marshal my somewhat dissipated attention. Even if she wasn’t acting totally in character, she sounded like my mother and looked like my mother, just bigger. I’d forgotten how far along in her pregnancy she was, but it seemed she was expanding before my eyes—sorta like someone had stuck an air hose up her ass . . . or like that fat girl who ate all the blueberries in Willy Wonka.

  Pregnancy had an interesting effect on Mona, softening her features and the hard angles of her toned physique. Too bad it hadn’t seemed to affect the sharp edges of her personality.

  Today, she wore a flowing peach top that dipped off one shoulder, a pair of tan pencil pants, and gold ballet slippers. A gold leaf barrette at the nape of her neck caught her hair into a tail. Normally a shiny brown, the golden highlights were new. A touch of peach lip gloss, a little smoke and violet to make her eyes pop. No need for blush—she radiated a contentment I don’t recall ever sensing before. As beautiful as ever.

  A frown bunched the skin between her eyes, which were filled with worry. Glowing with health, she didn’t look like she had bad news, so I relaxed a little. The whole day had me jumpy. I pulled free a feather that had become lodged in her hair. “Turkeys clipping your wings?”

  She pouted, sticking out her lower lip just a bit for effect. “That’s not funny.”

  “That depends on your perspective.” I smoothed her hair as a parent would a child’s. “I trust you and Jerry got the bird thing figured out?”

  She worked the huge diamond on the ring finger of her left hand as she chewed on her lower lip and nodded. “For now. But what am I going to do with a thousand live turkeys?” She gripped my arm harder. “Do you know they bite?”

  I bit down on a grin. “I really don’t know what to say.” I tried to block the visuals of Mona and Jerry herding angry birds. I was only partially successful. The whole thing made me want to laugh.

  Mona’s face crumpled into a frown, and she lasered me with the evil eye—it used to work. “You’re mocking me.”

  “Mocking is one of my best things, along with chasing pipe dreams and kissing toads hoping for a prince.”

  Mona let go of my arm. “Sarcasm is a shield, Lucky.”

  I rubbed the spot she’d been gripping in an attempt to restore circulation. “Apparently, an ineffective one.”

  “I heard Teddie was back.”

  “Really?” I pretended not to care. “From whom?”

  “Your father.”

  “Did he happen to tell you the whole story?”

  She put her hands on her hips and tried to look fierce in the face of my waning good humor. She wasn’t entirely successful. “For the record, I don’t agree with what he did. But just the same, I’m glad he did it—you need to figure out the Teddie thing and move on.”

  Complicity. Betrayal, total and complete. And good intentions did little to soften the blow. I lowered my brows and gave her my best stern look. “You haven’t talked to Jordan recently, have you?”

  Her eyes drifted from mine as she pretended to be interested in the sparse crowd. With one finger, she looped and twisted the thick gold chain around her neck, tightening it until the flesh underneath whitened.

  My fingers itched to help her. “You do know accomplices are considered just as guilty as the perpetrator of the crime?”

  Mona switched to concerned-parent mode, as if that worked anymore. “Lucky, your father and I have your best interests at heart. We’re worried about you. You’ve got to face Teddie, face yourself. You run around here solving everyone else’s problems, doing what you should do. When are you going to do what you want to do? Figure out your own dreams, sweetheart, and follow them.”

  “It would be great if, just once, someone would leave me alone to solve my own problems, my own way, on my own time.”

  She rested her hand delicately on my arm. “We would, b
ut you don’t.”

  Just as I was adjusting to the truth in her statement, Mona snapped back to the Mona I knew. She waved her hand, slapping away our previous discussion. “Now, about those rabbits.”

  “What rabbits?” Floundering, I struggled to follow the flow of her conversation. I knew better—past experience taught me I’d end up at sea with a bad case of motion sickness.

  “I went to the doctor today, and I killed two of them,” Mona announced, tilting her chin just a hint higher.

  All I could do was blink at her. “You killed two doctors?”

  Mona sighed and looked at me with that patronizing parental look she was so good at. “No. Rabbits.”

  “You killed two rabbits at the doctor’s office?”

  She nodded, then raised her eyebrows as if willing me to understand.

  We stood there, staring at each other. Clearly, I needed a Rosetta Stone.

  “Rabbits . . . ,” Mona prompted in a slightly louder voice, as if she were an ugly American willing a non–English speaker to understand.

  “I got that, but why do they have rabbits at the doctor’s office?”

  She sighed dramatically. “It’s an expression.”

  “Oh, well, that makes it so much clearer.”

  Mona rolled her eyes. “Twins,” she said with a smile that didn’t camouflage the panic in her eyes. “I’m having twins.”

  Time stopped. I stared at my mother. When I felt light-headed, I gasped for air—that whole breathing thing again. “What?” I managed to gasp with the tiny bit of oxygen I had left. Clearly, none of it was reaching my brain.

  “You’re going to have a brother and a sister.” She cocked her head upward and the corners of her mouth down. “Or maybe two brothers. Or two sisters.” She looked at me. “Two more girls. I’d like that. I haven’t a clue what to do with boys, do you?”