Leave a Mark (13 page)

“Good boy." Lee smiled down at the little guy. He was already half in love with him and dreading the moment he’d have to go back to the hospital in the morning. But by then, he’d have introduced the puppy to Marcelle, and hopefully she’d agree to look after him during his shift.

Lee didn’t kid himself. Marcelle would be a little pissed at first, but after two minutes with Victor, she’d turn to mush. Lee took a hand off the paddle to give the puppy a gentle scratch behind the ears. Victor was so darn cute. Who could resist him?

Not Wren.

The bittersweet thought came without warning, but he savored it. She’d let him take the pick of the litter, her favorite. And when Lee heard that she’d already named the puppy — after a Joss Whedon character, no less — he knew he didn’t want to call the dog anything else. Now, Lee just hoped that there would come a time when looking at Victor wouldn’t bring Wren to mind — at least not so painfully.

He needed to forget her.

Paddling harder, Lee tried to move his thoughts away from the petite tattoo artist who had managed to get under his skin without needles or ink. He settled his mind on Marcelle instead. Marcelle was good for him.

They didn’t always see eye to eye, but Lee knew that his girlfriend complemented him in ways he needed. Without her, he’d eat like a frat boy. Marcelle didn’t cook all that much, but she kept him from eating pizza every night. And while he was a dreamer, she was a planner. When he’d bought the house on Dunreath, Lee had talked about how he’d one day like to plant crepe myrtles in the front yard. Marcelle had hired a landscaper, and the job had been done two weeks later.

She was efficient. She was driven. And she loved him.

“She loves me… I think,” Lee said aloud. Victor picked up his head, regarded Lee for a moment, and dropped it again, looking unimpressed. “And I love her… I mean, we might not say the words every day, but that doesn’t change the facts, right?”

Victor didn’t respond, and Lee paddled on, working harder when the current picked up as the river bent northwest behind Alice Drive. The houses along the river here were older than those he’d just passed in River Ranch, and the trees and brush were taller, growing thicker and throwing their shadows along the bank.

“Wren probably hates me,” he told the dog, breaking a sweat now as he braced his whole body to move the kayak against the current. “She’d have to. Wouldn’t she? I mean, she wasn’t happy at all to see me last night, and I don’t think that kiss made her any happier. She couldn’t even look at me after.”

He fought the current again as the river snaked south around Beaullieu Drive to his left.

“And why should it matter if she hates me? We’ve spent — what? A total of two whole hours together? More if you count the part when she was unconscious.”

Despite his words, Lee knew that with someone like Wren, the amount of time didn’t really matter all that much. She was the kind of person who could leave a mark with just one meeting. Even if he’d never seen her again after her surgery, Lee would have remembered her. Vividly.

The effort to make the bend around Broadmoor cleared his mind, and he was breathing hard by the time the Ambassador Caffery Bridge came into view. To get a good workout and earn his snack, Lee made himself race toward it, burning lactose in his abs, traps, and shoulders. Even his legs started to burn as he braced himself in the kayak. The vessel flew over the water, and the breeze buffeted Victor’s soft curls.

Breathless and streaming sweat, Lee turned around to head downstream and rested the paddle across his lap. His body felt the welcome ease after exertion, and he’d worked up an appetite. He let them drift while he took turns popping almonds into his mouth and trying to teach Victor how to sit by offering him treats. The dog caught on quickly, his excitement clear in his eyes as he grasped the game. Lee laughed.

“Marcelle is going to love you.”

“
YOU’VE GOT TO
be fucking kidding me.”

Lee’s girlfriend glared down at the dog with a look of revulsion. At the sound of her voice, Victor, who sat at Lee’s feet, had the good sense to duck his head and peek up at her under his golden eyebrows. But it didn’t help.

“I thought we talked about this.” Marcelle turned her glare on Lee as he chopped mushrooms for dinner.

Lee tried to swallow his irritation. He’d been in the middle of making chicken marsala when she came in. Clearly, his plan to cushion the blow of the puppy’s arrival with her favorite meal wasn’t going to work.

