This Time Is Different Page 6

  “Grady’s home,” I muttered in explanation. I couldn’t bear to look at him and I frantically began tapping on the remote. Last month I’d caught Grady giving a kiss to a girl behind the bleachers at a soccer game. A quick peck on the lips. That was tame, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t asked him about it, which led to both of us being terribly embarrassed and a little upset with each other.

  And this thing between me and Thomas. It wasn’t tame. It was wild. I’d been half a second away from palming his hardness. Goddamn it. This remote wasn’t doing a thing. I began waving it at the TV and grabbed another one, stabbing the buttons with no results before flinging it onto the sofa in anger. I reached for remote number three.

  “Here,” said Thomas, passing me a book and my glass of wine. He grabbed a book himself and began thumbing through the pages while I stared at him, gape-jawed.

  “Mom?” Grady yelled.

  “In the den,” I called back.

  Great. Now I’m shouting at my son. Between the stink eye Grady gave him earlier, my verbal vomit, and this disaster, I was sure Thomas was going to run screaming out the door. I opened the book and took a sip of wine, trying to settle myself on the sofa in a way that looked like we’d been comfortably reading together, not three minutes away from fucking.

  “Hey,” he said to me, appearing in the doorway. When his eyes fell on Thomas, he righted himself to his full six feet. “You’re here?” he asked Thomas, no kindness in his voice.

  “Grady,” I ground out. “Thomas and I are hanging out.”

  “Whatever. You want me to go?”

  “No, I don’t want you to go,” I said, discarding the book on the coffee table, never having read a single word.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Thomas flick his wrist and inspect his watch. “It’s after ten and I’ve got a big week coming up.” He stood up, and my heart sank. “Better get going.”

  I followed his suit, escorting him to the front door, our mutual thanks for a night out, appreciation for the company—the words were stilted. A simple side-arm hug at the door, with a brush of his lips along mine, and he was gone.

  I nabbed my phone from my purse and went back to the kitchen for another glass of wine. I felt scattered. Distracted. Off-kilter but not broken. I’d been broken before. And this wasn’t broken.

  “Grady,” I said, knocking on his bedroom door. There was no response. After a minute, I sighed. “Good night. I’ll make cottage cheese pancakes in the morning.”

  “Sounds good. Night, Mom.” Alive, but pissed. Yet still hungry. Life with my teenager was never boring.

  Down the hall, I pulled the Daniel Silva off my nightstand and drew a bath. Settling in with my glass of wine amidst the rose-scented bubbles, I exhaled. Maybe I really shouldn’t date. Maybe I really should just wait until he’s at college. It’s only a year. And I’ll be forty next July. Forty.

  And suddenly, I didn’t feel up for international intrigue. Out of the tub for a second and back into it with my phone. I needed distraction. I needed a treat. I needed a little escape into a world of dance cards and quadrilles and corseted heaving bosoms. I hadn’t been a romance reader my whole life, but the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon led me down a rabbit hole of steamy happily ever afters and I’d landed in a merry heap of Regency romance. And no one knew. Just me and my password protected iPhone.

  Earl of Rutford was down on one knee before sweet Lady Alice in a formal garden, the sounds of the ball drifting through the darkness of the midnight garden as he asked for her hand, when a text popped up on my screen.

  Thomas Popov: I have children. 3 of them. Had a great time. Next weekend?

  That classic moment from Pretty Woman where Julia Roberts gets all excited in the bubble bath and slides down below the water? I performed my own rendition, modified to include an underwater scream of excitement with one hand held out of the water to save the phone. I popped back up and scrubbed a dry towel over my face and looked at his message again, not quite believing it was there. That I hadn’t ruined it.

  I tried to let a few minutes pass. To let my excitement fade. I truly did. But I couldn’t do it. Patience wasn’t my strength.

  Me: I had a great time too. And next weekend sounds good.

  The dots of a typed reply danced at the bottom of the screen and disappeared several times before my phone rang, his name in bold letters.

  “Hi,” I said, trying to hide the giddiness in my voice by being cool.

  “I’m sorry. I hate texting. If I want to talk with my kids, I have to do it, but I really don’t like it.”

