Anyone but You (13 page)

"She needs a through line," Mary Theresa agreed. "A spine to hold the story together until the end.

But it's funny, really funny, so maybe the humor will carry it."

"Nope." Walter the plumber looked like an accountant. "It's funny, but it's kind of mean funny.

I felt sorry for some of these guys."

Great, Nina thought. This didn't bode well for Charity. Or for Howard Press, for that matter.

"I didn't feel sorry for them," Mary Theresa said. "I've dated guys like these."

"No, you haven't." Rich stretched out his legs and sipped his lemonade. "No guy is all bad. Maybe these guys had limits, but they were human beings, too."

So it was a gender thing. Nina thought fast. Women would understand it, but men would feel defensive. Most book buyers were female, but that didn't mean Charity could afford to offend men.

She was going to have to do some rethinking on her male characterization.

Rich was still talking. "I think the author sacrificed character for humor. You know, like she didn't have to make them real as long as they were funny. So they all have one thing that she focuses on and makes fun of. Like they're too anal retentive. Or they're too preoccupied with sex." He looked at Nina and smiled. "Or they're too young."

Nina's face burned, and Rich went on. "So she never sees the real man. She obsesses on this one character trait, and she never sees anything else."

Very funny, Rich. Nina stole a sideways look to see if Alex had noticed, but he seemed to be concentrating on what Rick was saying about Charity's book. Thank God.

And what Rich was saying was important. Charity was going to have to rethink her approach.

Nina, however, was not going to rethink hers about younger men.

Rich went on, dissecting Charity's male characters, and Nina watched Charity, prepared to carry her out the door if she looked as if she was going to scream.

Charity sat on the edge of her chair, frowning as she concentrated. "But won't it ruin the story if the men are nice?" she asked Rich. "Won't that make it boring?"

"No." Rich leaned forward. "Because then there will be some suspense. The way this is written now, you know each chapter is going to end in disaster. But if they're nice guys with flaws—"

"Okay, that's a problem I saw," Steve broke in. "Each chapter is a disaster bit. It gets depressing because, you know, you like Jane when you read about her. She's funny and she's sexy. You want her to be happy. And she keeps dating Godzilla. Over and over and over."

"Right," Mary Theresa said. "It's like, why is she so dumb? I wanted her to be smart. She's so funny and she's so smart about other things, why is she so dumb about these guys? There should be something about them that's attractive so you understand why she's going out with them. She's so blind."

"You're right," Alex said, and Mary Theresa smiled at him. Well, that was good, Nina thought. Mary Theresa was very pretty and a lot closer to his age. See, Rich? He's not nterested in me, anyway.

Alex was still talking to Mary Theresa. "You do expect Jane to learn something after each date.

You want her to do better every time."

"Yeah, I wanted her to win in the end," Steve said. "I wanted her to get her act together and end up with some guy, a good guy. I got tired of reading about losers, and then it ends and she's alone and you know she's going to hook up with another loser. So, what's the point?"

Nina couldn't look at Charity. Steve had pretty much just summed up the overwhelming problem of the book, right there. More than that, he'd summed up the problem of Charity's entire life.

Nina leaned forward to get Steve's attention. "How about if she learns something from every relationship so at the end she's ready to start again, and you know she'll succeed this time, even though there's not a happily-ever-after chapter? Would that do it?"

"No," Mary Theresa said. "I like the idea of her learning something and things getting better, but I want to see her make it. That's the payoff. If I've suffered with her through all those dates, and I've got to tell you, you really do suffer through those dates, then I ought to get the pay-off, too. I want to see her win."

Norma stirred. "You're all right, I think," she said, looking directly at Charity, "but what bothered me the most was that Jane didn't seem emotionally involved with any of them. It seemed as though she went through all the relationships knowing they were going to fail, so she prepared herself by making wisecracks and making conditions for herself. If she lost ten pounds, the relationship would work. If she wore the right clothes, the relationship would work. She never believed any of the men could love her for herself, no matter what she looked like or what she said." Norma looked at Nina. "Or how old she was. She didn't believe in unconditional love."

