Wallflower In Bloom (27 page)

Our food came and I ate mine slowly, paying attention to each bite. It was really good, but after about half of it, I wasn’t even tasting it anymore, so I finished the broccoli and drank my entire glass of water. When the waiter collected our plates, I asked him to wrap it up. If I didn’t eat it for breakfast, I knew Tag would.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Ilya peeking at his watch.

“I agree,” I said. “Time for me to get some sleep.”

We pushed back our chairs.

“Come on,” Tag said from the other end of the table. “The night’s still young.”

“Some of us have to try to dance in the morning,” I said.

“I don’t need much sleep,” Ashleyjanedobbs said.

I walked the length of the table and held out my hand. “Keys,” I said.

For a minute I thought he might fight me.

Ashleyjanedobbs smiled up at my brother. “I have a car,” she said.

Tag took the keys out of his pocket and tossed them to me.

Ilya walked me out to the parking lot and helped me find the Land Rover. He waited till I was safely inside the car.

I lowered my window.

“Good job today,” he said.

I tried to raise one eyebrow but had to settle for two. “But was it outstanding?”

He grinned. “You’re getting there.”

If I’d been heading home at this hour on a weeknight in Marshbury, everything would be closed by now. The only hope for any action would have been Marshbury Tavern. But here in Los Angeles, lights sparkled and glowed from almost every building, and the streets
teemed with people—tourists and stars and wannabes mingling as they decided whether their next stop might be more shopping or a bar or even a tattoo parlor.

For more years than I cared to count, I’d thought that if I could only get out of Marshbury, get out of the sheep shed, get out of my brother’s life, then I’d finally be happy. But it turned out the place I’d really needed to get out of was inside my head, a much harder task. I remembered that old quote:
Wherever you go, there you are
.

When I let myself into my little white apartment, Ginger and Fred were circling their bowl, waiting to be fed.

I sprinkled their dinner into the bowl and watched them nibble it off the surface of the water. Then I carried them into the little living room.

I sat on the little couch and watched Fred and Ginger meander around their bowl for a while. It was incredibly relaxing. I wondered what it would be like to get to swim around all day without a care in the world. Probably really boring. But maybe it was all perspective. At this very moment, my fish friends could be staring out through their wall of glass wondering how bored they’d be if they had to spend all their time just sitting like a lump on the sofa.

“Life,” I said, “is so damn complicated.”

My cell phone began to play its tinny instrumental version of “She Works Hard for the Money.”

I didn’t even check the caller ID first. I just said hello.

“Hey, it’s Steve. Moretti. Remember? We’ll always have Austin?”

I had an almost overwhelming urge to say, “Hi, I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you leave a message I’ll get back to you.”

And maybe I would get back to him. Someday. Or maybe not.

I was trying to learn to dance. I was trying to get my act together. I was trying to get my brother to go away. I had a lot on my metaphorical plate and I was trying not to put so much on my actual plate. All at the same time. I was exhausted. I was emotionally overloaded. I
couldn’t handle one more thing right now. I was really bad at relationships, and I’d already messed this one up, not that it was technically a relationship. It was only a kiss. A kiss-and-run. Which was basically nothing. And now I couldn’t even remember how many first kisses I still had left. What was Dentyne thinking with that stupid commercial? Like life wasn’t tough enough without that to worry about.

I opened the Styrofoam take-out container that I hadn’t gotten around to putting in the little refrigerator. I reached for the rest of my sandwich, my truffles bloat a distant memory. What I really wanted was chocolate. Not Skinny Cow chocolate but something rich and decadent. A dessert menu of possibilities flashed before me in an instant: Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food ice cream, peanut butter cookies still warm from the oven, Dove bars, fresh-baked gingerbread topped with homemade whipped cream, Ring Dings. I really wanted a Ring Ding. Did they still make Ring Dings?

A drop of barbeque sauce landed on the coffee table. Bits of congealed fat dotted the leftover sandwich in my hand. I didn’t even want it.

“Hello?” Steve said.

I looked at my phone. The man inside it would probably break my heart. Or he’d turn out to be a loser. Or he’d have unresolved issues with his ex-wife, or his ex-girlfriend. Or maybe we’d just be incompatible. I didn’t even know where he actually lived. Or anything about him. And I mean, face it, anyone who was still kicking around single at his age probably had some serious baggage by now. Wait, maybe he wasn’t even single. His unresolved issues could be with his current wife. He could be a polygamist for all I knew. The chances of this working out were a gazillion to one. But so was the chance of winning the mirror ball trophy.

I put my leftover sandwich back in the take-out container and closed the cover.

“Hello,” I said.

Learn to fail or fail to learn
.

S
o where were we?” Steve Moretti said.

“Ha,” I said. “Maybe we shouldn’t go there. Maybe I should just apologize for being a total idiot and then we could talk about current events or something.”

“Your call.”

I was actually blushing. Who still blushed at my age, especially when the other person wasn’t even there to see it? I took a deep breath. “Sorry. And how about those Red Sox?”

I’d half forgotten what a great laugh he had, rich and unselfconscious.

I took a slow, calming breath, in through my nose and out through my mouth. “I probably should add that my brother has a tendency to push my buttons. In case you didn’t notice.”

