Results May Vary (28 page)

“A lot more than I thought I could,” he said softly, leaning forward until he could stroke his free hand over my hair. “I've thought about this a lot, and here's the thing. Part of me will always love Eva, and that's the way it should be. But I'm ready to let it not be all of me. I'm ready to let it not even be most of me. Something I never realized before is that accepting that she's gone is not the same as…actually letting her go.”

His voice quavered slightly, and when I squeezed his hand, he squeezed mine back, hard.

“But what you said to me before, about always playing second fiddle, it made me realize that I
have
to let her go if I want to have any kind of a future. So, I've been making room. Because I want to try this with you, for real. I won't always get everything right, but I'm going to do my best, because you're important to me. I promise I will make you feel that.”

Another promise. Another choice. An extended hand I could grasp, or walk past.

“And as for your divorce baggage,” he said, voice warm with that humor I adored, “you don't scare me. If you can give me and my loss baggage a shot, then I'm up for whatever weirdness you're worried you might splash around. Lay it on me.”

I made a motion as if I was scooping a handful of liquid from my chest and tossing it at him, and he rubbed it into the skin of his throat like sunscreen. For a long moment we just smiled at each other, then he spoke again.

“So, listen. We will take it slow. As slow as you like. All I want from you is to let me take you to dinner sometimes, and make love to you a lot, and cook you and the girls pancakes on Sunday mornings. That doesn't sound like too much to handle, does it?”

“Knowing your pancakes, no.”

He slid his fingers slowly between mine. “Only the pancakes?” His voice had the deep, smooth, coaxing cadence of an upright bass.

Oh, god
. Down, girl.
“Also the saxophone,” I croaked out.

“The girls were asking about you, you know.”

I fixed him with a grim stare. “Neil. Don't lie.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “Annie did,” he amended.

“Clara hopes I have been permanently relocated to Chattanooga,” I said, and he laughed again.

“God damn, I've missed you. Are you in a better place with Adam these days?”

“Yeah. The papers were signed about six weeks ago. I'm expecting the judgment pretty soon, and then there's sort of a last-chance period before it becomes final. But, uh, neither of us is going to be having any second thoughts on this one.”

It was Neil's turn to squeeze my hand, this time. “I'm sorry, baby. I know you know it was right, but it must have still been hard to do it.”

“It hurt, but it wasn't hard to do it. There was no place else for us to go, and by the end he knew that too. I miss him. But I think we'll be able to be friends before too long.”

“If anyone can do it, it would be you.”

His voice trailed away into silence, and for a moment, all there was was the hypnotic rub of his knuckles against the back of my hand.

“So. Care.”

“Hmm.”

“Now that I've unloaded all of that, what do you think? Come back and give it a try?”

And here it was. That choice again. To offer trust, without a guarantee of safety, simply because there was someone asking for it.

As shattered as I'd been by Adam's betrayal, I knew I had no true reason to fear the same from the man in front of me. Neil had kindness, empathy, integrity, and a steadiness I could see now that Adam had always lacked.

He also had a wall full of photographs of his dead wife.

And a child who didn't like me, and in-laws who wouldn't welcome my presence in his life. But the thing was, he also had another child who
did
like me, and I badly missed the flame that lit inside me when I made her laugh. Then there was the way he was looking at me right now, like I was the first daffodil of spring and his favorite part of his favorite song, all rolled up in one. And, most of all, there was the answer I could feel ringing inside me, ringing so loud I was surprised I couldn't hear the sound.

We always make the same choice, don't we? As terrifying and often foolish as it is, we do it over and over and over, because the other way is just too cold to bear. We take a deep breath and square our shoulders and take that left that leads us deeper into the maze.

I stacked my other hand on top of Neil's and locked our fingers. “Of course I will,” I whispered.

And when he kissed me, even though it wasn't my first kiss or even
our
first, it still felt like a beginning. I had no idea what the story of my future would be without the man I married in it, but this was, as Neil himself had said last fall, the first of many steps. And I liked the direction I was headed.

For Allen, the original good-hearted man

The part where I get to thank everyone is my favorite part!

First of all, enormous thanks and love to O Captain! my Captain! Meredith Kaffel Simonoff, who is the wind beneath my wings; and also, of course, to my wonderful editor, Kara Cesare, for loving and guiding this book and for being every bit of a dream come true to work with, every step of the way. Huge thanks as well to the marvelous Random House/Ballantine team, including Nina Arazoza, Emma Caruso, Christine Mykityshyn, Jess Bonet, Misa Erder, Belina Huey, Marietta Anastassatos, Beth Pearson, and everyone else who's given input and assistance on this book as well as my first.

Thank you as always to those poor souls I've pressed into service to give me feedback on my drafts, including Amy FitzHenry, Wynne Newman, and Jess Rogers—your thoughts and advice have been invaluable. Special shout-out to Jen Kingsley, who was patiently answering my questions about curatorship and museum life while forty weeks pregnant with a nine-pound baby.

To Cory Barber and Melissa Walker—thank you for being your amazing, inspiring, creative selves. If you didn't already know how much I admire you, you should certainly know it now.

My sincere gratitude goes to Shaun Usher, whose wonderful website and book
Letters of Note
I stumbled across while researching correspondence to use in this book. A great many of the letters featured here I discovered through Shaun.

