Mixed Signals (15 page)

E
llie's been traveling for business, but today she is back in the office. At lunch, she asks me to walk to the sandwich shop around the corner so we can catch up. An inch of slush coats the sidewalk from the melting snow and ice, so we walk single file in the narrow road, stepping around deep puddles every few feet. Halfway there, she shouts something over her shoulder. The only word I can make out is
Nico
because a delivery truck rumbles by at the same time, making it impossible to hear.

I wait until we reach the sub shop's parking lot to speak. “What about Nico?” A cold gust of wind kicks up from seemingly nowhere, reminding me that in March and sometimes in April, winter likes to sucker punch us. Just when we think we've moved on to sunshine, blue skies, and warm temperatures, BAM! Bad weather returns.

Ellie and I are side-by-side now. She grabs hold of my wrist with her gloved hand. “I saw the survey on the show's website. It's time to give back the ring and forget about Nico.”

“I'm trying.”

“You're not trying hard enough.” She opens the door to the restaurant and waits for me to pass through. There's a long line snaking from the front counter around the tables to the back wall. We take our place at the end. “Tomorrow night with Ben,” she says, “make it happen.”

“I'm thinking about it,” I admit, remembering the pink Victoria's Secret bag dangling from Nico's fingertips.

“We know what the pros are. What are the cons?” she asks. It's the same question she asks in most of our work meetings.

“It could ruin our friendship.”

“Or it could take it to the next level.”

I tell her about the night at Donovan's. How Ben was flirty and brought up our dancing together at the holiday party. “He said he was looking forward to doing it again.”

“So, he's definitely up for it,” she says. “You just have to show him that you are too.”

“How am I going to do that?” I ask as we reach the counter.

Before she places her order, she gives me a look similar to the one Mr. O'Brien often gives me that makes me feel like the stupidest person in the world.

Once we're seated with our food, she offers advice. “Be flirty. Make subtle innuendos. Touch him. Dance with him the way you did at the Christmas party.” Her suggestions remind me of the articles in
Seventeen
magazine that Rachel and I used to read out loud to each other when we were in our early teens. It's what we did all summer sitting by her pool.

I bite into my veggie pocket. A nasty earthy flavor fills my mouth
. Damn! I told them no mushrooms!
I gulp down my soda to wash away the taste. “Isn't it bad that I'd be using him to get over Nico?”

Ellie laughs. “He won't mind.”

I inspect my sandwich for more fungus.

“Just don't expect more,” Ellie says.

“What do you mean?”

She puts down her chicken Caesar wrap. “Sleeping with him doesn't mean the two of you will be in a relationship.” She picks up her sandwich again. “Don't think of it as anything but a night of fun.”

Rachel always teases me because I've never had sex outside a serious relationship. She says I should have been born before the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Well, it's time to prove that post-Nico Jillian is different. If I'm going to have a one-night stand, Ben's the best person to have it with because we're friends and I care about him.

“I will think of it as nothing more than moving on from Nico,” I say.

L
ate Saturday morning, I carry my overflowing laundry basket down the steep stairway to the basement. The musty smell hits me as soon as I hit the bottom step. I try not to breathe in the scent. Stupid, I realize, because it's not like I can hold my breath the entire time I'm down here.

The lights are on in the back corner where Mr. O'Brien let me set up my washing machine and dryer. For a second, I think I forgot to shut them off when I was here last, but then I see the old man hunched over his workbench.

“Hello,” I yell while I'm still several feet away so that I don't frighten him.

Startled, he jumps and turns in my direction. “What are you doing sneaking up on me like that?”

“Just came down to do my laundry.”

“You scared me half to death,” he says. Several broken pieces from what looks like an old coffee mug are scattered on the workbench in front of him. He slides them around, trying to fit them together as though he's doing a puzzle. The man hates to throw anything away, as evidenced by the stacks of plastic bins piled from the floor to the ceiling four rows deep along every grungy concrete wall of the cellar. Each of the containers is carefully labeled to identify its contents: Colleen's artwork, Colleen's baby pictures, 1996 Christmas cards, Playbills—That's the one that gets me, because I can't see the old man spending an evening in the theater.

As I sort through my dirty clothes, tossing bras and panties into the washer, I occasionally glance over at Mr. O'Brien because I'm embarrassed to be handling them in front of him. He's too busy rummaging through a drawer of his red tool chest to pay any attention to me though. He pulls out Elmer's glue, rubber cement, a glue stick, Gorilla Glue wood adhesive, and finally clear epoxy, which apparently is what he's looking for because he returns everything else to the drawer. He lowers his head toward the workbench and squirts the epoxy onto a thin wooden stick and then carefully transfers the adhesive to a broken piece of the mug. It seems like an awful lot of work to repair an old coffee cup.

