Coming Home to You (29 page)

Chapter 28

There was a new scratch on Neil’s front door, and I wondered where it had come from. Not that it was really any of my business anymore, but idle curiosity and my keen sense of awareness demanded that I gave it at least a moment’s attention. Plus, I was trying to put off ringing the doorbell for as long as possible while I decided how I was actually going to do this.

How
was
I going to do this?

I cracked the knuckles on my right hand—something I do only under an extreme case of nerves. I glared at the doorbell, really wishing I could just turn around and walk away from all of this. Somehow, though,
all of this
had become part of my life. My messy, broken-but-healing, chaotic life.

And there was no way to walk away from all of it. Because as much as I would have liked things to be simpler, they rarely turned out that way. Walking away would have meant turning my back on everything I had learned and all the people who had taught me those things, and I really couldn’t imagine doing that. I needed these people too much; more than that, I wanted them too much.

Neil was just an extension of the life I wanted. He was like one of the edge pieces on a puzzle—sure, you could have a great puzzle even if you were missing one of those bordering pieces. It didn’t really interrupt the flow of the picture the way, say, a middle piece would, but it still left the puzzle incomplete. You could cover that missing piece up with a picture frame, but it would still be missing. That one little thing would stand in the way of completion.

The puzzle of my life was constructed by my closest friends and family, even the ones I had lost, each piece interlocking to form an intricate picture. Kate and Ray were key pieces, so fundamentally important, that I knew being alienated from another important part of their life would be impossible. Which was why I was here now, standing at the front door of Neil’s house, getting ready to ring the doorbell and tell him everything.

I reached out and touched the button on the doorbell, tentatively at first and then with force enough to actually elicit a sound. I heard it echo through the small house, alerting Neil of my presence.

The door opened before I was ready, before I’d had time to breathe. And then I was robbed of all possibility of breath.

I wasn’t looking into Neil’s eyes, but those of a complete stranger. We stood face-to-face on the front steps of Neil’s house with nothing between us but all of the unspoken questions I had swelling in my throat.

He had a darkly shadowed jaw, this man who stood so proprietarily in the doorway, sizing me up as though I was the one who did not belong here. His dark hair was short and wet, suggesting a recent shower, and I smelled a hint of cologne—a fresh, clean smell that made me want to reach out and bury my nose in his shirt. It was an absurd impulse, of course, since he was a stranger. A handsome stranger, as I was quickly realizing, but still.

This was not a laundry detergent commercial or an ad for men’s cologne, so chances were slim that something like that would be well received.

“Um, who are you?” I blurted in surprise, completely forgetting every bit of manners my mother had instilled in me since childhood.

Mr. Freshly Showered Stranger Guy crossed well-toned arms over his chest and cocked an eyebrow at me, his deep green eyes narrowing in suspicion.

“I could ask the same of you, but I might pose the question in a slightly less hostile format.” He leaned forward slightly, perhaps to let me in on a little secret. “It tends to make a better first impression, you know?” he asked, offering a mischievous smile.

I detected a slight accent that I could only place somewhere in the Northeastern region of the country, but I would have been hard-pressed to nail it down more specifically than that. I was leaning toward New York State somewhere.

“Um, sure. Sorry,” I said, shaking my head at my own idiocy. “I’m not usually so rude. I was just caught a little bit off-guard, is all,” I explained, attempting a lame smile. “I was expecting…someone else.”

Realization dawned in the Shower Guy’s eyes.

“You were expecting Neil,” he supplied.

I nodded.

“Neil moved out and sold me this place. I’m Jack, by the way,” he said, offering his hand and bridging the distance between us.

“Zoë,” I replied, taking his hand. “I used to live here. Sort of. Until very, very recently, actually,” I said, not that that really explained anything.

His grip was firm, his hand sturdy and capable-feeling as it clasped mine. It was probably the only thing that kept me from losing my balance and doing a face-plant right there, the way I felt I might do at any moment now. My legs were proving to be a little less than reliable, slightly on the wobbly side.

Neil had moved out? When? Why hadn’t Ray told me?

Neil himself could have told me when we’d run into each other at the bookstore a few weeks ago, if he’d wanted to. Obviously, he hadn’t thought his future plans needed to be run by me for any reason. Because the reality was this: as much as I felt I knew Neil, I really didn’t
know
him.

I realized I was probably holding onto Jack’s hand a little harder than I meant to, and I pulled back hastily. Maybe a little
too
hastily. Now I had to worry that he thought I was disgusted by having to shake his hand. Great.

Too many thoughts were flashing through my head right now, none of them really holding still long enough, all of them probably glaringly obvious on my face. I shook my head and tried to reshuffle my brain into some semblance of orderliness and rationality. Not that I had much to go on here. Mostly still just questions.

“When—?” I realized I wasn’t sure what I wanted to ask.

