Zach had been home all of two minutes—he hadn’t even made it to the basement—when his phone rang. Darren & Tracey. He still needed to change the contact name.
“Zach?” said a young voice.
“Hi, Maddie.”
“Sorry to bother you.” She sounded too grown-up. “But something is wrong with Mommy.”
Zach felt like his heart had fallen through his chest and out the bottom of his stomach. No, no, no. Please, no.
“What happened?” he asked, trying to be calm. He walked back to the front door and started putting on his boots.
“She told me to make a peanut butter sandwich for snack.”
He stood up but didn’t pull out his jacket. “What else, sweetie?”
“That’s also what she told me to do for lunch. She’s been lying in bed all day. Yesterday she said she felt a cold coming on, but this doesn’t seem like a silly little cold.”
Zach exhaled with relief. Perhaps it was more than a “silly little cold,” but it didn’t sound as bad as he’d feared.
“Could I talk to her?” he asked.
“She said not to bother her unless it’s an emergency.”
“Okay. I’ll come over in half an hour.” He’d make dinner, put the kids to bed, and check on Tracey.
He stuffed some food and cold medication in a bag and got back in his car, stupidly wishing Elise was there to place a calming hand on his shoulder.
»»•««
Brit said she’d be over about eight, so Elise had lots of time to lose it and regain her composure. She’d managed to hold it together in the car, and she thought she’d let it all out and cry now.
But she was just numb.
That Zach believed he couldn’t have a relationship, almost like he thought he didn’t deserve one—it drove her mad. When he wasn’t trying to sabotage everything, he was such a kind and fun and caring man.
But she couldn’t expect someone else to change. She knew that all too well.
Perhaps part of this was just bad timing though. She believed there was such a thing, no matter what Rory said. If she’d met Zach before Darren’s death, maybe the way he saw himself—as his friend’s opposite—wouldn’t have been so immutable. Maybe his self-worth wouldn’t have been so low, believing as he did now that he should have died instead.
She could have been there for him. She wished she had been there. And she wished she could have met Darren.
It did no good to dwell on it, but she did know this: it would take a long time to get over Zach Adams. He was, after all, the only man she’d ever loved.
Elise changed into her pajamas and watched TV for an hour. Then she called Marissa.
“You know how on TV when a woman breaks up with her boyfriend, she eats ice cream out of the carton and her friends come over? A breakup party. I always wanted one of those.”
“Hold on a second,” Marissa said. “You’re not supposed to be excited about it. And what happ— ”
“But it’s better to have loved and lost than never loved at all, right? Not that Zach was ever my boyfriend, but…”
“The weekend didn’t go well?”
“Saturday went well,” Elise said.
“You slept with him?”
“Yeah. And that was good.” Bit of an understatement, but whatever. No need to get into the details. “But today was a mess.”
“Assholes are the best in bed in my experience,” Marissa said. “Pity about that.”
Elise didn’t really want to think of Zach as an asshole. “So are you free now? Can you come over? I’ll tell you all about it then. But if you’re busy, that’s okay. It wasn’t even a real breakup and—”
“You were pretty smitten with him, though.”
“Yeah, I was,” Elise said. “I still am.”
»»•««
Marissa came over to Elise’s with Chinese takeout at six, and Jill came slightly later with ice cream.
“My sister will be here in a couple hours. She broke up with her boyfriend, and she’s moving in for a few weeks. So it’ll be a family breakup party.” Elise brought some plates and utensils to the table. “Let’s eat.”
“Now will you tell me what happened?” Marissa asked.
Funny, only twenty-four hours ago, Elise had been hurrying to the hotel with Zach. And now…
She gave her friends a brief account of her weekend.
“Usually at these things we’re supposed to say ‘good riddance’ and trash-talk the guy,” Jill said.
“But I don’t think that’s going to bring you any comfort,” Marissa said. “And I really don’t have the heart to trash-talk someone who just lost his best friend. Though he did do some jerkish things.”
Elise nodded. “Maybe he’ll change his mind.” She knew she was pathetic, but she couldn’t help it.
Marissa reached for the fried rice. “Don’t count on it. This is where we tell you that you’ll find someone better.”
“And I fully believe that,” Jill said.
Elise wasn’t convinced. She had a hard time imagining she’d find someone better than Zach. She remembered how perfect it felt when she was snuggled up against him and… How could she ever find something else so perfect? It didn’t seem possible.
“After we eat,” Jill said, “we’ll make you an online dating profile.”
“It’ll be so much more fun than making my own,” Marissa said. She and Jill exchanged conspiratorial glances.
