Cheating on Myself (28 page)

I would go home late at night and wake up early in the morning, with everything in my life revolving around those sweet girls and my tiny friend and the family that needed me. I didn’t see Joe, and we didn’t talk, and I didn’t think of him very much at all. Things had changed, and I began to feel myself slip into old habits and settle into a routine that felt like my life. There wasn’t enough space in my brain to think about anything beyond the superficial needs that faced me every day, and I focused everything I had on filling those needs and just keeping myself and the Wesleys afloat.

I watched the way Laurel and Peter supported each other, and I saw a love there that I’d never noticed before. To me, they’d always seemed like separate planets, orbiting around the same life, but never touching or interacting, their atmospheres as different as could be. But now, in the face of this, while we all had to be strong and hope and want with all our hearts for this to pass, I saw them come together for each other. They had one another, and for the first time they were relying on each other to keep moving.

In much the same way, I watched as Erik clung to me, holding tight to our years together and knowing I was something he could count on. I accepted the role, and started to feel myself floating back to him as we spent those hours together at the hospital. First, it was our hands. They’d cling to each other as we sat beside Pippa, or we’d link them together behind our backs as we stood before Cat, telling her the latest news from the doctors. Sometimes, he’d rest his hand softly on my back as I cried in the waiting room, wishing I could just tell Cat that Travis was fine and her little girl would be fine, and we could all go home. Eventually, it was our bodies, pressed up against one another in the waiting room while we watched TV, or leaning together as we sat side by side on the edge of Heidi’s bed.

Joe called, of course, and he sent me emails, and several nights when I’d get home late from the hospital, there would be daisies left for me on the dining room table or a box with a piece of cake from my favorite bakery waiting on the counter. One morning, he’d left a hot coffee on the stoop. But I didn’t see him, and he must have understood I didn’t have room inside for anything more, that I couldn’t fit any more people in and I had to focus on the family. Because he didn’t try to see me, and he didn’t press, and eventually, I started to think of him as something distant and past, a memory of something that had happened so long ago, in such a different life, that it was a wonder so little real time had passed.

After a few days, they released Cat and Heidi and they were sent home to recover. They went to Laurel’s house, where they would be taken care of and watched and where we could all be together. I moved in to the guest room, helping with Cat and Heidi while Laurel and Peter were at the hospital. Because Heidi was home, Cat went, too, but she spent large parts of her day at the hospital with Travis and Pippa. We all chipped in and did our part, and we began to work as a unit, taking care of the people who were home and hoping for the ones who weren’t.

Finally, the day came when Travis could remember and he could speak through the swelling. The doctors were confident he was going to get better. Though he would never be perfect again, and his leg would be pinned, he’d come home in one piece someday soon, and I watched as Cat cried in relief and exhaustion.

“I love him so much, Stella. He’s always been good to me,” she said as I drove her to the hospital to see him. “If I’d lost him, I don’t know what I would have done. If I’d been left alone…”

I thought about that, and I let it sink in, and I wondered, not for the first time, why I’d set myself up for a life alone. There were no guarantees with Joe, or anyone else, and though Erik had never agreed to give me exactly what I wanted, I knew he’d never leave me and I’d always have someone. Someone who’d be there through the hard times, and the challenges, and the nights when I was scared. Maybe that mattered more to me than perfect passion or total happiness or fulfilling the needs of a list that was really all about family, anyway. If holding tight to family, holding tight to my mom, had led me to the list in the first place, then why was I letting the list drag me away from the only family I’d ever known after I lost my parents? Surely, some things could be sacrificed for stability and the knowledge that I was surrounded by good people who would never do anything to hurt me.

I was living at Laurel’s, and even though nothing beyond a few gentle touches had passed between Erik and I, we sometimes slept in the same bed, holding each other late at night when everyone else was asleep. I wouldn’t say either of us was happy, but we both felt comfortable and cared for.

