Someday Maybe (21 page)

Chapter Thirty

Once I was out of recovery, I slept for a full day, waking only for food and to be poked at by cold metal objects. On release day, I didn’t even get to go to my apartment, but was wheeled to the hospital curb and loaded into the back seat of an airport shuttle next to my mother.

During the sixty-five-minute flight to Santa Barbara, I nodded off and on, doing my best to listen to Mom’s doctorly instructions for achieving full recovery. It seemed I was to be their prisoner for at least a week—in the bedroom where I grew up.

Krikit was there when we arrived, relishing—a little too enthusiastically—that
I
was finally the one who needed help.

“Justin Timberlake is gay,” was the first thing I said.

She gaped at me. “For that, I’ll be removing your other vital organs while you sleep.”

A few days later, Meghan came over. We went for a painfully slow stroll up the block. She held up most of the conversation with talk of Ryan and wedding plans.

“Gio’s designing my dress.” Megs bared her teeth in a fake smile. “She’s insisting.”

“Oy.” I cringed in sympathy. “That’ll be, um, fun.”

It wasn’t until we stopped at the subdivision’s playground that she turned the subject to what had happened. “They totally cut you open, babe.” She helped me into a swing.

“My stomach looks like Scarface.”

She sat on the swing next to me. “No more two-piece bathing suits.”

“Yeah,
that’ll
be my excuse this summer.”

Meghan swung for a while, pumping her legs, wind blowing through her hair the higher she got. When she slowed down, she said, “So, you were with Rad when it happened.”

Hearing his old nickname reminded me that, not so long ago, my best friend had a major Jones for Oliver. I began cautiously, ignorant of how much she knew. “It’s not what you think.”

“I’m not upset about it. I’m with Ryan. I love him.” She looked down, smiling sweetly at the grass. “
Damn
, do I love him.” She took a long swig from a tall water bottle. I grinned, silently thanking Ryan and his good influence. We all needed Megs healthy and around for a very long time. “Anyway, things with Rad never took off. Were you interested in him the whole time?”

I bit my lip, not sure how to answer that honestly. “No.”—which was the truth—“but it’s a long story.”

She tipped her chin to face the sun. “I plan on hanging out right here to work on my tan. I could use a long story.”

I lifted my feet, allowing the light wind to blow my swing around.

I’d only seen him alone that one time, right after I woke up from surgery. Sarah stopped by my room the next day. Some girls from work sent flowers. Giovanna was a pretty permanent fixture. But every time Oliver came, there were always other people around.

Clear-headed now, I still had a difficult time piecing together exactly what had led up to being rushed to the ER. Pain and stress can mess with the memory, I knew that too well. In addition to the appendicitis, I’d bashed my head pretty good. There was still a lump. I was in no position to completely trust my memories of that night.

“Do you remember when I told you Oliver and I knew each other our first year of college?”

“Yeah.”

“That wasn’t the whole truth.” I stared down at the patch of dirt between my feet. “We dated back then.” I let the sentence sit.

“Dated,” Meghan repeated. “As in…”

“As in, he was my boyfriend for eight months.”

“So, you really did have a secret lover back then? Wait—you didn’t tell me? And then he moved back here and you
still
didn’t tell me?”

I nodded, waiting for the explosion.

After a beat, Megs exhaled a laugh out her nose, then she laughed out loud. “Well, that
explains
it. Half the time I thought you wanted him and the other half I thought you hated him.”

“Uh, no.” I swallowed, my throat raw and dry—side effects from surgery. “I broke up with him. It ended badly.”
Ha ha. Understatement of the century
. “Very badly. I wanted to forget it so I never told anyone. Then seeing him again was…weird.”

“Babe.” She gave me a disapproving eye. “You could’ve told me.”

I lifted my chin and laughed. “Ha!”

“What?”

“Seriously? You were so into him. There was no way I’d do that to you.”

“Rachel.” She lifted her feet off the ground so her shoulder bumped against mine. “You’re my very best friend.”

“And you’re mine.”

Which was all that needed to be said.

“If you’re not dating now, how did it happen you were at his house that night?” This seemed like a logical question, so I told her about my dream and about being afraid to be alone. Saying it out loud should’ve made me feel like a mental case, but I knew Megs understood.

“Any new dreams lately?”

“Not a one. Which is so weird. Pain meds must be blocking my chi.”

She agreed with this assessment and started swinging. “So, to recap, you were having reoccurring nocturnal death premonitions, and decided to go to Rad’s—”

“Meg. Please don’t call him that. He hates it and so do I.”

“Well, now.” She pressed her lips together in a smile. “So. You thought the fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse was after you and you wanted to die with Oliver. Is that the gist?”

I groaned and looked away.

“I’m not judging. I just want to get it right.” She swung for a few minutes then continued. “What happened right before the appendix thing?”