“Brit would enjoy helping you.” Elise tried to inject some enthusiasm into her voice. “Wait for her.”
She’d barely finished saying that when the phone rang. She pounced on it, hoping it was Zach.
It wasn’t. It was Brit.
Elise knew what her sister was going to say. She suppressed a groan.
“I’m not coming,” Brit said. “We worked things out, and he promised—”
“He’s not going to change.” It wouldn’t do any good to say this, but Elise needed to get it out. “He’s made promises like this before, and then… You’re going to tell me it’s different this time, aren’t you?” She walked to her bedroom and plopped down on the bed.
“What the hell would you know about men?” Brit snapped.
“Why do you think I was out of town this weekend?”
“You’ve got a boyfriend? Really?”
“No.” Elise sighed. “But I was out of town with a guy.”
“Seriously?”
She was a little hurt that Brit had trouble believing this. “Yeah. But it didn’t go so well. You were supposed to come over and eat ice cream out of the carton with me.”
Brit hesitated. “I could still come over for an hour or two.”
“No, no,” Elise said. “Don’t feel like you have to be here.” Seeing Brit would just make her angry. Angry that the two of them had failed to have functional relationships.
She got off the phone and returned to her friends. “My sister won’t leave her loser boyfriend. I think I need to get started on the ice cream.”
“Okay,” Jill said. “We’ll get started on your profile too.”
“Is he that bad?” Marissa asked.
“He expects her to put up with way too much shit. Including telling her she’s in an open relationship without giving her any choice in the matter. Don’t know if that’s included in his so-called promise to change.”
“I can relate,” Marissa said, shaking her head.
Elise went to the freezer. “He makes her do all the housework, and he’s just generally obnoxious and mean and—”
The phone rang. It was Brit again.
“I was supposed to tell you something else,” she said. “Corey and I want to get you a bike for your birthday. Are you free next Saturday? His friend works at a bike shop, and we’ll take you to pick one out. And then maybe Corey can teach you because, unlike me, he’s actually been on a bike in the past ten years.”
“Okay,” Elise whispered. “That’s very nice of you.”
“I think we owe you,” Brit said casually. “Anyway, got to go. Lots of dishes to do.”
Elise wanted to ask if her boyfriend had ever cleaned a dish in his life. But that would just make her sister defensive.
Before bringing the ice cream over to the table, she shoved her skates to the back of the storage closet. Skating was over for now. Once the snow melted, she would learn how to ride a bike.
She would move on. She could do this.
»»•««
Although Ethan ran upstairs and loudly announced Zach’s arrival in front of his mom’s bedroom door, Zach didn’t see Tracey until he was helping Maddie read Ethan a bedtime story.
Tracey stood quietly at the door to Ethan’s bedroom for a couple minutes without her kids noticing, her face red and her blonde hair uncombed. She put a hand to her mouth—it looked like she was going to cry.
Zach’s heart squeezed. This wasn’t the way things were supposed to be. Darren should be here reading bedtime stories with his children, not Zach.
Tracey started to turn away, but Ethan finally saw her. He scrambled off the bed and ran to her.
“I made you a picture,” he said, gesturing to his dresser. “A get-well-soon picture.”
God, these kids were so cute.
Tracey came into the room and picked up the drawing.
“It’s a blue-and-red puppy,” he said proudly.
“I can see that. It’s very nice. Thank you, Ethan.” Her voice was a little hoarse. “Don’t worry, I’ll be all better in the morning.”
Maddie seemed skeptical. “If you’re sick, you should stay in bed.”
“I have to take you to school.”
“Zach can take us to school.”
Tracey looked at him. “Don’t worry, I’ll do it.”
She said goodnight to her children before disappearing again.
Once the kids were in bed, Zach read the paper in the kitchen, not quite sure what he should do now. He hoped Tracey would come down to talk to him.
Around nine she re-emerged, looking weak but more composed, and sat across from him at the table.
“Thank you for everything,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t expect them to call you.” She put her face in her hands. “I was doing okay. But this cold, it was too much to deal with on top of everything else, and I just couldn’t think about them. I know that sounds awful.”
He shook his head. “There are lots of people who will help you. I know it’s hard to ask, but you have to. Promise you’ll call me—or someone else—if this happens again. You don’t have to do it all alone.”
She nodded and blew her nose.
“Will you really be okay tomorrow morning?”
“I think so. I’ll call my mom if I’m not,” she said, pushing the hair out of her eyes. “How was your night away with your…friend?”
“Oh.” He folded up the paper. “It was good, but it’s not going to work out between us. You know me.”
