Emily's Reasons Why Not (12 page)

When the sun finally did come up, I wasn’t tired in the slightest. We had talked, laughed, and kissed all night. I roll out of his arms to pee and brush my teeth. I shut the door to the bathroom and look in the mirror. My cheeks are rosy and glossy. My eyes have a hint of sparkle. I sit down on the toilet
thinking to myself,
This is it, finally
. I flush, wash my hands, and stroll out of the bathroom.

He is gone. “Reese?” The room is empty and deadly silent. Sun peaks through the heavy drapes. My pulse increases. My shoulders drop. I sit on the edge of the bed feeling an overwhelming sense of abandonment. Did I dream it? Then …

A knock at the door. My heart leaps. I jump up, swing open the door, and there he stands, holding a Starbucks coffee.

“Triple-venti-nonfat-no-foam-three-Sweet’n-Low latte.”

He holds out my drink. “Oh, and don’t think your buddies at the coffee shop didn’t know who I was buying this for at six A.M.”

The best. He is the best. I stand in the doorway, not wanting him to go. I take the coffee and he kisses me one last time. “Make it a great day,” I say again, for the second time. He smiles, hugs me, and walks off. “Wait.” I pull on his sleeve. “You never told me what you were doing in Pittsburgh.”

He waited two or three good long seconds. Jesus, these pregnant pauses of longing eye contact are going to kill me. Then, almost afraid of all of the stereotypes, all of the questions, all of the innuendos, he throws it out there. “Playing the Pirates.”

“Huh?”

“I’m a pro baseball player. First base, San Diego Padres.” And just like that, he was gone.

The door to my room shut, my head was racing, and my heart sank.

I lay back down on my bed, feeling miserable.

Looking up at Dr. D., I plead with him for insight. “How did I shove a lifetime of dreams and who I really am, or better yet who Reese really was, or who I wanted him to be, into one night?”

“Keep going,” he says. “We’ll figure that out later.”

“For me, the worst thing in the world is being left. I don’t like to be left. I hate it, despise it, would rather face anything than the fear of abandonment, and Reese, as great as he seems, was destined to be leaving me ALL OF THE TIME!”

“You’re not still in touch with him, are you?” Dr. D. asks, interrupting the flow of my thoughts.

There it was, out there, the defining moment of whether to lie to my therapist. Truth. I choose truth. I choose good mental health.

“No. Not technically, at least. We e-mail sometimes.

Mainly just jokes. I think it is his way of just making me laugh as somewhere inside he knows I am still hurt.”

“But it’s over?”

I nod a sort of yeah, I guess, YEAH, it’s over, nod.

“We’ll figure out why you’re still e-mailing, then.” He writes a note and encourages me to continue.

I was completely enthralled with a man who was destined to be shutting the door on me seven months out of twelve. I knew what it meant to me. For me.

This created “issues.” I know this. My friends know this. I need a man who is home, someone normal, someone who isn’t leaving all the time. And there are all those stereotypes about ballplayers having a woman in every city. Eighty-one road
games. Eighty-one nights in hotel beds. Eighty-one nights left to wonder if your boyfriend has his penis in another woman.

That night I get home to my hotel room after shooting scenes of the river snake eating locals, open my door, and smell nothing but roses from the moment I walk in. The entire room is filled with red roses. There must be six or seven dozen. I leap over the bed and rip open the card in the vase on my desk.

You make my day great. XOXO, Reese
. Roses. I haven’t gotten roses, hmm, ever. He is too amazing to be true.

Reason #10
,
and although I try to shoot it down as pessimism before it can form, it pops into my head: If your man seems too good to be true, he probably is
.

Maybe we were just destined to fall in love. I have finally found my soul mate.

I dial Grace. “Hi, it’s me. What’re you doing?”

“What’s wrong?” Grace says with worry in her voice.

“I’m in love!”

Grace questions, “I talked to you two days ago. You’re not in love.”

“Love, love, love.”

“Lemme guess. An actor? A Clooney lookalike.” She pauses.

“Nope.” I smell my roses.

“Director?”

“Nope.”

“Producer, camera guy, best boy?”

“Nope, nope, nope.”

“Em, what’s a best boy?”

“I dunno know.” I plop down on the bed, spinning a rose in my fingertips. “He’s a baseball player.” Ow. A thorn pierces my thumb. I stuff it in my mouth and suck it.

