Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
T he next morning, Gary and I redefined the term “open house”. We didn’t finish painting until well after midnight, and it was even later by the time Gary’s shirt had soaked. While I was moving it to the dryer, I asked him if he wanted to stay the night again.
“Better safe than sorry. No ulterior motives. I promise.” I offered to let him take my room, but he insisted the couch was fine. Kyle, of course, got the rocket ship bed.
While I was digging out some extra sheets and a pillow, Gary turned on the television. Family Feud was playing, so I joined him. His shirt was still in the dryer, so I strategically sat on the opposite end of the couch. Not too close. Taking it slow.
Eventually, as you might expect in that kind of situation, one thing led to another. No. Not that thing. Before we knew what we were doing, we found ourselves neck and neck. In points, that is. Another friendly competition, guessing answers during the speed round. Gary won the first round, I won the second. We battled back and forth, neither one of us willing to quit. During one of the commercial breaks, I decided I would rest my eyes just a little, a few seconds at most.
I must have dozed off because the next morning, when I woke up, I was still on the couch with Gary. He was zonked out on the other side, tangled up in the blanket. Our legs wrapped together like a pretzel.
He still wasn’t wearing a shirt, and for some reason, I wasn’t either. Just a sports bra and my sleep shorts. I must have gotten hot in the middle of the night and torn it off. And, let’s just say, the snippets of my dreams that I could remember hadn’t exactly cooled things down. They made the dream I had about Jack in his waiting room look like a rated G nursery school rhyme for toddlers.
Unconcerned about my partial clothing coverage, I sank back into the couch cushion and watched Gary sleep for a few moments. His bare chest rising and falling, the way his eyes fluttered in his dreams, the whispered sound of his breath as it passed back and forth through his lips.
“Ah-hmm.” The noise came from the other side of the living room.
I whipped around to see Bonnie and Joyce standing there, eyes wide, mouths hanging open. Behind Bonnie was her client, a bald man in wire-rimmed glasses, black slacks, black shirt, and a white collar. The pastor. His hand clutched the silver cross that hung around his neck.
Next to Joyce were her clients, the young couple and their four children, each one’s eyes wider than the next. The husband and the wife held each other like they were standing on the deck of the Titanic.
I scrambled up from the couch. “Bonnie! Joyce! You’re here!”
The little girl pointed. “Mommy, she’s not wearing her jammies.”
I ripped the sheet off of Gary to cover myself, fully exposing his naked torso, his private bits barely covered by his boxer shorts. Startled awake, Gary grunted, then tumbled off the couch with a thud.
The little girl pointed at Gary. “He’s not wearing jammies either.”
Despite the look of horror on the faces of their clients, Bonnie and Joyce were smiling ear to ear.
Bonnie winked.
Joyce gave me a thumbs up.
The pastor made the sign of the cross.
* * *
Thankfully, the rest of the open house went off without a hitch. And after calling Karen to grab Kyle to hang out with Cary for the day, Gary stayed the entire time, helping out. During a lull in visitors, he even went back to the grocery store and bought all the ingredients to make us a gourmet brunch. Huevos Rancheros, with homemade salsa, sliced avocado, the works. Turns out, when I just got out of his way and let him do his thing, he could really cook.
Over the course of the day, a lot of people came through. No on-the-spot offers, but the changes I made to spruce up the place had them oohing and aahing. I even overheard one woman tell her husband she really liked the wallpaper in the kitchen. Gary must have heard her too, because he winked at me. I could tell by the look on his face it was one of those things he would never let me forget for the rest of eternity. The rest of eternity? My imagination was obviously still high on paint fumes from the previous night.
When Gary wasn’t making me amazing Mexican brunches or giving me I told you so looks about the wallpaper, he busied himself touching up a few scuff marks on the walls, lubricating the windows, or vacuuming the exhaust lines for the air conditioner. He even baked a batch of cookies for the guests. Without burning them. I’m pretty sure he ate most of them himself, but nothing says welcome to your new house like the aroma of fresh-baked cookies.