In early December, I had to go back to work, and it was then that I saw Joe for the first time since Thanksgiving Day. He came to the front desk, so I went to the lobby to see him, even though I didn’t really want to. I was emotionally exhausted, and I didn’t know how I’d respond when we were face to face. I’d convinced myself to forget him, and let myself believe I had been a fool for falling for him. But when I saw him, I felt the same desire and lust and want I’d felt when we’d been together the last time. I pressed it deep down into the depths, and focused on Pippa and Cat and how they still needed me.

“I missed you,” he said, coming forward to wrap me in a hug. But I bristled, and he sensed it, and stepped back to look at me. “I’m so sorry, Stella.”

“Thanks,” I said, shuffling as we walked toward the coffee shop in the skyway. I felt his hand reach for mine as it hung by my side, but I stuffed it in my pocket, unwilling to take it and feel that heat knock against me and trick me into falling for him again. I was empty, and I didn’t have anything to give. “How have you been?”

“I’m lonely,” he said, laughing, obviously oblivious to my signals. “I’ve been dying to see you.” I tensed, and he said, quickly, “I can wait, though. I know you still have a lot going on. Anders has kept me up to speed. If there’s anything I can do…”

“I appreciate it,” I said honestly.

After a few minutes of walking in silence, he said, “Stella, listen, I just want you to know I’m here for you. I’ve been trying to stay out of the way, but I don’t want you to think I’m not here to talk whenever you want to. I can help at the hospital—I was thinking, the guys and I could come, or just me, and play some songs for Pippa if you think that would help?”

I felt tears creeping to the surface as I thought about how much that would mean to her, and I nodded. But I couldn’t let him do this, and lead him on, if he thought it meant there was still any hope for us. I didn’t know him enough to trust him, and there were still doubts, and listening to Cat talk about how Travis had always been there for her and how she trusted him had made me think about how well I really knew Joe and whether I could trust him.

Suddenly, I just had to get away. Without thinking, I blurted, “I know you’ve been with a million women, but one of the things I need to know is, have you slept with any of the women who have come to your shows?”

He waited before answering, looking at me with a mix of hurt and confusion. “Yeah, but that was before.”

“Were they still married at the time?”

“Some of them,” he said quietly. He didn’t look proud, but he also didn’t look as ashamed as he ought to have.

“Right,” I said.
Wrong
, I thought. It was reckless passion that had drawn me to Joe, and I had to step back and let reason and sensibility guide me again.

“It’s not something I’m proud of—” he started, but I cut him off.

“I actually don’t really want the specifics,” I said tightly. “You know I’m a big believer in marriage and commitment and believing in someone, and I have a hard time feeling great about someone who makes a habit of screwing married women.” He looked more appropriately ashamed.

“I get that,” he said, scratching at his head. “I can’t change the things I’ve done,” he said. “But I can make different choices in the future, and that’s what I’ve been working on. With you, I—I’m not—”

“Joe, it doesn’t matter anymore.” I cut him off. If I’d learned anything from Erik, it was that guys don’t change, even if you wish on every falling star. “I hardly even know you, and I don’t feel any pressing need to have you justify yourself to me.” I thrust out my chin, hoping it would give me the confidence to say what I needed to say. “We were just having a good time, and it’s not like I’m interviewing you for marriage.”

As I said it, I realized it was true. I knew what I was getting with Erik, and that had to be the safer choice. I was giving up too much by letting him go. I looked at Joe without any emotion at all. I was spent. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he said, but I could tell he didn’t mean it. I could tell I’d hurt him, and he had more he wanted to say, but I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t need to hear it, because it wasn’t going to change the kind of person he was, or the kind of person I was.

I stood in front of him outside the skyway coffee shop, ready to turn back and go to my cube and the predictability of a safe life surrounded by things that I knew wouldn’t change. “I’m sorry,” I said again, and I really did mean it.

“It was different with you, Stella,” he said, and I ached with guilt and anger and frustration. “I want things with you I didn’t think I’d ever want again. For what it’s worth, I was falling in love with you, if you’d have only given me a chance.”

I looked at him one last time, and then I walked away, leaving him there in the skyway to watch me abandon what could have been, if only things were different.

