This Time Is Different Read online

  “Whoa. Whoa,” I replied, my hands waving in front of my face. “Let me be clear about a few things. Your dad is a good guy. But we’re better apart. And I’m not talking about marrying Thomas. We’re dating. There’s a huge difference. He was married before, too. I’m not getting married again. He’s not looking to get married. But we’re dating.”

  “I just didn’t expect that,” he said, running his hand through the mop of brown curls he’d gotten from me. There was no doubt as to what exactly the “that” was. Yesterday morning’s ugly scene would forever weigh on me.

  “I could tell. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. All of it,” I swore.

  “Dad’s got a girlfriend. He tell you that?”

  It didn’t surprise me that Bert was dating. What surprised me that Grady knew about it. “He hadn’t mentioned it.”

  “She’s young.”

  And that didn’t surprise me either. I didn’t see him going on dates with forty-year-old single moms, because forty-year-old single moms generally want something. They want a relationship. They want assurance. They want a future. And the part of Bert that offered that, the part of him that held an endless spring of devotion, that was the part I’d broken when I said I couldn’t be married to him anymore. And that’s what hurt me most about our divorce. That instead of freeing us both to find our own happiness, like I’d expected, I feared that I’d ended his.

  I didn’t realize how much he cared for me, loved me, whatever the right verb was for how he felt now that he was no longer obligated to me, until several months later after we’d signed papers, when we were at the beach house for our agreed upon joint Christmas with Grady, when he gave me a new charm for the bracelet that my mom had given me at my tenth birthday, long before the cancer word entered my vocabulary. A little silver swallow with its forked tail and outstretched wings, caught in mid-flight. There was nothing Bert gave that didn’t have meaning. My brain worked in data and numbers. His worked in ancient rhymes and myth. But a bird in flight. Even I knew that meaning.

  “Does he seem happy?” I wanted him to be happy. For himself, but also to somehow redeem my own selfishness. That my acceptance of his duty-driven proposal hadn’t ended in his ruin. I wanted him to fly, too.

  “I guess, so. I mean, it’s not like I’ve actually met her, but I was at the restaurant and Aunt Fischer pointed her out one night. Fischer says she’s a picky eater. Some weird no carb diet or something.” I smiled at the words, hoping that Bert spending time with someone was a good sign, but also knowing there was no way he was going to get serious with a woman who didn’t eat carbs.

  “Would you feel better if you had dinner with Thomas or maybe met the woman your dad is seeing?”

  Horror spread across his face at the idea. And I retracted the suggestion. “It was just a thought. That way you’d know I wasn’t out with a serial killer and you’d know he’s not dating one of your classmates.”

  “She’s not that young, Mom,” he said. “But she’s not like a real adult. Not like you.”

  “I was joking about her being in your class,” I said, leaving his comment about Bert’s girlfriend not being a “real adult” alone. Grady was clearly worried but I wasn’t in a position to offer him any assurances and it wasn’t my place to ask about Bert’s girlfriend.

  Bert’s life was his own and while I loved him and wanted the best for him, I’d signed away my right to be involved. If it didn’t involve Grady, it didn’t involve me. That was a clear line he’d marked when I’d overstepped by suggesting that he look at going to get his PhD when Grady went off to college. But the line between caring and being involved, it was hard to navigate. After we divorced and I realized he still wasn’t breathing easily like I expected him to do, I hated that. And I wanted to rescue him like he’d rescued me, but my help with anything other than Grady was entirely unwelcome. As it should be, but that doesn’t mean that I liked it.

  “Want to come home and meet our new cat?” I asked Grady. “She’s Honey Rider and I’m not changing her name so don’t ask.”

  “I’m calling her Oddjob. Oh, hey, you want to hear a cat joke?” he asked, perking up.

  “A cat joke?”

  “Never mind. Just kitten.” We were back on track. All might not have been forgotten, but it was at least forgiven. And I’d take it.

  24

  Thomas

  “You’re asking me to play Mrs. Methodist Hospital again?” she asked. I could tell that the put-out tone was not real and she was going to say yes to dinner tonight.

