13
After dressing in last night’s clothes she tried to tame the tangle of her hair with his brush which was lying on top of his scarred wooden dresser. Beside it was a ceramic dish where he obviously tossed his change when he emptied his pockets at the end of the day. A scrap of paper, torn from a notebook, sat among the scatter of quarters and dimes. Originally folded, the paper had opened so she could read the message. It said,Heidi, then a phone number. After the phone number, Heidi had written, “Your girlfriend’s a lucky gal, but I can be discreet. Call me,” and punctuated her message with a hand-drawn heart.
She stood staring at the scrap of paper. That long-ago night in the Australian bar came back to her, when she’d found out Tim was cheating. She could hear that woman’s voice in her head. “Darl, a man like him is a gift.” Of course every woman wanted him. It wasn’t his fault he was gorgeous and sexy.
His pockets were probably stuffed with scraps of paper bearing phone numbers.
But he hadn’t tossed Heidi in the trash. And the word girlfriend jumped out at her like a broken heart.
She brushed her hair slowly, trying to still her racing heart.
When she got downstairs to the kitchen, she saw sunlight streaming in the big windows of his kitchen filling it with cheerful light.
He was so easy in his movements, as casual as though he had new women in his bed all the time. “Do you want to have another cup of coffee and watch me work? Or do you want to be my sous chef this morning?”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to watch the master at work.”
“I can do that. What’s your pleasure?”
“Why don’t you surprise me?” She wanted to ask him about the girlfriend and the Heidis in his world, but she felt the need of a quiet space to think first. It was as though a brick sat in her chest, stopping the words coming out. She’d find her center, meditate, and then decide how to handle her feelings for Alexei. For now, she concentrated on holding it together until she was alone and could think.
He crossed to his fancy espresso machine to pour another cup for each of them and said, with his back turned, “That’s what I like about the beginning of a new relationship. Everything’s a surprise.”
New relationship? One among how many? When she’d let herself be swept away by her passion last night, she’d kept it firmly in her mind that this was a fling. A night of no-strings sex with the most amazing, drool-worthy, exciting man she’d ever known, whose beauty almost hurt her to look at, but she hadn’t realized until this morning what a mistake she was making. Everything about him screamed player from his looks to the way he charmed the women who swarmed to his food truck. She wondered if his girlfriend had any idea what he was really like? Was she as naïve as Marguerite had been with Tim?
Then she reasoned that people using a word like relationship gave it many different definitions. Maybe his idea of this relationship was that they would write a cookbook together and while she was convenient, and they were working closely together, it made perfect sense for them to be friends-with-benefits.
But she wanted a man of her own, who was exclusively hers and hers forever. Till-death-do-us-part forever. As she sat in that cheerful kitchen watching Alexei prepare her an omelet, giving her tips as he did so, she acknowledged that she craved kind of love that Iris and Geoff had, the kind of love her parents had.
How did they do that? Men like Alex and Tim, talk to a woman using the words she wanted to hear and sound so convincing?
And why did she keep falling for men she could never have?
* * *
When she leftAlexei she immediately retreated to her cottage where she indulged in a long hot shower, then rubbed her body with soothing lavender body oil but as she rubbed the oil into her skin she kept thinking about all the times during the night that Alexei had touched her there and stroked her here. She cursed herself for a fool but it didn’t stop the memories.
She walked outside, breathing in the cool air and bundled together a selection of autumn flowers. Time in the garden usually soothed her, but today she felt heartsick. She never should have trusted him, and triple never should have slept with him. Hadn’t she been down this road before? Only this time, she couldn’t run home with her broken, battered heart. Shewashome.
She tried to concentrate on Iris’s happiness as she arranged the flowers in one of the many vases she’d collected over the years for her homegrown bouquets. She bought old vases at flea markets and yard sales and saved interesting bottles. After peering through a shelf full of glass and ceramic, she passed over a ceramic baby in a pram, thinking it was too early. Instead, she chose a fluted vase made of milky glass. She sorted through a bundle of dahlias and chrysanthemums, ranging in color from deep purple to pumpkin orange, some yellow daisies, a tangle of pink Japanese Anemones and deep blue spikes of salvia, spicy with the smell of autumn. She trimmed stems and placed the blooms one by one, finding harmony as she pulled together different colors and sizes. After a while, she found the jumble of her thoughts beginning to settle as well. She didn’t achieve the harmony of her flower arrangement, but at least she settled enough that she could show a calm face to her nosy family.
She drove over to Iris’s house to find that she was not the first one there. In fact, she recognized several of the vehicles parked on the road out front. News travelled fast in the Chance family.
There was no point knocking on the door; she could hear the voices and laughter and excitement even from the porch. She took a moment to take in the sounds and just be grateful for this crazy, wacky family she was a part of and the joy that was ahead for them all with the new babies on the way.
She pushed open the door, hung her coat on one of the hooks in the hallway, picked up her bouquet and made her way into the main room, which in Iris’s house was a kitchen-den combo. Iris sat in the two-seater sofa, surrounded by both parents and a selection of siblings. Geoff sat beside her, holding her hand in a way that suggested to Marguerite he had been in that same position for a while. Geoff was a man who made Iris happy, and exactly the kind of guy you wanted in a crisis, but Marguerite got the feeling, when her sister glanced up at her, that she was feeling a little overwhelmed. Her mom and dad were perched on the hearth in front of the fireplace, also holding hands, and sitting so close that at first glance they seemed to be one body rather than two. Neither of them seemed to even notice the handholding. They’d been doing that as long as she could remember.
Cooper, sitting on the floor, had a baby-naming book open and was throwing out likely names. “Jedediah Josephat has a nice ring to it.”
Paisley shook her head at him. “The twins are girls. I know it.”
When she caught sight of Marguerite and the flowers, Iris jumped up. Geoff said, “You sit, honey. I’ll get them.”
Iris was shaking her head already before she said, quite firmly, “No, that’s okay. I’ll do it.”
She came into the kitchen and the sisters embraced. “I am so happy for you,” Marguerite said. “I knew it would happen. I knew it.”
“I can’t believe it. I was scared I’d never have one baby. Now I’m having twins!”
