by Terri Osburn
“I do.” We traveled another half block before he said, “Are you shooting for some blind date record?”
A fair question. Three men in four days, and for all he knew I could have gone out with someone else on the one night our paths didn’t cross.
“Do you ever do something you absolutely don’t want to do, but you know it’ll make someone else happy so you give in?”
“Not an answer,” he replied as I motioned to make a right at Washington Avenue. As we rounded the corner, he switched sides and I realized he was keeping himself between me and the passing cars. A display of chivalry I hadn’t seen in years.
“Well, that’s what I do,” I confessed, continuing to ignore his original question. “I am physically incapable of saying the word no.”
“I don’t know. You told that jerk last night that you weren’t going with him.”
“That was an extreme case.” I shuffled around a light post. “I never should have agreed to these dates in the first place.”
We made the left onto Academy. “Then you aren’t looking for love like you said?”
“Not in the least,” I confessed, “but my friends refuse to accept my choice to be alone, so here I am.”
He remained silent for several seconds before stopping and turning my way. “Do the guys on these dates know you aren’t serious?”
An odd question. “My friends don’t even know.”
For the first time in our brief acquaintance, Jacob appeared agitated. “So the guys think these are real dates, and you don’t have any qualms about manipulating people like that?”
“Who am I manipulating? Under the best of circumstances, most first dates never result in a second. I’m not lying to them about who I am. I’m not catfishing anyone. I simply know before I show up that nothing more will come of it. No one is getting hurt in this scenario.”
His jaw twitched as he watched me with a cold glare. “You’re wasting their time.”
So now he was defender and protector of his entire gender?
“No,” I argued, “I met a few men for what should have been a simple meal. Everyone has to eat. What’s the difference if they eat with me or with someone else or eat alone? It’s an hour of their lives, and as you well know, I’ve done nothing to lead any of them on. Hell, the first was in love with someone else, the second was a racist caveman, and the one you just met accused me of looking at other men before we’d even ordered our drinks. These are not victims who walked away from our dates believing they’d just met the love of their lives. If anyone has suffered from this endeavor, it’s me.”
“You’re playing with people’s feelings either way.” Hitting me where it counted, he added, “And you aren’t even being honest with your friends.”
No, I wasn’t. I hadn’t been honest with anyone, including myself, for longer than I cared to admit, but I would not have my life scrutinized and judged by a virtual stranger.
“I don’t have to defend myself to you just because you have some hero complex and got unlucky enough to stumble into my life at a few less-than-stellar moments. You can stop playing the hero now. I can take care of myself.”
He shook his head. “You passed out less than ten minutes ago. Last night you had a drink poured over your head. Before that you tried to carry a drunk man who probably outweighed you by at least fifty pounds before colliding with a tree. Is that what you call taking care of yourself?”
Having a litany of my week summed up so concisely was not what I needed right now. Anger made my cheeks hot and brought tears to my eyes. I would not add to the humiliation he’d already witnessed by letting this man see me cry.
“Do us both a favor and go save someone else.” Charging down the sidewalk, I kept my shoulders back and my chin up, pretending the world wasn’t blurring before me. I half expected him to barrel down on me, determined to fulfill his savior role or just to continue pointing out all the ways I was a shitty human being. To my relief, he let me go without another word, and I picked up my pace once I crossed the next intersection.
Jacob’s accusations played over and over again in my head. I was not manipulating anyone. If anything, I was letting my friends manipulate me into these stupid dates. And then there was Amanda exploiting my spinelessness and dropping more work on me than I could or should have to do. Also, she hadn’t even hinted at paying me more to do twice the work, and it never occurred to me to ask. Because cancer trumps fair pay, apparently. At least in my feeble, don’t-rock-the-boat brain.
Around the corner from my parents’ house, my frustration, anger, and suffocating helplessness poured out in a guttural scream that bent me in half. As I panted with my hands on my knees, a dog in a nearby yard barked and a woman called out of her window.
“Are you okay out there?”
I looked around and realized I was standing in the middle of the alley that ran perpendicular to my old street. Straightening, I brushed fresh tears from my cheeks and located the source of the voice. “I’m fine. Sorry I bothered you.”
Taking several deep breaths, I reached the corner and turned left down Plum while pulling a tissue from my bag to blow my nose. No matter what I did, Mom would know I’d been crying. She’d always known no matter how hard I tried to hide the truth. Maybe that was the reason I hadn’t visited much lately. No one else saw through me like Mom did, and she didn’t need tears to know when something was wrong.
I considered ordering a car and just going home, but sometimes a girl needed her mom. This was definitely one of those times.
Chapter Ten
As I stepped onto the porch of the house I grew up in, memories overwhelmed me. I’d gotten good at shoving them away over the last couple of years, but in a moment of weakness—like when I’d had a terrible week and literally fainted in the last ten minutes—that was more difficult.
This was the porch where I had my first kiss. Where we took endless prom pictures. Where Brian got down on one knee and told me he’d love me forever. Closing my eyes against the onslaught, I pushed through the door and called out. “Mom? Hello?”