  “Fat fingers?”

  “Something like that,” he laughed. “Anyway, thanks for tonight. I had a good time.”

  “Me, too. I didn’t know he was coming home. I’m really sorry. I wouldn’t have invited you in.”

  “Well, I’m glad you did. Learned that the walls in my kitchen are greige.”

  “They are greige?”

  “Well, the rest of the house is what I’d call beige, but the kitchen is different. I think it’s greige, but maybe you can be the judge of that, since you are the expert on it. Next weekend?”

  Me, soft and warm in a tub. Him not having a clue on the other end of the line. Now I was wet and soaked at the thought of this accidental naughtiness.

  “Yes, but I’ll have to check. Weekends I have Grady. He’s with his dad Monday through Wednesday, so if it’s not too presumptuous, weekday dinner or drinks works for me. I have clinic until eight on Thursdays, so that night is pretty much out for me.”

  “Ah, schedule chess. These next two weeks are really bad for me, if I’m being honest. Our accreditation survey begins.”

  “Oh, that’s right. I forgot.”

  “Don’t apologize. It’s my calendar, not yours. I’m tied up and then we’ve got a board of directors meeting and then it’s approaching quarter end.”

  “So, Fourth of July?” I said, half joking and a little sad at the prospect of not seeing him for a month. Because this is how it worked in Adultlandia, wasn’t it? You meet someone—potential friend, tennis partner, arch nemesis, whatever—and then you never got to see them again except for random cocktail parties or when you bumped elbows at a bar.

  “No, I’ll be with my kids then. And that’s next month. Fuck it. Amy, how would you like to come to dinner with me on Wednesday? It’s a work dinner and I can’t promise it will be fun, but I can promise you that you’ll be well fed and we’ll have drinks.”

  “What kind of work dinner?” I asked, amazed that I was even entertaining spending an evening with strangers just to see him again.

  “We’re recruiting an interventional cardiologist from St. Louis. He and his wife are coming in. It’s close to being a done deal, and I’m supposed to wine and dine and sign them.”

  I hesitated. I wanted to see him, but wasn’t sure if I wanted to see him on a business dinner. “Sure I wouldn’t be the proverbial third wheel?”

  “No, you’d be righting the proverbial ship,” he assured me.

  “Okay,” I said, draining the last of my wine and setting it on the edge of the tub.

  “Okay?” he said.

  “Yeah, I’ll do it. You said there would be good food. Heads up about me. I don’t cook. Like ever.”

  “Well, if it’s confession time, then I’ve got one for you: I don’t care.”

  “You don’t care?” I asked, not understanding his response. That revelation had always earned me a disappointed reaction from that evening’s date. That was what I hated most about the dates I’d been on. That I was being interviewed for the position of wife and oftentimes it felt like the guy was mentally going through a checklist and assessing my skills at the various job duties.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I don’t care about you not cooking.”

  “Well, this is new and different. Let me cut to the chase. Cleaning. I’m mediocre, but I do hire out. Home decoration and gardening. Also hired out, but I do like festive wreaths at the holidays. Hostessing
. I throw mean parties. Tolerance of whatever sport you binge on. I am a die-hard Knicks fan, so as long as you don’t pull for the Celtics or Bulls, we’re good. Gold digger threat level. I do very well for myself, thankyouverymuch. Willingness to give head. Downtown traffic must move in both directions. Marriage. Not interested in a repeat. Children. Grady is enough for me. Dietary restrictions. If it’s dead, good chances I’ll eat it. So, if all of that is cool with you—Shit,” I said, as the wine glass fell.

  “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  “I had the wine glass on the edge of the tub and just knocked it over. But it landed on a towel and didn’t break. Thank God.”

  “Are you in the tub?”

  All of the blood drained from my face in humiliation. It was fun when he hadn’t known, but now he knew. He knew I was naked in the bath. And now I seemed desperate. Or overly sexed up. Or that I was a huge dick tease. A million bad thoughts rushed through my mind. “Yes,” I squeaked, hiding my face behind my free hand. The boldness I’d felt a minute before while I’d rattled off what I was sure he wanted to know, it evaporated.