When I finish loading my dirty clothes into the machine, he's still painstakingly gluing the pieces back together. “Goodbye,” I say quietly so that I don't scare him again.

He doesn't even look up. I make my way toward the stairs but stop when I walk into a spiderweb stretching from a piece of lumber resting against the wall to the metal shelves housing more of Mr. O'Brien's tools. I cringe as I brush it aside.

Mr. O'Brien clears his throat. “Zac knocked it off the table this morning,” he says. “Caught him throwing it in the trash. Don't even know why he had to touch it.” He looks up now, his blue eyes watering more than usual. “It was Carol's. Drank her coffee from it every single morning.”

Now I feel my eyes misting up as well. “I'm sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?” he asks. “Zac's the one who broke it.”

I climb back up the stairs with my empty laundry basket. Somehow, it seems heavier than it did on the way down.

* * *

After my laundry is done, I spend the rest of the day getting ready for Renee's party. I go to the nail salon around the corner from my apartment and get a French manicure and pedicure. From there, I drive across town to see Karen, my hairdresser, to have her style my hair because I can never get it to hold a curl the way she can.

Karen was cutting my hair long before I ever met Nico. Her husband, Phil, is a huge sports fan who regularly listens to
BS Morning Sports Talk
, so she knows all about Nico's and my split. She even sent an email to tell me how sorry she was. “I was so excited when I saw you on the books for a blow dry,” she says as soon as I walk in. “Does this mean you have a special date tonight?”

How can I possibly explain what tonight is? “Kind of.”

She hands me a cape and leads me to the sink for a wash. “So, who is he? How did you meet?”

“I've known him for a long time,” I answer. “We work together.”

“Ohhh, an office romance. How scandalous. Are you keeping it on the down low?”

Jeez, I hadn't thought about that. If Ben and I sleep together, I don't want anyone at the office but Ellie knowing, especially not Renee, who gets her hair cut at this same salon. I better squelch this right now so that rumors don't start. “It's not really a romance. One of our other coworkers is celebrating her twenty-fifth anniversary by renewing her vows, and we're going to the party together.”

The water she's spraying over my head is much too hot. I jerk upright.

“Sorry,” she says. She adjusts the temperature and is quiet while she pumps the shampoo into her palm. “You must be into him if you're getting your hair done though.”

“We're friends. I guess he's my work husband.” I feel all the tension leaving my muscles as she massages my scalp with her fingertips.

Jason, another hairdresser who's washing one of his clients' hair at the sink next to ours, chimes in. “Karen's going to have you looking so hot when you leave here that your work husband will be asking for conjugal privileges tonight.”

B
ack at home, I have less than an hour to get dressed. Instead of picking underwear from my usual drawer, I go to the nightstand where I keep my special lingerie and select a red lacy brassiere and panty set that Nico gave me for Valentine's Day last year. I swear I feel like a porn star whenever I wear them, which, okay, was just one time—the night Nico gave them to me, because he insisted I try them on. I look in the mirror now and admire myself in them. Not too bad. I fantasize about taking a selfie and firing it off to Nico.
Going out with Ben tonight and look what I'm wearing.
No doubt the picture would end up on
BS Morning Talk Show
's website.

I slip on a dress I took from Rachel. It's short-sleeved and green, or as Ralph Lauren likes to call the color, malachite. When I tried it on earlier, I thought it made me look skinny because of the way it twists and gathers at the waist. Looking in the mirror now though, I decide it makes me look matronly. I take it off and instead put on the blue dress that I wore to my father's retirement party.

Just as I finish changing, the bell rings. Ben is twenty minutes early picking me up. My breath catches in my throat when I open the door and see him standing there. Dressed in a charcoal gray suit with a light blue shirt and solid dark blue tie, he's holding a bouquet of flowers. He always looks handsome at work, but tonight on my front step, he is disturbingly good-looking.

“Hi,” I say, trying to play it cool and ignoring the pounding in my chest.

He stares at me, grinning through the storm door.

Mr. O'Brien's station wagon pulls into the driveway. I hurriedly usher Ben into the house before the old man gets out of his car. I don't want to introduce them. When Nico and I first started going out, Mr. O'Brien would wait up for me. After a few dates, when it became clear Nico would be sticking around for a while, my landlord made a point of knocking on my door to introduce himself, stopping just short of asking Nico his intentions. Later Mr. O'Brien mentioned that Nico didn't look him in the eye when the two shook hands, something my landlord apparently never got over.

“Your hair. It's different,” Ben says.

Does he hate it?
“Same hair I've always had.” I attempt to smile, but now I wonder if Karen overdid it with the curls.

“It's not usually curly,” he says.
Damn. I should have styled it myself instead of shelling out forty bucks plus a tip.
He grins. “It looks amazing.”

