Heart Like Mine (7 page)

He leaned forward and rested his forearms across the table, grasping the crooks of his elbows with long fingers. “Well, I’m new to the idea, but I’d have to say no. She definitely was not.” His tone indicated he wasn’t ready to elaborate, and part of me was glad for it. Men who spoke excessively about ex-girlfriends or wives on a first date never came across well. Nor, for that matter, did women who chattered on about their exes. I don’t think I was testing him, exactly—I was honestly curious to know more about their relationship. But if it
was
a test, he passed.

Later, he walked me to my door and kissed me softly on the lips. The clean but heady musk of his skin dizzied my senses and turned my joints to mush. “Can I see you again?” he whispered, and I nodded eagerly, thrilled by our immediate, easy sense of connection.

After a few weeks, I slept over for the first time at his house. I woke up to the smell of coffee and bacon in the air, my body pleasurably achy from the night before.
Hat trick. No doubt. Mental, emotional, and physical. And he cooks!
When I opened my eyes, he stood over me with a grin on his handsome face. His dark hair was pressed flat on one side, and his gray eyes twinkled, giving him the look of a mischievous little boy who’d just successfully sneaked several cookies from the jar. “Damn,” he said. “You’re even beautiful when you wake up.”

I crossed my eyes at him and stuck out my tongue, and he laughed. “Let me start the shower for you.” He paused. “Or do you want coffee, first?”

“Coffee
always
comes first,” I said, propping myself up on my elbows and smiling at him.

“Duly noted,” he said, pretending to pull a pencil from behind his ear and write on an invisible notepad.

My smile widened at his silliness, and I felt that incredibly
rare emotional spark in my belly. The spark that said,
Oh wow . . . this one’s a keeper
. I’d dated my fair share of men over the years, but things tended to end after a certain point, and I suspected it might have something to do with my focus on my career rather than getting married and having children. I found that most men who weren’t anxious to be fathers weren’t anxious for a long-term, committed relationship, either. There might have been exceptions, but I didn’t meet many. This left me with a limited eligible pool of partners from which to choose. Victor appeared to genuinely respect my lifestyle, but I didn’t know how to trust that he wouldn’t end up expecting me to change somehow, too.

“What if he decides he really wants
us
to have a baby?” I asked Melody not long after I’d spent the night with him. She and I were working together at the Second Chances thrift shop, standing in the back room, sorting through boxes of donated clothes.

“He already
told
you he doesn’t want any more kids,” Melody said. “You’re such a scaredy-cat.”

“I’m not scared!” I protested as I pulled out a lovely blue Calvin Klein blouse and laid it carefully on the “keep” pile. These were the clothes in good enough condition that women in the program could pick them out and wear them to job interviews. The “sell” pile consisted of more casual outfits and would be steam-cleaned, then priced to sell in the shop.

“Oh please,” Melody said. “You’re totally scared.” I looked at her fondly. She was tall and thin with long, honey-blond hair, brown eyes, and a wide, easy smile. Clad in black leggings and a sage linen tunic, her body moved with a lithe ease as she worked. She also knew me better than anyone—maybe even better than I knew myself. We’d met in our midtwenties when she had just graduated from massage school. In order to make ends meet while she built up a client list, she temped at the same advertising
firm where I worked as a recruiter. One afternoon, we ended up sharing a table at a coffee shop near the office and immediately clicked over a mutual fondness for white chocolate mochas and the cute barista behind the counter.

“What do you think?” she had asked me as we sat down together, nodding toward the hunky employee and lifting a single suggestive eyebrow. “Does he look like a
single-
or
double
-shot kind of guy?” A decade and countless mochas later, she was my closest friend.

I sighed as I looked away from her in the back room of the thrift store, reaching to pull another handful of clothes out of the box next to me. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Of course I’m right,” she said with an impish smirk. “You’ve got this quiet, orderly life, and inviting in an emotionally available man like Victor, who has two possibly noisy children in his, is totally freaking you out.” She paused, taking a moment to shake out the floral skirt she was in the process of putting on a hanger. “Come on. What are you really afraid of? Being happy?”

“No,” I said. “That’s not it.”

