by Octavia Zane
He refocused on his ex. “Dreyer was like a little kid clutching a toy to his chest and shouting MINE, but I was the toy. How did a whole year get away from me with him? I guess I thought he would see sense. What’s the saying? You can’t reason someone out of a position that they didn’t reason themselves into.”
“Yup.”
Rivers’s half-hearted yups and nods were beginning to aggravate him. “You didn’t like him either,” Riley said accusingly.
“I didn’t like him at all,” Rivers said. “He was so full of himself. He didn’t want family or friends so much as an audience listening to all of his deep thoughts, even if that deep thought was just what he wanted for dinner. It was tedious, being around him.”
Even that was spoken half-heartedly.
“What?” Riley asked.
“What?” Rivers echoed.
They loaded into the car. Riley put his hand on the key but then let it go. Turning to his sister, he said, “What are you not saying?”
She gazed at him steadily. “I’m just wondering what you’re getting out of recounting all of your past boyfriends while leaving out Theo.”
“He wasn’t my boyfriend!” Riley said, bridling.
“He was headed in that direction.”
“It was a couple of dates and it fizzled.”
“It was a couple of dates and you acted like a jackass, so you’re making yourself feel better by telling me about all the times in the past you were the wronged party. Harry lied about himself. Jeremy was a schedule junkie. Dreyer was Dreyer. But you were the dick to Theo and you know it and it’s killing you.”
“I was-”
“A dick,” Rivers repeated. “For God’s sake, let’s review, and you tell me where I’ve got it wrong. You tossed the leash on him and he held it in his fist as he came after you to help you find my missing son. The dog broke away to chase a squirrel just as Theo saw you two plummet off the jungle gym tower. Instead of chasing after the dog, he ran onto the sand to see if you were okay first. And then, once he knew you didn’t need him to call 911, he went after the dog. I can’t find anything worth criticizing in that mess. It’s what I would have done.”
“But-”
“Fine. I’ll keep going.” She got comfortable in her seat. “You let Gigi roll off the changing table when she was one. After I warned you that she was wriggling around like a worm and you couldn’t turn away for even a nanosecond or she’d be airborne. You turned away for wipes the very next day and there she went.”
Outraged to have that old, awful incident dredged up, Riley burst, “That was an accident!”
“And when Jesse was little and I was in the hospital with Ari, you forgot to close the kitchen sink cupboard hard enough to make the child-proof lock work. It doesn’t work if you don’t close the damn door all the way, Riley! And then you came back to the kitchen just as he was about to make a tasty snack out of scouring powder.”
His temper rose further. He’d never leaped so fast in his life, a crazed pirouette across the linoleum to grab the container out of his nephew’s hand. “That was-”
“Yeah, that was an accident, and so was Gigi falling off the changing table. I’ve had accidents, too. Every single person on the planet has had some sort of accident, so I don’t know why you’re holding Theo so terribly accountable for this one as if he’s somehow separate from the rest of us.”
Riley turned on the engine. Her hand snapped out and she turned it off.
“You. Screwed. Up,” she said, slowly and mercilessly. “And I get why you screwed up. My hair would have turned gray and fallen out on the spot from seeing Jesse up there. You were angry and you were scared and your adrenaline was pumping and your feet were slipping and you were doing everything you could to get that kid out of a pickle when the dog decided to get himself into a pickle, too. But Theo certainly didn’t intend for that to happen, and I’m sure you didn’t intend to blow up at him over it, but you did and he deserved better. A lot better than you deciding, well, it just wasn’t meant to be, rather than taking responsibility for your mistake. That’s just like Mom and Dad.”
Riley turned on the engine again but kept his hand protectively over the key. “I can’t believe you would say that. I try so hard to not be like them.”
“Then don’t be like them now, just like I try not to be like them every damn day.”