Ben eyes me appreciatively. “Did you wear that dress for me?” he asks in a low voice.

“Maybe.”

“Well, you look really hot.” He steps toward me. I think he's going to kiss me, but he hands me the flowers.

“These make tonight seem like an official date,” I say, laughing to make it seem like I don't really think it's a date.

“It is, isn't it?” Ben asks with a cocky grin.

I remember Ellie's instructions to be flirty. “It can be anything you want.” I was going for coy. Judging from Ben's confused expression, I didn't pull it off. I should have made my voice breathy. I repeat it in my head that way. It definitely sounds more flirty. I decide to use a breathy voice the rest of the night.

We stand awkwardly in the foyer, staring at each other. “How about a glass of wine before we go?” If I'm going to go through with what I have in mind tonight, I'll need alcohol, lots of alcohol.

With his hand on my lower back, Ben escorts me down the hall. “I have a good feeling about tonight,” he says.

“Me too.”

In the doorframe between my living room and kitchen, Ben comes to an abrupt stop. I follow his eyes right to Nico's jacket, still hanging over the back of the chair. “You still have that?”

“I just—”
I just what? I'm just waiting for him to come back? “
I haven't had a chance to return it to him yet.”

Ben frowns. “It makes it look like he still lives here or that you're expecting him back at any time.”

“It's one coat,” I say.

“You could throw it away.” He gives me a challenging look, like he expects me to take it to the trash now.

I hand him the bottle of cabernet and a corkscrew. “Can you open this while I dig out the wine glasses?”

“Sure,” he says, but he's still frowning.

After I pour our drinks, I ask him to make a toast. He thinks for a minute, staring at Nico's leather coat. “To you getting on with your life.”

I move my glass before he can touch it with his. “And to us having a good time together.” This time I use a breathy voice and narrow my eyes, trying to look seductive.

“Are your contacts bothering you?” he asks before clanking my glass.

* * *

All the guests are sitting in chairs arranged in a semicircle around a fireplace on the far wall of the dining room. Ben and I scurry across the dark hardwood to the only empty seats at the end of the last row. He stretches his long legs sideways and extends one arm over the back of my chair. I move all the way back so that my shoulders brush up against his forearm. Any type of physical contact is good, according to Ellie's instructions—and those old
Seventeen
magazine articles, if I remember right.

Dressed in a long off-white gown, Renee stands in the center of the circle, beaming at a tuxedo-clad, grinning Lenny. Their daughter, Cheryl, stands in front of them with a leather-bound notepad in her hand. She has the same hooded eyes as her father, as well as an identical bump in her nose. I haven't seen her since her high school graduation two years ago. Back then, she didn't wear makeup. It was a form of rebellion against her mother, who wouldn't be caught dead without lipstick and mascara. The rebellion is clearly over. Tonight, Cheryl's made up like she's about to do a photo shoot for Cover Girl.

Renee's son, Joel, slumps against the brick wall behind his sister, staring at the floor. At sixteen, he is tall and lanky, clearly still growing into his body. Nico and I took him to a hockey game last season. He's grown half a foot since then.

Lenny nods at Cheryl. She takes a deep breath and opens her notebook. “Good evening and thank you for coming.” She reads in a slow and deliberate manner.

Ben leans toward me. “She should have guzzled down wine to loosen up.” He doesn't say it, but I hear the word
too
at the end of his sentence, and I feel like he's passing judgment on me. I slugged down two big pours before we left my apartment. Meanwhile, Ben didn't finish his first glass.

Cheryl continues. “Twenty-five years ago, my mother and father joined their hearts and hands and vowed to love, honor, and cherish each other.” She finally looks up from her notes. “My dad also swears that my mom promised to obey, but she denies that.”

The guests laugh. Renee shakes her head.

Cheryl consults her notes again. “Throughout the years, life has brought my parents some wonderful blessings.” She looks up and grins. “Me, for example, and some challenges as well.” She looks at Joel, whose cheeks turn ruddy.

“Through it all, they fulfilled the promises they made to each other. Today, they want everyone to know, knowing everything they do, they would do it all again.” She pauses, scans the crowd, and then turns back to her parents. “Do you want to renew your vows?”

“We do,” Renee and Lenny say together.

Lenny reaches for Renee's hand. “All these years later,” he says, “I still can't believe that you picked me. You're my best friend. You know me better than anyone else does, and still you want to be with me.” He sounds incredulous. “You are my one and only, my soul mate. It is a privilege to recommit myself to you and our marriage today.”

I glance at Ben, expecting him to be scrolling through his phone, checking scores or messages, because that's what Nico would be doing. Instead, Ben is leaning forward in his seat, paying such close attention to the vow renewal that he's not even aware I'm looking at him.