Overall, it was a good day. No, a great day. In fact, it was almost perfect. The only thing missing was some billionaire investor falling in love with the house, then making a full price, all-cash offer. But by that point in my life, I had learned not to expect any of my hopes or dreams or wishes to come true. But maybe this time …
The open house officially ended at five thirty. I was just about to turn out the lights and lock the door when I heard a knock. When I opened the door, Bonnie was standing on the front porch.
“Bonnie?”
“You’ll never guess,” she said, a huge smile spreading across her face.
“What?” Was the pastor pressing charges for indecent exposure?
“He wants to make an offer. Full price. Thirty day close.”
“Thirty days?” There was a time in my life when thirty days seemed like forever. But suddenly, at that moment, it seemed like no time at all. Once again, my mouth spoke before my brain could interrupt. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? He’s offering full price. You’d be crazy not to take it.” Crazy, right? Maybe that’s what I was. “He didn’t even ask for closing costs.” Bonnie started digging through her briefcase. “Now he’ll probably want to douse the entire place in holy water, you know, after your little show and tell, but …”
“There was no show,” I protested.
“There was from where I was standing. And you’re definitely telling me everything.” Bonnie winked. “I expect details. Vivid details. The more graphic, the better.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
Gary came down the stairs from the second floor, from where he had been busy caulking the bedroom window frames. Caulking? My dirty slut brain was going haywire again. “What’s going on?”
“Oh, you’re still here.” A devious grin swept over Bonnie’s lips. “My client wants to make an offer. He said he would sign the paperwork first thing in the morning. Isn’t that great?”
“Is it?” Gary looked at me.
“Yeah,” I said, though I could barely muster the energy to pretend to be excited. “Great.”
My phone rang. I silently thanked whatever higher power was listening for the distraction and begged them to absolve me of my impure thoughts while I had their attention.
“Hello?” It was Joyce. Her clients wanted to put in an offer too. Even better, the young couple was willing to go as high as ten thousand dollars over the asking price, as long as I could vacate the house in the next two weeks.
“Two weeks?”
“Two weeks. And that’s firm. They’re in a rush.” Two weeks??
I told both Bonnie and Joyce that I needed a night to sleep on it and I would let them know first thing in the morning.
Once Gary and I were alone, he must have seen the panic building. “I thought you would be happy.” He handed me the last remaining cookie. “It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
“I thought so.” I took a bite of cookie, the crumbs cascading to Aunt Catherine’s freshly swept floor. Except it wasn’t Aunt Catherine’s floor. It wasn’t Aunt Catherine’s house. Not any more.
I looked through the hallway at the kitchen, the kitchen where Gary had convinced me to keep the wallpaper. The wallpaper my father had stood against growing up through the years. His markings on the wall. A tangible, physical reminder of him.
I looked over at Purrfect, licking herself obscenely. In the cat bed by the stairs. Her cat bed.
I looked in the dining room at the red wall. The wall I had painted. The wall I had worked on until my wrists hurt and my back was sore. The wall that had made Gary want to come and rescue me. The wall that had given us a second chance.
Then I looked at the painting Gary had given me as a housewarming present. The little blue bird. The gathering storm. The painting Jack had taken and Gary got back. For me. Because he knew how much it meant to me.
Last flight. It was like the little blue bird was staring right at me. Through me. Right into my very soul.
I was tired of flying.
I was tired of running.
This wasn’t Aunt Catherine’s house anymore.
This was my house.
This was my home.
“Mary?” Gary took my hand in his.
“I’m not selling it,” I said at last. “I think it’s time I put down some roots.”
Gary looked at me long and hard. “Good.”
I should have been scared. I should have been terrified. It would not be easy keeping up with a permanent mortgage and a car payment and electric bills. Sewer. Water. Cable. Pool service. I was going to need a pool service. And I’d have to find someone to take care of the lawn.
“Mary.” Gary’s voice momentarily quelled the rising tide of panic. “Just breathe.”
I did as I was told. I breathed. Long. Slow. Deep. Long. Slow. Deep. It must have worked because my dirty slut brain kicked back into high gear again.
“You’re not mad at me, are you?”
Gary looked at me like I needed fitted for a straight jacket. “Why would I be mad at you?”
