Damage Done (17 page)

"Oh, I know you're upset, but it doesn't make it any
less funny," he'd said, "And I'm not teasing you. I really am going
to marry you. And nothing you could ever tell me is going to change that,
especially telling me you can't afford a prom dress. You've always had so many
nice things, and never had to ask for anything, so this is new for me. I've
always wondered how I'd be able to give you anything special since your parents
give you whatever you ask for."

"That's not true. I'm still the only person we know
without a car, or a cell phone," she'd protested.

"But you've got two horses, an attic full of art
supplies and a closet full of hundred dollar jeans. But it's okay, now I know.
Tomorrow we'll go into Houston and I'm buying you a prom dress."

"Dylan, you can't!"

"Yes, I can. I will. And you can come with me and pick
it out, or I'll just show up in two weeks and you can wear what I want you to
wear."

His fingertips brushed her arm, his head resting against
hers.

"And what do you want me to wear?"

"Nothing," he'd laughed, pressing his fingers
into her ribs to tickle her.

***

The building was stuffy, Rachel walked around and opened
the old wood windows to try and get the air circulating. Her office was still
covered in the invitation samples she and Jake spent hours arguing over before
they'd finally settled on a classic style, heavily textured white cards with
black ink, the ReachingOut logo stamped at the top. The invites went out the
week before, one thousand of the wealthiest and most influential powerhouses in
the Houston area, and their guests. They already had more than four hundred
RSVP's.

They'd ordered the signs and banners, and solicited dozens
of donations for the silent auction. A local jeweler had given some expensive
lapis earrings, they'd received several free stays at various bed and breakfast
type resorts around the Houston metropolitan area, dinners for two at restaurants
and bistros, ten free riding lessons out at Miller's Stables, and a dozen other
items the wealthy elite would spend time outbidding one another to win. But she
still had to get the linen orders in, finalize the floral arrangements,
organize the restaurants that were donating food, make sure they had any
supplies they would require on site for their buffet tables, and she needed to
walk the event center with the lighting and sound crew, not something she was
looking forward to. There were a million tiny details that would have to be
attended to, and she'd practiced the argument she would make to Jake right
before she begged him to supervise and take on the bulk of the coordination
leading up to the gala.

Please, Jake, come through or I'm gonna blow it.

Her attention span had grown thinner in the weeks since
Dylan showed up at her office. A week had gone by since they'd exchanged text
messages and she hadn't gotten back to him yet. She'd spent most of the last
few weeks making and returning calls, spending time with Hunter and Lauren and
doing her best not to think about Dylan, Michael, her failing marriage, or the
job she'd started to hate.

She pulled out the pile of crap she'd decided were
priorities.

"Blanchard's Dope Lighting and Sound," the card
read, a terrible graphic with picture of a DJ, neon lights in the background.
Last year she'd agreed to use a lighting and sound crew who didn't work for the
event center, giving the job instead to an independent twenty-something and his
small company in exchange for a donation from his wealthy father, Marcus
Blanchard, a friend of her stepfather. It was a painful experience, but they'd
pulled it together in the end, and it was worth the check she'd received with
Marcus's polite letter asking for the favor.

She made the call, a few rings on the other end, and then
loud music and static as Neil Blanchard fidgeted for a moment, probably trying
to put out a joint before he said hello.

"Blanchard's Dope Lighting and Sound!" he yelled
at her through the receiver.

"Neil, it's Rachel Daniels. I was hoping to pin you
down for a time to walk the event center, I'd really like to get it done this
week. What looks good for you?"

"Ummm, this week? When is it again?"

"When is the fundraiser? It's in three weeks, Friday,
October 25th." She'd already sent him two emails and they'd had this
conversation once before.

"Oh yeah," he mused slowly, "Yeah, so can we
do it tomorrow? I'm kinda busy, but I can do it at like noon."

"Sure. Tomorrow at noon. I'll shoot you a confirmation
via email and I'll see you tomorrow. Thanks, Neil."