The petite brunette who’d given me my height—or lack thereof—my hazel eyes and my love of organization rushed into the foyer with a tea towel in hand. “Becca, honey, you’re earlier than I expected. Is everything okay?”
“Dinner didn’t go as planned,” I said, dropping a quick kiss on her cheek.
Kathy Witherspoon was not fooled. Forcing me to make eye contact, she said, “What’s wrong?”
So much. So, so much.
“Nothing. Really. Rigby’s is too packed thanks to the game so I decided I’d rather watch it here. Where’s that box you found?”
Eyes narrowed, she nodded toward the room on my right. “It’s in the dining room. We’ll take it into the kitchen so you can tell me what’s going on while I finish the dishes.” I’d offered to buy them a dishwasher more than once over the last few years, but Mom had brushed off the idea as if I’d suggested they get a butler. “Have you eaten?” she asked. “I can heat up some pierogi.”
Never had I needed the comfort food more. “I would really like that, thanks. Dad’s downstairs, right?”
The Witherspoon basement had been converted into a man cave long before the term had been invented. The only thing that had changed since I was in middle school was the size of the television.
“Of course, he is.” She crossed to the door that led to the basement and yelled down, “Carl, your daughter is here.”
“Send her down!” he yelled, before adding, “That was off sides!”
Mom rolled her eyes. “You can go see him after we talk. Get the box off the table while I put the food on.”
I followed the order and found the mystery box heavier than expected. Becca’s stuff was scrawled across the top in my swirly teenage handwriting, and dust filled my sinuses as I dropped it onto the kitchen table harder than I should have.
“What’s going on with Aunt Jeanne?” I asked, hoping to put off the conversation I wasn�
�t ready to have.
“Reginald has a week to move out, and then Jeanne’s having some updates done to the house before putting it on the market.” She pulled a skillet out of the cabinet and crossed to the fridge for butter. “I don’t blame her for not wanting to be there while he’s packing his things, and since we have that spare room, I told her she could stay here.”
“I can’t believe she’s selling that house. They’ve been there forever.”
I lifted the cardboard flaps to find my old green and gold pompoms on top of a collection of books and magazines. From third grade on, all I’d wanted was to be a cheerleader, and freshman year I finally made the team. Always the smallest on the squad, I started to rethink my choices when I found myself at the top of the pyramid three years running. By the time I graduated, I knew that cheering on the college level was not going to be for me.
“They bought the place a year before your dad and I moved in here.” Mom tilted her head. “That was thirty-three years ago so, yeah, forever.” When the butter started to sizzle, she tossed in the pierogi. “Now what’s going on with you? And don’t tell me you’re fine because I know you aren’t.”
Of course, she did. To be fair, I hadn’t been fine in a long time. This week had just pushed me past my ability to pretend.
“The girls have been setting me up on blind dates,” I said, dropping the pompoms onto the table beside the box. I hadn’t mentioned the dates before because of my lack of intentions. “I’ve had three so far this week.”
Tossing the tea towel over her shoulder, she cut me a cautious glance before reaching for a spatula. “How are they going?”
“About as well as you’d expect a blind date to go, I guess. They’ve been awful.”
I continued to go through the box as I talked. Along with several tattered copies of Seventeen magazine was the entire Twilight saga in hardback along with a slew of other angsty YA novels—which explained the weight of the box—an ancient iPod with a cracked screen, a Beyoncé CD, and High School Musical one, two, and three on DVD.
“Is that why you were at Rigby’s?” Mom asked. “For a date?”
“Yeah.” No need to mention the fainting incident. That hadn’t happened since my senior year in high school when stress over possibly not getting into the same college as Brian had resulted in a lack of appetite and sleep. A period much like this week, except back then had been nothing more than adolescent drama and now my boss had cancer. “We didn’t hit it off,” I explained.
The next layer in my trip through the past was my high school yearbooks. Picking up the one from junior year, I brushed a hand across the cover and traveled back in time without having to open it. The pep rallies. The homecoming dance. The class trip to New York City when Brian told me he was going to marry me for the first time. We were at the top of the Empire State Building, and since we’d watched Sleepless in Seattle the week before, I assumed he was trying to be funny.
Turned out he was serious.
I dropped the yearbooks on the table as Mom said, “What was wrong with him?”
“With who?” I asked, having lost track of the conversation.
“The date.”
“Oh, yeah. He was the jealous type,” I answered as my eyes landed on my old journals. “I can’t believe I kept these.”
“Kept what?” Mom crossed to the table and looked over my shoulder. “Your diaries?”
“Journals, Mom. Not diaries.”
“What’s the difference?”
“In a diary you write Dear Diary at the top of every entry.” We’d had this same conversation when I was sixteen. “In a journal you can write anything.”
And I had. Poems, both by me and other more talented writers. Lyrics from whatever emo song suited my emotions that day. My fears and hopes and dreams for the future. A future I’d had all mapped out with Brian and me and a house down the street filled with three perfect children and a family dog. Now the idea of a future felt as far off as a trip to Fiji.