“When I was growing up, my older sister had me completely convinced that I was adopted.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. ‘Why aren’t there any baby pictures of you?’ she kept asking. My parents denied it, but my sister had planted that seed. And she was right, there weren’t many baby pictures of me, and believe me, I counted. Repeatedly. It turned out to be part second-child photo
syndrome and part the fact that my sister had hidden most of the ones we did have. Anyway, I finally smartened up and tracked down my birth certificate.”

“That’s awful,” I said. “Although I used to fantasize I was adopted. Or that they’d given my mother the wrong baby at the hospital. Or that I’d been dropped from an alien spaceship in the middle of the night because my real people’s planet was being invaded. It just seemed like there had to be another set of siblings I’d fit in with better.”

“To this day, my sister and I can spend about two hours together before we revert to our childhood selves and start going at each other again. It’s not pretty.”

“Oh, that’s so good to hear.”

Steve laughed again.

“Sorry,” I said. “I meant that it’s good to be reminded that my siblings and I aren’t the only ones who do that.”

Steve took a sip of something before he spoke. “Maybe siblings were created to make the rest of the cold, cruel world seem manageable.”

I tried to picture him. Sitting in a leather recliner with a glass of wine in his hand. Or curled up in bed with a mug of chamomile tea.

“Where do you live?” I asked.

“Good question. I have a place way out on Cape Cod, in Truro. It’s pretty rustic, really just a shack, but it’s a beautiful spot. And I have a small condo in Boston. I’m traveling all the time, so it works out since they’re both pretty much lock and leave. And I have a son in western Mass so I spend as much time as I can out that way.”

“How old is he?” I asked. It came out like a whisper.

“Twenty-three. His name is Ben. He’s in grad school. Political science of all things.”

“Wow,” I said. It was the best I could do. I switched my phone to the other ear and watched my hand reach for the sandwich as if it was
connected to someone else’s body. I stood up and walked over to the refrigerator to put the Styrofoam container away.

“His mother and I were high school sweethearts. We broke up freshman year in college. Then my parents died the week before I graduated and, well, we shouldn’t have ended up together again, but I guess it was just one of those things. We tried to make it work for Ben’s sake, but it never really did.”

“What happened to your parents?”

“Drunk driver. Middle of a Saturday afternoon, a mile and a half from home. They were on their way back from grocery shopping.”

“I am so, so sorry.”

“Thank you. It’s a long time ago now, but not a day goes by that something doesn’t remind me of them. They were good people. They never got to meet Ben.”

I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my T-shirt, vowing to call my parents back.

“So where do
you
live?” Steve asked.

“I have a little place on Tag’s property. Pretty much my whole family does.”

I listened to Steve take another sip.

“How’s that working out for you?” he finally said.

“Ha. Not too well, I don’t think. But give me another decade or two to make sure.”

He laughed again. I could get used to that laugh.

“Well, it’s actually a converted sheep shed, so I have to admit it’s a pretty cool place. And I don’t pay anything to live there, so that’s a plus. But Tag won’t let me buy it. And living there means that basically I’m on call around the clock. And the guy I lived with off and on for ten years who didn’t want kids decided to marry someone else because she was pregnant. And he asked Tag to marry them.”

I stood up, took two steps toward the refrigerator, then sat back down again.

“So that’s my life,” I said. “Or lack thereof.”

“Sounds like that must have been pretty painful.”

“Which part?” I said. “Oh, Mitchell. I don’t know. Yes and no, I guess. I mean, we weren’t together at the time or anything. And I think we’d probably been over each other for years. We just kept sliding into it again because it was the easiest thing to do.” It felt good to talk about Mitchell in the past tense. “Anyway, I hit him with Tag’s golf cart the last time I saw him. And that’s the end of that story.”

“Do me a favor and remind me of that right before our first fight.”

I could feel myself grinning. “Deal. And just so you know, I didn’t hit him that hard. He’s kind of a whiner.”

Steve cleared his throat. “You know, at first I didn’t get the whole
Dancing With the Stars
thing, but now I sort of do, or at least I think I do.”

“Wait. You know about
Dancing With the Stars
?”

Steve let out another laugh. “Uh, I think I’d have to be living under a rock to miss it. It’s all over the news. And the Internet. You’ve become the celebrity alternative—an Everywoman hero.”

I closed my eyes. “Please tell me they’re not using my high school yearbook picture. No, don’t tell me. I can’t even think about it. It’s enough trying to survive the dancing part.”

“Well, I have to hand it to you. It’s a really creative way to put some space between you and your family.”

I started to tell Steve about Tag showing up, that in my family the concept of space was nonexistent. But then I just didn’t. Maybe I thought it might sound too strange. Maybe I was still hoping Tag would go away. But I think mostly I was afraid it might scare Steve off.

Ginger and Fred were watching me. I ran my finger around the lip of the fishbowl. “Yeah, well, now I just have to survive embarrassing myself in front of twenty-three million people.”

“I have to admit I haven’t actually watched it, but it’s like a dance contest, right?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“I’m sure you’ll take the whole thing.”

“That’s very sweet, but that’s like me telling you I’m sure they’re going to let you redesign the gardens at Buckingham Palace.”