“Well, I told you I wanted a dog; you listed reasons why we shouldn’t get one, and I refuted all of those reasons,” he said, slipping into debate-mode even as he kept slicing mushrooms. “Marcelle, this is Victor.”

At the sound of his name, Victor stood and wagged. Still, he seemed to know not to approach Marcelle. She ignored him.

“I can’t believe you did that. You didn’t even tell me." Marcelle then took in the dog crate in the corner of the room. Victor’s lead and harness sat coiled on its top. She pointed to them. “You obviously planned this. It wasn’t one of your impulse purchases. How could you not tell me?”

Lee set down the paring knife. “What do you mean, one of my ‘impulse purchases’?”

Marcelle rolled her eyes. “Hello? The jukebox. The second kayak. The Xbox One…”

“I wanted all those things. I
use
all those things.” Lee took a breath and tried to master his voice. “If I can afford them, what’s wrong with buying things I want?”

Marcelle flipped her hair behind her shoulder, ready for battle. “You’re thirty-one years old, and you shop like a little boy. You don’t give any forethought to where something will go or how much upkeep it takes.”

Lee threw up his hands. “What the hell are you talking about? The jukebox goes in the dining room. The kayaks hang up on the porch. The Xbox is under the TV.” He felt his brows draw up in the middle with what he knew was his most condescending expression. “I don’t see a problem here.”

Marcelle unbuttoned her tailored jacket, shucked it off, and flung it over the back of a kitchen chair. Victor hid behind Lee’s legs.

“Every time the jukebox breaks, you have to call that specialty company. Every time you take the kayak out, you get mud on the top of your jeep and on the porch.” Her neck was getting red and splotchy, and her eyes narrowed down to slits. “Every time you get a
fucking
video game, you camp out in front of the TV and surround yourself with dirty dishes for three nights straight.”

“
So?
Playing video games is
fun
.” His voice dripped with affected calm. “Maybe you should try it.”

“I’m not twelve!” she shouted. “I don’t collect comic books that take up four bookshelves in the spare bedroom. I don’t buy box sets of
Star Trek
, and I don’t play video games.”

Lee grit his teeth even as he felt his face heat. “What’s your point? What does this really have to do with my dog?”

“Leland, when,
when
are you going to grow up?”

Lee was struck dumb. He looked at his girlfriend. Really looked at her. The crowding of her brows. Her flared nostrils. The clench in her jaw.

She looked miserable.

He took a step back and leaned against the stove, noting, too, the set of his shoulders bunched up behind his ears. The tightness in his gut. The blush of shame that had come to his face when she asked when he’d grow up.

He felt awful.

Lee drew in a long breath, let it out, and shook his head. “Marcelle… what are we doing?”

Her mouth gaped. “We’re arguing about your ridiculous habi—”

“No.” Lee held up a hand to stop her. “What are we doing
together?”

Marcelle’s head snapped back as if he’d slapped her. “What?”

Lee swallowed and softened his voice. “Are you happy with me, Marcelle?”

“I…” Her mouth opened and closed twice, and her eyes widened, this time in alarm. Lee nodded, knowingly, a sad smile coming to his mouth.

“You don’t seem happy…”

“But… I… I would be if you would just grow up a little.”

Lee pressed his lips together, tamping down on his temper and shaking his head. “Marcelle, I’m all grown up. I don’t think that’s what you want,” he said, just an edge of bitterness sneaking into the words. “I think you want me to be someone else.”

“That’s not true." Now she looked afraid. She took a step closer to him and touched her fingers to his wrist. But then she let her hand drop to her side.

“Be honest. If you knew now that I’d still be collecting comics and playing video games and buying outdoor toys when I’m sixty, would you still want to be with me?”

Marcelle’s eyes bugged. She looked horrified. “But that’s not going to happen!”

Lee couldn’t help the harsh laugh. “Yes. It is.”