Jake waltzed in as she was hanging up, brown paper bags
full of something organic and well-balanced for lunch, she wouldn't bother to
argue, he'd have insisted she eat it anyway.

"Hey Honey," he said, throwing the bags on her
cluttered desk, "What's up?"

"Jake, remember that kid who did the lighting and
sound last year? Neil?"

"Sure, Neil Neil the Achille's Heel."

She busted out laughing, "Yes, Neil Neil the Achille's
Heel."

"What about him?"

"I have to let him have the job again this year."

"Why?" Jake asked melodramatically, "He's a
dopehead junkie moron, he's going to burn the place down and our insurance
probably won't cover the damage."

Rachel tore into her sandwich, surprisingly edible
considering it was covered in bean sprouts, "His dad wrote us a check for
five thousand dollars," she said, food still in her mouth.

"You're disgusting, close your mouth."

She swallowed and finished, "His dad gave us a lot of
money, Jake. I've got to give him the job. You know I do."

"Fine. But I'm not babysitting him this year. Last
year he dragged me behind the stage and spent ten minutes telling me he wasn't
gay, but that he really liked my tuxedo.
Ten minutes
he spent telling me
he wasn't gay. Then I let him blow me."

"No you didn't!"

"Okay, no, I didn't. But only because he's a smoker. I
hate smokers."

The front door creaked open and a young man called in,
"Ms. Daniels? I have a delivery!"

Jake stood to sign for it and she polished off the rest of
the disgusting bean sprout sandwich.

"Ohhhhh, Raaaachel," Jake sung in his best
soprano.

"What?"

"Come and seeeeeee," he called back, his voice
full of melodic mischief.

She dropped her notepad and walked into the front,
"What is it, drama queen?"

There were six enormous vases full of irises, every shade
imaginable. She'd never seen anything more breathtaking, or extravagant. The
vases were plain, glass cylinders, tall and thin, the shiny green stems
perfectly aligned. But the flowers, there were hundreds of them, purple, blue,
pink. The delivery boy pushed the door open with his hip, carrying in two more
vases, one under each arm. Jake reached for one and placed it on the floor.

"Is that it?" he asked sarcastically.

"No, I have eight more," the delivery boy called
back on his way out.

Jake's eyes, wide and seeking an explanation, met hers. But
she didn't have one. Her heart had taken flight as soon as she'd seen them.

Dylan.

Kenneth would never have done such a thing, especially
after six months of the silent treatment, so she shrugged and feigned
ignorance. The delivery boy came back in with the other vases and Jake helped
him place them safely next to the others.

"Sorry, there's still one more," the boy said,
running back outside.

"It's a goddamned Van Gogh painting," Jake said.

She stood there while the boy placed the last vase on the
floor and Jake signed for the delivery. After he was gone, Jake opened the card
and started laughing.

"It's a haiku!" he teased, "Except, he got
it backwards!"

     consider hues of iris

     petals multiply

     more reasons you should meet me

"Rachel," Jake said, shaking his head, "Is
this him? Is he serious? Because if he is serious, I don't know if you should
hump him or send him my way. Or both. This is by far the cheesiest, silliest
most ridiculously romantic thing I have ever seen."

"It's absurd. I'm married.”

“Miserably,” Jake argued.

“So?” she yelled, “He doesn’t know that! He left me sixteen
years ago, pregnant and alone. I almost died. Fuck him."

"Maybe this is his apology?"

"I think not."

"Rachel, you can't pretend some delivery boy didn't
just waltz in here with something out of Martha Stewart's million dollar
wedding magazine and a handwritten backwards haiku saying he still loves
you."

"Yes, I can," she said, turning for her office,
"And he didn't say he still loves me, he said he wants me to meet
him."

"No. Let me rephrase that, Honey. You can't pretend
this was some small token of friendship. This was an 'in your face, I'm not
going anywhere, you're going to sit down and talk to me whether you like it or
not, and I'm probably going to fuck you silly afterwards' kind of gesture.
Assholes don’t do stuff like this. Stalkers maybe, but not assholes. And if he
were stalking you then we’d have heard about it a long time ago. So if he’s not
a stalker, and he’s not an asshole, then you're going to have to talk to him.
Either you tell him you're married and he has to stop, or you tell him you
haven't had sex in six months and you need a good dicking, but you're going to
have to tell him something."