  “If you’re up for it. I mean, I can’t promise more than rubber chicken in an overly air-conditioned hotel ballroom.”

  “What’s the event for?”

  “The hospital’s Nursing Excellence Awards.”

  “And the dress?”

  “I’m wearing a suit.”

  “What should I wear?”

  “Clothes.”

  “Thomas,” she sighed, but I could hear her smile.

  “Clothes that I can get you out of easily when it’s over.”

  “Not helping,” she sang.

  “Hold on, let me ask.”

  I placed my hand over the phone receiver and called to Ava. “Ava! What’s the dress for tonight’s event?”

  Five seconds later she was in my office doorway. “A suit,” she said.

  “What about for Amy?”

  “Oh, the invitation says cocktail.”

  “Cocktail,” I repeated into the phone. Two thumbs up and a ridiculous grin from Ava and I was alone again. “So, what are you going to wear?”

  “A dress,” she teased, drawing out the sounds.

  “That I can easily get you out of?” I asked, dropping my voice to a whisper and casting my eyes to my wide-open office door to make sure that no one walked in and heard this conversation.

  “Or just ruck up around my waist. Would that work?”

  “Amy . . .” I sighed and scrubbed a hand over my face. “I’m at the office.” I loved this playfulness, but not in the middle of a workday. There were only so many times I could go sweat it out in the fitness center before Ava got concerned.

  “And so am I.”

  I hadn’t seen her since Friday morning and while I’d double checked that the weekend had in fact only lasted two days, it felt like I hadn’t seen her in a month.

  “I’ll be at your house at four,” I said, glancing at my watch. “A dress sounds great. But don’t bother putting it on until I after I’ve stripped you out of whatever you’re currently wearing.”

  I stationed us a good distance from the hospital’s CEO who hung out near the entrance of the ballroom, so not to upstage him in any way. My strategy, honed through years of navigating business slash social events, was to stand no more than twenty feet but no less than ten feet from the bar at about a forty-five-degree angle. Perfect for being seen and capturing acquaintances for quick handshakes as they got drinks.

  Amy stood at my side, a glass of wine and a black dress that danced around her knees and dipped low to show a hint of the cleavage I’d buried my face in not two hours before. She’d fussed at me as she struggled to get ready after our romp. Swearing that my fingers through her hair hadn’t been a good idea, but there hadn’t been any complaints as I twined it around my fist and tugged as I pounded into her from behind, my free hand tweaking her nipple. My dick began to stir back to life in the ballroom. I heard my name and pulled my eyes from her boobs.

  “Thomas. Hey, man.” Max McDaniel, my assailant, stood next to me, hand extended and I shook it. And although the bat to the jaw was an accident, the video of me wasn’t. It wasn’t an accident when he’d played it for Ava and it damn wasn’t an accident when he’d emailed to the CEO and CFO.

  “Max, I believe you’ve met Amy before. You know, when you damn near broke my jaw?”

  “Oh, Dr.—” His eyes shot to mine, slightly sheepish behind his glasses.

  “Forsythe. Amy Forsythe.” I laughed at her husky, Bond-like introduction
and watched them shake hands. And I knew from her smile that she was digging the opportunity to trot out the line in normal conversation.

  “Dr. Forsythe, I can’t thank you enough.” Max was apologizing, but not letting go of Amy’s hand quickly enough for my liking. I fixed that. I snaked an arm around her waist and drew her close to me, sending her bobbling on her tall heels from the jolt. I pressed her to me, to steady her but also to make it clear to anyone watching who she was here with. And that we weren’t in a doctor-patient relationship.

  After Max’s apologies trailed off, Amy protested that all was well that ended well with a smile in my direction. I loosened my grip. Ever so slightly.

  “So, I guess instead of making good on taking you skiing like he kept promising when he was all doped up, he’s taken you to the fabulous Excellence in Nursing awards for some room temperature chicken over cold mashed potatoes. That’s a shame.”

  “Not really here for the food,” she said, shrugging.

  “What about Paris?” Max asked me.

