by Octavia Zane
Once out of the shower, he wrapped a towel around his waist, stepped over the cat on the bathmat, and went into the bedroom to retrieve his phone. The caller wasn’t Joleene but Derrick, surprising him.
He tapped on the message.
The cool, crisp voice of the surgeon filled the silence in the house. “Hi, Theo, it’s Derrick. I need to speak with you. It’s by no means urgent, but I do feel it’s a matter of some importance. Please call me back as soon as you can.”
Theo tapped again to return the call. The phone rang once, twice, and was answered. “Hello, Theo.”
“Hi, Derrick. How are you?”
“Enjoying a day off. And yourself?”
“Heading into work. What’s going on?”
Derrick sighed. “This is awkward.”
Baffled at what this could possibly be about, Theo said, “That’s okay.”
“I just . . .” Derrick sighed again. “I don’t want to get involved in anything. I don’t like fiddle-faddling around in other people’s business. I assume you haven’t kept up with Vaughn yourself? Or any of our crowd?”
Theo sat down on the bed. “No, not since we broke up.”
“You don’t cruise his pages online now and then?”
“No.” It tempted Theo on occasion to do that, but he always refrained. Nothing upon those pages would make him feel any better, he suspected, and plenty would likely make him feel worse.
“Then you truly don’t know, which makes this even more awkward,” Derrick said. “Theo, Vaughn is in a new relationship.”
Far more confused than upset about this news, Theo said. “I hardly expected him to stay single. That’s not his way.”
“It’s more than a new relationship. We went out to dinner last night with Vaughn and his new guy, and they told us that they’re getting married. The date is set for Valentine’s Day.”
A lance of pain went through Theo, who wished fervently that Derrick hadn’t passed that information along. “That sounds quick.”
“Yes, it is. They’ve only been together for six or seven months. But what bothered me, I must admit, is that they had a book with them. A blue book with silver flowers on the cover, the same book that you used to tote about, and with all of the same things inside.”
Goddamn him! The pain turned immediately to anger. That was the wedding planner that Theo left behind when he moved out. He should have heaved it into the trashcan!
Struggling to keep his voice free of temper, Theo said, “I suppose he has the right to use that.” Even though Vaughn had participated in nothing upon those pages.
“Yes, he has the right, but I fail to see the appeal,” Derrick replied. “The wedding was your project, specifically designed to please you and him, not him and another man. It was their intention to adhere to many of the choices you made, choices that Vaughn is passing off as his own. But still, you never would have known, and I wouldn’t have called you about it.”
You could not rush the surgeon along to the point. He had to get there in his own time, which was one of the things that Vaughn mocked about him in private. Theo remembered his futile attempts to explain how Derrick thought in order, which likely served him well during surgery, but could make conversations a little slower as he stitched the individual pieces together to a whole. Patience was a requirement when speaking with Derrick. Theo had no trouble with it, but Vaughn found it intensely frustrating.
“I see,” Theo said, and waited for the next piece to drop.
Derrick went on. “His name is Matthias Adrian, the fiancé, and I am afraid that his sense of humor is rather aligned with Vaughn’s.”
And Lane’s, Theo thought, but that was neither here nor there, nor polite to point out about someone else’s spouse.
“Their invitations will be going out in the mail very soon. It has to be soon with the wedding taking place in February. They were joking around the table about mailing an invitation to you.” The surgeon’s voice grew peeved as Theo went numb. “A wedding invitation that you designed, but with Matthias’s name in place of yours, sent to your new clinic in Weathership. You are not hard to find with the Internet. They searched your name right there at the table in front of me. Are you still there?”
“I’m here,” Theo said distantly.
“I can’t say if they will actually go through with this foolishness, but it bothered me all night to think of you receiving the invitation in the mail without any warning. It’s cruel. So that’s why I called you with this, and Theo, I’m sorry. It was like . . .”
Theo let him gather his thoughts.
“It was like sitting at a table with a bunch of grade school boys planning a nasty little prank to play on a classmate. But these are men in their forties, adults and professionals in their fields. To them, it’s just a joke. But I knew it would not be a joke to you. If I have overstepped in telling you about this . . .”
“No, you didn’t overstep.” His stomach hollowing out and his heart beating painfully, Theo thought of how bad it would have been to open up that envelope at work. A psychic slap to the face. “Thank you for the warning. If I do get one, I’ll put it in the trash or through the shredder without opening it.” The shredder appealed to him more.
“Good. That’s where it belongs.” The heat in Derrick’s voice sharpened and died. “How is Target doing?”
“Getting into one mess after another and batting at my hair like always. She’s fine. How are you doing otherwise?”
“Well enough.” Pause. “I’ll let you go. You said you were heading into work.”
“I am, and thank you again.”
They hung up.
Target jumped up on the bed and settled down beside him into a bread loaf position. She always sensed when he was upset, doubly so when the cause of the upset was Vaughn. Or perhaps Theo was reading that in.
This was the second time that the surgeon had intervened between Theo and Vaughn, despite his distaste for doing so. The first time was a scant week or so after Theo left. He was living in a hotel and putting in offers on houses to purchase when Derrick called from a shelter, and sent along a picture of a tabby cat in a cage.
