Leaving Amy (Amy #2) (11 page)

“Can we talk?” he said in almost a whisper.

“Sure.” I looked around for Margaret and Jeff, who had thus far not showed up for the unexpected guest.

“We’ll go outside.” I directed my comment to Wesley.

“Let’s all go, if you don’t mind.” He looked at Tyler, who was zoned while some documentary played on the television. “Jeff and Margaret ran out to get bread or something. If they come back, at least we can say the doctor came to see me too.”

“Sure, that’s fine.”

Mark waited for me to go first. So much was processing in my head at that moment. In essence, I’d pulled the pin on the grenade that ended our relationship, threw it, and ran like a fugitive. It seems I had only a day on the lam until he caught up with me.
Now what would I say?
I never figured on this part of the breakup: face-to-face combat.

Just as we were exiting the door, Jeff and Margaret walked onto the porch. You would’ve thought Jeff had seen a ghost.

“Dr. Reilly! What are you doing here? Is something wrong?”

I swear he turned three shades of paste waiting for the answer.

“Mr. Tillion, not at all. I’m here on personal business. I was in the area and dropped in to see Wesley and Amy. Wesley was my patient earlier this year.”

Jeff grabbed his chest and sighed in relief. “Of course, I’d forgotten.” He stole a look toward his wife. “Well then, do come in and visit. We’re having dinner in a few hours. Maybe you’d like to stay.”

“Thank you, but I’m having dinner with family later. I appreciate it, though.”

Jeff smiled and walked past us into the house. I didn’t know what just happened, other than Wesley and I would be interrogated later about Mark’s mysterious visit. I would be glad when this day was over. Especially the next couple of minutes, when I had to face Mark and tell him why I couldn’t leave with him. Why did he go and mess up what we had going?

“If you want, we can go down to the pier. I’ll just wait while you all can talk in the boathouse.” Wesley was being unusually congenial about the whole situation.
Thank goodness.

“Sure, okay.” I glanced at Mark. His eyes were tired and his lips seemed glued shut…in the shape of a frown.

Mark didn’t say anything on the way there. I knew he was saving it all for when we were alone.
Lucky me. Just do it, already.
Smack me around a little bit for being a schmuck and delivering that horrible note. Pull out the tiny hairs next to my ears—the ones that make your eyes water if the hairbrush gets a little tangled in that area. Just do something more than look at me with the pit of sorrow in the pupils of his eyes. It wasn’t my fault he was moving to Chicago. I didn’t make a call to a friend, who knew of a guy, who would be quitting in the next day or so.

When we made it there, I walked toward the corner of the boathouse for my flogging. It was damp in there. The dark boards allowed little light to shine through. And it smelled like wet bird feathers. I tried not to turn up my nose. I didn’t want it to be construed as the feelings I had about this impromptu discussion.

“Amy.”

Oh, gosh.
I loved and hated the way he said my name. There used to be so much joy in hearing him say it. Now it echoed like death in this dank structure.

“Before you say anything, Mark, I’m sorry for the note. I know it was immature and completely not cool to have it delivered. And then to leave so you couldn’t see me.” I looked at my feet. They didn’t know where this was going either. All they did was keep pressing harder on the knots in the wood. “It was stupid.”

“No, what was stupid was me taking a job in Chicago. Especially without talking to you first about it.”

Okay, so this was not what I was expecting.
He was taking the blame?
True, it was his fault, but I thought we were discussing my handling of the situation. Good to know I wasn’t the worst one in the room.

“That would’ve been nice.” I looked at where he stood motionless.

“I don’t know what was going through my mind.”

He was doing such a nice job of beating himself up, it made me want to protect him from further browbeating of himself.

“What was going through your mind was being the chief of neurology, Mark. Someone flashed a dream job in front of you and you acted on it. I don’t fault you for that.”

He stepped closer to me, reaching out to me—his hand slid behind my damp hair and cupped the back of my neck. “You must be cold. Here, put on my coat.”

He slipped off his coat and draped it around my shoulders. I was caught in his trance.

“Amy, I would never do anything that would result in losing you. You know that, don’t you?”

“I do.”

