CHAPTER 6
LIFE REALIZATION #4: FRIENDS ARE OVERRATED
“I’d be even luckier if you hadn’t had that third helping of roast,” William was saying as I entered the living room. “What will I snack on tonight, Deanna?”
She rolled her eyes.
“Is that how you treat your guests?” Grant feigned offense in a proper English accent.
“You aren’t a guest.”
“Still angry about that twig, I see.” Grant rocked back and forth on his feet beside the wheat-colored sectional in Deanna’s living room.
“It was the size of a tree! I could’ve really done some damage, possibly skinned my knee!” William glanced at me, affronted. “They’re one of my best features.”
I didn’t know what to do, so I stood, rapt with morbid fascination.
“Oh, here we go again,” Deanna said. “On their last bike ride, Grant ran into a twig ... branch,” she corrected when William cleared his throat. “And it flew into William’s wheel. They won’t let it go.”
“You can’t help that you married a weenie, Deanna.” Grant gestured grandly with an imaginary sword, then slid it into the invisible scabbard around his waist as if he were the victor.
William sprang to his feet, dislodging a fluffy couch cushion, pulled from his hip, then passed nothing between his hands. “I beg to differ. In fact,” William said, stressing the two words, “I think it was all part of your elaborate plan. But”—he shifted the sword that only he and Grant seemed to be able to see into his right hand and pointed it at Grant—“my adept skills and catlike reflexes not only—”
“Did you say ‘inept’?” Grant interjected.
William lunged forward, stopping a sword’s length away from Grant, who inhaled and looked down his nose as if the tip of William’s blade were hovering just shy of his skin.
“You. Know. I. Didn’t,” William replied.
Grant moved sideways, rolled across the couch cushions, and leaped to his feet, drawing his nonexistent weapon once again.
I leaned toward Deanna. “Is this really happening?”
“Oh, it is. Though I’m a little surprised it’s happening in front of you this soon.”
“I ...” This was like a Shakespearean flash mob in Deanna’s living room ... with two guys ... over a serving of pork roast.
“Oh, it’ll get worse if we allow it.” She turned to the men. “Stop it, children. You’re being ridiculous. William, knees are no one’s best feature.” She tossed her hair and reached toward the coffee table to pick up a small black box with the words OUR MOMENTS written in all caps on the front. “It’s time to play our game.” She opened the box.
“Game?” I asked. No one had mentioned a game.
“Have you ever played? It’s a get-to-know-you card game. I thought the four of us could play.”
I had a flash of fifteen-year-old me sitting next to my aunt Tif in a small waiting room as I bit my fingernails and slammed my heels together like that could transport me to a home where Brandon was. Tif had taken me to a therapist because she knew I was depressed, but she’d done it without my mother’s approval or knowledge. A little girl on the floor a few feet from our chairs drew numbers with faces and fancy clothes on a sheet of college-ruled notebook paper. She was talking to them; she was soothing herself with them. I was transfixed by that little blonde head as she cheerily conversed with the numbers on the page, except Naughty Nine and Sinister Seven, whom she scolded and threatened with an eraser. It was the first time I’d smiled probably that whole year, but I stopped smiling when the door to the waiting room was flung open and my mother stood, red faced and tight lipped. She’d been running. She walked over to me, grabbed my arm, and lifted me to my feet.
She scowled at her sister. “How could you?”
“Aurora, she needs to talk to someone.” One of Tif’s hands wrung the other as she stood and followed us toward the door. I looked back at the little girl on the floor, and she smiled and waved at me, then said, “Bye, One.”
“Maybe if we’d done this when we were kids, when Mom ...” Tif paused and then continued in the hallway: “Things might’ve been different.”
Aurora stopped. “You need to mind your own business.” She was calm. No one would’ve guessed she’d just plucked her daughter from a therapist’s office or that she would never speak to her sister again. Aurora looked straight into Tif’s eyes, and Tif nodded like my mother had said something. And that was it, the last time I saw Aunt Tif, the last time I’d entered a therapist’s office. I’d never understood how my mom had let her sister go like that, especially since their parents had been killed by a drunk driver when she was fifteen, and the two sisters were the only family each had.
“I’m ... I’m afraid I need to go,” I stammered. I glanced at Deanna’s door. So very far away.
“Oh, come on. One question.”
That little black box grew until I was shoved up against the wall, trying to breathe against its boxiness. What kinds of questions are on those cards? I tried to force these three people back into their crisp number shapes, but they wouldn’t go. I’d cope by leaving. This was too much.