“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”
“I do think you’re crazy, sometimes, oftentimes, but not for this. I knew you’d come around, eventually.”
“But I almost sold it …” I realized how close I had actually come. If Bonnie or Joyce had handed me a pen and a contract a few minutes earlier …
Gary gave my hand a squeeze. “If you would have said that you were going to take one of those other offers, I was prepared to make you an offer myself. Then I would have insisted on a really long closing. However long it took for you to come to your senses. The sense to realize you should just keep the place for yourself.”
Gary was the one not making any sense. I smiled. “That’s kind, but I would never let you take on that kind of burden.”
Gary shrugged. “No burden at all. Remember Rodney Banks from D&D club?”
I remembered him. One of Gary’s nerd friends. “Gnome Illusionist, right? The kid who used all his spell points to create illusions of naked Elven nymphs.”
“That’s him. Anyway, he went to Yale at the same time I did. Now he’s an investment banker. Helped me set some things up during the architect years.”
I scanned Gary’s face again for any sign that he was joking, but I could tell that he wasn’t.
“Good old Rodney may have had an Elven nymph fetish, but he sure as heck knew what he was doing when it came to picking stocks.”
For the next thirty seconds, I tried in vain to wrap my head around the reality that I was going to be a house owner. A real one this time. Not a temporary asset holder waiting for a transaction to close. No, wait, not a house owner. That wasn’t the right word. Now, I actually owned a home.
But my sudden and unexpected sense of peace and well-being was short-lived. As soon as I heard the knock on the door, I knew things were too good to be true. There was no way the Universe was going to let me off the hook that easily.
I opened the door, Gary standing tall beside me. I half expected to see the grim reaper standing there. Or an IRS agent. Or Justin Bieber with an army of lawyers suing me for past karaoke sins.
It wasn’t any of those things. The person standing at my door was Janet. Her face was red. I could tell right away that she had been crying.
“Janet?”
“Mary.”
Another face poked out from behind Janet’s head. It was Ralph. Janet reached one arm back over her shoulder and Ralph dutifully maneuvered a loose tissue from a tissue box into her outstretched hand. When Janet blew her nose, the resulting honk attracted every eligible goose within a twenty-mile radius.
Before I knew what was happening, Janet rushed forward and wrapped me in her arms.
* * *
As Janet settled onto the couch in the living room, Gary and I pulled Ralph to the side.
“How bad is it?” I asked.
“So far we’re on our third box of tissues and fourth pint of ice cream. Though being fair, I’m responsible for at least half of the ice cream.”
“You’re eating ice cream too?” I noticed Ralph had bags under his eyes and his wrinkled clothes looked like he had slept in them. Ralph never wore wrinkled clothes. He dry cleaned everything.
“Where’s Karen?” asked Gary.
“Long story.” And from the look on Ralph’s face, I could tell that it was. “A story we better save for another day. One crisis at a time.”
After making Ralph swear to tell us what was going on with him and Karen later, Ralph and Gary went to put on a kettle for tea, correctly realizing that Janet and I needed some time by ourselves to talk.
“What happened?” I asked as soon as Gary and Ralph left the room.
“You were right,” said Janet.
“About what, exactly?”
“He never changed, Mary. Jack Thompson is an asshole. You were right all along.” Janet pulled out her phone and handed it to me. There was a video queued up on the screen.
“What is this?” I asked.
“The security camera footage from the Dungeons and Dragons night,” said Janet. “You know, the night you and Jack … kissed.”
“I remember.” I really didn’t feel like reliving that night, but Janet waited for me to watch whatever she had recorded on her phone.
I took a deep breath and hit play. On screen, I watched every awful moment, cursing myself for how stupid and horrible I had been. I really didn’t want to finish watching it, especially when I saw Jack walking down the book aisle toward the place I was standing on the screen. Especially as Jack and I stood close to one another. Especially the part where he leaned in and …
“Wait a second.” I hit pause on Janet’s phone. When I looked up, her eyes locked onto mine.
That entire night was still a blur. My mind had been going in a million different directions. I couldn’t tell up from down or left from right. The truth was, my memory of everything that happened that night was still in a bit of a fog.