He snorted and pulled into the road. Driving to the corner, he said, “It’s not the same for you. You had an easier time shutting them out than I did. You never took in their poison somehow. It didn’t leak out of you with Ari, it doesn’t-”
“What in the hell are you talking about? You think I’m not still angry at them sometimes? God almighty!” Rivers exploded. “I’m furious at what they put us through! We were nothing but the weapons they lobbed at each other, and when I wouldn’t let them use my own kids as weapons, they essentially walked away from us. They walked away! Jesse and Gigi have healthy grandparents living and breathing upon this planet who do not care to know them unless it’s on their terms, their terms only, and yes, I’m bitter and I’m angry, but I’ll be damned if I let it spoil my life. This is who they are and I can’t change them, Riley! I can only change how I react to it. And what does my marriage have to do with anything?”
It was a rare occasion that Rivers got genuinely mad at anyone, but she was mad now. Well, so was he. “Rivers, I can’t keep a relationship because I’m screwed up and it always devolves into pointless arguing. You were able to keep a relationship, you’d still be married now if he’d lived, and that’s the difference between us! You and Ari were the total opposite of Mom and Dad. You never fought. That’s what I want, but I can’t find . . .”
He had to stop talking since her anger had turned to chortles of laughter.
“Fuck you,” he mumbled. “Nothing I said was funny.”
“Are you kidding me?” She laughed harder. “You actually believe that Ari and I never fought? We did. God, we had some doozies in our time. We heard something the other said wrong, or read in something that wasn’t there. We got tired and cranky and argued about stupid shit like who raided the coin compartment in the car for the parking meter and didn’t refill it, or who forgot the laundry in the washing machine until it mildewed. When Jesse was just born and crying incessantly, you better believe we fought from sheer exhaustion. Arguing doesn’t make a relationship bad; it’s part of a relationship! If you’re holding out for a guy that you never ever argue with, then you’re going to be waiting for the rest of your life.”
Riley pulled up to a red light. “I never saw you fight.”
“Just because we didn’t do it in front of you doesn’t mean we didn’t fight, you doofus. Love isn’t staring at each other with dewy eyes year after year. Sometimes it’s messy and it hurts and you’re the fuck-up instead of the hero or the victim, but you push through it to the other side because in the end, you’re on the same team.” Her anger was gone, her laughter as well; she was speaking from her heart. “Ari and I made it work because we wanted to resolve our arguments more than either of us wanted to be right. The opposite of our parents isn’t a relationship where you never fight; it’s a relationship where you fight and then work it out. That was what they never did. They got stuck on the who’s right part. Imagine how different it would have been when we were kids if they were capable of admitting they were wrong.”
“I can’t imagine that.”
“Neither can I, and that’s awful. My brain literally finds it impossible to picture.”
His shoulders sagged as his foot pressed down, the hybrid coasting through the now-green light. “I don’t want to argue with anyone,” he muttered.
“Good,” Rivers said. “But it’ll happen here and there despite your best intentions. You and I argue about things all the time and I seriously doubt that keeps you up at night.”
“That’s different.”
“Not really. It doesn’t keep me up at night. We always fix it, don’t we? We’re on
the same side even with me telling you right now that you’re wrong. I just want you to be happy and you’re getting in the way of that happiness. Before Theo came along, you picked these self-interested, rigid guys, but Riley, you’re kind of rigid, too. You tend to see things in black and white when there’s so much gray between them.”
She put her feet up on the dashboard and flinched. “Ugh, someone else has lost a pet, too. There’s a poster up on that pole.”
The wind was flapping the flyer, so all Riley saw as the car passed by was the large font LOST. “Did you just call me self-interested?”
“No,” Rivers said. “Just rigid. You’re a very giving man. A lot of the guys you’ve been with, though, haven’t been . . . oh.”
That quiet, shocked oh took Riley by surprise. He pressed down on the brakes in reflex, stopping in the road that ran alongside the park.
He followed her gaze. Posted on every telephone pole and street-lamp down the block were flapping flyers for Sherlock.
