Second Time Around (30 page)

A high-pitched electronic wail drowned her out. The fire alarm. Brooke raced out of the kitchen, down the hall, and into the entryway, where she found Everett balanced on a rickety wooden chair and jabbing at the ceiling-mounted smoke detector.

“Sorry,” he said after he turned off the alarm. “That was me.”

“Oh! I had no idea you were already in the wall.” Brooke glanced at the overhead light fixture in confusion. “Didn’t you turn off the circuit breaker?”

He stepped down from the chair. “Yeah, I probably shoulda done that.”

“It’s a miracle you weren’t electrocuted.”

“Everything was going fine—I made it past the gasket with no problem—but then the duct tape I was using to mark the lead wire caught fire.”

She blinked up at him. “Why were you using duct tape to mark the wire? Duct tape is flammable.”

“Yeah, so I’ve learned.” He hung his head and rocked back on his heels. “Forget it. I knew this was never going to work.”

“What’s never going to work?”

“This. Me. My total incompetence.” He kicked the gleaming red toolbox with the back of his heel. “As I’m sure you’ve already figured out, I know nothing about wiring or renovation or any of that stuff. I barely know a Phillips screwdriver from a flathead.”

Brooke furrowed her brow. “But you work at a hardware store.”

“Which makes everything worse. I know what everything is for, in theory, but knowing and doing are two different things.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “It’s my dad’s store, and he and my mom begged me to help out for a few months while they dealt with his medical issues. I said fine because it wasn’t like I was making any money doing freelance photography, but then you walked in asking for Romex wire and drill bits.” His voice broke low. “And then you kept coming back. For the first time, I actually enjoyed working at my dad’s shop.”

She brushed her hand against his. “I’m so sorry to hear about your father. Is he feeling better, I hope?”

“He’ll be okay, we think. He’s had a rough autumn; in and out of the hospital.” His eyes bore testament to the strain of the last few weeks; he looked older somehow. “But his doctors are optimistic.”

“Wait.” She was still trying to process his earlier confession. “So you don’t know the first thing about replacing a GFCI outlet?”

“I don’t even know what GFCI stands for. If it can’t be fixed with duct tape, I’m out. That’s why I haven’t called you. I was trying to buy time so I could learn about wiring.” He extracted a do-it-yourself circuitry manual from his toolbox. Yellow Post-its protruded from the pages he’d bookmarked. “And this damn thing is useless.”

Brooke was flabbergasted. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“I wanted to impress you.” He flushed and kicked the toolbox again. “Stupid, I know. But you can do everything. I didn’t want to be the guy who does nothing.”

“Don’t say that,” she admonished. “Just because you’re not mechanically inclined doesn’t mean you do nothing.”

“Yeah, that’s the other thing I have to tell you.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I got a job offer. For photography.”

“That’s wonderful! That’s your dream job, isn’t it?”

“It’s only a six-month contract for now, with a small weekly news magazine.”

She studied his expression. “I have the feeling there’s a ‘but’ here.”

He nodded. “The thing is, I have to move down to Manhattan. And if it goes well, I’ll be relocating for good.”

“Oh.”

“So it’s not really practical for us to start dating.”

She knew this was the time to say something along the lines of
Let’s just be good friends
, but all that came out was, “I see.”

Then he took her off guard with a big, warm grin. “But then I realized neither one of us is practical at all. Look at us:
me finally getting the guts to try to make it as a photographer, you building a bed-and-breakfast out of a falling-down firetrap of a dorm.”

“Excuse me?” She laughed. “The only fire we’ve ever had here is the one you just started. Watch yourself, or I’ll have you cited for violating code.”

“We both go after what we want, even if it means hard work and delayed gratification. So I’m thinking, we go out this weekend. See how it goes.” He paused. “And, if it comes down to it, I can always come up on the weekends to see you. As Kierkegaard said, ‘Adversity draws us together and produces beauty and harmony.’”

