Uncommon Pleasure (34 page)

“It’s probably romantic if she’s in the right frame of mind. But everything I feel for you is this big tangled ball of barbed wire around my heart. Hate and love, longing and resentment, anger and admiration. Sometimes I can’t bear to look at you, but that year you were gone, I was half alive. I never stopped loving you. I realized that last night. I just…don’t trust you.”

“Right.” He exhaled through his nose. “After what I did, I wouldn’t trust me, either. I quit. I got scared, and I quit.”

“You did what you had to do.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I was such an unforgivable,
egregious jerk to you ten months ago when I broke up with you, and I’m sorry for the last month. I never, ever should have come on to you like I did, shown up when you asked me not to, done things you could have done for yourself. I had a plan. I’d won you once in four weeks. I could do it again. Except last year you wanted to be won, and now…you wanted to be left alone. I should have honored that, and I didn’t. I treated you like an obstacle to overcome, or a game piece, and I’m sorry.”

She licked her dry, cracked lips. She needed lip balm—God knew he was a connoisseur of lip balm after a year in Afghanistan’s dry air—and water. Probably a handful of aspirin, but he wasn’t doing a thing until she asked. He wasn’t stupid. He had two world-class degrees and the accolades to prove it, goddammit. He would get smart about this. He would.

“Why did you break up with me?”

The question was tentative, as if she didn’t dare ask. Answering honestly would be like showing up naked on the parade ground for a full review. “You nailed it last night. I was afraid. Terrified. The thought that I’d make a mistake and get one of my Marines killed…I was so fucking scared I’d fuck up everything, and I sacrificed you for them.”

There.
That was the truth, the ultimate dishonor revealed. “Because what matters is the guy on your left and the guy on your right,” she said.

He lifted his gaze from the floor to her face. Her eyes still obscured by the icy cold washcloth, she said, “I understand, Sean. I didn’t want to be the most important person in your life. I just wanted to be in your life.”

“You deserve to be the most important person in someone’s life, Abby,” he said.

Air huffed from her. “I’m done with fairy tales. What I deserve is to be a part of something bigger than myself. Like you are. You
serve something. Your life means something. I wanted to be a part of that.”

“You’re on that path, going to nursing school.”

“I wouldn’t have quit on you,” she said. “I know lots of women don’t last the deployment. I wouldn’t have quit on us.”

“I know that now. I’m sorry I did.”

I’m learning, Abby. Please don’t quit on me.
But he didn’t have any right to ask her for that now. Maybe ever.

There was a long silence, then she held out the washcloth. “Would you wet that down for me again?” she asked, keeping her eyes closed.

He took the proffered cloth, soaked it in the ice water, wrung it out carefully, and came back to her side. He draped the cloth over her puffy eyes, then sat down on the floor with his back to the sofa. After a minute her hand patted his shoulder gently, then came to rest.

“Thank you.”

“Did you really want to do any of the things we did? Anal sex, the ménage, any of it?” Not that he didn’t deserve it, but he hoped Abby had done that because she wanted it, not out of some dark, twisted place he’d created.

Another heavy inhale. “Oh, yeah. I’m not the woman you left behind, Sean.”

Not unlike gunfire and combat terror, knowing he would never get back what he’d thrown away clarified his thinking like a crucible clarified metal. He loved her. He’d fallen as hard and fast as she had, but that love, tender, new, and unfamiliar, went unacknowledged and unvoiced in the whirlwind of preparing for war, then sucked into the vortex of fear. He had nothing left to lose, so he told her. “I love you, Abby.”

“I still love you, too, Sean.”

She still loved him. He still loved her. In the fairy tales, that
would be enough. In reality, two people could love each other and still have the odds stacked against them.

Fuck the odds.
They were going to beat the goddamn odds if it was the last thing he ever did. The tactics decision tree winnowed through options in his head like a slot machine spinning up gold.
Dinner.
A quiet dinner, somewhere nice but not romantic was the right move here. He almost put his hand on her knee and asked her out to dinner.

Almost.

This time he waited.

She sat up and neatly folded the washcloth. “I have to go,” she said, balancing the cloth on her palm, then offering it to him.

He took it. The chill seeped into his skin. “I know.”

“I have homework, and about a year’s worth of housecleaning to do.” She looked down at her hands, then up at him.

