by Lucia Jordan
16
Chapter Twelve (Brooke)
I felt so foolish for having given Tim a second chance. I felt foolish even now for answering his text and wanting to give him a third chance. But there was just something between us that kept pulling us around each other like orbiting planets—a gravitational pull, a force of nature I couldn’t resist. I felt lost when I wasn’t with him, and like my thought were flying off recklessly into space. Maybe that was the sign of a doomed relationship, and perhaps I really just needed to move on. The problem was that I didn’t want to.
Kate got me my job back at the coffee shop, even though I had to grovel and beg the store manager to rehire me, which was humiliating, but I didn’t really care. I had bigger things to worry about than the opinions of a coffee shop manager who went into actual panic attacks when we ran out of the mocha sauce.
I spent more time hanging out with Nick and Kate. You’d think that we would end up going somewhere other than the coffee shop where we worked when we just wanted to chill, but it was easiest just to hang here after our shifts were over. Nick would come in just before closing, and we would stay and talk and make crazy latte concoctions, and then lock up on our way out. It was a good thing that most of the security cameras in the café were broken because I was pretty sure the store manager would fire us if he saw us sitting in the café hours after we had locked up the doors and helping ourselves to pastries from the case.
“I think you should meet a friend of mine,” Nick said to me as we had just finished inventing a new coconut lavender latte. “He’s a pretty cool guy, good-looking, and single.”
“No, thanks,” I said as I shook my head. “I don’t need a guy right now.”
“I think Nick is right,” Kate added on. “You should hang out with guys your own age. I mean, no offense to Tim, but isn’t he like almost a decade older than you? Maybe that’s part of the problem, too. You need a nice, hip, younger guy who you can have fun with and now worry about jetting off in a limo with a gaggle of older, wealthier women.”
“Gee, thanks, Kate,” I said, rolling my eyes at the unwelcomed visual.
“You know what I mean,” she said.
“Just meet him for a drink,” Nick said as he tried to convince me more. “His name is Scott, and he’s super chill.”
Nick pulled out his phone and started texting someone.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He paused for a minute before answering me, and it looked like he was waiting on a response. Sure enough, his phone lit up, and then he answered.
“Seven o’clock tomorrow,” Nick said. “The little place around the corner, I think it’s called Taps or something. Scott will meet you there at the bar.”
He held his camera up to my face and took a picture.
“Hey, what was that for?” I hated having cameos taken.
“So that he knows what you look like and can find you.”
“Guess you’re going,” Kate giggled.
“Fine,” I said. “But just one date. Tell your friend I’m not interested in hooking-up, just having a drink.”
Nick nodded and sent another text that ended with a swishing sound as he hit send.
Why in the world did I just let them talk me into that?
17
*** (Brooke Continued)
The next evening after my shift, I ran back to Kate’s apartment to change. I grabbed a pair of distressed jeans and a retro, marigold-yellow T-shirt that was cropped to fall just above my belly button. I figured that since I was going out on an actual date my age, that I might as well look the part. Besides, it had been a while since I had worn some of this stuff.
When I got to the bar, it was a far cry from Plethora. For a minute, I stood outside and closed my eyes and envisioned the fancy rooftop bar and the way that the colored silk canopies blew in the breeze, which carried all of those delicious scents of exotic cocktails. Then I opened my eyes back up again and pulled the giant wooden slab of a door open and went inside.
I realized that even though Nick had taken and sent a picture of me to Scott, I actually had no idea what this guy looked like or how to find him. I messaged Kate real quick and asked her to have Nick send me a picture of the guy I was supposed to meet here. I was a few minutes early, though, so I sat down at the bar and ordered a glass of wine. When I felt a tap on my shoulder, I turned around, thinking it would be some cute, young guy.
Max.
“Hi, Max,” I said. I was always glad to see Max. He was just such a cool guy that it made you feel good just being around him.
“Hey, Brooke,” he said. “What are you doing here all alone?”
“I’m actually waiting on a blind date.” It was embarrassing to say for some reason.”
“A blind date?”
“Yeah, Kate’s boyfriend, Nick, set me up with one of his friends who is supposed to be meeting me here in a few minutes. I wasn’t real keen on the idea, but they both convinced me that it would be good for me to go on a date with someone my age, someone younger than—”
“Tim,” he finished my sentence.
I felt as sad as I knew my face was giving away.
“Brooke, I really think that you should just give Tim one more chance. I know you already did, but just one more. He really cares about you a lot more than you know. If you just gave him one more chance to show you, I think you would see.”
This was the part where I broke down and went home, or I stuck to the reason I came here tonight, to venture out a bit and try something new.
“I appreciate all that you’re doing to try to help bring Tim and me together, Max, really I do. But I’ve already given Tim way too many chances as it is. Despite the feelings that I have for him, I think it’s time for me to move on.”
That was so hard for me to say. I think Max could see how much it hurt me to vocalize that I was giving up because he didn’t press me about it anymore.
