Regrets Only (12 page)

“I
don’t think anyone will bother you tonight,” Marci said. “Jake snores like a
bear with hay fever. That should scare people away.”

Suzanne
was silent, washing out the bowl of brownie batter in the sink.

“They
smell amazing. It was a good idea to make them,” Marci went on. “Remember when
we used to do this in high school? And we’d add all those weird ingredients?
Basically anything we could find at my house.”

 Suzanne
laughed. “I remember. You always wanted to add cherries to
everything
.”

“Hey!”
Marci said defensively. “Maraschino cherries are good! Besides, they’re fruit,
so they’re healthy. Mmm…you don’t have any, do you?”

“Yes,
I do,” Suzanne said. “I keep them right next to the giant pack of hot dogs and
frozen chicken nuggets I always have on hand in case an elementary school takes
a field trip to my apartment.”

“No
need for sarcasm,” Marci said. She rubbed her belly thoughtfully. “I probably
will have that stuff on hand before long.”

Suzanne
could see that Marci’s already soft waist was beginning to thicken and protrude
more than usual. She felt wistful, wishing she could feel more excited for her
best friend about the new baby. She wanted to reach out to her, but she knew
nothing about pregnancy and even less about babies. What could she possibly
offer?

“Just
don’t bake those horrible Dr. Pepper brownies for your kids. Remember those?”

“Oh
my God! What were we thinking?” Marci rolled her eyes. “Didn’t we put vanilla
pudding in those, too?”

Suzanne
nodded grimly. The results had been disastrous—a soupy, frothy mess that had
been completely inedible, even with spoons and teenage determination. Mrs.
Thompson had sent them to the grocery store early the next morning to replace
all the ingredients they’d wasted, and gently suggested that they find a hobby
other than baking to occupy themselves on Friday nights.

“So
should I go through what we have so far?” Marci suggested. On the kitchen
island lay a legal pad covered with names and notes.

“Sure,”
Suzanne sighed.

“Okay,
Rick, we got—and personally he seems the likely candidate to me. Dated for
three weeks, broke up a month ago. Reason…did I get a reason for him?”

“Do
we have to write the reasons?” Suzanne protested for the third time. “Really,
does it matter?”

“Yes,
I think so,” said Marci. “You never know what might help narrow it down.”

“Fine,”
Suzanne said. Marci seemed to enjoy her role as junior detective a little too
much. “He talked about himself too much. His vocabulary was atrocious. He was…sort
of barbaric, I guess.”

“Barbaric…vocabulary…,”
Marci muttered as she wrote. “Got it. Okay, what’s he doing now?”

“He’s
in sales, and he travels all over the state. I don’t know whether he’s dating
anyone. He—he had to mail me my underwear.”

“Underwear…,”
Marci repeated, writing. Suzanne waited for the inevitable joke but none came.
“Okay, before that was Damian. Pro basketball player, dated three months—hey,
that was pretty good, Suze!”

“He
was out of town a lot,” Suzanne answered drily.

“Broke
up because…?”

“We’ve
been over this. He was too young for me. He always had girls trying to follow
him back to his hotel room. I couldn’t compete with that.”

“So
he cheated on you?”

“No,
I don’t think so,” Suzanne said thoughtfully. “But it was only a matter of
time, right?”

“Riiiiight,”
Marci said, with no small amount of sarcasm. “Any chance it could be him?”

“Doubt
it,” Suzanne said. “He’s busy all the time, and he wasn’t really too upset when
I ended it. Besides, he’s not here that often. He has an apartment here during
the season but his family is all in Chicago, so he spends most of his time
there.”

“Hmm…not
upset. Are you sure?”

“Well,
he sent me some free tickets the other day with a nice little note. I have them
here somewhere. I was planning to give them to Jake but in all the excitement I
forgot.”

 “Sent…free…tickets…,”
Marci repeated and made a contemplative noise. Suddenly she was Columbo,
apparently.

“So
your theory is that the professional basketball player, who could have just
about any girl he wanted, was so devastated by our breakup that he is taking
time out of his busy game schedule to slash my tires and sabotage my office
ladder? And he’s sending me tickets to a game where twenty thousand people will
be watching so that he can…what? Kill me at halftime?”

Marci
chewed the end of the pen. “Perhaps not. Who’s next?”

“Kenneth.”

“Kenneth,
stockbroker, dated six weeks. Broke up because”—Marci peered more closely at
her notes, as though she had not been Suzanne’s sole confidant for each and
every turn of these events—“because he had a hairy back—ew—and was ‘weird about
kids.’ What does that mean?”

“You
remember this, don’t you? He wanted kids a little too much?”

Marci
flipped a couple of pages. “Two years ago you broke up with Xavier because he
didn’t want kids.”

“I
know. I’d like to have the option, I guess. But Kenneth was more interested in
the kids than in the grownup part of the relationship. Like he was just looking
for a womb.”

“Womb…got
it. Now, Brad Number Two.”

“Brad
Two was too outdoorsy for me. A little too Grizzly Adams, you know? Plus, he
had smelly feet.”

Marci
lowered her voice. “Don’t tell him I told you, but Jake’s feet are smelly, too.
Yuck! Okay, Timothy…”

“Got
into a fight at a bar on our third date.”

“Matthew?”

“Mommy
issues. Remember?”

“Oh,
yeah. Who was that guy who didn’t wash his hands after pooping?”

“Reggie.”
Suzanne made a face. The two of them shuddered and giggled. The timer dinged,
and Marci got the brownies out of the oven before going back to the list.

“Okay,
what about Frank?”

“Public
relations guy. Dated three weeks. Too…polished. He seemed like the kind of guy
who would make you iron his underwear.”

“Manuel?”

