The One That Got Away (26 page)

The boulder on my chest grinds in deeper. “Let's take some time,” I know as well as anyone, is one of that lethal handful of
sentences inscribed on the tombstones of millions of relationships. Although it sounds innocent enough, somehow the “time” in question never ends happily for the party who is having the moratorium imposed upon them.

“Okay,” I say, struggling to keep my voice level. How is it possible that, within ten minutes of finally finding out exactly how he feels, I am on the verge of losing him? How could I have screwed things up so badly?

I reach for the door handle and thump the car door shut behind me before I say something humiliating. I force myself to step calmly back up the front walkway, hoping desperately that he can't see my legs shaking. Trembling, I turn the lock, let myself in, and quietly close the door behind me. Maybe he'll relent; if he cares about me as much as he says he does, it has to hurt to watch me walk away. I breathe in, out, and in again as I wait for the knock. Then from outside I hear the ignition catch. Then the retreating noise of the engine. He's gone.

Since I got kicked out of Eamon's car instead of driving with him to San Antonio, the day looms long and empty ahead of me. I decide to spend the afternoon measuring the site of my new retail project downtown. Anything to keep me from sitting in my office moping and waiting for a message from Eamon. A message that doesn't come.

By evening, I am burning with restless energy.

Where are you hanging tonight?
I text Danny.

He writes back a few minutes later.
Clementine. Thought you'd be out of town though?

Told E about Noah. Didn't go real well
.

Come over immediately. Will have hot new bartender pour shots straight down your throat
.

Lord love my friends, they're always equal to the situation at hand. With the manic enthusiasm of a girl with something to prove, I blast some screechy hard rock as I shimmy into a short, sexy T-shirt dress. A quick check in the mirror satisfies me; the overall impression is of big dangly earrings and about four feet of leg, which will be just right for my purposes.

Danny is as good as his word; the minute I walk into the bar he materializes in front of me and gives me a big, bracing hug.
Without a word, he takes my hand and leads me to the chunky reclaimed-wood bar, where a shaggy-headed blond I've never seen before is pouring out a measure of vodka.

“Paul,” Danny announces, “this is Sarina. She designed this bar, and she had a shitty day today, so I want you to be very, very nice to her.”

Paul, who appears to be all of about twenty-three, winks one deep blue eye and whips out a trio of shot glasses. “Hi, Sarina,” he says, in a rich Australian accent. “I think we can do something about that shitty day. How does Tito's strike you?”

“Strikes me just fine,” I say; then we all pound the bar and knock back the shots in unison.

The rest of the night is a blur of shots, dancing, and shouted laughter. Paul and I flirt scandalously. It turns out that he is the keyboard player in a band called Leadfoot Lane—apparently I am back to musicians now. But the fact that he is also blond, blue-eyed, and on the short side just makes me like him better. Eventually, the alcohol takes hold and I stop watching for Eamon's dark head to appear in the crowd. It's about this point, after shot number four (possibly five?), that Paul leans one elbow on the bar and crooks his index finger at me.

“So Danny gave me the rest of the night off,” he murmurs into my ear. “You want to head out of here?”

“Yes please,” I say without hesitation.

As soon as we reach my room, he gets directly to business, pressing me against the door and hitching my dress up and off. I close my eyes, trying to unmoor my body from the restraints of my brain, but my body proves to be curiously resistant. He's touching me with skill and enthusiasm, but he feels all wrong somehow, and, as the vodka haze burns off slightly, I know why. He feels too short because he's not Eamon's height; his lips are too full compared to Eamon's; and instead of Eamon's leanly
powerful physique he has the rounded, bulky muscles of a gym rat. Trying to use him to distract myself from missing Eamon is, to borrow one of John's favorite expressions, a Band-Aid on a bullet hole. Suddenly, the thought of John swamps me with such a wave of sorrow that I feel tears squeezing the backs of my eyelids.

“Oh shit, I can't do this,” I say, my voice weirdly strangled. I pull away from him and stumble to the edge of my bed, my shoulders heaving as I sob. John, Eamon, even Noah—everything comes pouring in on me at once. I feel like I'm drowning in loss.

From across the room, I hear Paul clear his throat uncertainly. “Uhhh…”

I raise my head, not even caring that my face is streaked with tears and mascara. “It's nothing to do with you. I'm sorry. You should go.”

