Love.com (23 page)

“Can I give you some advice, honey? This isn’t your kind of place. My advice is to turn around and leave before
more of these cowboy wannabe’s show up. This can be a rough place for a lady by herself.”

“I appreciate that. What’s your name?”

“Anne-Marie,” the waitress replied and cringed from the men hooting from across the bar.

“I’m Emily. I have a reason for being here tonight, Anne-Marie. It’s about your son, Andy,” Emily replied, earning a sudden glare from Anne-Marie.

“You from social services?” The redhead looked panicked suddenly, her eyes filled with unease. “Goddamn it! I told you people he has a sitter on the nights I work here! His grandma is a liar! Ain’t you got somebody else to pick on? My kid isn’t alone and in any danger, lady! You can call and talk to my sitter if you don’t believe me!”

“No, I don’t work for the state, Anne-Marie,”
Emily explained to put her at ease. “My friend took a picture of your son in the park. We want to use it in our ad campaign. He’s a minor and we would need your written consent.”

Anne-Marie relaxed then
, her green kohl-lined eyes turning sly. “Any money in it?”

“Three thousand dollars
for the print rights.”

Anne-Marie looked at her incredulously. “You want to use my kid’s face on an ad and you
’re gonna just hand me three thousand dollars? Just like that? You’re kidding me, right?”

“That’s the standard fee,” Emily replied and smiled at her. “That’s a nice tip, by the way. Here’s my business card.
” Emily stood and handed the redhead her card. “Call me on Monday and I can meet you with the release you need to sign. I need to get his grandmother’s signature too since she was in the shot.”

Anne-Marie stiffened at the mention of the boy’s grandma. “I don’t have
nothin’ to do with her! She’s the reason my marriage fell apart! You’re on your own with that!”

“Do you know where I can find her?”

“She’ll be in Hell any day now, lady. Last I heard she was dying from Martin, that’s her son. She don’t have much time, mean old bat that she is! Good luck with that!”

“Do you know where she lives?”

Anne-Marie shrugged. “She’s in the hospital right now. St. Vincent’s, I think.”

Emily thanked her and was glad she didn’t have to drink the beer. As she guessed, Anne-Marie gobbled up the promise of a fee and gratefully gave her the prepaid cell phone number to reach her
at on Monday. Now all she needed was Andy’s grandma to sign the release and they were back in business.

Emily
left Poole’s and shuddered slightly when her admirer’s hooted at her back, saying lewd things about her ass. She left the bar in haste, nearly running to her car and locking her doors as she hopped inside.

Emily returned home intact. She swore she’d never drink beer again. She had a headache and just wanted to go to bed. The phone rang. She glanced at her watch. It was nearly eleven. She debated letting the call go to
her voicemail. She groaned and dug her new cell phone out of her purse. Her eyes widened. It was Ian. How he had her new number now made her cringe to think he figured out who is secret texter was. She wanted to answer the call so badly her hands shook. She didn’t, still feeling the burn and bite of his parting words. Sure, she reneged on their deal for no strings, but she was still deserving of respect. She might be pathetic and be a doormat, but even doormats had pride. Or did they? She waited until he left the voicemail and listened to it eagerly.

“Emily, I just called to tell you how sorry I am,”
Ian said into the phone, his sigh deep and telling. “I didn’t mean to hurt you and I did. I feel like an asshole about what I said. I did warn you that I’m not
that
guy. Anyway, I got offered an assignment in Germany. I took it. I leave for Luxemburg next week. I’ll be gone for a year. Yeah, it’s probably not a good time to get that dog, you’re right. I just wanted you to know that if I had been
that
guy; you would have been the girl for me. It’s just me, Emily. I just can’t do this with anyone right now; maybe never. That isn’t fair to you, or anybody else. I called to say good-bye. I know it’s shitty to do this over the phone, but I’m an asshole. Take care. I wish you the best.”

Emily held the phone a long time as the connection ended. She shut off the phone and shoved it back into her purse. Ian did have a heart. He must have thought about
it before he left Sacramento. She found little satisfaction in knowing if he had been a different man he would have been hers. The reasons Ian rejected love were as complex as her own for going after it. Who could explain how people get so twisted in life? She felt better now, less pathetic, even more worthy somehow.

Ian hadn’t come out and said he cared for her, but it was close, enough to make her believe again. Hope flared in her eyes to think her misguided crush wasn’t so misguided after all. When she felt that way again one day, she’d act on it,
and not hesitate as she would have had she not gotten his call. Maybe that was why he did it? He didn’t want to influence her future with someone else; the guy he wasn’t, refused to be anymore.

Emily basked within her think tank
that night, resolved to never tell another lie as long as she lived. She could have felt this bad had she gone about the whole thing honestly, she realized with some disgust.

Ian was gone, but his
parting apology cheered her. She could forget about him now. Even as she told herself she would, his image came to her, mocking her efforts to push him away once and for all.

She had much work to do in the coming weeks. She had enough to do to keep her mind off Ian the Unattainable. She had an ad campaign to sell to Ambidor next week. If they liked it, she could be certain she wouldn’t have to worry about her career
in the future.

Just then, she thought of Tabitha and Stu. She had the dilemma of getting them off her back on her own. How she would manage that would have to
wait for another night in her bubbly haven. She was tired and the water grew cool. She got out, reaching for her towel. She went to bed feeling better for the first time in months.

