The Dating Intervention: Book 1 in the Intervention Series (3 page)

Zachary opened his front door. His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.
 

You’re just being paranoid. He always smiles like that.
 

“Hey,” he said, reaching out and squeezing her shoulder.

“Hey,” she responded. “You know, if you’re too busy for lunch, we can just skip it. I can grab something from The Sand Witch.”
 

“Nah, it’s okay. I’ve got to eat, anyway, right?”
 

As Delaney attempted to quell the sense of foreboding growing in her stomach, Zachary shut and locked the front door, and they walked companionably toward the downtown square, side-by-side but not touching.
 

Instead of focusing on Zachary’s cool reception, Delaney thought about the town of Juniper as they walked. The quaint little city had always been home. Nestled into northern Arizona’s pine-covered mountains, it was cozy and absolutely imperfect for a single woman in her thirties.
 

Its turn-of-the-century downtown plaza featured perfectly manicured lawns, a bubbling fountain, and huge shade trees bordering all four sides. Boutiques, galleries, and restaurants lined the square, bringing tourists and locals into town year-round. Delaney loved everything about it. She loved that she could walk from her house to the square in less than ten minutes. She loved that she could shop for perfect, unique gifts, interesting books, and fun outfits without driving across town. She loved that she almost always saw a familiar face and that the people in her favorite shops knew her by name.
 

She inhaled the clean scent of the snow, smiling to herself.
 

“It snowed?” Zachary asked.
 

“Obviously,” she said. It was almost noon, and he was so wrapped up in whatever he needed fuel for, he hadn’t even noticed?
 

“What are you working on?” she asked, softening her tone.
 

“Oh, it’s a new paper about John Dewey.”
 

“Who’s that?”
 

“He was a philosopher. One of the developers of pragmatism. Where should we go?”
 

“What will best nourish your huge brain?”
 

He chuckled.
 

“The Sand Witch sounds fine.”
 

Delaney later thought she should have noticed Zach’s strange behavior. He barely spoke during their walk to the deli, ordered a plain turkey on rye rather than his usual Italian sub, and ate only half of it while Delaney wolfed down her veggie sandwich. For once, they ate in relative silence.
 

“So, no new opinion on gun control?” Delaney said, wiping the avocado off her fingers with the thin brown deli napkins.

“Not today,” Zach answered.
 

“What about taxes?”

He didn’t answer.

“You look tired, Zachary. I think you’re working too hard.”
 

“It’s not that. Delaney–”
 

She held up a finger.
 

“You don’t have to explain. You’re allowed to have a biorhythm. This is just a low-energy day, right? I’ll walk you home, drop you off and leave you to your herbal tea and philosophy paper. I just expected a zinger with you today after I saw yesterday’s story on the news about the tax increases. But it’s totally fine.”
 

Zach’s thin chest rose and then fell. His light blue eyes, practically invisible through the layer of grease on his glasses, didn’t meet hers.
 

“Delaney,” he started again.

Oh, shit
.
Shit, shit, shit. You have to be kidding me
.
 

Blake, the brawny owner of the deli, had stopped moving around in the kitchen. He stood behind the counter, drying blue plastic cups. He took off his chef’s hat with a meaty hand and used the dishtowel to wipe the sweat off his head. Delaney wondered first if he’d keep using that towel to dry cups, and then she wondered if he was eavesdropping. She closed her eyes.
 

“Delaney,” Zach said again, “you know I really enjoy our conversations, right? I really enjoy our time together. But the thing is, I need to close this chapter of my life. I’m going for my tenure at the college, and I need to focus on my work. It’s very important.”
 

“And I’m
not
important?” she whisper-yelled, opening her eyes to glare at him.

Blake resumed his cup-drying. Sure enough, he continued using the towel he’d used to wipe his head. Delaney made a mental note to order bottled drinks from now on.
 