“Here,” Mom said, startling me back to the present. She patted my cheek with the towel before shoving it into my hands. “Dry your face while I clean this up.”
I hadn’t even realized I was crying. Annoyed that I was being such a melodramatic baby, I settled into a chair as she loaded the items back into the box. “I don’t know why I’m such a mess these days. I should be fine by now.”
“There’s no set time for getting over a broken heart,” she said. “I should have gone through this stuff myself first.”
“You don’t have to protect me. I’m not a baby, after all.”
Closing the box, she turned and cupped my chin in her hand. “You’ll always be my baby, whether you’re thirteen or thirty.” Gesturing to the box, she said, “I’ll put this back in the closet and when you’re ready, we’ll pull it out again.”
Nodding, I silently agreed.
Returning to the stove, she asked, “Have you not met a single nice guy on these dates?”
An interesting way to phrase it. I had met someone nice. Or so I’d thought. Until he’d turned into the intention police and tried to make me feel like an asshole for going on a few harmless dates.
“No one,” I said. “I don’t know what the girls were thinking when they picked these men. None of them are right for me.”
“Are you sure you aren’t being too picky?”
Too picky was disqualifying a guy for not driving the right car. That was not the problem this week.
“Am I a jerk for agreeing to these dates without intending to take them seriously?” I asked.
Mom’s lips puckered as she took several seconds to answer. “Why did you agree to them then?” she asked, and I realized where I got the answer a question with a question habit from.
“Then you do think I’m a jerk.”
“I didn’t say that.” She flipped the pierogi before turning to lean a hip against the counter. Arms crossed, she repeated, “Why did you agree to the dates?”
I sighed. “Because the girls are worried about me and I figured going on the dates would show them that I’m fine now. They would stop worrying, and we could all get on with our lives.”
Sliding the skillet onto the back burner, Mom crossed to the table and sat down. “But you aren’t.”
“I’m not what?” I asked.
“Fine or moving on.” Mom pressed her hand over mine. “Becca, you have a long life ahead of you. Do you ever think about taking a trip or exploring a new hobby? Anything that would give you something to look forward to?”
Other than the events I planned for work, I never thought about the future. I’d had big plans once. Places I wanted to see. Things I wanted to do. And then the plan got blown to bits and I learned real quick that planning is pointless when in a split second your whole life can change.
“My job is about the future, remember? We’re busier than ever and now that Amanda will be out of the office, I won’t have time for trips or hobbies for a while.”
“Why is she out of the office? That woman already works you to death. She doesn’t expect you to do everything, does she?”
That’s exactly what she expected. “This can’t be helped, Mom. Amanda has cancer and she needs time off for the treatments. It’s only for a few months.”
“Meredith Rebecca Witherspoon, cancer is no excuse to run you into the ground,” she snapped, warrior mom activated. “You’ve clearly lost weight, and you look like you haven’t slept in days. How are you possibly going to run that place by yourself?”
Why did no one understand the words I have no choice?
“I’ve looked at the schedule and I can make it work. Marquette will handle things at the office, and he’ll help out more when I need him to.” After all, what Amanda didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. Or get me fired, hopefully. “It’s not as if she went out and got cancer to make my life more difficult. Beating this is her top priority, and I’ll take care of the rest to make sure she still has a business when she comes back.”
&
nbsp; “I’m sorry that she has cancer, but I still don’t like this,” Mom grumbled, returning to the stove. She pulled a plate from the top cabinet and slid the pierogi from the pan. “Promise me you’ll say something if it gets to be too much. And you have to start eating more. I don’t like how tiny you’ve gotten.”
Extra meals didn’t fit in the schedule, but I would do my best. “I promise.” Taking the plate from her hands, I said, “I’m going to eat this downstairs with Dad. Do you need me to take him anything?”
Without a word, she turned and pulled a bag of pretzels from the cabinet. As if he could smell them, we heard a voice from the distance.
“Kathy, hon, send down the pretzels.”
“How did you know?” I asked.
“He took the popcorn down an hour ago.” Due to cholesterol issues, Dad was supposed to stay off the snacks, but the best Mom had been able to do was switch him to healthier ones. “He averages a bag an hour so this should last through the rest of the game.”
I tucked the bag under my arm and turned toward the front hall.
“I’m always here to talk,” Mom said as I was heading downstairs. “You know that, right?”
Turning, I shared a genuine smile. “I do.”
She nodded and went back to her dishes in the sink, but I could see the concern still etched on her face. I hated that she worried about me. It seemed as if everyone worried about me these days. I’d have to work harder to make them see that I was fine. Or mostly fine. Either way, I’d be more than happy to stop being the center of everyone’s attention. I wasn’t some fragile doll in need of fixing. This week was testing me, that was all.
So there’d been a few moments of weakness. Everyone had bad days. I was just having a bad week. And after this last disaster of a date, I was done with the worst part anyway. I’d let Lindsey know to cancel the dinner cruise, and after making it through the graduation party, Sunday was my day of rest. A day to sleep in, spend some quiet time on the couch with Milo, and put the last few days behind me.