It was awkward, standing up together, his throat tightening while she got her keys and purse together. “Can I call you before I leave town?” he asked.

She shook her head, the movement slight but unmistakable. “I need some time to think, Sean. Can I call you when…if I’m ready?”

“Anytime, Abby,” he said.

She let herself out quietly. Her car started without a hiccup, and purred off down the street. When silence fell, it was his turn to cry.

*   *   *

Abby hurried through the front door of her house, dumped her
backpack on the tile, and headed up the stairs. She’d just finished another review session in the lab and had barely enough time to shower and feed herself and her father before heading to No Limits for the Saturday night rush. True to his word, Sean made no attempt to contact her since that night. No surprise appearances at No
Limits. No knocks on her front door. No new bumper for her car, or even a bumper sticker. She’d asked for time, and he’d given it to her.

After a quick shower she toweled off, slathered lotion over her entire body, and pulled on a simple pair of capris and a T-shirt. She was on her way down the stairs to tackle dinner when the doorbell rang.

Sean.

A wide smile on her face, she opened the door not to Sean but to Jeff, Lindsey, and Mikaela. Her smile disappeared as Abby glanced over her shoulder at unvacuumed floors, undusted surfaces, the clutter of medical paperwork and unopened mail on the dining room table, her father’s unmade bed in the office, and her face flushed. “Jeff…Lindsey.”

“Hi, Aunt Abby,” Mikaela said.

“Hey, sugar lump,” she said, and gave the little girl a hug. “What’s up?”

“We brought Grandpa some cake,” she said, and held out a paper plate with a piece of white birthday cake with white frosting and pink roses on it. The plastic wrap was wrinkled, and one corner of the cake was smashed into the plate. “Grammie Ruth couldn’t come to my party because she had a cold, but we took her some cake. I wanted to bring Grandpa some cake. That’s fair,” she said with a seven-year-old’s certainty.

Grammie Ruth was Lindsey’s mother, the grandma who babysat every Saturday night. Abby looked down at her wide-eyed niece, then at Jeff and Lindsey. They both jerked their gazes back from the disaster in the dining room to her face.

“Is now a good time?” Lindsey asked. “We called, but didn’t get an answer.”

“I was at school,” she said. “Dad doesn’t answer the phone. It’s fine. Come in.”

She took Mikkie’s hand and led her down the hallway. “Dad, there’s someone here to see you,” she said.

Her father turned to face her, then his eyes widened. Little Mikaela confidently dropped Abby’s hand and walked over to him. “Hi, Grandpa,” she said, and held out the cake. “I brought you some cake.”

Her father looked at the cake, then at Abby, his expression so flabbergasted Abby almost burst out laughing. “Do you want milk to go with the cake?”

“Yes, please,” Mikaela answered for them both, then sat down on the sofa next to her grandfather. “What are you watching, Grandpa?”

“The History Channel,” he said.

“I like the Cartoon Network,” Mikkie confided, “but Mama won’t let me watch it. It’s in-a-pro-pri-ate.”

Jeff and Lindsey stood in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen. “Dad,” Jeff said noncommittally. “Hello, Stan,” Lindsey added.

“How about PBS?” Abby suggested as she went into the kitchen for forks and milk. Her father switched the television to a show about a talking dog. Abby brought two glasses of milk to the table by her father’s end of the sofa. Her father looked from Jeff to Lindsey to little Mikaela, then back to Jeff again. Tears shone in his eyes, and his lip quivered. He cleared his throat and put his hands on the arms of his recliner to get up. Lindsey gave Jeff a little nudge, and her husband crossed the room.

“Don’t get up, Dad,” he said and sat down on the hearth. “Who did the cool design in the lawn?”

Lindsey looked at Abby. “Do you want something to drink?” Abby asked.

“Water,” Lindsey said. Abby got two glasses of ice water and led Lindsey into the dining room.

“Sorry about the clutter,” she said as she cleared off two chairs. “I’m a little behind on the housework.”

Lindsey looked around the disorderly, dusty room, then at Abby. “At Mikaela’s party you said you guys were doing fine,” she said.

“I wouldn’t call it a lie,” Abby said. “Wishful thinking, maybe. I wanted us to be doing fine. I wanted to be able to take care of him on my own.”

“Why?” Lindsey said candidly. “From what Jeff’s said and my own experience with your dad, he’s difficult on a good day and mean on the rest. Why would you be able to?”