Why Vaughn adopted Target was always a mystery to Theo; possibly it was to impress some old boyfriend to precede him. Vaughn didn’t care for her, nor she for him; he played too roughly for her liking and ignored her body language when she had had enough, so she skirted him. Yet her nervous skirting irritated him all the more, because when he was in the mood for affection, she wouldn’t give it. But he hadn’t earned it, and that was what he didn’t understand. She wasn’t a stuffed animal to be picked up and dropped at will.
It pissed him off that Theo and Target got along famously from the moment they met. She did not have a difficult temperament, as Vaughn claimed. She was pesky and curious, but quite affectionate and easy-going. You just had to treat her kindly and she responded in spades. Theo took over her care and feeding, yet she was not his cat but Vaughn’s. So when Theo walked out on their relationship, he had no legal right to take her along. He begged for her, but to no avail. And then Vaughn dumped her off at a shelter once Theo was gone.
Thank God, thank God he bragged to Lane about getting rid of that miserable cat, and thank God a slightly perturbed Lane passed the information along to Derrick. Shocked to the core, Derrick secretly drove to three shelters before he found an overweight, middle-aged tabby female in a cage. Unsure if it was Target, he snapped that photo and sent it along. Theo drove like a bat out of hell to the shelter, in rage and horror at Vaughn’s final act of ugliness. And it was his sweet, naughty Target there behind the bars, the clock ticking down fast to her euthanasia. The poor little thing was so afraid that she hid her head in his armpit and dug her claws into his shirt when he pulled her out of the cage.
He adopted her that afternoon and asked that Derrick never breathe a word about it to Vaughn. For Theo to have gotten around him would tweak his temper beyond reason; he had little doubt that Vaughn would try by any means to
get the cat back. And Derrick, seeing the fading bruise on Theo’s cheek, swore to be silent. Even to Lane, from whom he had never kept a secret in the twenty years of their marriage.
No, Theo and Derrick weren’t friends in the traditional sense. But in a way Derrick was the best friend that Theo had ever had.
He would be thanking God again for the head’s-up if that invitation arrived. It would have swept the legs out from under him, the pettiness and the nastiness of it. But that was Vaughn, a petty and nasty man who hid his darker side under a surface of civility and charm. Theo had mistaken that civility and charm for his true character.
He’d been so in love with the surface. When he was missing Vaughn, when he was doubting his decision to leave, it was because of that lovely surface that initially lured him in when their paths first crossed.
Unable to resist the urge all of a sudden, he went online to look up Vaughn. And there it was, some wedding announcement site with Vaughn pictured beside this man named Matthias. Theo’s replacement was an athletic fellow with a deep tan and short blond hair. Neither handsome nor heinous, Theo searched the guy’s hazel eyes for an answer as to why he would adopt someone else’s wedding plans rather than create his own.
Sometimes the answer was that there was no answer. On second thought, Theo didn’t really care to know anything about this vindictive stranger.
He looked at Vaughn, still handsome, still with that huge, winning smile, and felt a welcome bit of distance, a breath’s length between himself and the pain.
Then he scrolled down to the messages. Those hurt more.
Natalie: You guys look so good!
Alden: True love wins out! Can’t wait for Benny to be your ringbearer.
KalvinT: Perfect + Perfect = you two!
Ollie: Sometimes you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince!
Ginny: I’m happy to be a surrogate! Hint, hint. You guys would be such cute dads!
Linc: I’m so excited for you guys to start out on your next great adventure! Kisses.
Lane: D and I wish you all the best! Better have an open bar at this wedding.
Matthias: Thanks, everyone! We’re so excited!
Theo read down to the very last message, and then read through them a second time. These people used to be his friends, and Ollie would have been his sister-in-law. Was that a jab at Theo about being one of the frogs Vaughn kissed? It felt that way.
He had thought he was part of a family for those eight years. But he was wrong about that. Matthias had stepped in and taken over completely.
Theo needed to get to work, so he closed the wedding site window rather than search for more. This was why he’d kept himself from searching for Vaughn. It stung. He wouldn’t repeat this mistake. Getting up, he tried to put it all out of his mind. Tried, but mostly failed.
The morning flew past in a waiting room full of unexpected arrivals, he and Joleene barely getting a pause to speak as one pet after another was brought into the examination room. It wasn’t until almost lunch that she mentioned a message from Riley in passing.
Riley. He was so absorbed in Vaughn’s latest piece of nonsense that his incredible date with Riley had fallen into the background scenery. All of the trepidation Theo felt beforehand, his urge to cancel . . . he was so glad that he hadn’t, because then he would have missed out on the loveliest date he had ever gone on.
But there wasn’t time to call Riley back. He flew madly around the clinic, working straight through lunch until the waiting room at last emptied, and then he drove out on his afternoon round of home visits. Doctor Gillett used to do that and Theo continued that part of the practice. Some animals were so terrified of the vet’s clinic that examination and treatment was a battle. At home they were calmer. Most were unenthused to see him stepping through the front door, but their stress was reduced by being in familiar surroundings.