“Of course you are, Del. But that’s exactly why you deserve someone who can devote more time and energy to you. More spirit.”
 

“Of course you’d say something like that,” she said.
 

Hating herself for the bitterness in her voice, she stood up, almost knocking over the tiny table, covered in its green and white checkered cloth. She threw her greasy, balled-up napkin onto her greasy paper plate.

“Forget my offer to walk you home,” she said, infusing her voice with as much coldness as she could. She pulled her coat off the back of the chair, which tipped over. She scrambled to pick it up.
 

Just as she shoved through the glass door, making the bells jingle wildly, Zachary caught up with her.
 

“You’re a free spirit, Del. You deserve to fly.”
 

The door shut behind them.
 

“Oh, give me a break,” she said, whirling around to face him. “Just give me a break. What is it, really? Why don’t you want to be with me?”

Zachary looked down. Either he was looking at his feet, or he’d discovered a new bug species, Delaney wasn’t sure. She just knew he wasn’t looking at her.
 

“Del, when we first met, you were a breath of fresh air.”
 

“King of clichés today,” she muttered, struggling to get her coat on, annoyed that Zachary wasn’t helping her. He’d never been big on manners, though. That was one of the things she’d so loved about Mark. Her eyes burned with the threat of tears.

“You were so fun, so full of life. Your eyes! They’re so green. They just sparkle with mirth. I loved arguing with you, debating with you, just being around your … energy.”
 

Sparkle with mirth? How lame is that?
“But?”
 

“But you’re exhausting. I can’t keep up with you. I was telling the truth, before, when I said I need to focus on my work. I really do. If you weren’t so … argumentative, so … challenging, I could do both. But you drain me.”
 

Ouch.
 

For the briefest of moments, Delaney felt like crying—again. Zachary was dumping her. Dumping her! And he was like a tiny flea on the ass of an elephant. Which made her even smaller. This was bad. And very depressing.

Am I really draining?
 

She pushed the thought out of her mind before it could take any kind of shape, and replaced it with anger.

“Well, as long as we’re being honest, Zachary,” she said, “you bore me to tears. You’re ridiculous, self-righteous and self-centered. You want to save the world, but you don’t actually do anything to help anyone. You sit home and write papers all day! About pragmatism! Who actually
reads
them? And what the hell is pragmatism, anyway? I find you equally exhausting. And the sex wasn’t even that good!”
 

She spun around and almost ran into a bundled-up couple walking arm-in-arm down the sidewalk. As soon as they’d passed, she whirled back around to look at Zachary. He stood in the same spot, his hands in his pockets, his thrift store clothes hanging loosely on his thin frame, his eyes downcast and the lines around his mouth etched deeply into a frown.

“Ridiculous!” she called again.

He didn’t respond. The fight left her.

She should have seen it coming. But what would she have done? Avoided Xander completely? Beaten him to the punch? She wouldn’t have done either, she knew. Especially because she hadn’t yet replenished her back-ups after Mark and Zachary ended things. And so it probably all would have played out the same way. In the end, she would still have ended up alone and lonely, the dating system she’d designed as fail-proof having failed. Completely.
 

After storming away from The Zachary Scene, she called Xander to see if he wanted to go rock climbing or kayaking. No answer. That should have been her first clue, since he almost always picked up, but she persisted.
 

Finally, after she worked out, called Xander, showered, called Xander and ate a container of leftover cashew chicken from Red Lantern, she tried him again.
 

He finally answered.

“Hey,” Delaney said. “You sound tired.”

“What’s up?”
 

“Oh. Okay,” Delaney said, suddenly feeling awkward. She got off the couch and went to the kitchen to finish cleaning up the cartons from her lunch. “Well, I was calling to see if you wanted to go climbing out at the dells today, maybe after I drop Summer’s kids off?”
 

“I can’t today.”
 

“Oh. Okay. Big plans on your day off?”
 

“We need to talk.”
 