Silence.

“Did you hear me?” I ask.

“Oh, I heard you. I am just trying to figure out at what point I need to get on a plane and come out there for an intervention. How far gone are you?”

“He lives in Scottsdale.”

“Oh shit, you’re planning the wedding. What happened to taking it slow?”

Maybe she’s right.

I instantly hang up on her.

What the hell am I doing? I’ve known this guy less than twenty-four hours and I’m planning our retirement in Arizona. Mental. I am mental. Two hours, one bath, and one Band-Aid from thorny rose later … my phone rings.

“Hello.”

“Emily? It’s Reese.” I can hear the other players on the bus talking and celebrating in the background.

“I just got the roses. They’re beautiful. You didn’t have to do that.”

“Well, I figured they’d live in your room long enough for me to at least get back. This way you won’t forget about me.”

As if that’s ever going to happen.

“That’s so sweet.”

“You deserve them. I gotta go. We just got on the bus and
we’re heading to the hotel. I gotta call my parents and I’m beat, so I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Well, thanks again for last night and today and the roses.”

“No problem. I’ll call you tomorrow, bye.”

“Bye.” I hang up.

Why do I feel sick?

The phone rings again. I pick it up halfway through the first ring. It’s Grace and Reilly three-way-calling me. They sound like they’ve got a game plan. I can tell they’ve conferred and strategized.

“You should have known, you big fat bonehead,” Grace says into the phone. “Better yet, you should know now. If you know your issues, which you do, Em, and the guy you date pushes these buttons knowingly or unknowingly … Don’t date him! ‘Cause he’s going to make you batty.”

“Ahhh, but I can still smell him on my pillow,” I counter. “And the room is full of …”

“I sense a train wreck,” adds Reilly on the other end of the three-way call.

“I haven’t figured out what about Reese is making me nervous.” I flop back on the bed and write the plusses and minuses of dating Reese while I listen to the girls.

“Nausea, headaches, and sleepless nights are your body’s way of telling you what’s going right, or wrong,” Grace says. “Your body is the first thing to warn you, and in nine cases out of ten, when you feel nervous energy, there is a reason to be nervous.”

My focus moves from her ever-more-frantic voice to my
list. Plus column: Hot, sweet, funny, seems family-oriented, tall, dark, handsome, calls, sends flowers.

And the minuses: Is not here, could have an account at 1-800-FLOWERS, is too hot, and has a job where senseless women hurl themselves at him, thus making my ploy to “hold out” not productive.

“… Wait and ‘suss it out,’ ” Reilly finishes.

For the next two weeks, Reese and I talk on the phone twice a day, once when he is going to the field for practice at around 2:00 P.M. and the other time when the game is over and he is either heading out on the town for the night with the boys or to his hotel room, depending on whether they win or lose and whether he hits or strikes out.

Day fourteen. Exactly 336 hours and 24 minutes since Reese left.

Is it love or obsession when you know how many hours it was since you last saw him?

I am delusional. But, on the phone I have learned every detail about Reese’s three brothers, one sister, their wives, husband, families, and his parents, who are still married. A bonus, as it means he knows that commitment and relationships take hard work and love.

Of course that could all be wrong if, say, Reese’s parents HATE each other, sleep in twin beds on opposite sides of the house, and never talk.

Other tidbits I have learned … He had trouble in school with academics, yet graduated from college. Had one serious girlfriend in high school, another when he got drafted, and a
psycho girlfriend who currently wants to kill him because he broke up with her and, apparently, she didn’t think the game was over.

Another reason breaks through my mental defenses while I sit on the couch in Dr. D.’s office. Is it bad if an old girlfriend, ex-wife, or even female friend has cause to want to shoot my new boyfriend in the head? The thought happens before I can stop myself from thinking it. But it never gets vocalized. The ex knew everything I had to learn. Just like with Craig. Remember, not every ex-wife, ex-girlfriend is a crazy, drama-filled, needy, money-grubbing, lying slut. Be wary of men who hate their ex and be warier still of an ex who hates your man. I learned that one already. I’m starting to see more patterns.

I will say here, just as a side note, that Reese and I have something. I am not sure if it is the “flutter, flutter,” or if it is chemistry, history, past life, something, anything, but there is a connection. A familiarity. A strange, cosmic connection that we both feel and share. Is the connection enough? Or is it just the universe recycling past love? Whatever the answer is, it has me totally convinced that this guy is going to steal my heart.