Nina closed her eyes and vowed never to come back to Norma's again. At least not with Alex beside her. She didn't dare look at him. He was probably embarrassed. She sure as hell was.

Mary Theresa said, "Did I miss a chapter about a younger guy?" and Nina wanted to groan, but Charity nodded at Norma, caught up in the conversation.

"You're right," she said. "You're absolutely right. I'll fix it in the rewrite."

"Did you write this?" Mary Theresa asked her, incredulous.

Charity flushed and sat back. "Yeah. Sorry it was such a waste of your time."

Mary Theresa beamed at her. "But it wasn't. It was funny. And sexy. We didn't talk about that, but the sex scenes were terrific."

"Yeah, they were," Steve said, looking at Charity with new eyes. "Really good."

"I think it's going to be an excellent book," Norma told her. "Once you rewrite it to get some of the kinks out of it-"

"No, leave the kinks," Steve said.

"—it's going to be a terrific novel."

"Do you think so?" Charity said.

"I do," Walter said. "Do we get to see the rewrite?"

Charity's face lit up, and Nina relaxed, more relieved than she'd realized that Charity was okay with the criticism. "You'd read it again?" Charity asked them. "You really would?"

"You bet," Alex said. "It's good stuff."

"I think we deserve to see it again," Rich said. "We want to see what happens."

Nina smiled at him and thought, Thank you, Rich, I forgive you for the age crack.

Charity nodded, beaming on them all. "Yes. Thank you, I'd love to have you read the rewrite."

* * *

"That was NOT a help," Alex told Norma and Rich when Charity had dragged Nina out the door to talk about revisions, and everyone else had left. "Beating Nina up in public is not going to make her want to go out with me."

Norma patted his shoulder. "She just needs to wake up. You'll see. She just needs to be nudged a little."

Alex tried to look quelling. "I'd rather do my own nudging, Norma."

"Well, yes, but you're not," Rich said as he put the last lair back against the wall. "You're just standing there with your finger up your nose waiting for a miracle." He shook his head. "You've got to make your own miracles with women, boy."

Great. Now he was getting his technique with women critiqued. He tried to look unwounded. "Thank you, Rich. I'll try to remember that. As a matter of fact, I'm working n the problem."

"You've been working on it for three months," Rich lid. "It only took me half an hour to ask Norma out." He grinned at the woman he loved. "And two weeks to spend the night."

Norma raised an eyebrow. "That was my decision, not yours," she told him before she turned back to Alex. "And it'll be Nina's decision, too. We were just pointing out to her tonight how blind she's being in not making that decision."

"Well, don't do it again," Alex said. "You keep it up, she won't even watch movies with me."

Rich rolled his eyes and took the tray of glasses out to the kitchen.

"He has a point," Norma said, and Alex gave up and went downstairs to his own apartment where nobody did postmortems on his seduction technique, no matter how much it needed them.

* * *

Charity called Sunday afternoon while Nina was cleaning the kitchen after lunch and trying not to think about Alex.

"That was something Friday night," Charity said.

"Listen, Char, don't get discouraged." Nina cradled the phone on her shoulder so she could put the milk back in the fridge with her free hand. "I looked at the book again last night, and it's not going to take that much to fix it."

"I know," Charity said. "I'm not discouraged. But I've been thinking. And I think Norma's right, about both of us."

"Us?" Nina echoed, butter in hand.

"Us," Charity said, and Nina sighed and slid the buttei in the fridge before she shut the door.

"We don't believe in unconditional love," Charity went on. "I keep thinking I have to be sexy and funny and sweet, and then I get mad because I'm never myself, and I figure out some flaw in the guys I'm with and use that to get out so I can be myself for a while. And then I get lonely and go out and play that dumb game again."

"Wait a minute." Nina stopped with a bowl of macaroni and cheese in her hands. "That's not true.

Look at some of these guys, the ones who cheated or who had mother complexes or—"

"I know," Charity said. "I know some of them deserved to be left. But some of them didn't.

Like Alex."

Nina shoved the mac and cheese bowl in the fridge and slammed the door. "How did Alex get into your book?"