Emily
would have liked to say she didn’t dream of Ian that night, but she did. A listless feeling of melancholy filled her when she woke up on Saturday morning. It was raining hard outside, the splattering sound hammering the roof and waking her at seven in the morning. She lay in bed and wondered why life worked out the way it did. Why couldn’t people just be happy and get what they wanted? She had no answers. She would revisit this internal debate again and again until Ian’s image receded from her memory.

It rained all day, matching her dismal mood. She cleaned out the boxes and bins in the garage. She found more questionable items in Eddie’s things. She was no expert, but they looked like antiques.

She got excited and called Joan. Her friend knew a dealer who would be by before the end of the day to investigate her
find in the garage and the attic. Who knew what was up there? She felt like she was on a treasure hunt.

Remembering the baseball cards, she called Jay. He answered on the third ring, mumbled he just got up, and would be over in a while. His ‘while’ turned out to be three hours later. Emily was bristling
in annoyance as he walked up the driveway, seeing her in the garage up to her elbows in Eddie’s junk boxes.

“Good morning
, half the day is over,” Emily called with a disapproving frown. It was after one in the afternoon. Jay looked showered but hung over to the hilt. “Looks like you had a hard night. Your eyes look like two piss holes in the snow.”

Jay glared at her as he entered the garage. “Yeah, I closed the bar with my buddies. What of it, Em? Are you giving me shit
too?”

“No, just noticed you spend more time closing bars lately
than anything else,” Emily observed with a knowing look. “Feel any better for it?”

“No! And I could say the same
for you! Saw that guy leave here when I was coming home the other night. I’m not the only one putting in the hours to feel bad, Em. You’re doing a pretty good job yourself.”

“Hey! I didn’t invite you over to decide
who’s better at punishing themselves,” Emily informed him with a glare. “I found something I want you to look at before I throw it in the trash.”

“What is it?”

Emily pointed to the shoebox at her feet and kicked it over to him. “I don’t know anything about baseball cards, but that’s full of them.”

Jay leaned down and opened the box, his expression filled with excitement as he leafed through the stacks of cards, exclaiming over a few. He looked up, his face
now animated. “Do you have any idea what these are worth?”

“That’s what I wanted you to tell me before I tossed them out like a dumb ass.”

Jay shook his head as he picked one up, looking stunned. “This is a pristine Lou-frickin-Gehrig, Em! Holy shit! And there’s more! Babe Ruth! All in perfect condition! Damn, you have a real find here.”

“Can you arrange to sell them for me?” Emily was excited too, feeling Jay’s enthusiasm as he poured over the box
of trading cards.

“As a dealer, I can tell you that you got some serious cha-
ching coming, Em. These are some really rare cards. You have the whole series here. A collector would pay big money for a whole series. These are hard to find these days, and in such great condition. You had these sitting out here this whole time?”

“Eddie must have found them at a yard sale, or he picked them out of the trash,”
Emily said absently and shook her head. “I doubt he even knew what he had.”

Jay looked stunned. “Is there more boxes like this out here?”

She pointed to the corner. “Three more of them over there; just like that one.”

Jay wasted little time in scurrying over to the boxes and going through them. He was mumbling to himself while she
swept and cleaned the garage, commenting on this one and that one until she stopped sweeping.

“What’s the verdict?”

He looked up, a grin on his face. “You’re not going to believe this but you’re sitting on a fortune here! You have four complete series that I can see so far. We’re talking big money, Em.”

“How much?” Emily thought of the years she skimped and saved
. All her savings disappeared when her husband got sick. Just having enough to renovate her house was enough for her right now.

“I have to look some of them up
online, but ballpark…you’re looking at over three hundred thousand dollars so far and I’m still not done going through the last box of cards.”

Emily looked stunned, the broom clattering to her feet. “You’ve got to be joking?”

“No, I’m not! You have no idea how valuable these cards are today,” Jay told her and proudly held one up, explaining each and every thing about it, why it was so valued. He really was very good at his chosen profession, and the ideal one to sell her cards. It gave her an idea.

“How do you feel about being my agent in selling these for me? Let’s say we work out a commission for you?”

“I’d be happy to do it for you, Em. No problem. I’ll take five percent off the top. That’s the rate most dealer’s charge in shops. Not bad cha-ching for me, either.”

Emily could see Jay was glad he crawled out of bed now as he went through the last box, whistling as he sat on the garage floor to pour over the cards. Emily could almost forgive her packrat
of a husband for turning gay on her as Jay sighed over the find.

  
By the time the antique dealer arrived at nearly four that day, Jay estimated the baseball cards worth at nearly four hundred thousand dollars. Emily was stunned as she watched him heft the shoeboxes home. Never in a million years did she expect to find anything of value in Eddie’s junk.

The antique dealer brought two
hefty guys with her who went to work in the attic. The woman introduced herself as Ilene Sterns. The guys clambered up to the attic through the opening in the garage. They were up there until six in the evening with portable lights, carting off things to the dealer’s truck. When it was all over, the regally-dressed Ilene handed her a check for thirty-six hundred dollars. Emily was too shocked to do more than gape as the dealer promised to return the following afternoon to finish.

Emily sat at the kitchen table
that night, holding the check and wondering what she would do with her newfound fortune. It was a funny thing about having money. When you didn’t have it, you could think of a million ways to spend it. When you had it, it seemed like nothing appealed to you but those things which couldn’t be bought. Ian’s image came to mind and she pushed it away. No amount of money could bring him back to her.

In the end, she vowed to put it
all in her savings account. She wanted to get a new kitchen. She earned that much from her marriage. The house needed to be upgraded throughout. Maybe she would sell it and move into a condo as Joan suggested. She realized she could do whatever she wanted now. She didn’t have to make a snap decision right this minute.