TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER
The house was a mess. The drywall had been taken down in some places, my kitchen floor was pulled up, and plastic sheets hung like curtains to keep the dust from flying.
I wanted to do as much of the work as I could, thinking the more I made this place a real home, the more settled I’d finally feel. But holy shit, it was a much bigger job then those HGTV shows make it look.
Thankfully, Yvonne was handy with a sledgehammer and let me pay her in beignets I bought from her favorite bakery. Today she was helping me demolish the old kitchen cabinets. They’d been painted and repainted so many times, the doors stuck together.
“What’s with the mopey face, baby,” she said, peering at me from behind her safety goggles. “You seem a little down.”
“Do I?” I yanked at a cabinet door that hung on one hinge. “Just nervous, I guess. I have a date on Friday.”
“With Teddy?”
“What?” My head shot up, and I frowned. “No, not Teddy. He’s back in Vegas. The date is with a friend of Phoebe’s.”
“Oh.”
“Oh, what?”
“Nothing.” Yvonne whacked the sledgehammer into the lower cabinet like a pro golfer, splintering wood and cracking it off the wall.
I don’t know why I felt the need to explain myself, but the words poured out anyway. “Teddy’s only a friend. He’s my best friend.”
Yvonne pursed her lips and peered down at me over her goggles.
I laughed and slung my arm around her. “I mean best friend from my old life. You’re my BFF from my new life.”
“That's better.” She took aim at another cabinet. “And does your other best friend also go out on dates?”
“He says he’s not seeing anyone serious, but I’m sure he must go out. You’ve seen him, right?”
“I have. He’s sex on a stick.”
I nearly lost my balance, and a flush of heat swept over my face. “Yvonne!”
“Isn’t he?”
“He’s…handsome.”
Yvonne snorted. “My grandfather was ‘handsome.’ My grandmother too, come to think of it.”
“I admit, he’s sexy,” I said. “He probably has many manly urges to satisfy and many women to help him.”
“There it is again.”
“What?”
“That sad look on your face is back.”
“What? Stop. It’s…probably jealousy. I have urges too, you know. I haven’t had sex in forever. But I’m not sure this date with Matt is a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“A date with an unknown guy makes me feel like everything I had with Jonah was…disposable. As if all I have to do is wait until enough time goes by and boom. I’m back in the saddle.”
“What more is there?” Yvonne asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I feel like… I can’t follow up being with Jonah by doing something as superficial as dating.
Trying out different guys to see if they fit.
Kissing them, maybe even sleeping with them, only to break up a week later because it turns out he’s still not over his ex, or he’s not into ‘getting serious,’ or he hates dogs. ”
Yvonne quirked her brow. “Hates dogs?”
“You know what I mean,” I said. “All the bullshit that comes with dating. I can’t do it.
Not after Jonah. What we had was beyond special.
What comes next needs to be special too.
Going on one date already feels like a betrayal.
It would be a million times worse if I did it over and over again, one stranger after another. ”
“Theo’s no stranger.”
I stopped what I was doing and gave her a look.
Yvonne held up her hands. “He’s cute. He’s tatted up, like you. He’s obviously a good man for flying out here to help you like he did. And you two are close. You share a common pain.”
“Yes, because he’s Jonah’s brother,” I said quietly.
“So?”
“So?” My eyebrows shot up. “So that’s…I mean, he’s…”
Yvonne leaned on her hammer. “Yessss? Have you thought about it? Maybe just a little?”
I shook my head. “No. Well, maybe.”
She pursed her lips.
“Okay, yes. Fine, I think about it. I think about him constantly. My favorite part of the day—besides talking to you—is my phone calls with him. But I can’t tell if our friendship is really strong or if I’m just clinging to him for comfort.”
“Maybe,” Yvonne said, “you should try to find out.”
I sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t know that I’m ready. I can’t dump all that confusion and guilt on Teddy. He’s precious to me. So precious, in fact…” I spread my arms out to indicate the house. “I buy a house fifteen hundred miles away from him.”
“You want to know what I think?”
“In the worst way possible.”
“I think something’s happening between you and Theo, and it scares you to pieces.”
A thousand reasons why that was wrong piled up on my lips. I swallowed them all down.
“I think you might be right,” I said softly, and all at once I felt something shift in me. A settling. A Big Something I might have been waiting for.
Yvonne’s smile was gentle. “Keep going, baby. Tell me.”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to imagine a life after Jonah,” I said.
“A future like other people have, with marriage and kids, and careers we help each other to build. It’s been almost impossible to imagine loving someone else.
But when I let myself have that kind of hopeful vision, the only person I see is Teddy. ”
Yvonne nodded. “And now the but…”
“But the guilt. And how Beverly would react. And what Oscar and Dena would think. And the worry that I’d mess it up. And the fact that I’m… I’m terrified something will happen to Theo like it did to Jonah.” My eyes stung with sudden tears. “I’ve lost too much already.”
“I know.” Yvonne dropped her sledgehammer and embraced me in a dusty hug. “I know you have.”
“I had Jonah. For a few, short moments that beautiful man was mine and I was his. I’ll never have anything that real or good again, will I? Who gets a second chance like that?”
“The ones who step back up to the table and lay it all out there.” Yvonne pulled away, pushed the hair from my eyes. “You’re not done, Kacey. I know you aren’t. You have more cards to play.”
I smiled through the tears. “I am a universe.”
Yvonne’s eyes widened. “I like that. Yes, you are a universe, right here in this room, and you are not done .”
She put her arm around me, and we surveyed the demolished kitchen.
“You’re starting over again. New life, new place. It’s brave, putting one foot in front of the other. You don’t have to figure it all out at once. Don’t force it, and if something good and real is waiting for you around the corner, it’ll still be there when you’re ready.”
The cabinets were all down, and we were up to our ankles in splintered wood. Dust motes danced in the afternoon light streaming in through the window.
Yvonne gave me a squeeze. “Can you see it yet? Your new home?”
“Not yet.”
“You will, baby. You will.”