“Okay. Then what is it?”

“God, you’re pushy!” I exclaimed, throwing a sweater at her. It missed, and she grinned. I sighed again. “I don’t know. I guess I’m worried I won’t be any good at it. Being around the kids, I mean.”

“You were good with Sam,” she said.

“That’s different. He’s my brother. And I only had to help take care of him until he was ten and then I moved out. I might do okay with Max, but Ava is thirteen. I have no idea if I could relate to her at
all
.”

“Oh, right. Because
you’ve
never been a thirteen-year-old girl.” I gave her an exasperated look, and she adopted a softer
tone. “You won’t know until you try. What is it you’re always telling me? And what do you tell your clients when they tell you how afraid they are to start their lives over again?”

She looked at me expectantly, her brown eyes open wide, and I laughed, shaking my head at her uncanny ability to use my own words against me. “No risk, no reward,” I said.

“Exactly. So I think you should quit your bitching and be grateful that you met a man who clearly seems to adore you. Let the details take care of themselves.”

It was good, solid advice, but still, in a weird panic, I canceled on Victor for our date that night. “I’m sorry,” I said when I called him. I was supposed to meet him in a few hours for dinner at the Loft. “I’m totally swamped with work.”

“It’s okay,” Victor said. “Can I help?”

I laughed, a little nervously. I wasn’t sure if he could tell that I was lying. “That’s sweet, but probably not. I have to build a spreadsheet of all the corporate donations Second Chances has received so far this year for our accountant. I’m getting carpal tunnel just thinking about it.” I
did
have to build the spreadsheet, but it wasn’t something I had to have done that night. Victor said he understood and would call me the next day.

After we hung up, I dropped to my couch, my gaze moving over the sandy earth tones I’d picked for my tiny living room. I loved this space when I bought it. With its coved ceilings and the huge square windows that looked directly out to the lake, it somehow managed to feel both cozy and spacious at the same time. I had decorated with small dishes of shells and smooth stones and hung my favorite black and white photograph of waves crashing against the beach over the fireplace. There were two luxurious cream-colored blankets thrown over the back of my couch and plush goose-down pillows thrown in the corners of it, as well.
Everything about the room invited silence and calm. It was safe. Melody was right—I assumed Victor’s life was chaotic simply because he had children. But I didn’t really know this was true. I hadn’t even
met
his children. Backing away from him that night wasn’t about him—it was about me and my own fears. It wasn’t fair to either of us.

I reached for my cell phone and he picked up on the first ring. “If you need help writing a formula, you have called the
wrong
man.”

“I lied to you.” I blurted the words before I could lose my nerve. “I didn’t really have to work tonight. I’m just scared. I’m so sorry.”

He was silent for a moment, and I could feel my pulse pounding inside my head as I waited for him to speak. “What are you scared about?” he finally asked.

“That I’ll be terrible with your kids. That I’ll have to change everything about my life if this amazing thing we seem to have together goes much further.” I paused, trying to steady my pulse. “I’m being stupid. I panicked.”

“I don’t think you’re stupid,” Victor said gently. “And I don’t want you to change. I want you to stay exactly who you are.”

“You do?” The muscles that had been taut beneath my skin relaxed the tiniest bit.
I thought men just said things like that in the movies. I hope he’s not feeding me a line.

“I do.” I could hear his smile through the phone. “And I’ll tell you something else. I really
like
who you are. Most women I’ve dated since my divorce were way too anxious to give Max and Ava a baby brother or sister, which is definitely not part of my plan.” He paused. “And I understand that kids weren’t part of yours. But I think we could find a way to balance things.” When I didn’t respond, he continued. “It’s not like you’d be their mother. That’s Kelli’s job.”

“What would my job be?” I asked in a quiet voice. This felt like a pivotal question, and I held my breath waiting for his answer.

“To be yourself, I hope. Maybe a positive role model for Ava, and a friend to Max, when they’re with us.” He took a breath. “I don’t actually know how it would all work, because I’ve never been in the situation before, but I think as long as we keep talking and stay honest with each other, we could figure it out. Don’t you?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I think so.” I waited a moment before apologizing again. “I’m really, really sorry I lied to you. That’s not the kind of person I am. I don’t know what came over me.”