I refocus my attention on Renee and Lenny, noticing the way Lenny's voice breaks as he recites his vows, the mist in Renee's eyes as she smiles up at him, the way their fingers are entwined. If I reached out into the air in front of me, I swear I could grab hold of a piece of their love. It's that palpable. I think of Mr. O'Brien earlier in the day, gluing his dead wife's mug back together. Nico and I didn't love each other like that, I realize. We would have swept up the broken pieces and deposited them in the trash without a second thought. I want someone to love me enough to renew vows with me on our twenty-fifth anniversary and glue my coffee cup back together.

When the ceremony is over, I remain seated as everyone around me rises and rushes to the bar in the other room. Noticing that I haven't moved, Ben returns to his chair. “You okay?” he asks.

“Sure,” I say, forcing a smile because I don't want to be Debbie Downer.

“Someday we're going to do this too,” he says.

I shoot him a questioning look.

“I don't mean together,” he hurriedly adds, getting back to his feet. “But we're each going to find that right person to make vows to. I'm sure of it.”

I tilt my head and smile up at him. “You had me so excited when I thought you meant we'd be reciting vows to one another,” I tease. This time my flirting is not premeditated.

“I wouldn't necessarily rule it out,” he says, flashing me his lady-killer grin. It's the first time he has smiled since we were standing in my foyer.

* * *

Ben and I are seated with two of Renee's college friends, Darlene and Jennifer, and their husbands. Darlene looks like a blond version of Renee, with the same short, spiky haircut, wide forehead, prominent cheekbones, and inflated lips. I'd bet my life they went to the same plastic surgeon.

“You could be her sister,” Ben says.

“If you mean the much younger, prettier sister, then yes.” Darlene touches Ben's arm as she speaks.

Jennifer has salt-and-pepper hair and a full, round face. I'm pretty sure she's never had work done and can picture her teasing Renee and Darlene about theirs. She hasn't spoken a word but her name, but I like her already.

After we all introduce ourselves, I expect Ben to escape to the bar to watch the Celtics game until dinner is served, because that's what Nico would do. Instead, Ben has the table in stitches with his impersonations of Renee and her hot flashes at work. When he's done with his stories, he says, “Give us the goods on her college years. Stuff we can use to blackmail her.”

Darlene and Jennifer talk over each other filling us in on Renee's days at the University of Massachusetts.

As the salad is being served, a hefty man with curly dark hair joins our table. He introduces himself as Tommy Mackay and tells us he's Lenny's cousin. “Looks like I timed it perfectly and missed the vow renewal. What a crock of shit that is.” He reaches over me to grab a roll. “You married?” he asks, looking at Ben.

Ben shakes his head. “Smart man,” Tommy says.

“Or an unlucky one,” Ben mumbles.

His remark surprises me. I look up at him and notice a twinge of hurt in his expression.

Between large bites of his chicken saltimbocca, Tommy tells us about the night Renee and Lenny met. “She was dancing with me first,” he says. “We didn't even make it through an entire song. Can't believe Len's put up with her for twenty-five years.” He laughs, opening his mouth filled with half-chewed food. “I'm kidding. I love Renee.”

Ben elbows me. “Renee wanted to set you up with Tommy,” he whispers.

I think he's kidding, but then I remember Renee telling me about Lenny's single cousin. Why in the world would she think this buffoon is a good match for me?
Because he's over thirty and he's single.
Damn. I pick up the glass of red wine the waitress has already refilled two times and take a large sip.

Tommy stares at me like he might have heard what Ben said about Renee wanting to set us up. “Jillian,” he says. “That name is familiar. How do you know Renee and Lenny?”

“I work with Renee,” I answer. “The both of us do,” I say, pointing at Ben.

“That's right,” Tommy says. “You're the one who was dating the producer of the morning sports radio show.”

Jennifer's husband's head snaps in my direction. “You're Jill from
BS Morning Sports Talk
?”

I reach for my wine again.

“Branigan sure is gunning for you,” he says. “What did you do to the guy?”

He and Tommy stare, waiting for me to answer. I take another sip of wine. They don't turn away from me. “I called his ball out,” I say. They look at me blankly. “During a tennis match. It was near the line. I said it was out, and he lost because of that.”

“Was it out?” Tommy asks.

Ben cocks his head in my direction.

“It was really close. Probably could have gone either way.”

Tommy laughs. “Bet you wish you had called it the other way now.”

I reach for my glass again, but it's empty. “Excuse me.” I bolt for the bar, where I order a rum and Coke.

A few minutes later Ben joins me. “You okay?”

“The ball was on the line,” I admit. “I should have called it in.”

Lenny and a group of men approach the bar, slapping each other on the back and laughing. Lenny winks at me.

“I know that,” Ben says. “It wouldn't make sense for Branigan to go on this vendetta against you if the ball was out.” He flags down the bartender and asks for a scotch and soda.