Tracey frowned. She glanced toward the window before turning back to Zach. “When I met you—the night I met Darren—you were talking loudly about the waitress’s tits.”
“Sounds like me,” he muttered.
“I think you tried to burp a little song too. You were wasted. Darren pretended he wasn’t such good friends with you when we started dating.”
“Can’t blame him.”
“But I liked you better once I got to know you, and I certainly didn’t object to you being his best man. You’ve also improved with age.”
“Thank you.” He wasn’t sure how else to respond.
“And I—we, actually—have long thought you would like to settle down but just hadn’t met the right person.”
“We,” he repeated faintly.
“But there was something else, too. For some reason, you didn’t think you could do it.” She paused. “You know how Darren used to tease you about getting married? And how he’d throw you the lamest bachelor party ever?”
“All the time.”
“He was hoping you’d snap and tell him why you didn’t think you could get married. I guess this is what passes for deep male bonding sometimes.”
Zach laughed a little at that.
“I’m just saying,” Tracey continued, “I think you might be the only one who still believes you can’t be in a relationship. Of course I did believe that at one point, but it was a very long time ago. I see you with my kids now, and I can’t help but think you want that, no matter what you might say.”
“I think about your kids a lot.”
“I know.” She smiled weakly at him, and he thought she expected him to say something else, but he was so drained he just couldn’t manage.
“I should get going,” he said finally.
She nodded. “I’ve got something for you. Wait a moment.”
She left the room and came back a minute later with an envelope marked pictures for Zach and an alumni magazine from their university.
“You know I get these too,” he said, taking the magazine.
“I know, but I’m almost positive you don’t look at them.”
“This is true.” He flipped to the page with a sticky note, curious.
“She had a baby,” Tracey said softly. “She’s married.”
She being Sheri.
He smiled and closed the magazine, a strange sense of peace washing over him. “I wanted to be like you and Darren. But I couldn’t.”
“Not with her.”
Zach hesitated before repeating, “Not with her.” He said the words quietly, testing them out, unsure if they were true.
He said goodbye to Tracey and walked out to his car in the lightly falling snow.
When he got home, he opened the envelope. The pictures were mostly old ones that Darren’s parents had taken when they were kids. He stuck one on the fridge, and, too exhausted to punch anything, curled up on the couch.
»»•««
On Monday evening, Zach came home from the gym and saw his skates by the door. But he didn’t need to see the skates to remind him of Elise. He was thinking about her constantly. A long workout certainly hadn’t been enough to banish her from his mind. And when he looked at his skates, he thought of the day they’d met, how he’d been annoyed when someone else stepped onto the ice and disturbed his solitude.
Little had he known the effect she would have on his life.
He didn’t put the skates away. He walked into the kitchen to have a snack after his grueling workout, and he saw the photo on the fridge of him and Darren when they were perhaps eleven or twelve, playing road hockey. And then he sat down at the table with a plate of peanut butter and crackers, and he saw the alumni magazine, which he hadn’t bothered to put away last night, either. Again he flipped to the page with birth announcements, ran his finger over the picture of Sheri’s pudgy-faced daughter. Sheri had very much wanted to have children. Three of them, if possible. That’s what she’d told him, back in the days when he was planning his future with a woman he’d never quite loved.
As he stared at the picture, he realized that although Sheri had taken their breakup badly, she was the one who’d moved on. Zach hadn’t quite managed it. The painful ending to their relationship had been an excuse to never try again. To say that love just wasn’t for him.
And for years he’d never had reason to challenge that assumption.
Until Elise.
He read through the other commitment and birth announcements, most for people he didn’t know.
Maybe I could have that, too.
But the thought still freaked him out a little. It was just so different from how he’d seen himself for so long.
He could use a friend right now. He could use Darren.
Sure, their friendship might not have been filled with deep conversations, but he knew he could have talked to Darren about anything.
Zach resisted the urge to go to the basement and beat the shit out of his punching bag, like he’d usually do. He realized he was grieving, and he was finally okay with that.
It hurt so much because he had been close to someone. Someone other than his parents. He might have cut himself off from romantic relationships for nearly a decade, but he’d still had a close friendship. And he cared for Darren’s family, and he was good with his kids. He hated that he was the one taking Maddie and Ethan swimming because their father wasn’t there, but he was doing the best he could.
He walked back to the fridge and slipped the photo out from under the magnet, and for the first time in a long time—probably since that picture was taken, in fact—he cried.
Tomorrow morning, he would take out the list his mom had given him and make a few calls.