Not waiting to be told twice, he grabs his T-shirt and backs out the door. “Um, I hope you feel better,” he mutters, and closes the door behind him. I wind myself into a ball under my covers and concentrate on breathing until the sobbing eases its grip.

How could I ever have thought anyone else could be a substitute for Eamon? Sex is never going to be just sex again, because my craving for Eamon's sweet, teasing warmth is tangled around that basic physical need like a wild morning glory vine. I dig my nails into my scalp as I relive every minute of his touch the night of the party, the hunger in his face as he looked at me, his dizzying words this morning—
I'm crazy about you, I feel at rest with you
. And yet I've lost his trust. I had everything I wanted cupped in the palm of my hand, and I opened my fingers and let it blow away like dandelion seeds.

After ten restless minutes I throw back the covers and stalk to the kitchen with a grim sense of purpose. I pull down our vodka bottle from the liquor cabinet, slosh a couple more shots' worth into a glass, and swallow it in three blazing gulps. The fumes,
flavored like raw rubbing alcohol, rise into my nose and make me cough until my eyes water.
That ought to about kill it
, I think triumphantly as I settle myself in bed again, but my stomach expresses its skepticism by roiling queasily. My last thought before I fall asleep is a deep sense of foreboding.

A few hours later I'm drawn up from sleep, like anchor chain out of the ocean, by an increasingly insistent billow of nausea. Moments later, as I'm retching miserably into the toilet while Newman watches from the safety of the bathtub, it strikes me what an utter failure the evening was. It started out promisingly enough, but instead of getting happily drunk and forgetting Eamon in the arms of a young Aussie charmer, all I achieved was some mediocre making out and a bad case of Demon Baby.

Once I've puked up every last ounce of bad judgment, I stagger back to bed and collapse with an arm over my eyes. A few minutes later, I hear Danny's soft knock at the door.

“Go away,” I moan. “I can't face an interrogation right now.”

“I have spiked coffee,” calls his disembodied voice. Grudgingly I tell him to come in.

“Where are the other three horsemen?” I mutter, gingerly taking the mug he hands me.

“I thought you might need some tonic,” he says mildly, sitting down at the foot of my bed and folding his long legs under him. “You sounded pretty miserable.”

“You could hear me?”

“Are you kidding? They could hear you in Dallas. I would have come in to help you, but I figured you'd rather be alone.”

“Your instincts are unerring as always.”

“I'm surprised, though,” he continues. “I didn't think you drank enough to make you that sick.”

“I didn't, not at the bar—I pounded two more shots after Paul left because I couldn't stop thinking about Eamon.”

He winces. “That good, huh?”

I close my eyes and press the warm mug against my cheek. “Worse. Something reminded me of John in the middle of things and I collapsed into a gibbering mess.”

“Oh, honey.”

“So, uh, give me a heads-up on the nights he's going to be working, okay? At least until he's reasonably sure I'm not going to creep up behind him with an ice pick.”

“You got it. So, I take it you told Ame the truth about Noah, and he didn't take kindly to being lied to?”

Trust Danny not to pull any punches. “No. No, he sure didn't,” I confirm. “Before that even came up, though, I blew up at him over that girl he slept with the night I got home.”

“And he told you you were an asshole for expecting him to be celibate when you had a boyfriend yourself, to which you responded, ‘Actually, about that'?”

I set the mug on my nightstand and glare at him from under my bangs. “Why do you even need to talk to me if you've already figured out exactly what happened?”

He flips his palms up helplessly. “I've known him for ten years, I know how he thinks. And I've lived with you for eight. So yes, I think I could pretty much write the script.”

I cross my arms over my chest and eye him expectantly. “Go on.”

“Well, judging from how miserable you are, I assume it finally got through your little concrete head that you are his number one girl—right about the time he decided he needs to figure out whether he's willing to trust you again.”

“You missed the part where I'm supposed to think about whether I really do believe that he cares about me, and stop torturing him to make him convince me.”

“Oh, yep, that sounds like something he would say.”

I wait a beat, then another one. Finally I can't take his silence anymore. “So?”

He eyes me cautiously. “So, what? So, do I think he's a bastard? So, am I going to talk to him? Or so, what do I think he will do?”

“Just the last one,” I sigh. “I don't think he's a bastard, and I'd never ask you to get in the middle of this. But I am curious what your take on it is.”