“Don’t worry. I get it. We just won’t make it a habit. Deal?”

“Deal.” I hesitated again, playing with the fringe on a pillow. “Do you still want to see me tonight?”

“I don’t know,” he said with a teasing edge. “Will you be naked?”

I laughed, feeling relieved. “Possibly. Are you going to feed me?”

“Absolutely. I’ll see you at seven.”

We began seeing each other almost every day, me coming over to his place more often than he came to mine, not because he didn’t like my condo but because my schedule was more flexible than his and I could miss rush-hour traffic over the West Seattle Bridge. He cooked me amazing meals, though he confessed that he was much better at managing a restaurant than being a chef.

“Are you kidding?” I said, trying to keep myself from licking the plate clean of a creamy lemon butter sauce he’d prepared and served over grilled chipotle-spiced halibut. “This is the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth!”

“The best, huh?” he said with a sly, suggestive smile. “
That’s
unfortunate.” I laughed, and he continued. “I started working in
restaurants as a line cook when I was a teenager, so I know my way around the kitchen. But I like what I do now more.”

“You like to be in charge, then,” I said, teasing him. “Control issues, maybe?”

“I prefer to think of it as teamwork-challenged,” he quipped, and I laughed again. I knew this was untrue—Victor ran a tight ship at the Loft, but the few times I waited at the bar for him to be done with his day, I saw how he interacted with his staff. He expected everyone to work hard, but he was always right there with them, ready to pitch in, covering for servers and dishwashers alike in a moment of need. I’d seen enough horrible bosses over the years to know that Victor was a great one.

He also turned out to be a really wonderful boyfriend. When I landed a huge corporate donation for Second Chances, he sent me the most beautiful arrangement of orchids I’d ever seen with a card that read: “You inspire me to be a better person.” He called when he said he would and lingered when it was time for us to part in the mornings. He made me feel important but didn’t smother me. He understood that I sometimes had to take midnight trips to the ER to help a client in crisis. He supported me when I struggled watching yet another woman go back to her abuser, feeling powerless to do anything to stop her. “All you can do is provide the resources,” he said. “Whether or not she chooses to use them is about her, not you.” I knew this already, of course, but it still helped to hear it from someone other than my own voice inside my head. I was usually the one issuing reassurances to my staff; having someone to do the same for me was new territory.

As we spent more time together, I began to feel better about his status as a father. I still had moments of apprehension, but I quieted them by reasoning that his kids were only with him a couple of weekends a month, so really, more times than not, Victor and I would
be on our own. And it wasn’t like he was rushing me into meeting them; we both felt we should wait on that until we were more sure of each other. But by then, I was about as sure as I could get.

*  *  *

Kelli is dead.
The phrase pulsed through my mind as I drove over to Max and Ava’s school. My hands shook and my breaths were shallow and quick. I tried to imagine what Victor might feel in this moment. The ragged grief in his voice over the phone had sparked my own. I couldn’t believe she was gone. What could have happened? How is someone there one moment and just . . .
absent
the next? I tried to fight it, but anxiety bubbled up inside me. I didn’t know how to get through this moment. I tried to focus on the road, to keep my eyes on the brake lights on the car in front of me, but tears blurred my vision. Not wanting to cause an accident, I pulled to the side of the road and called my mother, overwhelmed by the desire to talk with her. The phone rang and rang. “Come on, Mom,” I whispered. “Please pick up.” When she didn’t answer, I left her a brief message, then quickly called my brother, Sam, next.

“What’s up, sis?” he said. I could see him sitting behind his desk at the AIDS Support Center, where he worked as a client counselor, his wiry red hair cropped close to his head, his green eyes bright and smiling. As a child, he’d been called “Opie” by his playmates; today, he still possessed that same nerdy, endearing quality. When he’d come out to me as a teenager, I worried about the difficult road he might face, but as far as I knew, he hadn’t experienced any kind of blatant prejudice because of his sexuality and, at twenty-four, was actually in a very happy partnership with a slightly older man named Wade.