Every time he passed a postal truck while going back and forth through the city, he twitched. He was more angry than sad, though, which struck him as a good step; six months ago and he would have wanted to crawl back in bed after Derrick’s call and pull the covers up over his head.
He returned to the office a little after five. Joleene was already gone, the office cleaned up for the next day and an overnight, diabetic feline guest settled into a cage in back while her owners went on vacation. He tended to the cat before approaching his desk in fear. Afraid to find a deckle envelope in merlot with silver-swept calligraphy.
Nope. Just the usual stuff.
Annoyed at himself, he sorted through the mail. It said a lot more about Vaughn than Theo if that invitation did arrive. He wasn’t going to be scared of his own mail, a grown man cringing away from a pile of envelopes the way one would a venomous snake.
Then he fell into his chair, finally taking a moment to breathe, and decided to call Riley.
What if Riley’s warmth and charm were just a surface, too?
He paused. Riley seemed genuine, and if it was just a surface . . . well, it wouldn’t take Theo eight years to catch on like it had the first time.
Theo got the phone number and dialed. The call was answered on its first ring, Riley saying brightly, “Hi! Hold on!”
Children’s voices yelled happily in the background, Riley roaring at them to simmer down. The yelling continued, slowly fading away to burbles. “Sorry,” Riley said. “You do know what night this is, don’t you?”
“Monday night,” Theo replied.
“Halloween, Theo. It’s Halloween night and the kids are utterly beside themselves with joy. I’m losing my hearing. They’re so amped up on sugar right now. Their school had a costume parade and party.”
“I can call back another time.”
“No! That’s not what I meant. You’re giving me an excuse to hide around the corner, so you’re not allowed to get off the phone with me yet.”
Theo smiled. “Did you have a question about Sherlock?”
“No,” Riley said without remorse. “I realized yesterday that I didn’t have your cell phone number, just the clinic number, which made it hard to call you up.”
That gave Theo a warm feeling. “Would you . . . would you like to go out to dinner tonight?”
“I can’t-”
Disappointed, Theo said, “That’s all right. No problem. Maybe another time.”
“Would you stop? Let me finish my sentence.”
“I’ll let you finish,” Theo said, chastened.
“I would love to go out to dinner with you again, but I’m taking the kids out trick-or-treating tonight, so how about later on this week?”
Of course he was busy on Halloween night! Theo felt dumb. He saw all of the decorations while driving around, even a few little kids in costumes on the sidewalks, but he was so distracted with Vaughn and the busy day that he didn’t put it together.
The yelling returned with a vengeance.
“Hold on,” Riley said. “Gigi. GIGI. Stop shouting at me. We can’t go trick-or-treating until you’ve had your dinner. Your mom has called you to the table three times already.”
“BUT I DON’T WANT TO EAT! I WANT TO GO TRICK-OR-TREATING!”
“I will not take you trick-or-treating until you’ve eaten dinner! You can either eat and go out with Jesse and me, or not eat and stay home with your mom to pass out candy.”
“BUT I WANT TO GO TRICK-”
“Gigi!”
The yelling abruptly turned into a whine, which trailed away to silence.
“Okay,” Riley said. “That got her to the table. Would you like to come over?”
“To your house?”
“For trick-or-treating! The more the merrier. We’ll be leaving in about fifteen minutes.”
“Sure,” Theo blurted.
“You know where the bakery is, so just keep going down Collier until you hit the Madrone cross-street. Turn left and drive to the end. That’s us.”
“UNCLE RILEY, WHERE IS MY CAT HAT WITH THE EARS?”
Riley snorted and cal
led back, “IT DOES NOT MATTER UNTIL YOU HAVE EATEN, CHILD.”
“I don’t have a costume, though,” Theo said.
“You don’t need one. All I’m going to have on is Gigi’s old princess hat,” Riley said.
“If you’re going out in public, you might want to put on a little more than that.”
“Good point. I’ll wedge my feet into her ballerina slippers for decency’s sake. Don’t worry about a costume. Just come over.”
“All right. See you in a few minutes.”
Theo put down the phone and wondered what in the hell he was doing.
He was reaching out. That was what he was doing. Instead of going home to mull over Vaughn’s wedding, he was going to do something of his own with a guy he was starting to like very much.
And he did have a costume. A very simple one. Opening up the bottom drawer, he took out a spare T-shirt that he left at the office in case of disaster. He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled on the T-shirt in its place. There. He had a costume as understated as he was.
Perfect + Perfect = you two!
To be freed from that choking equation with Vaughn was a sudden, dizzying relief. He locked the back door of the clinic and went to his car.
Chapter Seven
Riley
“Trick or treat!”
Rivers took the picture of the kids and the dog clustered together, Gigi standing sideways to show off her cat’s tail and Jesse beaming in his giant marshmallow man costume. Sherlock sat between them with a spooky green and black bandana around his neck.
“Okay, one more,” Rivers said. “Your eyes were closed in that one, Jesse.”
Jesse sighed but gamely put on another smile as Riley adjusted the pink princess cone hat on his head. The doorbell rang and he picked up the bowl of candy on the table in the entryway. Opening the door, he grinned to find Theo there.
“I had a costume after all,” Theo said.