Theo had done this. He covered the entire block with LOST posters, Riley’s phone number listed below as the contact. Pressing down on the accelerator, Riley coasted along to the next block, and the one beyond that. Sherlock’s poster was taped up at regular intervals all the way around the park plus the surrounding blocks.
And each one was a stab to Riley’s heart.
“He’s a good man,” Rivers said softly. “He’s strong, and he’s kind, and he reminds me of Ari. Just a shyer, quieter version.”
“Goddammit,” Riley mumbled, because it was true. He’d screwed up royally. “What the hell do I do then?”
“That’s up to you.”
“Uh . . . can I drop you off at the bakery?”
“Yeah. I’ll take the van over to the school for the kids.”
He dropped her off and started across town for the vet clinic before he remembered that this was the day it closed early. Stopping at the curb, he searched for Theo Sullivan online.
A home address in Weathership popped up. It was less than a mile from Riley’s own house. Somehow they had never encountered each other in this little city since Theo moved here. It took Sherlock to bring them together.
All was still at the blue bungalow with the white shutters when he pulled into the driveway. Riley got out and knocked on the front door, fidgeting in his agitation.
It was dead silent within, not the held breath of someone avoiding a visitor but the profound silence of nobody home. He waited there for several minutes, scuffing his shoe in the welcome mat and fingering the cell phone in his jeans pocket.
Maybe Theo was out there hanging up more flyers throughout the city. They were even on this street, taped up and flapping.
Giving up, he dialed Theo as he walked back to the car. It went to voicemail. “Hi. It’s Riley. I . . . I’m . . . Well, just call me back, would you? Whenever you get a chance.”
He hung up, ashamed of himself for losing his nerve, and drove away from Theo’s house. At the corner he went right instead of left, winding through the blocks to the main roadway and taking that to the clinic.
The lights were off in the waiting area. Turning into the empty lot, he pulled around to the back. His heart jumped. Theo’s hybrid was parked in the hidden spot there reserved for the veterinarian.
Riley parked in an open space. Then he paused. Should he call again? Knock on the front door? Or he could just leave a note on the back of one of the flyers and tuck it under Theo’s windshield wipers for him to find later.
Torn over what to do, he sat there. Then he stepped out and went to the back door. Testing the knob, it turned easily.
Since he couldn’t possibly make this situation worse, he opened the door and peeked in.
Theo was seated in a chair beside a stack of cages. His hand froze with a playing card pinched between his thumb and index finger, which he had been about to set down upon a tray. A game of solitaire was laid out there. A second tray to the side was piled with mail and a laptop as a small work station. Nobody else was present in the surgical space across the room; within the cages was only one inhabitant in a comfortably plump tabby cat. It was seated in a bread loaf position near the cage door.
“I . . .” Riley got hold of himself. “May I come in?”
Theo nodded. That shuttered look from the park had been replaced by wariness, and Riley hated that it was directed at him.
He let the door close at his back. The cat looked out to him dopily, a shaved patch on its back and a couple of stitches in its skin. “Who’s the patient? Get in a fight?”
“No fight,” Theo said. “She’s an indoors cat who spends her time knocking half the world off the table, and knocking the other half onto herself.”
“This is your cat?”
“Meet Target.”
“Is she going to be okay?”
“She’ll be fine. It isn’t the first time she’s given herself a little abscess, and I doubt it’ll be the last.” Theo raised an annoyed yet amused eyebrow at the cat. “She doesn’t like being in a cage, so I’m just sitting with her until she’s ready to go home.”
Riley’s stomach twisted from nerves. “I suppose you know why I’m here.”
Theo set down the playing card at last. “No.”
“I want to apologize.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
That was not the reaction that Riley expected. “Why not? You shouldn’t make nice about this when I was out of line, so I need to say-”
“Just don’t. Just go back out that door and get in your car. Go home.”
Riley stayed put. “Why, Theo? I don’t understand.”
Theo’s gaze shifted to the work station and back. It was a movement so fast that Riley barely noticed, but then he followed it to the heap of mail. Partially hidden by a catalogue was a merlot envelope with Theo’s name done up in fancy calligraphy and silver ink.
