Fat Chance (26 page)

"Well, aren't you? Kind of?" Chelsea asks, throwing her hands up in surrender as I glare at her.

"Of course I'm not!" I exclaim, gesturing with my wine glass. "Am I?"

Renee has been sitting on the floor in front of Chelsea's feet, preferring the firmer surface over my cloud soft living room suite; now she unfolds her slender body and comes to sit beside me on the couch.

"Maybe you are," she says gently. "Cass, I know you've been so hurt by everything, and you feel like no one but mom and Chelsea and I have ever stuck by you. But you can't push him away, expecting the worst from him. If you do that now, before long, you'll be doing it to everyone you encounter. And you're just too good for that, you deserve someone who loves you. And maybe he can, maybe he does."

"You never know if you don't give him a chance," Chelsea says.

"I know, I know," I mutter, my head in my hands. "I just need to handle this Rick thing right now."

"What about after?" Chelsea asks.

"Okay." She's relentless; I have to agree. Not that I really want to fight it anyway. I really do miss him. "Okay, after. I'll call him when this is over."

The more I attend yoga with Renee and the girls, the more I fall in love with it. I'm invigorated and relaxed all at once, and I can see subtle improvements in each of the poses as I practice them more and more often. I'm proud of myself, which is entirely new to me, and I love it; I can't help being greedy for it, and I seek out new ways to impress myself these days.

Walking out of the yoga studio, I lock my purse in my trunk and go off down the street on foot. The park I like to run in is only a few blocks away, and I figure that between yoga and walking, I'll be good and warm in the muscles before I reach the park. The walk is invigorating, and as I come through the gates of the park, I'm smiling.

There's a part of me that's really hoping Drew will be here. I've been saying that I can't let myself call him, that I'm not ready to talk things out until I've dealt with my personal issues with Rick. But if I'm honest with myself, I have to admit how much I miss him, how much I’d loved running into him.

Stepping onto the path, I quicken my pace and get into a good jog, letting my body adjust to the new speed, my eyes combing the path for signs of Drew. I don't see him, but what I do see brings me to a grinding halt. Stepping off the path to make way for other runners, I lean back against the trunk of a tree and watch.

They walk together, hand in hand, slowly making their way along the path. They talk; they laugh. Occasionally, she leans into him and he drapes his arm over her shoulders; she gazes up at him, keeping both hands on the stroller in front of them, keeping it balanced. As they come closer, I lean forward and pretend to retie my shoe, sneaking a quick peek at the little boy in the stroller.

He's probably around a year old; he has a river of drool running down his chin, mixing with the dissolved mess of the graham cracker he has clutched in his fat little fist. He smiles at me, and his tiny teeth wink in the sunlight, somehow clean despite the crust surrounding his full lips.

I smile back, helplessly charmed.

"He's beautiful," I say to his parents; aching as they thank me and continue on. As an only child, orphaned at an early age, I have spent great chunks of my life secretly wishing for a family of my own. Janet and the twins have become family to me, but I crave the strength of a partner, and the sweetness of a child. It strikes me to the core, being faced with the perfection of a tiny child, reminding me that time is passing while I cower in self-conscious fear.

Picking up my pace again, I try to ignore the direction my thoughts have gone.

That could have been me, someday soon. Drew wanted me; and like a fool, I sent him away. And he hasn't called since I saw him. Maybe he gave up, and that's that. Maybe I shouldn't wait for the Rick thing to be over, maybe I should stop putting my own life on hold. Maybe I just need to stop this and call him.

Tossing off the entire issue, I focus on my run, speeding along the pathway. Still, as I reach the end of the path and turn to head back to my car, I pass that little family again. This time, the mother is walking carefully with her son, his tiny hand tucked gently into hers as he concentrates on each careful step. The child's father walks behind them with the stroller, smiling proudly upon his offspring.

The ache comes rushing back, and as I walk back to my car, my mind is racing. I never wanted to hurt Drew, but I know that I have, and in that process, I'm hurting myself. I miss him; I miss talking to him, and sitting with him. I miss the amazing dates he thinks up, the silly jokes he makes. I miss the possibility he represented, the possibility he seemed to want.

"Screw it, I'm calling him," I mutter to myself, unlocking the trunk of my car and reaching inside. My stomach does a little flip of anticipation as I slip the phone out of the bag and scroll down to his name.

"Cass?" he answers, warily.

"Drew. I think I'm ready to talk now," I say, opening the car door and slipping into the driver's seat. I lay my purse in the seat beside me, and shut my door, turning the key in the ignition.

"Okay," he says. "I'm listening."

"I'm sorry, Drew, I really am. I didn't mean to hurt you, and --"

"I know all that," he interrupts. "Just skip that whole part, because I know you enough by now to know you had some reason for whatever all this is. And I don't need you to humble yourself or grovel or whatever; I'm not that kind of guy. Just tell me what's in your head, and then tell me that you want us to keep trying."
 

"I did tell you, Drew, I told you it's this mess with Rick, and I just feel so confused about myself. One day I'm feeling great, and I can look in the mirror and see something great. The next, I'm a mess again. I think I just had put so much trust in Rick as my friend back then, and it's hard to turn that off, even when he's being horrible. I can still see the good in him, you know?"