“I’ve played before.” Grant’s voice held tenderness; his eyes searched mine. “It’s a conversation starter. Not a big deal. Deanna, hurry up and read one so we can show her they’re harmless.”
My face must’ve given me away, or maybe I was sweating worse than I realized. Damn. I felt it now, the sweat collecting on my scalp, ruining the hard work of my flat iron.
“‘What’s one dream you have but haven’t acted on yet?’” Deanna read.
Was she asking me? Because I could answer that one: Getting out of this house.
“I’ll go first,” Deanna said. “I want to own a bed and breakfast.”
“You’re serious, D? You never—” William started.
“A restaurant?” Grant interrupted. “Your own business? A restaurant is a lot of work. It’s a time suck. You’ll work your life away.”
Deanna had told me this at the store, but she hadn’t told her family. I’d known something they didn’t.
“So what, if it’s her dream? Maybe she wants to put the work in.” I wasn’t sure where the words or the near-hostility behind them had come from, and I paused to make sure I was actually the one who’d said them.
Deanna waved her hands in front of her face. “Maybe.” Her inhale was long and deep. “Now that it’s out there ... yeah, I’m thinking about it, having a space, a venue, a small restaurant. I think I’d love it. That’s one of the reasons I was drawn to Pen. She’s going for it. It’s inspiring.” Her smile was weak, like she’d been afraid to bring this up until now, when I was here. Her admiration was so unexpected. That someone so put together could be inspired by someone like me, it made me feel—valuable.
“You’re good enough for sure,” Grant continued, glossing over most of what Deanna had said, “but I want you to think this through. Life is more than work. I don’t want you to turn into one of those people who—”
“One of those people?” I asked, too loud and too abrupt, his words rubbing my skin the wrong way. I forgot about leaving. “Some of thosepeople have ambitions, goals. They’re motivated. What’s wrong with that?”
They all turned toward me. I was overreacting, stepping in where I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t stop. Anger seemed to be holding back the tears I’d been keeping at bay all evening.
“There’s nothing wrong with being motivated,” Grant replied slowly, as if approaching a bomb he had to talk out of detonating. “I value the trait. I know my sister, and I know what it takes to own a restaurant, which is what a bed and breakfast would turn into. It’s hard work. She’s a hardworking woman already, but she values family and free time, and it’s hard to do both. I’m not sure she’d be happy with the increased workload.”
Deanna opened her mouth to say something, but my mouth was going again before she spoke. “So you think someone who works hard to get to the top professionally couldn’t possibly value anything else?” I was shaking. He was essentially telling me I was a fool for trying to start my own business, but I’d avoided the topic through dinner because I didn’t want to talk about it. The whole issue was still raw, a walk out onto a limb that might not be strong enough to hold my weight.
Let’s go, Grant. I can take you and your chauvinistic mustache.
“No. I’m saying I think this is something my sister should think about.”
Deanna put her arms up. “Whoa. I appreciate you both trying to figure my life out for me, but this is just an idea.”
A curious expression curled under Grant’s mustache. “Do you love your job, Penelope?”
The question caught me off guard. I was worked up, hackles raised, ready for a fight, and it irritated me that this silly man with his ridiculous mustache remained calm and in control.
“I like my job.” My job was what I had, what I was good at, what I’d been doing my whole life. Those numbers had always been there when no one else was. Work was my whole life; of course I liked it.
“But you don’t love it? Does it make you happy?”
“Grant,” Deanna said. “Leave her alone, and stop being intense. Not everyone has your same life philosophy. People love and want different things, and that’s okay.”
“I’m just asking. And sure, differences should be celebrated. But if something doesn’t make you happy, well, you should question why you’re still doing it.”
Who is this guy?I started to ask him if he loved his job, but he’d already talked about the buildings he’d designed like other people did their children. For him, each room in a house had its own personality like each member of a family. Blah. Blah. Blah.
“There’s so much that goes into them,” he’d said during dinner. “Including pieces of myself. Intellectually and spiritually fulfilling.”
Suddenly I hated this evening, this man, and this game.
“People are different,” I huffed. “And you’d be well served not to be so judgmental and controlling. What if your sister were a man? I bet you’d slap him on the back and break out the damn cigars. If your sister wants to start her own business, then you should support her for her bravery.” I turned to Deanna. “I bet your bed and breakfast would be awesome, Deanna.”
Grant’s eyebrows went up as his jaw went slack. For three solid seconds, the only sound in the room came from eyelids opening and closing. The two, the nine, and the four (he was definitely a four again) merged into one big fifteen and then broke into their respective figures at the sound of clapping. It was William.