"The only thing wrong with Alex is that he's ten years younger than you are," Charity said. "That's a stupid reason not to love him, Neen."

"There are a lot of other things wrong with Alex," Nina said. "He's immature and unfocused and—"

"You're making up excuses," Charity said. "The real problem is that you don't believe Alex could love you because your body is forty years old and your face has some wrinkles. Norma hit it right. You don't believe in unconditional love."

Nina swallowed. "It's not that easy."

"Just because you don't believe in yourself doesn't mean that Alex doesn't believe in you," Charity said. "And you won't even give him a chance."

"He doesn't want a chance," Nina said. "He—"

"Trust me," Charity said. "I've seen the two of you together. He wants a chance."

"Charity, you're being romantic," Nina said. "This is real life."

"Real life doesn't have to suck," Charity said. "And that's how I'm going to rewrite this book. I feel good about the book, Neen. I'm excited about this. And I believe things will work out for us if we just believe in ourselves."

"Good." Nina closed her eyes and wished she believed that, too. "I'm glad, Char. I can't wait to read the rewrite."

"That's what I'm working on now," Charity said. "I just wanted to let you know that I was okay.

And that I think you should give Alex a chance.''

"Goodbye, Charity," Nina said, and Charity sighed and hung up.

Give Alex a chance. Alex had had plenty of chances and he hadn't taken them. All right, she hadn't been exactly welcoming, but he'd had his chances.

He just hadn't wanted them.

Nina got a glass out of the cupboard and jerked the refrigerator door open to get some ice. The door stuck, and she jerked again, annoyed and frustrated over more than the door, and then it opened at the same time the Crock-Pot fell off the top of the fridge and onto the glass in her hand, breaking it neatly into four jagged pieces before it crashed onto the floor, the glass lid smashing in a million pieces at her feet.

Nina stared at her hand, nonplussed, still holding the largest bottom piece of the glass. Her hand hurt, but there were no marks on it. How had she managed to drop a Crock-Pot on a glass and not cut herself? She shut the door and moved slowly to the counter, crunching glass underfoot, to put the rest of the glass down. She swept the glass up one-handed, moving it into a corner and dropping a towel over it so that Fred couldn't wander into it accidentally. Then she flexed her hand, and a thin red line appeared, running down the side of her thumb and into her palm.

She'd cut herself, after all. It couldn't be too bad, though; it was barely bleeding. Just that thin red line.

Even as she had the thought, blood began to seep from under the cut, and she realized that it wasn't a cut as much as a slice, and that it was deep, and that there was going to be a lot more blood. She moved to the sink as her palm turned red and watched in stunned disbelief as the blood began to ooze from her hand, slow, but steadier than she believed possible.

Blotting it with a towel didn't help. Pressure made it bleed faster. There weren't enough Band-Aids in the world to help this cut. Still too stunned to think, Nina looked in the sink and saw red splashed everywhere. She was going to have to get help.

She grabbed a clean blue-checked dish towel and wrapped it around her aching hand. "You stay here,"

she said to Fred, and grabbed her keys and headed downstairs to see Alex.

She knocked twice, but there was no answer, and she realized he was on duty. At the hospital. Two blocks away. The towel was stained red now, and her hand ached harder, and she pressed it into her stomach, hoping the pressure would slow the bleeding until she figured out what to do. Call 911 and say what? "I cut my hand?" Not for 911. That was for emergencies. Heart attacks. Car accidents.

All she had was a cut on her hand. The hospital was only two blocks away.

Pulling her scattered thoughts together, Nina headed for the stairs.

Later, Nina couldn't remember much of the walk except the ache and the throbbing and the dizziness mixed in with how pretty Riverbend was in the twilight. If she had to bleed to death, at least it would be on a nice evening. But once she was at Riverbend General's ER, elbowing her way in the door, trying not to get blood on everything she touched, the calm evening turned into a madhouse filled with more people than she'd ever seen in her life, all talking at once. She found her way to the admitting desk and leaned against the counter, keeping her hand low and tight to her stomach so she didn't get blood on anything, hoping the pressure would ease the sharp ache that was turning into pain, a little overwhelmed and a lot woozy and very close to throwing up.