"And it throws you off. But what about me? Do I wait for him to turn into Mr. Nice Guy? Or isn't there enough good in me to make you want to try this?" he asks.

"Of course there is, and I want to try again. I think I just need closure on the whole thing, and I've got plans in the works for that. I've kept his abuse to myself all this time, and I haven't really told anyone but you, and Dr. Caswell. But I've told my sisters now, and they've offered to confront him with me. One way or the other, this mess will be behind me soon, and I feel like then I can move on."

"And?"

I lean my head back, still sitting in the parking lot of the yoga studio. Taking a break, I close my eyes and give myself permission to take a risk. "I'd like the moving on to be with you, Drew. I do want us to try
again; I just don't want my issues with Rick to poison us any more than they already have. We have a family dinner set for this weekend, and he'll be there; it's when I'm going to confront him."

"I want to be there," he says, and I freeze, my eyes popping open.

"Drew, please. The whole problem with this is that I need to prove to myself that I can handle it."

"Surrounded by family?"

"They won't be there because I can't go it alone. They'll be there because I've allowed him to say vile things to me in secret for almost a decade now, and they have had no idea about any of it. They'll be there because when I clear the air with Rick, I want to expose what he's been doing, so he is forced to honestly deal with who he's become. Maybe I hate him for what he's done to me, Drew, but he's the only brother I've ever had, and he's a part of what I see as my family. I owe myself the confrontation, but I still owe him the gift of privacy."

"That's fine, I get it," he says, grudgingly. I know he's not happy, but I'm thankful for his choice to respect what I've said. "Call me when it's over, and I'll be there."

And then he's gone.

Sitting on Janet's couch, I sip my wine and wait for the door to open. Renee thinks that Rick will probably try to deny everything when we confront him, and it will cause the situation to not be resolved. Her solution is to leave me alone with him, hoping that he says something. She and Chelsea are with Janet in the kitchen, being as quiet as possible.

I've just settled back into the cushions of the couch when the door finally opens and he comes breezing in. He stands for a moment in the doorway, still and quiet, listening; I listen too, praying no one sneezes in the kitchen.

Satisfied that we are alone, he turns to me, and walks over to stand over me. I look up at him as calmly as possible, and wave the goblet in my hand. "Well there you are. The star of the show," I smile.

"No, sweetheart, I'm never the star. I'm just the frog, remember? You've always been the piggy."

"Right, I remember." Taking a sip of wine, I place the goblet on the table and gesture the chair beside me.

Lowering himself, he asks, "Where is everyone? I thought we were supposed to be having a family to-do or something."

"We are," I answer, trying not to be smug. The only cars in the driveway are Janet's, and mine, because I picked the twins up and brought them with me, giving me an excuse to be alone in the house with him. "Renee and Chelsea ran Janet to the store, she's out of some stuff she needed for dinner."

"Oh, wow, you've been here all day then huh? Cleaning out the kitchen for Janet? Eating everything up?"

"Well you know me," I answer. "I come hungry."

"Please," he scoffs, propping his feet on the coffee table. Janet has always hated this; he's only doing it because he thinks she isn't home. "You come hungry? You could sit here and eat yourself half to death all day long, and you and I both know you'd still leave hungry. A pig is a bottomless pit."

"Well, that may be so," I mutter. "But really Rick, it's been 'piggy' this and 'piggy' that for years now. Can't you be original sometimes? I mean, there are lots of other offensive animals to compare a woman to. You know, there's the elephant, and the hippo --"

"And the whale?" he suggests helpfully. "Sorry, it's just that your blubber tends to be a little distracting. Sometimes, I'm so busy fighting off waves of nausea that I can hardly think at all."

"My, my," I gasp, raising a hand to my chest, struggling not to laugh as his eyes follow my hand, lingering before me meets my eyes again. "You must be nauseous a lot, because you think about as much as a doorknob."

"You disgusting bitch --" he hisses, cut off as Janet's voice rings out from the kitchen doorway behind him.

"I'll thank you not to use that language in my house, young man. And kindly remove your feet from my furniture."

Rick's eyes widen, and so does my smile. He knows that I've set him up, and fury floods his face as Janet enters the living room, her arms crossed. He stands, freezing as Chelsea and Renee follow behind Janet, both of them enraged.

"And here I thought you'd grown up," Janet says, coming to a stop in front of him. "Are you really so low, Rick? Have you learned nothing from us?"

"Apparently not," Chelsea mutters, and Rick whirls on her.

"You shut your mouth, this is none of your business," he growls, raising a finger to point at her. She hesitates, but Renee is bold, stepping forward to slap his hand away.

"How dare you!" she exclaims. "My parents took you in when the whole world thought you were worthless. My father took you under his wing, like a son. And this is how you thank us? You disrespect his memory by tearing someone else apart, after he tried so hard to make something good out of you?" Raising her hand, she slaps his face, and shock widens his eyes.

"I have done nothing to disrespect him," he whispers.

"Who the hell do you think brought her here?" Renee retorts. "It was his idea all along, to take in kids who had no one, and give them a life. He took her in," she says, turning to point to me. "And he loved her so much that he petitioned to keep her, and then he petitioned for another foster. You. If he were still alive, he'd be ashamed."