Dread, which had appeared at the murky bottom of her consciousness at the start of this phone call, came clawing its way to the surface. Delaney stopped cleaning and plopped down on the ottoman.
 

Maybe I should just hang up now. Pretend I lost the connection.
 

“Seriously?”
 

“Uh. Yeah, Delaney. Seriously. We need to talk.”
 

She closed her eyes. Swallowed. Put a hand over her mouth to stifle a groan.

“Okay. Lay it on me.”
 

She flopped onto her back so her head hung off one end of the ottoman and her legs off the other.
 

“When we’re together, we have so much fun. You know? I love the climbing, the kayaking, the camping. Hell, I love the grocery shopping. Everything with you is an adventure.”
 

That doesn’t sound so bad.

“So …” she said.
 

“So,” he repeated. “Everything is an adventure. Except the sex. I know you’re with me, here. We like, barely ever have sex.”
 

It was true. She just wasn’t that attracted to him. Tall, thin, bordering on gangly, Xander probably weighed a buck fifty soaking wet and carrying a dumbbell or two. A large nose, small jaw, and grimy fingernails made him look like a caricature of himself.

“I mean,” he continued, “can you remember the last time we did it?”
 

She thought back. “Oh! Yeah, I can. It was that time we went to the hot springs and you attacked me under that waterfall down the path.”
 

“Do you remember when we went there? It was the weekend after Labor Day. We waited the extra weekend so we wouldn’t have to deal with the crowds.”
 

“Labor Day,” she repeated in a wooden-sounding voice, calculating the time that had passed since then.

“Five months. A man can’t go that long on a regular basis.”
 

“I could do better,” she lied, grimacing even as she said it.

“No, you couldn’t. And neither could I. I think we both know we’re more like brother and sister than we are like lovers.”
 

She never considered that Xander felt the same way she did. She always figured he just wasn’t that sexual, and that was only when she thought about it. Mark had sated her needs at least once every week. Maybe that was why she hadn’t even considered Xander’s needs.

“Could we still hang out? As friends?”
 

“No. We can’t. I’m seeing someone else.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”
 

“You know I really like you. But I think it’s time you started being honest with yourself.”
 

What was this, The Delaney Life Review?

“Honest with myself?”
 

“Yeah. You don’t want to be with me any more than you want to go to the dentist every six months. And I know I’m not the only thing in your life you feel that way about. Honesty, Delaney. It’s the new black.”
 

***

Time marches on, Delaney thought. Dejected or not, it was Carpool Tuesday. She’d just picked Summer’s kids up from school.
 

It seemed only natural that after being dumped (not just by one guy, but by three in the span of a few hours), Delaney hit every red light during this trip. Here she was, for the first time in months with absolutely no romantic prospects, and the Universe was playing cruel jokes on her.

Her mantra, “It’s a new beginning,” wasn’t helping at all.
 

Now she sat at the intersection of Highway 23 and Pinecone Street, waiting. Again.

The loud squeal of tires pierced Delaney’s thoughts, and instinct had her looking in the rearview mirror. A huge black pickup truck came barreling toward the back of the van. She knew right away that the driver wouldn’t be able to stop in time, and she squeezed the steering wheel, bracing herself for impact, mentally flicking through images of ice patches she’d seen all over town since leaving the school parking lot.
 

Nope. There is definitely no way he can stop in time. Oh, shit. He’s really going to hit us.

She had nowhere to go. Neither did the truck. Squeezing her eyes shut didn’t help, but at the last second she lifted her foot off the brake pedal. The truck slammed into the back of the van, and the impact sent the van lurching into the intersection. Delaney glanced to her left at oncoming traffic, and then gunned it, accelerating forward to avoid being T-boned.
 

“Well, that’s a first for Carpool Tuesday,” she muttered, concentrating on breathing deeply to slow her heart rate.
 

“Aunt D?” Summer’s daughter, Sarah, squeaked from the back seat.