He looks relieved. “Look, the problem is, you've trashed his pride. I know you think he hasn't been clear about his feelings, but as far as he's concerned, he's laid it out there for you from the get-go. And from his point of view, all you've done is”—he ticks off the points on his fingers—“push him away, get mad at him for sleeping with some other chick after you pushed him away, refuse to explain to him what you were pissed about, and then hide behind a fictitious boyfriend to keep him at arm's length while he quietly went insane with jealousy.”

I cover my face with my hands. “Oh my god, I'm as bad as his ex-girlfriend.”

“Hannah? No way. Not even close. Good heart on that girl, but she liked to put him through the wringer just to generate drama. That is not you.”

“But I fucked it up. I made this whole
thing
drama. He's not going to want anything to do with me.”

Danny ruffles my hair like a jovial dad. “Buck up, little camper. He'll come around. It might take a while, 'cause he's a stubborn bastard, but he will.”

With Danny's bracing words in mind, I try not to be too upset that I don't hear from Eamon that day, or the next. It makes sense
that he'd take a few days to think about things. Wednesday morning, my heart starts jackhammering when a new email from him arrives in my inbox, but it's only a question about the house. No subtext, no humor; nothing. Purely matter-of-fact. I answer in kind, and I don't hear from him again for the rest of the day.

By the end of the day it's obvious that this isn't going to blow over quickly. It's the longest I've gone without talking to him for months, and I miss him more than I would have thought possible. It's like all the oxygen has been sucked out of the air. By the morning of the weekly Thursday site meeting, my nerves are jangly as out-of-tune guitar strings.

I arrive at the site half an hour early, wanting the psychological advantage, as well as the opportunity to walk around to check on the progress by myself. The house is about two-thirds of the way done now, and, with most of the walls sheetrocked, it's beginning to look like a place where somebody's going to live instead of just a raw tangle of metal and plywood. But seeing the drywall in place makes a couple of screwups immediately apparent.

“Joe!” I shout, but he must not be able to hear me over the whine of his drill. I bellow his name into the hallway, and after a moment he saunters into view, wiping his dusty hands on his jeans.

“Good morning, Sarina,” he drawls, imperturbable as always.

“Joe, would you like to take a look at this outlet cut and tell me what's wrong?” I say, arms folded over my chest.

“Hmm,” he says noncommittally, surveying the room.

“By ‘Hmm' I'm going to assume you meant ‘There is only one outlet on the north wall, where there are supposed to be two of them, a hundred and twenty-six inches apart,' ” I hiss. “Fix it.”

“You got it, boss. Anything else?”

“Yes. Whoever thought that J-box was centered on the ceiling is either blind or lazy,” I snarl, pointing at the mounting plate for
the ceiling fixture. “I want it moved by the end of the day.
And
I noticed in the master bath you've got ninety-degree elbows running to the valve for the rain shower. It's no good; that water's going to slow down when it hits those corners and all he's going to get is drizzle. Take it out and do it with wide elbows like you should have in the first place. You know better than that.”

Joe nods, apparently not feeling that further speech is required, and for some reason it is this that pushes me over the edge.

“I don't want to see any more sloppy work around here, Joe. I can't have it. I went out on a limb to get you this job, and if you make me look like a hack in front of this client, then I will never have you bid one of my jobs again.”

He throws his hands in front of him. “Don't worry, Sarina, we'll get it taken care of. The guys will get it all fixed today.”

“They better.” I spin on my heel and almost slam directly into Eamon, who's been standing in the doorway unnoticed, and undoubtedly caught the entire exchange.

So much for psychological advantage. What was left of my composure splinters as the impact of his nearness crashes into me. How is it possible that, the last time I saw him, he was kissing me as if he would never get enough of me? And now he's looking at me with all the intimacy of a seatmate on a Greyhound. He is clearly fresh out of the pool; the smell of chlorine is stronger than usual, and his hair is standing up in wet dark spikes. All I want to do is sink my fingers into it, and pull him to me. I urgently scan his face, searching for a sign that he's feeling the same need, but his usually expressive features are blank.

“Good morning, Sarina,” he says. “Joe. Looks like you got a head start on the meeting before I got here?”

“Just going over a few corrections,” I explain unnecessarily. Pretending he didn't just catch me taking out my frustration on poor innocent Joe Martinez. “But since you're here, we might as well get started.”