“Bravo!” he said.
Deanna nodded. “Thank you, Pen.”
Grant was silent.
William steered the conversation back to food and then suggested I come on their Sunday bike ride. Yeah, right. But Deanna wouldn’t let me leave without agreeing to go or without taking leftovers (she’d made a whole second roast). So I took my pork, packed neatly in a biodegradable to-go container, and promised Deanna I’d go on their ride as I left their home, pretending I wasn’t still simmering and that the evening hadn’t ended in a way that showcased I wasn’t friend material.
At the door, Deanna leaned in. “I had a feeling about you. I needed that. Grant is an angel, the greatest man I know, but he’s also overprotective of me. No one stands up to him when he goes on his verbal tangents. Because they know his intentions are good, and, most of the time, he’s right. But you, you took him down a peg right when he needed it. I think I’ll keep you.” Her smile held so much humor it crinkled the corners of her eyes.
But the interaction had thrown me off, and I couldn’t really respond. I kept a weird, crackly smile on my face until I got into my car, where it dropped onto the floorboard of my Mazda.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
A sharp tapping on my window startled my eyelids open again.
Grant.
I rolled my window halfway down and stared at him.
“I need to apologize,” he said. “Deanna told me about your financial business. I didn’t mean to insult you or to insinuate anything about someone who works hard. Sometimes I come off as a bulldozing know-it-all. It’s just that my sister’s been through a lot, and as her older brother, I try to take care of her. Good intentions ...”
Exactly what Deanna had said. He loved his sister. He cared about his sister. It was sweet.
It was crushing.
“I shouldn’t have been so defensive.” The words slid through my tight lips, my smile lost in the dark floorboard.
Silence.
More silence.
Was he expecting something else? Because that’s all I had.
He nodded and wished me good night, a hesitant wave on the end of his hand.
My head gave a curt nod as I watched him walk to his own car, and then I pushed the gas harder than I meant to, forgetting I was still in park. I jerked the car into drive, my face reddening, and sped off down the road, wishing I’d biked the six miles over.
Hell as it was, this evening had taught me a quick lesson. I had a past. My past had shaped me into an immovable form, and that form didn’t belong with these people. Despite what Deanna had said, it would only be a matter of time before they cracked me open and uncovered the scrambled eggs inside.
And that’s when Chad settled back into my mind, and even the thought of him made me feel comfortable. He was what I was used to. I didn’t even have to pretend he was a freaking number. He was just Chad. He didn’t make me feel inferior. I knew that Deanna and her lovely family—minus Grant—hadn’t meant to make me feel that way. They’d been delightful. But I couldn’t help it; the feelings were there. And I didn’t know how to manage them. How could I be surrounded by people but lonelier than ever?
What I’d had with Chad, before the cheating was an issue, wasn’t perfect (obviously), but he was driven, successful, sure of himself. A workaholic who didn’t want kids. Best of all, he was taller than me, one shallow prerequisite to my personal “fairly” tale.
Maybe committing to him was progress. Didn’t everyone deserve a second chance? He hadn’t been the complete jerk I’d thought he’d been. It still wasn’t okay, and I wasn’t justifying his actions, but he and his wife had both been unhappy. This situation wasn’t black or white. It was gray. Like it had been with my mom and dad. Aurora had forgiven my dad because of what they’d been through. We’d lost Brandon, which had led my father to do things he wouldn’t have done previously. Aurora understood that, and her words sprang back to my mind. People are complicated.
Before I changed my mind, I pulled over, located my cell, and did a quick online search for Vicki Gwinn. I found links to her Instagram and Facebook accounts. Before I did what I was thinking of doing, I needed to see more of Chad’s soon-to-be ex-wife, prove to myself that she wasn’t devastated, that what he’d said was true—that they both wanted this divorce.
The beach, a cabin in the mountains, painting some guy’s toenails, a girls’ weekend in Sonoma Valley, a “then and now” family pic with her brothers and sisters. His wife was surrounded, surrounded, by people. And just when I started to doubt I had the right woman, I found one picture of her with Chad, and he looked out of place.
If her online profiles accurately told her story and represented what was important to her, then Chad wasn’t.
I reread the text he’d sent me earlier in the evening.
He wanted me, was willing to work for us. Maybe, if I worked at us, too, we could have something more.
I typed Let’s talk into the reply box before I could overanalyze. Then I pressed send.
Three little dots appeared on my screen and then abruptly stopped. Two seconds passed, and then my phone rang.