  “What about Paris?” Amy asked. I tried to ratchet up my eye laser game, but it wasn’t working.

  “He ask you to go to Paris yet?”

  “No,” she said, looking at me with her forehead wrinkled in confusion.

  “Well, wait for it. Because while he was all slurs and begging you to go skiing with penguins when the drugs kicked in, by the time I got him home, he was talking about how he was going to take you to Paris on a magic carpet ride.”

  If I thought I’d set my eyes to laser beam kill mode a second ago, I was wrong. Because the look I was giving him now could have cut through metal. I breathed deeply, trying to keep my anger and embarrassment in check. Water off a duck’s back. Water off a duck’s back. But damn, if I couldn’t feel the heat radiating off of me in waves.

  I got that Max was the stereotypical socially awkward tech guy, but this was ridiculous. He wasn’t this uncool. It probably had to do with me balking at the numbers he was talking about for the new email filtering vendor. “Can we simply train our people not to click on shit?” had been my response to his “Employees see a link and they will click. Even if the link is labeled ‘ultra-mega death virus.’” The discussion hadn’t gone well and he was back to getting new bids that we could take to the CEO without being laughed out of his office.

  “Is ‘magic carpet ride’ something I should or shouldn’t look up on Urban Dictionary?” Amy asked him. Her boldness made me stand up a little straighter. I didn’t have to defend her. She could take care of herself and I liked that.

  “No, like a legit Disney movie style magic carpet ride.” Max dug into his pants pocket and pulled out his phone. Oh, shit. “Let me pull it down for you.”

  Other than taking his phone and hurling it across the room and into a wall so that it shattered into a million pieces, there wasn’t much I could do. I had to watch it play out and hope for the best. Before I could even give a disclaimer as to how drugged up I was, I remembered that she was the one who’d drugged me and, apparently, I’d talked skiing penguins with her.

  I was never known for being smooth with the ladies. It was my determination that won me points, but if I’d overcome blathering about skiing penguins, then maybe I had more game than I thought. The question was whether I had enough game to survive the next few minutes without looking like a fool.

  When the part of the video played where I slurred and rambled on about taking her to the “tippy top” of the Eiffel Tower, she popped up on her toes and gave me a soft kiss on my healing jaw. A morsel of reassurance. A simple hello that washed the worry away, that said she wasn’t ending this even if I was a fool.

  “So, Aladdin is a street rat?” She eyed me over the rim of her nearly empty wineglass once the clip ended, completely ignoring Max. “Watch that movie much?”

  “Two daughters, both of whom lived and breathed Disney princesses. I couldn’t count how many times I’ve seen it. Add in the fact that Miller liked the genie, and a hundred bucks says I could still recite half the movie,” I said, as I guided her away from Max.

  “I’ll take that bet,” she said.

  “You serious?”

  “Watching you trying to quote that movie is definitely worth the risk,” she said, swirling her empty glass and nodding at the bar. “Hundred bucks buys a lot of cheap wine.”

  I leaned down and whispered in her ear. “You need some more big cock, Doctor Dentist Angel?” She nodded and walked to the bar, me trailing her like a puppy.

  And that’s how we ended up naked in my bed, her falling asleep to me reciting almost every damn line of a children’s movie while I wondered if I could take her to Paris next weekend.

  25

  Amy

  When I woke up Tuesday morning, I noticed the painting over Thomas’s bed was gone. An empty beige wall greeted me as I slid on one of his large T-shirts. I’d avoided looking over his bed last night when we stumbled home after the banquet and after drinks at the hotel’s bar that led to even more bets about movies. Truth is that I didn’t want to see the painting. I didn’t want to be reminded of his happiness and how I was a consolation prize as we’d screwed last night and then fallen asleep wrapped up in each other.

  After a quick shower, I met Thomas in the kitchen where the coffee battled the morning’s cobwebs, slowly clearing my mind.

  “Looks good there,” I said, gesturing to the family portrait that now hung where an abstract big red barn had been last week. I didn’t know why he’d moved the painting. If he’d moved it because he didn’t want that remembrance of Laurie so close while we slept together, or if he didn’t want to take it down but did in deference to me.