"Jake, I can't talk to him, you don't
understand."

"No, I don't understand, but it looks like he doesn't
either, Rach- so, you better start figuring out how to articulate those
complicated feelings in that little head of yours, before somebody gets hurt,
like maybe your husband," he warned before turning to leave her office,
and then he stopped at the door, "At the very least, he owes you an
apology and you deserve an explanation. You're a strong, independent woman,
Rachel Kay Beauchamp Daniels. Stop thinking you have to live up to some
helpless female ideal that your mother always glamorized, that's not who you
are."

He'd sounded angry by the time he finished, and slammed her
door on his way out.

She scrambled around for her phone to shoot off a text
message.

       Fine. Coffee
tomorrow. 9 AM.

       I'll be in Houston.

       Where do you want
to meet?

Then she called Savannah and asked her to meet with her
when she and Neil walked the summit at noon. She knew well enough to expect
she'd be flustered after meeting with Dylan, and she'd be too impatient to deal
with Neil alone.

She would need a buffer, and her mother always talked
enough, so Rachel wouldn't have to.

***

They were meeting at the Starbucks on the bottom floor of
the building his firm was housed in. Dylan suggested it. Rachel was indifferent
and wanted to focus on maintaining her composure, and making sure there were
plenty of other people around.

She tried to dress casually, comfortably, something to make
her feel like the married mother of two she'd become, something that wouldn't
give off the impression she was interested in being kissed again. The blue
jeans and loose fitting white blouse seemed to work. She stuck with her trusty
cowgirl boots, and ponytail, and threw on some large silver earrings and a bit
of make-up, but only because Savannah would have been traumatized if Rachel
showed up all natural to their meeting later.

Thank God for the sleeping pills or she'd have stayed up
all night, obsessing over everything that happened, what she would say, what he
would say, and if she psyched herself out too much, she might not have been
able to walk into the coffee shop at all.

Composing herself, Valium well in her system, she marched
through the entrance with as much aloof confidence as she could muster. He was
already there, seated in a leather chair in the corner, one long leg casually
draped over the other as he scrolled through his phone. He was in a full suit
this time, dark blue, perfectly tailored. His hair was carefully molded with
one of those salon creams that gave off the appearance of using nothing at all,
nothing like the disheveled mess he'd shown up at her office with weeks before.

In a room full of people, he stood out like a model on the
cover of a men's magazine, his entire presence demanding attention. He glanced
up as she approached, her hands already beginning to shake as her courage
considering fleeing. He stood, reaching to touch her shoulder and she
shuttered.

"Hey Rachel, thank you for coming, can I order you
something?" he asked, standing as she took the seat next to his.

"A vanilla latte'."

He strode to the counter and placed the order, smiling
easily at the young barista who flipped her hair and smiled back, theirs was
not a new friendship. She batted her eyelashes flirtily, her heavy blue make-up
more suited to a strip club than a morning shift at the coffeehouse. He
laughed, she smiled, but then she turned to Rachel and cut her eyes just enough
to let her know she wasn't intimidated by his meeting with another woman for
coffee.

Is he fucking the barista in Starbucks?

Rachel looked away, picking at her fingernails until Dylan
took his seat. He had to know how uncomfortable she was. This wasn't a meeting
she could ever prepare enough for.

"Rachel, I want to start over. I'm sorry about when I
came to your office," he took a deep breath and looked her in the eyes,
"They’d just told us about Michael’s condition, and I know it sounds
cliche', but I really don't know how I ended up at your office. I've been wanting
to talk to you, but I hadn’t meant for it to happen like that-" he stopped
as the barista approached with their coffee.

"Thanks, Brooke," he smiled, taking both cups and
handing Rachel hers. The barista cut her eyes at Rachel again before walking
away.