Because she had something to prove to someone who was ten thousand miles away. “I don’t think it was actually about him,” Abby admitted. “He and Jeff don’t exactly get along.”

“He may not be easy to deal with, but that doesn’t mean we won’t do right by him,” Lindsey said firmly. “Family is family. He looks bad.”

“He’s a horrible patient,” Abby said. “He won’t take his meds. He won’t eat. He won’t exercise or practice any of the breathing exercises. It’s exhausting. This disease doesn’t have to kill him next year, but at the rate he’s going, it will.”

As she spoke Jeff appeared in the doorway, then stood behind Lindsey’s chair. “You can’t control him, Abby,” he said gently. “But you can break your heart trying to. He’ll choose to live as long as he can, or he’ll choose to die as soon as he can. It’s Dad’s world, and we’re just living in it.”

“I know,” she said.

“What do you need? Meals? Someone to take him to the doctor? A housecleaner? Backup?”

“You and Lindsey are already so busy. You have a house, and you both work,” she started.

“Standing right here, Abby, offering to help,” Jeff said a little stiffly.

An excellent point. “I had a thing about not giving up,” she said.

Jeff looked at her more closely, then loosened his tie. “It’s not giving up to ask for help.”

He was the spitting image of her father as a young man, and Mikkie had their dark hair and eyes. She took a deep breath. “All of the above,” she said. “All of the above, but would you start with the lawn? I hate mowing the lawn, and he’s so picky about it.”

He smiled at the intensity in her voice. “Lawn care. We’ll start there. I’ll call Cody, get him over here, too. I can’t copy your Marine’s work, though. I’m a straight rows kind of guy. Maybe diagonals.”

“He’s not
my
Marine,” Abby said automatically, then amended her statement. “Yet. He’s not my Marine yet.”

“I’ll come over next weekend and see if we can get some of this paperwork organized,” Lindsey said. “Mikkie can spend some time with her grandfather.”

“Thank you,” she said.

The talking dog show over, Lindsey carried Mikkie down the hallway. Her father was actually out of his chair, gasping with the effort to follow the dark-eyed little girl. As soon as Lindsey realized he was trying to keep up with them, she slowed down and turned so Mikkie could see her grandpa. “Did you like my cake, Grandpa?” she asked imperiously.

He nodded. “I did,” he said, then coughed.

“Can Grandpa come to my dance recital?” she asked her mom. “I wear a pink tutu and a crown!”

Her father had no interest in girl stuff. Princesses, ponies, stars, fairies, crowns, makeup, glittery shoes, dances, party dresses, none of it. “We’ll see how Grandpa’s feeling,” Abby said. “Maybe your dad could record the recital and we could watch it here?”

“I’ll be fine,” said the man who’d never once seen her cheer in high school or college. “I’ll be there.”

From the expression on Jeff’s face, he was familiar enough with their father’s frequently broken promises to temper Mikkie’s expectations. “Let’s see how you feel, Dad,” he said easily.

Jeff and his family left, and the house suddenly felt empty. “Pretty little girl,” her dad said, his breathing loud in the silence.

“She looks like Jeff, and you,” Abby replied. “She’s going to be striking when she grows up.”

A grunt, then her father shuffled back down the hallway. When he turned for the family room and his recliner, Abby said, “Hey, Dad? The recital’s in four weeks. If you want to be able to go, you need to do some of those breathing exercises.”

He paused for a long moment, then turned for the kitchen and the breathing machine.

Abby smiled. A lifetime of broken promises, hurt feelings, missed events, and yet there was always a new start. Someone walked through a door with a piece of cake, or offered to mow a lawn. She remembered her heart’s response to a knock at her door, and found that the terrible, wild night with Sean burned away her anger. New shoots of love pushing through the devastated earth of her soul.

But she waited. First she helped her dad with his breathing exercises and fixed him a plate for dinner, then she called one of the part-time waitresses at No Limits and offered up her prime Saturday night shift. The girl jumped at the chance. Abby changed into jeans and a decent blouse, then scuffed her feet into flats.

“I’m going out, Dad,” she said.

“Okay,” he said.

“I left you a plate in the fridge,” she said.

He looked at her. “Thank you,” he said gruffly.

“You’re welcome, Dad. See you later.”