  “Have you been naked this whole time?” His words were slow and deep.

  “Yes,” I said, my embarrassment fading with his interest and wondering how it would feel like to be naked with him.

  “Oh. Fuck. Amy.”

  12

  Thomas

  Naked. In a bathtub. I didn’t know what to do with this information. All of the other information she’d just dumped on me, I didn’t care about. But this? Her naked. That I did care about. And I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to handle this. Was this an invite for phone sex? How do you do that? How do you open up that conversation? Hey, so I’m going to put my hand down my pants while we chat why don’t you do the same? I couldn’t ask what she’s wearing. I already knew. Nothing. Images of her naked, her breasts peeking out above a mountain of bubbles, her hair piled up on her head, errant damp curls falling down around her face—

  She cleared her throat and spoke. “Anyway, Wednesday.”

  Okay, so that wasn’t an invite for phone sex. I tamped down the images as best I could, knowing that I was headed for my shower as soon as this call ended. I’d been worked up on her sofa, but now, there was no turning back.

  “Yeah, so, I’ve got a table at Acre at seven. He will have been at the hospital and she’s set up for a tour with a real estate agent, showing her neighborhoods, where things are. You know, the whole recruiting hard push that Memphis is a fine place to live.” The words I said, but my brain was still on her naked body.

  “Gotcha,” she said casually. Like we were chatting over lunch, not having a late night, post-date call with her in the nude.

  “I’ll pick you up at six thirty,” I said, wanting to end the call before I did or said something incredibly stupid. I was having a hard time focusing on forming words.

  “I can meet you there,” she said, and I guessed from her tone that she was offering so as to not be a burden. To make it easy for me. To make me expend as little effort as possible on her. And fuck that. Any woman who liked mob movies, professional basketball, and oral sex was worth crossing seas for.

  “I’ll pick you up,” the words firm on my lips.

  A quick goodbye, both of us continuing to ignore the elephant in the room that was her nakedness, and I was in my own shower, hot water coursing down my back, dick in my hand, thinking of her.

  Sunday morning I wanted to text her, to call her, to talk with her, but I didn’t know the rules. And whatever the rules were, I was sure they’d changed in the nearly thirty years since I’d pursued a woman. And that was what I was doing, I realized. I was pursuing her. I liked her. I wanted her teasing wide smiles and happy green eyes. I wanted her under me. I wanted her on top of me. I wanted her anyway I could get her.

  I sipped my coffee and looked at the pictures hung on the greige kitchen walls. Of the family I loved so much. Of the family Laurie and I had created. Of the family that existed only in my memories now that the kids weren’t kids. Hell, the girls weren’t even home this summer. Cassie had gotten her coveted internship at Neiman Marcus, and Claire was working as a barista in Portland. I’d watched the first season of Girls and tried not to think too much about any of it, but there was no denying that my babies were their own people. They had their own lives. Hopefully lives that didn’t anywhere near resemble an HBO show, but still, my nest was empty. Other than the hefty checks to schools, they didn’t need me in the same way that they needed me just a few years ago.

  Deciding to risk it, I called Miller and to my surprise, he answered. “Hey, Dad. What’s up? How’s the jaw?”

  “Good. Healing nicely. Still got a hell of a bruise and I’m looking like a reprobate ’cause I haven’t shaved in a week, but it’s starting to fade and the dentist says my teeth are good. What are you up to?”

  “Breakfast.”

  “Me, too. So, I’m going to ask you a question and I need you to keep this between you and me. Don’t tell your sisters. Okay?”

  “Okay.” I heard the trepidation in his voice.

  “I’m fine. Healthy as a horse.” Spit it out, I coached myself. “What would you think if I said I was seeing someone?”

  “Are you seeing someone?” he asked.

  “Not sure yet.” There was a pause on the line and all I could hear was my heart pounding in my chest. If Miller didn’t think this was a good idea, that meant that his sisters would be devastated, and no amount of time with anyone was worth making my girls upset.

  “I wouldn’t have a problem with it, as long as she’s not like my age.” The warning in his voice was clear.