It hadn’t sounded like Theo harbored a desire to get back together with his ex, yet here he brought the wedding invitation along with him to work! “Why did you keep it?” Riley exclaimed in bafflement.
“Keep it?” Theo repeated in equal confusion.
Riley gestured wildly to the envelope. “The invitation! Just be honest with me: are you upset that he’s marrying someone else? You wouldn’t say you were happy about breaking up with him. You said it’s complicated and I just don’t know what that means.” You were happy or you weren’t, Riley thought. But perhaps this was what Rivers was trying to tell him. He was seeing things in black and white where others dealt in shades of gray. Black and white, good and bad, right and wrong were easy. But maybe not always accurate.
Sliding the envelope out of the pile, Theo gave it to Riley. The address beneath his name was the clinic’s. The ex-fiancé had sent two invitations, one to Theo’s house and this one to his place of work, just to be a prick.
“I threw out the other one,” Theo said. “And I’ll throw out this one. I’ll throw out as many as he sends, for as long as he sends them. No, I’m not upset that he’s marrying someone else. The more time that passes, the more I think I’m well rid of him. The more I wish I’d left much earlier than I did.”
Riley was tempted to throw away the invitation himself, but he returned it. This was Theo’s task to do. “Does that have anything to do with why you want me to leave?”
Tossing the envelope back onto the stack of mail, Theo looked down to his game. “Have you ever spent Christmas alone?” he asked.
This conversation kept leaping away from Riley, so he had to scrabble after it. “No.”
“I have.”
“That’s awful.”
“Yes. And no. It’s going to be a nightmare, you think at first. Spending the holidays alone. Having your birthday pass by unnoticed. People are so afraid of those things, and then when it happens . . . you survive it. You get through it. You even get used to it. You’ve lost everything, so what else can be taken away?”
A lump came to Riley’s throat at the thought of bei
ng that alone in the world.
“I got used to being alone before I met Vaughn. Used to having no connections,” Theo said in the silence. “Belonging nowhere and to no one. And then I wasn’t used to it anymore after I got together with him. I had something, someone, and I didn’t want to lose it again. So I stayed. No matter how impossible he became in our last years, I never considered leaving. I’d gotten some of my roots back. Taking an axe to them was unthinkable.”
Theo’s fingers passed absent-mindedly over his cheek, like he was wiping away a tear though his skin was dry. “It was harder to lose my connections the second time. I didn’t lose just him; I lost my whole world around him. It was why I almost stayed after he hit me.”
Stunned, Riley fought for the right thing to say. He was so out of his depths with this. “Did that happen a lot? Vaughn hitting you?”
“No. Just the one time on the last night we were together.”
“And you thought you might stay with him anyway?”
“Bad company was better than no company. I’d been homeless, and now I had a home. I’d been hungry, and now I had more than I could eat. I’d been friendless, and through him I had a community. He was my family when my own family tossed me out. As he walked away, I did that calculation.”
Theo checked on the cat, who was rolling onto her side. “It’s division, in case you were wondering.”
Math was never Riley’s strong suit. “Yet you still chose to leave.”
“It kept coming back to that slap in the remainder column. By that point, I knew the secret. I knew I would survive it again, being alone, just like I survived it the first time. So it’s just been me on my own. Belonging nowhere and to no one. And then there was you, you and your family, drawing me in again. And I can’t keep doing this.”
Finally, Riley understood. Theo wanted Riley to leave so the vet wouldn’t make more connections that he risked losing.
Riley’s heart broke for him. He put his hand on Theo’s shoulder. Theo tried to shrug him off, but Riley tightened his grip.
“No, I’m not going out that door,” Riley said. “You’ve said your piece and now I’ll say mine. Theo, I’m sorry. I panicked and I took it out on you. I could give you a lot of reasons why, but they don’t matter. I wasn’t being the guy you should have at your side. But I’m not walking away unless you get out of that chair and boot me out the door.”