My writer friends have been involuntarily entrusted with my sanity, and you've done a remarkable job of spreading the word, propping me up, and talking me down, as the case has required: Emily Giffin, Taylor Reid, Mary Kubica, Allie Larkin, Liz Fenton, Lisa Steinke, Michelle Gable, Rachel Goodman, Terra McVoy, Joy Callaway, and all the awesome folk of the WFWA.

And, of course, I owe another enormous thank-you to every single one of my readers, for trusting me with your time and entertainment, and for in many cases reaching out to me to share your enjoyment and your own stories. I love every one of you. The same goes for all my blogger and book-lover buddies, who've been so wonderful with your support and enthusiasm for my work, and so generous with your friendship in general: Jenny O'Regan, Ginger Phillips, Estelle Halick, Jess Martinez, Melissa Amster, Nancy Farrow, Megan “Adios Pantalones” Simpson—you are the actual best.

To all my co-workers who've put up with me, friends who've cheered me on, and family who have supported me in my moments of both triumph and panic, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I couldn't do it without you.

And Allen, you get the last word as well as the first: You make me feel grateful, and joyful, every single day. You're the best parts of Adam and Neil and every love story I'll ever write.

Hello, lovely readers!

Thank you so very much for reading
Results May Vary
—I truly hope you enjoyed it. You are the reason why I, and all authors, write.

I hope you'll reach out and connect with me through one of the means below, because I would LOVE to hear from you! I especially love meeting book clubs via webcam, so please don't hesitate to contact me to join in with your group!

Lastly, if you enjoyed the book and can spare a few moments, I would be so grateful if you would consider leaving a review of the book at the retailer or book-sharing site of your choice. Those reviews are a tremendous help to authors, and help ensure that we get to keep writing books for readers to enjoy.

Read on, my friends, for an essay in the Reader's Guide I wrote exploring the theme of trust and vulnerability that's woven through
Results May Vary
, as well as some great questions for book clubs. Let's talk soon!

Xoxo,

Bethany

Bethany Chase

A READER'S GUIDE

One of the things I found myself grappling with as I wrote
Results May Vary,
and which Caroline struggles with throughout the book, is the delicate nature of trust. In our best and closest relationships, trust is the default setting. If we have good parents, we learn to trust them from the moment we're born—again and again, they protect us and care for us, and we reward that care with love. Friendships and romantic relationships develop gradually into a structure of closeness, with moments of shared experience and mutual support climbing upward and bracing each other like bricks laid in mortar, creating a shelter that becomes ever more solid and reliable with time.

But if someone betrays our trust, what then? The shelter cracks, or maybe it crumbles all the way down. And then, suddenly, there is a choice to make.

What fascinated me as I wrote this story was Caroline's realization that there has been a break in her relationship, between a past when she trusted her husband without thinking about it and a future in which it will have to be a deliberate and ongoing choice.

Prior to the opening of the story, Caroline never
chose
to trust Adam, because she always had that default setting: She understood, without conscious consideration, that he loved her, supported her, wanted the best for her, would never knowingly hurt her. But after she finds out about his affair, that unthinking sense of security is gone. He
has
hurt her, terribly, and so the trust she has given him is destroyed. And so, she must determine first whether she wants to rebuild it, and then, if she does,
how
to rebuild it.

When someone you love dearly has shown you that they will hurt and mistreat you, how do you rebuild? What steps do you take to replenish what's been lost? Can you trust this person without having to be aware of it, and is it worth it to have to work to trust someone? Doesn't that destroy the very joy of it? Because trust at its most beautiful and rewarding does not have to be consciously built.

I think the partner of trust is vulnerability. One of the primary ways we demonstrate trust toward the people in our lives is to give them access to our raw, tender parts: the insecurities, the painful memories, the innermost emotions, the feelings we yearn to have reciprocated. As trust deepens, we allow our defenses that protect these parts of ourselves to drop away. So surely one of the steps to regaining trust in someone is to slowly—
slowly
—lower those barriers.

In the kayaking scene, Adam very intentionally places Caroline in a position that maximizes her vulnerability, which she recognizes, and she spends most of the day fighting to keep her armor on. She's short with him, and guarded, and won't show him any signs of softness until, at their picnic, he asks her to. And in that moment she asks herself what is more important: to satisfy her savagely wounded pride, or to heal her relationship? So she reaches deep inside herself for the courage and generosity to let a little of her indignation go and start treating her husband like the man she loves again.

Of course, she finds out not much later that there are even more reasons to mistrust Adam than the one she knew at first, the main example of which was born in his own (unfounded) lack of trust in her. And this, finally, is what makes her decide that the relationship is too badly shattered to repair.

And that is a question that anyone in her position has to answer: At what point do you decide the other person has transgressed too much to deserve your good faith? There is a point of no return, and we all have to keep an eye on that in every single one of our relationships, whether with our partners or with our friends or even with our parents. Sometimes, for our own emotional safety, we have to stop being vulnerable and walk away. How do you know what that threshold is? And, when you have been badly hurt in a relationship, how—as Caroline wonders—do you muster the willingness to open up all your raw and tender corners to somebody else?

And the answer is, always, there's no reward without risk. There is no guarantee of safety, but for most of us, the immense rewards of connection make it worthwhile to accept that danger. As frightened as we might be, we just have to keep on trying. We have to take a breath, square our shoulders, and take that turn that leads us deeper into the maze.