“Nice. That philosophy degree comes in handy.”

“Oh yeah. The ladies love old Søren K. And who knows?” He winked. “Maybe it won’t be an issue. Maybe we’ll find out we’re totally incompatible.”

“Maybe. But it’s not every day I meet a guy who’ll give me the contractor rate.”

“It’s not every day I meet a beautiful girl who can school me in how to install a GCFI outlet,” he countered.

“GFCI,” Brooke corrected without thinking. “For ‘ground fault circuit interrupter.’”

“See? I’m learning already.”

A
s soon as Brooke said good night to Everett and returned to the kitchen, Anna and Jamie pounced. “What happened?” Anna demanded. “Tell us everything! Did you make him grovel?”

“Did you kiss him?” Jamie asked. “With tongue or without?”

“We replaced an outlet together,” Brooke said. “Nothing more, nothing less.”

Anna pretended to swoon. “It’s a renovation romance.”

“Not yet,” Brooke said. “But we’re having an official pizza-and-painting date tomorrow night.”

“A date!” Jamie clapped her hands together. “Did you ask him or did he ask you?”

Brooke beamed. “He asked me.”

“What’s up with this guy? I thought he blew you off, callously and without remorse,” Anna said. “Now he’s turning up at your doorstep asking you out?”

“He had his reasons.” Brooke picked up her paint roller. “Some better than others, admittedly. But he’s not callous. Quite the opposite.”

Then Jamie noticed Brooke’s newest accessory. “Hey, check you out; I didn’t know they made tool belts in pastels. I like it. Very contractor chic.”

“Everett special-ordered it for me.” Brooke couldn’t resist adding, “He says it matches my eyes.”

She waited for Jamie to come back with a snarky retort, but Jamie surprised her by softening. “Aw. What a nice guy.”

“Here’s hoping you’ll have many happy years reading
Popular Mechanics
together,” Anna said. “Oh, and Jame, that reminds me—something came in the mail for you, too.” She pressed a slim, cream-colored envelope into Jamie’s hand. “Looks like it’s from Arden’s attorney.”

A
rden and I were supposed to get married.” Jeff Thuesen sat across the table from Jamie. He watched her with unnerving intensity, seemingly oblivious to the pub’s lunchtime bustle. Since he’d spent his morning conducting job interviews on campus, he was all buttoned up in a well-cut dark suit and a subtly patterned silk tie. He and Arden had made a great-looking couple with their dark hair and classic features and Park Avenue dress sense. Today, his conservative formality had the effect of making Jamie feel as though she were being interrogated by a high-ranking government official. “She knew it and I knew it.”

“Oh boy.” Jamie ran her thumbnail along the dull edge of
her butter knife. She was wearing a suit, too, but hers was a shapeless black poly-blend atrocity she’d bought without trying on at a thrift store in North Hollywood. The jacket fit her in the bust but nowhere else. All the better, she figured, for blending into the background and letting the bride shine. On her way out the door, though, she’d broken down and accessorized with high-heeled patent leather Mary Jane pumps. Brooke had advised her to wear comfortable shoes to prevent bunions, but a girl had to draw the line somewhere. “I’m sorry you didn’t get married, Jeff, but what does that have to do with me?”

“That’s what I’m here to find out.”

Jamie accepted the laminated menu their server offered, then put it aside without even glancing at the text. “Listen, I’m going to level with you: My goal is to be out that door in thirty minutes or less. I just found out this morning that the tearoom we booked in Saratoga is shut down due to water damage, so we had to move the bridesmaids’ tea to the college president’s house, and I have about eight billion last-minute details to attend to.”

He inclined his head slightly. “Then I’ll get right to the point. Why did Arden break up with me?”

“How on earth would I know?” She stopped fidgeting and gave him her full attention. “Wait. Arden didn’t break up with you.”

“Yeah, she did. Believe me, I was there.”

She sat back in her chair. “You broke up with her. I know you did. We all know it.”