“I’d been asleep, but I had a nightmare so I got out of bed. Oliver was up, too, in the kitchen.”

“Does he sleep in the nude?”

I could have answered this accurately—based on information from seven years ago—but refrained. “Irrelevant,” I said. “I don’t think he’d been to bed yet, anyway.”

“Okay, so it’s the middle of the night and you’re in the kitchen. Then…?”

“We argued.”

“What about?”

I bit my lip. “I think it had to do with basketball.”

Meghan frowned. “You’re not giving me anything.”

“No, wait.” I touched my head. “That was before I went to bed. Out of nowhere, he started yelling at me about never going to games with him in college. He brought up stuff from years ago, totally went off on me. He wanted to rehash why we broke up.”

“Huh. Go on.”

“After that, I went to bed.”

“Got it. So you were arguing then you stomped off.”

“I didn’t stomp. I stormed.”

“Uh huh. What next?”

This was where it got fuzzy, so I spoke with caution. “Oliver hit his head, so I got him some ice. He was talking about how I used to wear his clothes.”

“Why?”

I remembered this part clearly. “Because I…I hadn’t worn anything to bed that night, so I was kind of borrowing one of his shirts.”

“I see.” Meghan scratched her chin. “So you were tenderly pressing ice against the man’s head while naked under his favorite shirt. I’m sure
that
wasn’t a blinding turn-on for him or anything.”

“You’re making it sound more calculating than it was.”

“What was he wearing?”

I didn’t have to think hard about that detail, either. “Boxers.”

“Rachel Daughtry.” Meghan pressed a finger to my shoulder and made a sizzling sound. “You were seducing him.”

“I wasn’t. This is coming out wrong.”

“Did you kiss?”

The question made my heart thrum, I could feel my pulse in my stitches. “I think so. I’m pretty sure.” Some memories of that night were too vivid to not be true, like when I’d touched his face and he looked up at me, and he’d ran his mouth across my neck, caught me when I’d crumpled to the floor of the kitchen.

“Babe.” Megs knocked my shoulder. “I can tell by your expression that we have a lot of catching up to do.”

That we did. As we walked back to my parents’ house, Meghan gave me an earful of psychobabble, how my fear of losing Oliver again manifested itself by causing me to dream about dying at his hand. This didn’t make sense to me, but Meghan was the expert here, so I listened and nodded and counted the steps until I could take another pain pill.

Her words echoed in my head as I drifted off to sleep that night. Blissfully dreamless.

Chapter Thirty-One

My parents and I returned to San Francisco a week later. With Roger overseas for another few days, they didn’t want to leave me alone in the apartment. Even Sydney was still at doggy sleep-away daycare. Mom was literally clinging to the front door while Dad loaded their bags in the cab. If they missed their flight back to Switzerland, I might have another medical emergency. I loved my parents to death, but Mom had never gotten over her hovering. Luckily, Sarah showed up before Mom decided to change her plane ticket.

I gave my mother one final hug before I yanked Sarah inside and shut the door.

“She cares; it’s sweet.”

“Yeah.” I laughed. “What are you doing on this side of town in the middle of the day?”

“I was over at the community college. They had a one-day painting seminar that USF doesn’t offer. Pre-Raphaelites.” She stepped over my purse and the duffel bag I’d borrowed from Krikit. “Please say you’re coming back to work tomorrow. Moron Bruce is on a rampage. You could do his job so much better than him.”

“You copied me on all the emails you sent to him. You could do it better, too.”

“He’s a moron,” we said together.

“So, seriously. How are you doing? Is everything”—she waved her hands in the general vicinity of my stomach—“healing?”

“I had a doctor’s appointment yesterday and another in a couple of days. So far so good.”

“You look great.”

I laughed and reached for my stack of mail. “Yeah, right. I look like death.”

“
Rachel
. Don’t joke about…
that
. We were so worried; you have no idea.”

“Sorry.” I lowered the pile of magazines still wrapped in plastic. “I sometimes forget I was catatonic for an entire day.”

Sarah shook her head. “It’s just nice to see you back home.”

“What else went on last week? Besides Bruce the moron being a moron?”

She flopped down on the couch. I did the same, just not as much flopping. “I painted a lot, trying to beef up my portfolio for finals.” She told me about having two lunch dates with two different guys and then skipping out on Tim’s party Friday night.

“Why didn’t you go? Not that any sane person needs a reason to avoid such an event.”

“I drove Ollie to the airport that morning then crashed at his place all weekend. So damn good to get away from campus drama.”

“Yeah, nice break,” I said with a breezy smile, but that wasn’t the part of her explanation that interested me. “So…” I played with the cuff of my sleeve. “Your brother took a trip?”

“He’s in Vancouver again. It was supposed to be for two days, but there’s some problem and he’ll be gone all week. They just had a snowstorm up there. In April!”