“But it won’t. You’ll go into practice, and we’ll get married, and you’ll settle down…" She sounded too confident, too familiar with her picture of the future. “…and we’ll travel and play tennis and entertain… and it will be really… really fun.”

Lee felt a chill sneak down his spine. This is what she saw when she looked at him. She didn’t want him. She wanted his father.

He brought the heels of his hands to his eyes and rubbed them roughly before dragging his palms down his face. How had he not seen this before?

“I fucking hate tennis,” he muttered. Then he locked eyes with her again. “Here’s what I want. I want to keep working at the charity hospital and get married to someone who is crazy about who I am. And we’ll go kayaking and walk our dogs and sleep ‘til ten on Saturdays and eat leftover Chinese for breakfast in bed… until we have kids, of course. Three or four kids don’t let you sleep very late—”

“Three…
or four?"
Lee couldn’t be sure, but Marcelle’s left eyelid may have twitched.

“Yeah. Growing up as an only child really sucked. I want loads of kids,” he said, certain that he’d mentioned this before. Had she tuned him out? Or had she just heard what she wanted to hear? “We’d have to buy a bigger house, of course. One with a great room where the kids could build forts with sofa cushions and sleep on the floor in front of the fireplace on cold nights.”

Marcelle folded her arms around herself and put a fist to her lips. “You’re teasing me, aren’t you? Please say you’re teasing me.”

For a moment, Lee wanted to. Marcelle wasn’t all hard edges and hospital corners. During the holidays, every time they’d passed a Salvation Army Santa ringing his bell, she’d turn her change purse inside out into his bucket. Lee would ask her to hold his spare change just to watch her do it. Whenever she broke down and played a selection on the Wurlitzer, she’d sing along in the sweetest voice. She didn’t have perfect pitch, but that’s what Lee loved about it. And the woman could spoon. At the end of the day, she’d curl into him and remind him that for all of her hard ways, she still had a few soft spots.

But this wasn’t going to work.

“I’m not teasing, Marce.” His voice had gone soft, and he watched the effect of it in her eyes. They held his for a moment before filling with tears.

Great. I’ve made two girls cry in as many days.

Tears slipped down her cheeks, and she squeezed her eyes shut. Lee crossed the space that separated them and cupped her shoulders, hating the way pain etched her face.

Marcelle opened her eyes again. “I told myself this would work out if we stuck together long enough,” she said, sniffing. “Either you’d change or I’d mellow out.”

Lee laughed a sad laugh. Marcelle smiled a sad smile.

“I guess that’s pretty stupid, huh?” Her voice was just a squeak.

Lee shook his head. “It’s not stupid. I wanted this to work out, too." He raised a finger and tucked a stray lock of her strawberry-blonde hair behind her ear.

“Shit, Leland, are we breaking up?” Her eyes again went wide with the reality of it. Thirteen months as a couple were coming to an end in the middle of his kitchen.

Lee swallowed. Sadness. That was the sum of what he felt — with a trace of guilt at the heart of it, but the will to fight — the will to deny that this was the end — was notably absent. Still, he didn’t want to hurt her.

“You know who I am. You know what I want. None of that’s going to change." He left it at that. No matter what he said, Marcelle would decide for herself anyway. Right on cue, she took a deep breath and stood straight.

“I guess I know what I need to do then… Goodbye, Leland." She leaned in and pressed her lips to his cheek. Lee caught her against him one last time and hugged her, half-sorry he couldn’t be the man she wanted but wholly grateful that they both knew the truth.

“Goodbye, Marcelle.”

They held on for a moment, but then Marcelle pulled herself away and wiped her eyes, wearing a brave smile. Victor whimpered and pawed Lee’s leg, and she laughed.

“I’ve never been crazy about dogs, but he’s pretty cute." She bent down and patted Victor on the head. He stood up and wagged. “Goodbye, Victor.”

“Yeah, he is.” Lee smiled at his dog. They’d been together all of twenty-four hours, but the puppy already seemed to be able to read his moods. They were bonding, and it was more than one-sided.