  “You think?” he asked, looking up from the eggs he was scrambling.

  “But I think it should go anywhere in your house that you want it to go,” I said, snagging a banana out of the fruit dish.

  He raised an eyebrow in reply, not believing my laidback reaction.

  “I didn’t move it for you, if that’s what you’re asking.” He set two plates of buttery scrambled eggs on the island in front of me.

  “I’m not asking. It’s a beautiful painting,” I said, peeling the fruit and breaking off a piece to pop into my mouth.

  “It is. It hung in the den at our house in Wisconsin. With the windows and the bookshelves there isn’t room in the den here, so I hung it in my room. But it belongs somewhere it can be seen.”

  I nodded in agreement, ate a couple of bites of banana, and stepped to the coffee pot to warm up my mug. I wanted to keep busy so I could avoid the consequences of the conversation I’d started, including the consequences that followed from learning that as great of a guy as he was, he’d always be in love with his wife. As I reached for the carafe, his hand snagged mine, clasping it tight and tugging it to the middle of his chest. “You want to talk about Laurie?”

  “I don’t know,” I responded, honesty making the words burn on my tongue. I looked away from his blue eyes and found my gaze settling on Laurie’s painting. I wanted to know, but I also knew it was none of my business. And I didn’t want to hear that my place was as a temporary understudy for a part that would go on uncast.

  “She was a labor and delivery nurse, and a very talented tennis player,” he said, tugging me close and wrapping his arms around me. His voice dropped to a whisper in my ear. “She liked cherry preserves on her toast and as soon as she stopped working, she always had her fingernails painted. It was against the rules for nurses to have their nails painted. As soon as Miller was born and she ‘retired’ from nursing, as we called it, she started painting her nails. She had exactly one beer each night after the kids went to sleep. Miller Lite. And when she packed me lunches for busy days at the office, because she knew I wouldn’t leave my desk long enough to eat anything, she put notes in there. Sometimes little cartoon drawings of me, or us, or the kids. Something that made me smile and realize how damn lucky I was.”

  I could hear his voice beginning to break and if he broke, I
would.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I kept repeating, pulling out of his embrace, thankful that I’d discovered the depth of his anguish before I found myself discarded and broken.

  “You’re not Laurie.” His firm words shook me. Of course I wasn’t Laurie, but I wasn’t expecting him to be so straightforward in his assessment of me. “Wait, that was wrong. That was all wrong,” he continued, holding out his palms to me in supplication. “Please come here.” His voice was barely a whisper as his eyes pleaded with mine. But I didn’t come to him. I stayed still, willing myself to take whatever blow he was about to deliver with as much grace as I could muster. It might not be much, but I’d do my damnedest to keep myself together.

  “What I meant to say is that I’m not your ex and you’re not my wife. You’re funny. And you’re headstrong and confident and braver than anyone could guess. You’re soft and kind and easy and sexy and smart and a million things that add up to you being you. This,” he said. “This isn’t that. That’s done. That’s over. And there isn’t any getting that back. But this, Amy? This time is different,” he pleaded. “We can have this.”

  I knocked on the doorframe of Diana’s private office, interrupting her lunch. Around a mouthful of lettuce, she waved me in.

  “What’s up?”

  “I need a consult,” I said, stepping into the room. Her eyebrows shot up and she closed the plastic clamshell that held the remnants of her salad. “On a patient?”

  “No. Grady,” I said, closing the door behind me and settling into her guest chair.

  “I’m a pro when it comes to two things—cavities and diaper changes. Anything else is outside of my wheelhouse, but shoot.”

  “He’s really pissed at me. We were rolling along fine earlier this summer.”

  “Yeah, the canoeing trip y’all took looked great.”

  “It was. We honestly had a great time together. It’s hard to be all hearts and rainbows and butterflies with your teenager, but it was a legit good time. But he absolutely hates the fact that I’m dating. And he’s being a dick. And I feel like an ass by calling him a dick, but it is what it is.”