Page 4 of The Fix-Up
He grabbed my hand and shook it. “I’m going to go tell Shelly how I feel about her.”
“Who’s Shelly?”
“My ex. The love of my life.” He leaned down and placed a loud, smacking kiss on my cheek. “It was nice to meet you.Thank you for being so understanding.” That last part he said over his shoulder as he broke into a run toward the exit.
Several pairs of eyes swung my way. Even the dad who was now also under the table and trying with increasing desperation to get his kid to listen. I smiled weakly and waved. “He had an emergency.”
Yeah. No one believed that.
Three minutes later, Liliana swept in and placed a heaping plate ofenchiladas verdesin front of me. “I told you,mija, he was no good.Un tonto. A fool.”
“You think?” My stomach rumbled. The real reason I liked my first dates to be at the Texican? When that date inevitably crashed and burned in spectacular fashion, at least I knew I’d get a good meal out of it.
Liliana dipped closer and lowered her voice. “The right man will be one who sees your value, who knows you are precious. He will see every part of you and love each part, even the things he doesn’t like.” She patted my shoulder. “This is a smart man.”
My chest tightened. “Yeah, maybe.”
And the thing was…I wanted that. I wanted a man who loved me for me. Someone unlike the guys I’d been with in the past. Oh, I’d loved them or thought I did, but they hadn’t loved me. I’d made it all too easy for them. Falling hard and fast; the endings had been just as hard and fast.
We all wanted to believe there was someone out there for each of us, a lid for every pot and all that. But sometimes I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was the odd one out. Three years of loneliness could do that to a woman.
But maybe that’s just how it was meant to be.
TWO
Love is when someone is nice to you a lot.
—THADDEUS D., AGE 8
I made it home by 6:30p.m. with a full belly and mostly over my first date blues. Like with most things in life, I took the punch and kept moving. Otherwise, I’d be curled up in the fetal position somewhere. I’d just settled down on the couch with a fuzzy blanket, three scoops of chocolate peanut butter swirl, and the latest episode of one of those awful housewife reality shows I loved when I heard the crunch of tires.
As the only house down a long, winding driveway, it was unlikely to be a passing vehicle. Maybe my brother, Chris, had decided to bring Oliver home early. I set my ice cream down—it would probably be soup before I got to enjoy it now—and headed back to the kitchen to meet them at the side door.
But… nothing happened.
I waited a few beats before I pulled the door open and peered out. But Chris’s monster-sized truck wasn’t there.
“Weird.” As I was stepping back into the kitchen, the doorbell warbled its way through the house. “Even weirder.”
I didn’t know we had a doorbell.
Besides that,no oneused our front door. The mailwoman, the guy from UPS, the one dude who sold steak out of the trunk of his car—everyone used the side door. Until three years ago, the front door had been buried behind two bookcases full of gardening books. Which was ironic since Ollie hadn’t seemed all that interested in lawncare. Although the bookcases had since been moved to the wall behind the door, I wasn’t even sure the front dooropened.
I hesitated. The doorbell sounded again. Maybe Chris and Oliver were playing a joke on me? I crept into the front “sitting room” and inched my way to the window by the door. Whoever it was had given up on the doorbell and was now knocking. Very slowly, I peeled back a tiny edge of the curtain and peeked outside.
But it wasn’t the towering frame of my brother or Oliver’s little face that I saw. What I saw was the shadowy figure of a man. Tall, lean, wide shoulders. I couldn’t make any of his features out, but I didn’t know any man who would just show up unannounced. Especially at night.
My heart climbed into my throat. THERE WAS A STRANGE MAN AT MY FRONT DOOR.
“Stay calm,” I whispered.
The doorknob jiggled. A voice called out, “Hello? Is anyone here?”
My heartrate shifted into overdrive. As quietly as possible, I pulled out my phone from my pocket and dialed nine-one-one.
“What’s your emergency?” a voice I recognized said.
“Cammie,” I whispered. “It’s Ellie Sterns. There’s a strange man at my door.”