And unlike Craig, he isn’t boring on the phone, nor will I ever run out of things to say to him. Another bonus.

He’s supposed to get in at 7:30 P.M. They had a day game in Milwaukee.

I go through my mating ritual. Take a bath in vanilla bath salts, shave legs and armpits, Nair bikini line, pluck the brows, slather in lotion, makeup, hair, Evian mist on face so as to appear
to be moist with translucent skin. Jeans, gray sweater, Ping ball cap. My typical trickery.

6:56 P.M.—in the hotel bar, waiting. Ordered one glass of red wine.

7:35 P.M.—in the hotel bar, waiting. Finished the glass of red wine that has turned my teeth purple. Switched to Kettle One martini, dirty.

8:01 P.M.—in the hotel bar, waiting. Have moved from the bar stool to the couch to get away from scary, bald Pittsburgh cop who is hitting on me. May appear to be call girl.

8:55 P.M.—feeling kinda good … and warm and fuzzy. On my third martini.

9:40 P.M.—I am sleepy.

1:10 A.M.—head pounding, hair stuck to the side of my face, shoes off, laying on hotel couch, passed out as Reese shakes my shoulder. He’s blurry. Ow! My head. I am filled with a mouth of cotton.

Where’s the Kool-Aid guy when you need him?

“How long have you been down here?”

“Not long. I am thirsty, very thirsty,” I say as I roll up off the couch and look at the mirror on the wall. “AAAAHHHHH!” I have mascara under my eyes, lipstick on the side of my face, lines imprinted on my cheeks from uncomfortable polyester pillows. My eyelashes are bent and I’m pale. Very pale.

This isn’t at all how I planned it in my head.

That night Reese walked me to my room and gave me two Tylenol and a bottle of Gatorade out of his bag before he tucked me into my bed, alone.

My phone is ringing. Or maybe it’s my head.

“Hello.”

“Hey, I was just checking to see how you were feeling this afternoon.” Reese says.

“Afternoon? What time is it?” I roll over and look at the neon clock radio.

Twelve forty-two P.M.

“Wanna grab a coffee before I go to the field?” Reese asks. “Sure, just gimme a half-hour to shower and I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

“I’ll come get you. I don’t think I want you in the lobby alone again,” he laughs and hangs up.

In the elevator, I looked him up and down out of the corner of my eye. Something about him warmed me inside. Made me feel alive. I realized I was smiling unconsciously. I looked away, and he took my hand in his as if to say, I am glad to see you, too. I was happy we didn’t have sex yet. At least one thing is going slow. We made a date for that night and he got on the bus to the field.

We met in the lobby at 10:15 P.M. They lost, but somehow I felt found. We shared a vegetable beef soup and some cheese bread, then went back to my room and kissed and rolled around. For three nights he is in Pittsburgh and it is awesome … but I am afraid because in the back of my head, his leaving is looming. He is always going to be leaving me after four perfect days. He is going, going, gone.

The river snake is dead. The movie is wrapped and I have not seen Reese in one month, but we have talked on the
phone every day, twice a day, since he left Pittsburgh. Almost seven weeks of sharing every intimate detail of our lives and five days of smooching, but no sex. Both of us are dying to do it, it’s just, well, I think it might push me over the emotional well-being line, and he understands that.

I am heading to see him in San Diego. I am going for it! I am putting my fear aside and giving love a chance.

I sit on the aisle seat of an American Airlines M80. I choose the aisle seat to get off more quickly so I will not waste a second of time with my man. I am consumed with excitement.

I walk the jetway. My legs are weak. I hit the open terminal and see him. I am suddenly aware of the blood surging through my body. He is perfect. Smiling. There. Real. Mine. In the flesh. We have a giant hug, followed by a long, wet kiss. We are that couple in the airport terminal, stopping the flow of traffic, that everyone hates.

We barely make it into his apartment in San Diego before tearing each other’s clothes off. We fall onto the living room floor and make love for the first time, and it is amazing, sensual, and intimate.

I wake up at 3:10 A.M. and look at him. His eyes are open and he grins at me.

“I am so happy that you made the trip. You make me, well, feel like, like I want to hold and protect you. I felt it when I first saw you,” he says, spooning me close to his warm body.