If only I wasn’t me.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Life carried on, and all of us settled into a routine of waiting and wishing. I continued to live at Laurel’s, helping with Cat when I wasn’t at work, spending my nights keeping an eye on Heidi while everyone else was at the hospital. Erik and I had become a team, usually going back and forth from the hospital together, and staying at Laurel’s together. Sometimes, we would sleep together in the spare room, but it was just for the company. We didn’t make love, and we didn’t talk about how we were falling back together, slipping into the old patterns and conveniences and customs we’d both grown comfortable with over the years.

We also didn’t kiss, and it was one day while I was reading an escapist novel filled with sex and passion that I realized, sadly, I didn’t even miss it. I didn’t want to kiss Erik. I told myself it was only because Erik and I weren’t there yet. There were still things we had to build, and trust and passion that needed to come back before I would be comfortable going there with him again. I knew there was no rush, since what we’d had had built up over years, and it would take more than a few months to break it down again. We had time, and I was taking that time to just be with him.

“Are you happy?” Cat asked me one day, as we sat together in front of a movie. Erik had gone home for the night, and I’d picked
Notting Hill
, a movie Erik hated and never wanted to watch.

“No,” I told her honestly. “I’ve been better.”

“I mean, are you happy with Erik?” she asked. When I didn’t answer, she asked, “What happened to Joe?”

“It wasn’t meant to be. I was never going to get what I wanted. And he could never be the kind of guy who would want the things I want.”

“What do you want?” she asked. “Marriage?” She lifted her brows, as though it would be criminal of me to lust after that.

“I thought that’s all I wanted, but it’s more than that,” I said, hearing myself repeat out loud what I’d told myself for the past few weeks. “Marriage stands for something, I guess. Stability. Trust. Love. What you have with Travis, what my parents had. It’s nothing I could ever get from Joe. He’s not the kind of guy who could commit like that.”

“But it’s what you have with Erik?”

“Yeah, I guess,” I lied, but I couldn’t look at her.

Her feet were resting on my lap, and she wiggled her toes in my face to get my attention. I looked at her, and she said, “That’s not what you have with Erik.”

I shrugged. “Maybe not. But at least Erik is a sure thing. The last few weeks have reminded me how much I need to know I have someone.”

She sighed, and that was as far as it went that night.

* * *

It was in those days while I was living with Laurel that she and I began to change the way we interacted, too. I felt, somehow, I was becoming more of a friend and—if it was possible—like a daughter, rather than simply Erik’s life partner. I felt the judgment passing, and I could feel her relief at my being there. She hadn’t brought up my hair in weeks, and there were no longer comments about shoving Erik and I back together. Perhaps that was partly because he and I were spending so much time together, and it gave her hope we’d stay together. But I felt it was more than that.

I actually kind of liked her, and began to enjoy spending time with her, rather than looking at her as a necessary evil that came with Erik. Of course, I’d relied on her heavily over the past twelve years, but it was always on an uneven playing field, and I’d never really let myself understand her as a woman and an individual. Now that I was watching her lead her family—okay, so she wasn’t leading, but she was at least organizing things effectively—through a difficult time, I felt like I started to know her as
Laurel
.

Laurel had been comforting herself and everyone else with her cooking through the hospital ordeal. In fact, she’d decided to revise her Foodie Channel segment to focus on what she was calling “Soothing Food from the Heartland,” which she believed was a cross between comfort food and southern cooking—made by a Minnesotan. In fact, her recipes were all hot dishes, the staple of Minnesota church potlucks.

“They’re comforting, and they freeze well,” she’d told me when she finalized her change-in-strategy. “The rest of the country has a lot to learn from people who understand a deep-freeze and can plan ahead in the face of tragedy.”

I wasn’t sure how well food connected to tragedy would go over on the Foodie Channel, but it was an interesting change-of-pace from their usual programming. It wasn’t like Laurel was suddenly going to be the new face of America’s kitchens, so whatever made her feel good about herself was what she should cook.