“He’s
a chef. Owns the Mexican restaurant down the street. We weren’t dating so much
as hooking up after closing some nights. He’d give me free margaritas and we’d
talk business for a while, and then…you know. It just never turned into more
than that. I’m not really sure why.”

“Down
the street? So he might be able to follow you?”

“I
guess,” Suzanne said slowly, thinking. “But I don’t know why he would. I’m
pretty sure he’s dating someone now. I think he would’ve told me if he were mad
at me—stalking doesn’t seem like his style.”

“Hmm…You
put a star by this one. Who is William? Oh, wait…
that
William?”

“Seriously,
Marci. I know you lived in Austin back then and everything, but pay attention.”

“It
was San Francisco, actually, before I moved to Austin,” Marci corrected.
“Speaking of paying attention. And of course I remember now. The New Year’s Eve
party.” She shook her head sadly.

“Yeah,
I thought he should go on the list even though it was so long ago. I dated him
the longest, actually. Almost a year. Aren’t you proud?” She said this with a
bleak smile.

“So,
why, again, did you say no?” Marci asked.

Here
was a question everyone Suzanne knew had asked her over and over at the time,
and her mother still brought up about twice a year. She had never come up with
a satisfactory answer. “I just…wasn’t ready.”

William
Fitzgerald was the boy Suzanne had dated the longest, and tried very hard to
fall in love with. He was also the boy who had asked her to marry him in front
of their parents and nearly everyone their parents knew at the country club’s
New Year’s Eve party. And in front of more than three hundred people, all
half-blitzed and ready to celebrate good news of any sort, Suzanne had been
forced to say no.

“Where
is he now?”

“I
have no idea.”

The
brownies had cooled enough by now not to burn the roofs of their mouths, so
they set the notes aside and cut into them with a spatula, eating them warm,
straight from the pan. For a few minutes there was no conversation, all of it
lost in the smacking sounds of gooey chocolate.

“You
know what’s weird?” Marci said. “There are so many guys on this list I’ve never
met.”

“Well,
you lived out of state for a lot of this time,” Suzanne said, reaching for
another brownie. Marci had moved away shortly after college and only returned three
or four years ago. Suzanne had always hoped she would come back; things weren’t
the same without her. In the end, it had been their college friend Jake who’d
brought her best friend back to Atlanta, with a love none of them had fully
realized existed until then. Suzanne would always be grateful to Jake for that.

“Yes,
but even in the last few years, when I was here, there are guys you dated that
I never met. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fine. It’s just…weird. I feel like you
know everything there is to know about me, and yet there are all these people
who were important in your life that I never even met.”

Suzanne
waved away the idea with a flick of her manicured hand. Even with the cast she
had managed to get to the nail salon. It was the kind of ritual that kept her
from going crazy. “It’s not that I didn’t want to share with you, it’s just
that…well, I don’t want you guys to get attached to someone until I know I have
something worth attaching to.”

“Oh,
come on. Don’t you think Jake and I could handle it?”

Suzanne
hesitated. “Well, to be honest…”

“What?”

“Well,
you met Damian twice, months ago, and you’re still asking about him.”

“Teasing.
We’re teasing. Jake thought it was neat that you were dating an athlete, because
he works in sports, that’s all.”

“But
it’s not just him. There were a couple of others, like Tanner. And Brad Number
One, who you got all upset about when things didn’t work out.”

“I
didn’t get all upset. I just think sometimes you’re a little capricious about
letting guys go.”

“Capricious?”
Suzanne repeated, slightly offended.

“Well,
yes,” Marci said. She gestured to the legal pad. “We have four pages of guys
there, four pages of nice guys, for the most part, and your reasons for
breaking up with some of them are downright silly.”

“So
I should stay with someone who’s not right for me? Someone I don’t want to be
with?” She felt defensive and angry. Now that she was happily settled, Marci
had apparently forgotten how hard single life could be.

“Of
course not. That’s not what I meant—”

“It’s
exactly what you meant. You’ve always been this way about the guys I’ve dated,
but ever since you and Jake got together, it’s been so much worse.”

“Suzanne,
what the hell are you talking about?”

Suzanne
knew she should stop talking. She should apologize, hug her best friend and eat
another brownie. But the events of the past couple of weeks boiled inside her,
out of control. “You think just because you got your fairy tale ending means
everyone else has to have the same thing. You are always pressuring me to be
with someone, anyone. Like our friendship would be better if I were part of a
couple instead of just me.”

“That’s
not true. I—”

“I’m
happy for you, Marce, I really am. I’m happy you and Jake finally figured
things out and you’re married now, and I’m happy for you about the baby, too.
But I’m not there yet. Maybe…maybe I will never be there.”

“That’s
ridiculous. Of course you will. You just have to stop looking for perfection.
You dump these guys for idiotic reasons, and then you complain about being
alone.”

“When
have I ever complained about being alone?”

“Well,
maybe you don’t complain out loud, but—”

“Oh,
so now I complain in silence? Or is it just that you can read my mind? Now that
your life is so perfectly worked out you’re clairvoyant, too, I suppose.”
Suzanne could hear her ugly tone and it made her wince. But she was so angry.
This had been building for a long time.

“It’s
not that,” Marci said. Angry tears were streaming down her face, too. “It’s
just that you are always moping around, especially when Jake and I are
together. We’re sort of afraid to be happy around you sometimes, like it’s an
insult to you.”

“‘We,’
huh? So you guys are sitting around talking about me and how pathetic I am. How
I’m in your way. Well, you shouldn’t bother.”

“No,
that’s not true—”

“Maybe
I don’t want the cookie-cutter house in Alpharetta and a minivan and soccer
games. Maybe I’m looking for something extraordinary. Just because I haven’t
settled like you did, maybe I am still looking for someone who is perfect for
me…”