This is the part where I melted into a puddle by looking into his baby-blue eyes and forgot just where Chicago was. Forgot that being a new chief meant never being home. Forgot that I had no friends or life there…. Forgot all the dreams of a future I thought we’d have.

“In fact, I thought it would be healthy for our relationship to move away from here.”

“What? How could it be healthier in Chicago than it would be here?”

I saw his Adam’s apple bob before he spoke. “I felt like if you were away with me, that you wouldn’t be able to see Tom anymore.”

My face did that thing. The “say what” look, with tons of folds in my brow. My eyes squinted with “what in the world are you talking about” stamped on my forehead.

“Tom? What does Tom have to do with any of this?”

Okay, okay.
I know Mark and Tom are not the best of friends. Okay, they really don’t like each other, period. But I make a conscious effort never to bring up the other one’s name when I’m with them.

“Don’t act like you don’t know how I feel about you and Tom, Amy.”

“You don’t like him because of some sort of male dominance thing.” I imagine gorillas in the jungle beating their chests over what trees are the domain of the leader. Mark was the one beating his chest now.

“I don’t like him because I know his agenda with you. And no matter how many times I tell you, it doesn’t seem to matter to you.”

“It does matter. Things that matter to you matter to me. But you’re wrong about Tom and me. It’s strictly friendship. Mark, I’ve never had someone close before who I could confide in, tell things to, and have a great time with.”

“That’s what I thought I was for.”

I cleared my throat. He had a valid point. But so did I. It was different. “You are more than that. You are the guy I can snuggle with while telling things to. It’s not the same with Tom. He is only a friend.”

Mark sighed. “Okay, I don’t want my last moments in this glorious, smelly boathouse to be talking about Tom. You just don’t get how the guy gets under my skin. You never will, I guess.”

Great!
I hated how this had become an argument. Not like it was anything new. The only time we fought, it was over Tom. I couldn’t go out with him on the nights Mark worked without it being a conspiracy to bring Mark down. It was obvious we had more issues than Chicago.

“Mark, you have to take this job.” I looked down at my restless feet again. “Actually, I know you’ve already taken it, but you have to know why I can’t come with you.”

“It’s selfish of me to even ask you.”

“It’s not entirely. I’d like to think you’d ask because I mean something to you.” I smiled a little and held his cheek in my hand. He covered it with his warm hand.

“You mean everything to me.”

“I made myself a promise after my epic-fail-of-a-marriage with Wesley, that I wouldn’t do anything…I wouldn’t say anything that I didn’t truly mean. But, I lied to you.”

His brow furrowed. “What did you lie about?”

“I know we’ve been dating for a few months, but moving in together before my divorce was final was something I really didn’t want to do. It’s not that I didn’t love you; it’s just not the way I was brought up.”

“And moving to Chicago—”

“I’m not comfortable with at all.” I took his hand and held it tightly in mine. “I love you, Mark. But I don’t want to move away from all that I know…from
everyone
I know, to sit and wait for you to come home after a twelve-hour shift at the hospital and collapse from exhaustion.” I shook my head. “That sounds extremely shallow, because if I loved you it shouldn’t matter where we were, but I’m not there yet, I guess. I was hoping we could continue what we had and let nature take its course. I was hoping…”

I couldn’t say it. To say I was hoping he’d propose sounded childish and naive. But I was hoping it, nevertheless. Moving in with my boyfriend while I was still married to my husband was really stretching my moral cord. Moving to Chicago with him under the same circumstances just might break it altogether.

“You were hoping I’d stay at Mercer as a resident doctor, you’d continue clerking, and we’d live happily ever after?”

Well, not like that. That sounded cheap and uneventful. Boring and lame. Been there, done that.

“Not entirely. I thought you might want to marry me one day.” Yeah, throw a little fairy dust on that horrible description he’d just delivered of a ho-hum life. Continue clerking? Geeze… No, I saw Cinderella carriages, doves flying, and him dressed like Prince Charming.
Please stay and be the prince, Mark.

He stepped backward, his hand raking through his unruly hair. “I love you, Amy. There is no doubt about it. You’ve changed me. You’ve given me the drive again to push me forward professionally and personally. I’m faithful…do you know I catch myself during the day smiling for no reason, other than knowing I’m going to be seeing you later? And I can’t imagine being with anyone other than you.”