  “She’s not. She’s thirty-eight. An orthodontist.”

  “Would this happen to be the orthodontist who saw you after your accident?”

  “Yeah.” My smart kid.

  “Okay. I looked up her practice after you sent me your X-rays, so I could see if you’d gone to some fly-by-night sketchy dentist. Looks like a nice practice.”

  “Yeah, she went to Vandy for undergrad and dental school.”

  “I’m looking at the practice’s page now. Her bio says she’s got a son.”

  “Yeah. He’s in high school. She’s divorced.”

  “No problem from me,” he announced. “You have my blessing.” I heard the wry smile on his face.

  “And the girls?”

  “I don’t know, Dad. I mean, I can feel them out, but maybe take her on a date or two and see how things go first.”

  “And that’s why I’m calling you.”

  “Hold up. How long have you been seeing Dr.—Dr. Forsythe?”

  “We’ve been out a few times,” I said, not wanting to share details with my son.

  “And you just met her a week ago?”

  “Yeah. Listen, I know it’s fast, but I’m not talking about marrying her or anything, okay? I’m just talking about seeing someone. And if we continue to see each other, then I don’t want you and your sisters surprised or hurt by that. I love your mom. You know I do. Me seeing Amy doesn’t change that.”

  “I didn’t think that at all. And I don’t think that Cas and Claire Bear are going to think that either. Just go slow, old man. If your softball skills are any indication of your dating skills, you’re probably a bit rusty.”

  I gently bristled at the tease. Fifty-three wasn’t old. “Enough about me. What’s new with you? Are you seeing anyone?”

  “No one important enough to talk with you about.”

  When I was twenty-three, that was the truth for me, too. No clue that two years later I’d meet the love of my life. “Understood,” I said.

  “Gotta go. Rounds in twenty, and I have to prep.”

  “Love you, Miller.”

  “I love you too, Dad.”

  I set down my phone and turned back to flipping through the newspaper. I saw an article about how the latest mystery novel that had taken the world by storm was being made into a movie. I hadn’t read it yet. I wondered i
f Amy had. It wasn’t a spy book, but it was about an insurance investigator tracking down a stolen DaVinci drawing. I wondered if Amy liked art. And that random thought led me down a rabbit hole of memories. Laurie started taking art classes when the girls began first grade. When I moved to Memphis, I hung one of her oil paintings above my bed.

  The ache in my chest was back, hammering at me from the inside. Because the truth about losing someone you love? Time doesn’t heal those wounds. It doesn’t make it hurt less. It just makes it hurt less often.

  And then, when you hurt, it’s a one-two punch of anguish and anger. Anguish at the thought of what I was missing and anger at myself for not loving her enough by keeping her at the front of my mind.

  And at that, I changed out of my pajamas, scraped my face clean of the week’s-worth of whiskers, and slid into my work clothes. My real work clothes, not my weekday suit and tie. While yoga was good, and rowing each morning was better, getting my hands dirty was the best. Busy hands, calm mind. Cargo shorts, old T-shirt, wide-brimmed hat and heavy boots. I’d bought this house for its garden. It wasn’t big, but it was complex and established. My job was to nurture it. To coax it to bloom and shine.

  I pulled on my thin rubber weeding gloves and fell to my knees before the patch of bright purple phlox, pawing through the thick mass of flowers and leaves in search of tiny weeds, pinching back where the flowers were spilling too far onto the flagstone path that led to the front door. And while I kept myself busy, thoughts of Amy and Laurie and my kids and her son shifted through my head. I wanted to call Amy. To hear her voice. How was it possible to miss someone I’d known for less than a week? I didn’t understand it. The garden wasn’t the balm my soul needed today, and before I found solace at the bottom of a glass of Scotch, I headed into the office.

  13

  Amy

  Monday morning as an orthodontist was always fun. Odds were that a teen patient had managed to pull a bracket off a tooth, had spent the weekend with a big glob of wax wrapped around the metal and now had expectations that somehow this was going to get him out of school for the day. Standing in solidarity with my fellow parents, I had appointments starting at seven on Monday mornings so that kids could be patched up and sent on their way and not even need a tardy slip.