“Huh.” I felt a combination of disappointment that he wasn’t here and impatience for Sarah to talk about him some more. But I didn’t know what to say, so I stuck with the weather. “We’re, uh, lucky we live in a temperate zone.”

“Did he call you?” Yeah. Sarah was much better than me at getting right to the point. “I asked him last week if he’d talked to you, and he said he didn’t have your number. Whatever. So I programed it into his cell. I asked him again the next day, and he said no.”

“Oh. Uh, no.” I stood up and returned to that unsorted mound of mail on the kitchen table, trying not to feel too shattered. “I haven’t talked to him at all.” I sifted through envelopes and magazines, stacking them into random piles.

Sarah muttered a very impressive compound swear word. She must’ve been taking lessons from Bruce in my absence. “He’s such an
idiot
, Rach.”

“Bruce?”

She gawked at me, her mouth hanging open. “No. My idiot brother who’s in love with you.”

“Oh.” I lowered myself into a chair, feeling lightheaded. “Him.”

“I’m
sorry
, Rach.” She didn’t sound sorry at all; she sounded ticked. “But it’s all so
stupid
. He camped outside your hospital room for two days, and everyone on your floor heard you crying his name before you went into surgery. The nurses told me about it when I got there.”

“I did what?”

“Nobody told you?”

“Oh, no.” I covered my face with my hands, trying to remember. Trying not to remember.

“He’s my brother and you’re one of my best friends, and it’s just
stupid
. What are you going to do?”

I lowered my hands and shrugged.

“Right,” she snapped, then scoffed sarcastically. “That’s exactly what
Ollie
did when I asked him. He
shrugged
.” She lifted her shoulders extra high in a mocking gesture. “What the hell does that even mean?”

I almost shrugged again, but was afraid she’d clock me.

“So what if he’s in Canada?” She stood up and started pacing. “Do cell phones not work across the border? Then I was thinking, maybe he’s super busy ‘cause of his new client or whatever and then I’m like, well, so what? He should call you, Rach, and—”

“Sarah. Not helping.” Though her thoughts were pretty much right along the same track as mine.

Her bottom lip started to tremble, then her expression completely broke as she burst into tears. Why
she
was the one who needed comfort, I had no idea. But I walked to her with outstretched arms and let her sob into my shirt.

“I’m sorry.” She sniveled. “I didn’t mean to yell at you. It’s just, I love him and I love you and…”

“Shhh, I know.”

She jerked away and eyed me in concern. “Did I hurt you?” She gestured toward my missing appendix region.

“I’m fine.” Though I did have to blink back a few tears of my own. “Whoa. Remind me to never get on your bad side.” I went to get a box of Kleenex when I saw a letter on the corner of the table. The envelope was thick and glossy. The raised logo where the return address should be made my heart stop.

I grabbed it and tore it open, nervous butterflies in my stomach. I had to read the first few lines twice. My heart sputtered, lightened.

“Rach?” Sarah sniffed. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s from
Redbook
.” I displayed the letter trembling in my hand. “I sent them a short story months ago. They offered to buy it for publication, and an editor wants to talk about signing me to a series contract.”

“
Redbook
?” Sarah repeated. “The magazine?”

I nodded, feeling an expression of total disbelief on my face. Then joy.

“Oh, Rach.” She broke into a huge grin, and her eyes watered up again. “That’s amazing!”

“I’m supposed to email the editor’s assistant and set up a time.”

“You’re going to write for
Redbook
, one of the most uber-glam magazines in the world! You’ll be famous.” She gasped and covered her mouth. “OMG. Rach.” She lowered her hands. “You’re just like Carrie Bradshaw.”

I laughed, about to explain how the real world worked, but then I thought, aw screw it, and I let out my own high-pitched squeal, embracing the joy. “Totally fabulous, right? Manhattan cocktails and Manolo Blahnik strappy sandals for everyone!”

Now if only I could track down that Mr. Big of mine.

The second Sarah left, I sat on my bed and reread the letter from
Redbook
. After numerous rewrites, I shot an email to Julia Charleston, Vivian O’Neil’s assistant.

After that, I knew I was in for a long wait, which didn’t stop me from making a pot of tea and glaring impatiently at my empty inbox screen. I assumed it would take much longer, since they’d had my stories for months, but I received a return email from Julia before I’d finished my third cup. Vivian would be telephoning me in two days, one o’clock my time.

The joy hit again. I’d really done something. I was in the middle of changing my entire life, with absolutely no plan. A few nervous doubts tried to push past my excitement, but I wouldn’t let them in.

Besides dodging Bruce, the first thing I did when I returned to work the next day was schedule a three-hour block on my work calendar: one hour before the call, one hour for the call, and one hour after. I was nothing if not thorough.

The rest of the day, I did my best to unbury my desk from the two weeks I’d missed work.

That night, I had a dream. The first since I’d been at Oliver’s.