I hit rewind so I could play the video back on Janet’s phone. Then I zoomed in and paused, advancing the image frame by frame. I watched as Jack moved toward me in slow motion, then, clearly, unmistakably, he leaned in to kiss me. In the video, I never moved.
“You see it now, don’t you?”
Slowly, I nodded.
“You didn’t start the kiss,” said Janet. “He was the one who kissed you.”
Watching it with my own eyes, I could see that Janet was right. It didn’t make it any better, though. Shaking my head, I said, “I should have pushed him away. I should have stopped him.”
“Yeah. You should have, Mary.” Janet’s eyes narrowed. “Which is why I’m still mad at you.”
As my eyes settled on my feet, Janet slowly unclenched her fists. “But I think I understand why you didn’t.”
When I looked back up, her expression had softened. She brushed a tear away from the corner of her eye. “I just wish you would have told me you still had feelings for him. If you would have been honest with me from the beginning …”
I laughed out loud, though nothing about it was funny. “I wasn’t even honest with myself.” I took an extra deep breath, still trying to wrap my head around everything that had happened. “Not that it makes any difference now, but they were never the good kind of feelings. The only feelings I ever really had when it came to Jack Thompson were insecurity and doubt.”
Janet reached over and squeezed my hand.
I squeezed her back. "Janet, you're my best friend. You've been there for me through everything, and I betrayed you. I lied to you … I was so wrapped up in my stupid obsession …”
"Jack manipulated both of us,” said Janet. “Like we were some kind of prize in his sick, demented game. He knew exactly what to say to make me think he was truly interested in me. And then, meanwhile, he did just enough to string you along.” Janet shook her head. “I feel like such an idiot."
"You're not the idiot here," I said. "Janet, I am so, so sorry. I know words aren't enough, but I promise you, I will do whatever it takes to make this right between us."
Janet moved in for another hug. When she finally released me, a slow smile crept over her face. “Whatever it takes?”
A slow frown crept over mine. “Well, I mean …”
“Well, you can start by buying me a cider at FoxPaw.” Janet’s devious smile only widened.
“You liked Mike’s cider that much?”
“Among other things.” Janet’s smile grew wider still.
Before I could question Janet further, Ralph and Gary returned from the kitchen, carrying our cups of tea. “Did you show her the pictures too?” asked Ralph.
“Pictures?”
The four of us gathered around Janet’s phone. “Remember Jack’s trip to Mexico?”
On Janet’s screen was a picture of a Pina Colada with a pink lip print on the edge, a shade of pink that looked very familiar. The same shade I saw on Jack’s lips at the race. That wasn’t all, though. Beside the Pina Colada was a second drink, with a very distinctive blue hue.
“Is that a …” My voice trailed off, the reality of what I was seeing sinking in.
“A Blue Hawaiian,” Janet finished. “Jack’s favorite drink. There are more pictures too. Tagged to a resort in Cancun. Posted on the same days Jack said he was going to that medical conference in Mexico.”
“Jack posted pictures of himself having fun in Cancun after he told you he would be working the whole time?” I scrolled through more pictures. “Not very bright, is he?”
“Jack didn’t post them.”
“He didn’t?” I looked up at Janet, confused.
“You want to guess who posted them?”
I had a feeling I already knew. “Ashley Griffin.”
I stared at Janet’s phone as she scrolled through picture after picture of white sand and clear blue ocean, fancy drinks and selfies of Ashley lounging by the pool in a barely there bikini.
It took me a moment to absorb everything that Janet was telling me, and what I saw on Janet’s phone.
I braced myself for Janet’s inevitable meltdown. But she didn’t melt down. Surprisingly, she looked like she was entirely sane and stable. Miraculously, she looked calm.
“Janet, what did you do?”
Another sly smile formed on Janet’s lips. “You know that Carrie Underwood song, Before He Cheats ?”
I couldn’t help but smile myself. “You didn’t.”
Janet shrugged her shoulders. “I sorta did. Except instead of a truck, it was a BMW. That reminds me, Ralph, do you know any good property damage lawyers?”