Another man came up behind Max and tried to make eye contact with me. “Brooke?” he asked.
Max turned around and realized that my blind date had arrived. He looked between the two of us and then gave me a small smile before leaving. The guy in front of me was checking my face against the photo on his phone.
“Yes, that’s me,” I laughed. “You must be Scott.”
Scott sat down next to me and ordered drinks. He was cute—really cute—and he had a young, sporty look to him. He had short blond hair and green eyes and looked like he worked out enough to be pretty ripped beneath his T-shirt. He talked about traveling the world and about the dog he had rescued. He said he wanted to be some sort of freelancer so that he could be free to work for himself and go where he wanted to go. He didn’t seem to care too much about the rat-race of the business world or the status elements of being in some of the city’s social circles. Scott was essentially everything that Tim wasn’t.
Scott was super nice, and we had a great time talking, but all throughout the date, I couldn’t stop thinking about Tim. I thought about what Max said and about giving Tim one last chance to prove that he cared about me more than he cared about letting some woman put her hands in his pants for the sake of a profitable contracted project.
But it didn’t matter how much my head told me it was time to move on, my heart still dragged behind, protesting every inch of the way that it wasn’t going anywhere without Tim.
When we decided to leave the bar, Scott asked me if he could see me again. This was my chance. He was a handsome, nice, and an interesting guy my age to spend time with. This was my chance to say yes and give him my number and actually make an effort to move on from Tim.
“I had a really nice time. Thank you. But I’m just not ready to go on a second date with anyone right now.” Seriously what the hell was wrong with me?
Scott was super cool about it all. He gave me a hug, walked me to my car, and thanked me for a lovely evening. I knew I shouldn’t have ended that before it even started. Maybe it was seeing Max at the bar before my date
that threw things off. Regardless, I just couldn’t seem to get rid of the hold Tim had on me.
When I got back to the apartment, Kate was practically standing at the door, ready to grill me about all the juicy details of the date. Nick had gone back to his place tonight, as he sometimes sporadically did just to make sure his roommates hadn’t trashed the place. I really felt like he should just move in here with Kate, even though there wasn’t much space, he was practically always here anyway.
“Well?” she said as she jumped up and down in her pajama shorts. “How was it? Tell me everything.”
“It was good,” I said as I walked toward my bedroom to get changed.
“Good? Just good? Not fantastic?”
“Kate, no one is going to be fantastic for me. I’m already too hung up on Tim.”
“You need to forget about him for a minute and tell me about your date with Scott.”
She stood in the doorway as I changed into my pajamas. I didn’t care about being naked in front of her; we’d known each other for years and seen each other naked more times than I could count.
I told her about Scott and about how nice and how attractive he was.
“Did he have a nice body?” she asked as if she was living vicariously thought my date.
I nodded. “Yes, he’s a very hot guy.”
“What else?” she asked.
I told her about some of the things we talked about and the cool things that he wanted to do in the future. Then I told her about how he asked me out for a second date and how I declined.
“You what? Why? You just said all of these wonderful things about him. You even said that he was hot and you were attracted to him. So what on earth is the problem with going out of a second date?”
“The problem is that I don’t love him.”
Kate froze and looked at me like a deer in headlights. “Oh, no, no, no. Don’t you dare say it,” she said as she shook her head at me.
“I’m in love with Tim,” I said as tears welled in my eyes.
“Fuck.” Kate had a way with not overly complicating words when she was exasperated. She was also super cute when she got frustrated. The sides of her nose would flare and make her sparkling nose ring look like it was moving.
“You can’t love him, Brooke,” she said. “He’s no good for you.”
I sat down on the side of my bed, and Kate sat down with me. “I can’t just choose not to love him, Kate,” I cried as I put my face down into the palm of my hands.”
“I know,” she said while she rubbed my back. “But then why don’t you just answer his messages and go back to him again then?”
“Because he has to know that he can’t keep things from me like he’s been doing. He has to know that unless there is trust between us and unless he actually values me as a person, then we can’t be together.”
“So you’re willing to just sit here alone in misery until Tim somehow figures all that out on his own?”
“Yes,” I pouted.
“Damn girl, that’s a tall order for a guy like him. I’m just not sure that Tim’s ever going to figure that out without you coming straight out and telling him,” she said.
“I can’t tell him. It doesn’t work that way. It won’t mean anything if I hand feed him what he should be doing if he truly cares about me. If I have to sit here alone forever, then I guess that’s just what I’ll have to do.” I could feel myself wallowing in my own self-pity.
“You’re never going to be sitting here all alone,” Kate said as she hugged my shoulders from beside me on the bed. “You know I’ll always be right here with you.”
I looked up and saw her smiling face, and it made me cry even more. Kate was the greatest friend, and even if I didn’t have a great boyfriend, I did have her. That was more than what most people had.
“Ice cream night?” she asked.