Now Jeff looked even more confused than Jamie felt. “Is that what she told you?”

“Yeah.” She tried to remember exactly what had transpired all those years ago. “I
think
so. I mean, she must have
said … Look, all I know is, people don’t spend days at a time sobbing in bed and blowing off exams if they’re the ones doing the dumping. She was devastated. I never saw her so upset about anything before or since that breakup.”

He took off his suit jacket and loosened the knot of his necktie. “At least that clears up one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Why you and your infamous lit clique all despise me so much.”

“We don’t despise you.” Jamie paused. “Okay, fine, we hate your guts. But can you blame us? You broke our best friend’s heart.” She braced her forearms on the table and leaned forward. “You must have.”

He maintained eye contact. “I did not.”

“Are you
sure
?”

“Why do you think I came to her memorial service?”

“I don’t know. To be hateful?”

“I loved her,” he said with such conviction that Jamie finally believed him. “I was planning to propose at the end of senior year. Then she dumped me right before spring break, and to this day, I don’t know why. What I do know is that something happened between the two of you right around the time she decided she was done with me.”

Jamie schooled her expression into a stony poker face.

After a minute or two, Jeff gave up on waiting her out and asked, “What happened to her? How sick was she, and for how long?”

“She never told you?”

“She never spoke to me again after she told me she didn’t want to see me anymore.”

Jamie tried to remain as clinical as possible. “Arden was sick for a long time. I don’t understand all the medical intricacies,
but Cait tried to break it down for us a few weeks after the funeral. Lupus can cause your blood to coagulate, so you always have to worry about clots forming. For the past five years, she kept telling us she was going to die of a stroke.” Jamie examined her hands and picked at her cuticle. “But then, randomly, a piece of a blood clot in her leg broke off and went to her lungs instead of her brain, so technically, she died of a pulmonary embolism.”

“What is that, exactly?”

Jamie took a slow, steadying breath. “I don’t know.”

“Was it painful?”

“I hope not. I try very hard not to think about it.” This clinical routine was not working. “I can tell you this, though: She was very calm and reflective about the whole thing. She had a much better perspective than the rest of us did.” She shook her head. “I’m explaining this wrong. It wasn’t like she was a martyr, she just … She was still
funny
, you know? She was still absolutely herself. It was like dealing with all that pain and stress pared her down to the most essential kernel of herself. The five of us, the ‘lit clique’”—Jamie grinned in spite of the tears stinging her eyes—“spent a week every summer at her family’s lake house, and every summer we picked up right where we left off. The dynamic was always the same.”

“She was something,” Jeff said with a small, private smile.

“Yes, she was.” Jamie swiped at her nose with the paper napkin. “She knew everything there was to know about me—the good, the bad, and the very, very ugly—and she loved me anyway.”

Another long pause, and then Jeff cleared his throat. “Which brings us back to the incident of senior year.”

“Everything brings me back to that ‘incident’ these days.”
Jamie stared over his shoulder and addressed the beer sign on the far wall. “The short version is, I did something I should not have done and Arden covered for me.”

“Any chance I can hear the long version?”

“Fine. I did
someone
I should not have done.” She resumed picking at her cuticles. “Terrence Tait, if you must know.”

He couldn’t have looked more shocked if she’d jumped up on the table and started stripping. “
President
Tait?”

She kept talking in a clipped monotone. “I was stupid and pathetic when we got together, but after he broke up with me, I took stupid and pathetic to a whole new level. I wanted his wife to find out about us, so I snuck into his house and left a smoking gun, so to speak, right on the desk in his study: a pair of black panties with a note reading ‘Come hither to Henley House.’”

Jeff’s eyes bugged out. “Holy crap.”

“And his wife did find them, right in the middle of a trustee reception, and apparently, you could hear the shrieking all the way across campus. I wouldn’t know because I wasn’t on campus that night; I was busy getting drunk right here in this very bar.”