So the problem is?
I stretched my neck out, waiting for the answer to this subliminal question. This was knee-deep prince kind of talk.

“But I never imagined myself getting engaged again.”

“Oh.”

I could suddenly hear all the air go out of my balloon…and the water hit against the side of the boathouse. I’d not paid attention to it before. I guess when the lights go out on all your dreams, your other senses kick in. Like hearing the flatlining of your heartbeat. Funny how I never saw marriage as a problem with Mark. Maybe he was confused with the imaginary one we had in front of all his colleagues and administration. No, I was pretty sure I lived in the real world. I thought he’d bought a ticket to it, too.

“I thought living together showed my commitment to you…to this relationship.” He grabbed hold of my arms. He must’ve seen the light exiting from my eyes.

I heaved a long sigh. “Well, this is certainly something I never figured on as being miscommunicated. I realize the last time you were engaged that it never took on the wedding part, but I imagined it would be different with us.”

Hello Miss Uninformed. Nice to meet you. Come here often?
To smelly boat shacks…to discuss marriages that were only taking place in your imaginary world?

“I’m sorry, Amy.” He dropped his hands to his sides. “The thought of picking out cakes, flowers, and a tux again puts me into another frame of mind. Not a good one.”

I checked on my feet, making sure they could still do the shuffle. The cold water rippled below the boards. “Well, I’m certainly glad I didn’t relocate, then.”

I looked at him, hoping he wasn’t going to catch me looking. Alas, he caught me. Those eyes that I could stare into forever now seemed like eyes in a photograph I’d one day remember fondly. Reminiscing and wondering what they were up to. Whose heart they were breaking by never being able to commit because he’d lost his first fiancée to tragedy.

I was certain it wouldn’t take long for him to find someone else. I certainly didn’t want to hear about it, see pictures of them smiling like lovesick coma patients, or know of any of the like. I would just remember him like he was the last few months we shared together—in a shallow kind of love. Moony eyes, and all. We were still in the beginning stages of two-week anniversaries and then three weeks, and then flowers sent to work and notes left on the fridge…good notes, not the kind that tell you you’re leaving. Which reminded me. Wesley was probably freezing out there waiting for us.

“So I guess this is it, then.” I just wanted to run away and cry in my pillow. Forget the whole scene of what-will-I-do-without-you. I’d seen enough Lifetime movies to last me a lifetime.

“I guess so.” His eyes fell to the ground.

I took his coat off my shoulders and handed it to him. He looked up, trapping me in his intense stare. My lips drew to his and before I could stop, my eyes went shut and my mouth was on top of his. I pulled away when I heard Wesley clear his throat.

“Jeff is walking this way.”

“Crap.” I looked at Mark with warning in my eyes. “Be careful driving home today…and in Chicago.”

“I will.” His eyes told me he wanted to say so much more than that. He wanted to perhaps be capable of so much more than he’d just told me. But he wouldn’t.

Jeff stepped into the now-crowded boathouse. He looked at the three of us and directed what he was about to say to Mark. “There’s no sense in leaving without something to eat. Come on in and have some roasted nuts and some brandy. Margaret and I just picked them up at the store.”

“No, really, I’ve got to get going. My mom will wonder what happened to me. I just wanted to stop by before leaving.”

“About that. Your office called and said something about a Dr. Phillips seeing me for my next appointment. What is that about? Are you—”

“I’m leaving for Chicago. All of my patients will be seen by Dr. Phillips. He’s a very thorough surgeon. You’ll be in good hands.”

What was going on here?
I looked to Wesley for some sign of “I’ll tell you later.” Instead, I saw his wrinkled-up face.

“I see. Well, I wish you luck, then. I hope I can get in touch with you if I need to.” He reached out and shook Mark’s hand.

“I’ll see that you don’t have any problems, Mr. Tillion.”

“Very well. Safe travels, then.”

He walked out, leaving more questions in his wake.

“Is—”

“You’ll have to ask him,” Mark said, before I could finish my question.