“Definitely,” I said as I wiped my tears away with the back of my hand.
We both got up and went to the freezer. Kate was an ice cream fanatic, so there was never any shortage of flavors. I took out bowls and spoons, and she took out five different flavors. While we were scooping, there was a knock at the door. Kate went to go answer it and returned to the kitchen shortly with Nick.
“Hey, Nick,” I said. “I thought you were staying at your place tonight.”
“Yeah, I was, but then I missed Kate and wanted to come back,” he said as he kissed Kate and smiled.
Again I thought about how they were the greatest couple.
“Uh oh,” he said as he saw all the ice cream. “Does this mean the date with Scott didn’t go well?”
Kate laughed at how perceptive he was. “The date with Scott went fine,” she answered him as I continued to scoop ice cream. “But Brooke is in love with Tim.”
“Oh shit,” Nick said as he rubbed his chin with his fingers and thought about the magnitude of that. “Well, I’ll leave you to it then; I wouldn’t want to interrupt your ice cream night.
“Nonsense,” I said as I walked around and took out a third bowl and spoon to hand to him.
“You’re not interrupting anything. Stay and join us.”
18
Chapter Thirteen (Tim)
“A date?” I asked Max in disbelief while we were working on the stained-glass piece that would inlay the shower door of Brooke’s bathroom inside the container home.
“Yeah, blind date,” Max answered. “Young guy, pretty good looking with blond hair.”
“You’re not helping, Max,” I growled.
“Sorry,” he chuckled. “I just thought you would want to know.”
I did want to know, but I also didn’t want to know about it. Brooke just needed to hold on a little longer. We were making so much progress on her new modular dream home, and once she saw it, she would see how much I loved her. All of the little things that she talked about, the minimalist style, go-green sustainability, the colors of autumn, hell, even her favorite insect of bumblebees, were included in the design. I had special ordered violet and moss green bedding for her. Max and I were painstakingly laying pieces of stained glass in the shape of bumblebees. Everything that she had ever said, I had listened to it. And I was putting it inside this house for her.
“Did it seem like she liked him?” I asked.
“How was I supposed to know? The guy literally just walked up before I left.”
“You didn’t stay around to watch them a while?”
“Of course not,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I’m not a creeper. Besides, you can’t expect Brooke to wait around on you forever.”
“I’m not asking for her to wait forever, just for like another week,” I said. I was moving on things as fast as I possibly could.
“Have you texted her at all?” Max asked.
“No, have you?”
“No.”
We went back to focusing on work because there wasn’t much that either of us could do about the situation currently. The build was coming along, and the sub-contractors were working at record speed. We had made it to the part where we could start putting some of the finishing design touches in the house, and Max’s doodles had helped a lot with that.
This tiny house was going to be a materialization of all the things that Brooke likes, and it would show her how much she mattered to me. I was so excited to see her reaction.
I made the purposeful choice to build it right here on my own property, next to my house. If Brooke loved it and if she heard my explanation about the photo shoot, then I was going to ask her to move in with me. The modular home that we are building for her right now could be added to my existing house, which would make the entire structure even cooler and more unique, and it would give Brooke her very own wing of the house that belonged specifically to her.
I know that Max was really rooting for this to work, too. We were taking painstakingly good care and detail with everything in the little home to turn it into something truly beautiful for Brooke.
/> “I’m proud of you, man,” Max says as we get ready to lift up the completed stained glass piece for the install.
“Yeah, I had no idea that I even knew how to install stained glass, either,” I said, quite pleased with how it had turned out.
“Nah, that’s not what I meant. I’m proud of you because I think you finally understand what I was trying to tell you before. That it’s about the gesture and the meaning, not the price tag, I can see that you finally get it now. That’s why you’re working on this yourself instead of the Spokane project, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “I’m sorry that it took me a while to actually hear you, my friend. But I do get it now.”
Max helped me lift the stained glass panel as we set it into the hinges on the door. We worked together until well into the evening, long after the sub-contractors had gone home for the night. Without Max, none of this would have been possible.
“What do you think she’s going to say?” he asked me while we were having a drink out by the fire again.
“About what?”
“About the home. When she sees it, what do you think Brooke will say?”
I realized as I was getting ready to answer him, that I didn’t really know what she was going to say or how she would respond. All that I knew was what I hoped she would say. I hoped that she would love it, and that she would see how much I love her, and that she would love me in return. That’s what I hoped for.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “I don’t even know how to get her to come back out here with me again.”
Max laughed so hard that he spit bourbon into the fire, which sent up a burst of scorching and popping embers into the air.
“You might want to get that part figured out soon. Otherwise, all of this will have been a giant waste of time and money. Except for that stained-glass bumble bee door—that I’m taking home with me if Brooke doesn’t like it.”
I laughed, too. It was good to joke around about some of it. Otherwise, the seriousness of it all, including the stakes I was risking with the Spokane project, all became too heavy.