When had Neil moved out?

When had Jack moved in?

When had this decision taken place?

“I moved in about a week ago,” Jack offered. “Haven’t really gotten all settled in yet, but I’m getting there.” I looked behind him to see stacks of boxes scattered around the small living room, only a few minor changes evident in my direct line of vision.

“Luckily for me, the place came fully furnished. Not going to keep everything, but it’s still nice to decide what I want and what I need to replace, you know?”

I felt an overwhelming urge to cry, a sense of unexplainable loss. I hadn’t been told, hadn’t been consulted, hadn’t been given the chance to tell Neil good-bye. And even though the real man was not the one I’d grown to depend on, I had gotten used to the idea of being able to reconcile the differences between the two. To make the man in my head match the one that was real.

I’d hung my hopes on a fantasy, and now the fantasy was lost.

“Are you okay?” Jack asked, looking mildly concerned.

I nodded silently, not trusting my voice enough to answer with actual words. I could feel the burn of tears in my nose and at the back of my throat, but I was determined not to make a fool of myself in front of this guy by bursting into tears on his front stoop.

He eyed me suspiciously, obviously far from convinced. “Okay, well. I’d ask you if you wanted to come in for a minute, but I’m actually getting ready to go out,” he said, grasping the door lightly.

“Oh, no. Please,” I stammered, waving at the air in dismissal, “don’t let me keep you. I’m sorry I kept you this long.”

I started to turn away, but he caught my arm.

“Zoë, wait,” Jack said, releasing me once he saw that I wasn’t going to run away. “Let me get your number. You know, in case I need some advice on where to get a good meal around here. Or if I find anything that might be yours.”

The thought hadn’t really occurred to me, that I might have left something behind in my haste to move out. Surely Neil would have mentioned if he’d found any trace of my presence in the house? I wondered fleetingly if he’d found something and mentioned it to Ray, who would’ve undoubtedly kept it to himself. Ray seemed most keen on minimizing my questions about his plans to tell Neil of my brief stint as his houseguest.

“Yeah, sure. Phone number…” I replied absently, my mind occupied by thoughts other than the man who stood in front of me.

I reached into the purse hanging heavily from my shoulder, fishing around for a scrap of paper and a pen. Once I found them, I quickly scrawled my name and cell phone number, feeling suddenly very anxious to leave.

“Thanks,” Jack said, taking the small piece of paper I held out to him and tucking it into his pocket with a quick glance at the writing. “It’s a real number, right?” he asked, a playful little gleam flashing in his green eyes and a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

I returned the volley, giving him a cocked eyebrow and a little half-smile-half-smirk thing. “Yes, it’s a
real
number. And it’s
my
number. You won’t call it and get Mr. Wong’s House of Wontons or anything like that, I promise.”

“Okay. If you promise, I guess I’ll just have to take your word for it. Although I do love me a good egg roll.” The man really did have a nice smile, I had to give him that. And a quick sense of humor.

I returned his full grin and held my hand out to him again, a parting handshake.

“It was good to meet you, Jack,” I said sincerely.

And I really did mean it. Sure, I was disappointed that Neil hadn’t been the one to open the door. That he hadn’t even felt the need to tell me he was leaving. That the trivial part I played in Neil’s thoughts was now an irrefutable fact. But sometimes being smacked with harsh reality is also oddly liberating.

“Great to meet you, too,” Jack agreed. “And I’ll make sure to call you the minute I find something I think might belong to you—unless you’d rather I just throw away the odd hair scrunchie I might discover floating around under the bed.”

“If you find a scrunchie under the bed, you can lay odds on the fact that it didn’t come from me,” I said, wrinkling my nose in distaste. I paused and shot him a look of suspicion. “Why—did you find a scrunchie under the bed?”

Visions of other women gracing Neil’s bed set off whispers of jealousy somewhere in the recesses of my brain. Not that I really had any reason to be jealous, but still.

“No,” Jack replied with a little chuckle. “Not yet. But do I detect animosity toward the unsuspecting scrunchie?”

“Well, I think you and I are both a little pressed for time to be getting into my litany of grievances against scrunchies. That could take all day,” I said.

There was an easy rapport, an effortless play of words that I hadn’t felt in ages. It was refreshing and strangely reassuring. When you’ve operated so long under a rotating cycle of grief-driven melancholy, happiness, depression, and enough other self-destructive emotions to keep a shrink busy for the next century, even the smallest reminder that you’re still
there
, in all that mess, feels like an unexpected gift.

“Another time, then,” Jack said pleasantly.

“Another time.”

So Neil was gone, and Jack was now living in his house. Ray must have known this was coming. There was simply no way Ray had not been included in this knowledge, not when the two of them were so close. The question now was this:
why hadn’t Ray told me about any of this?
Or at least shown me the simple courtesy of telling me during some point of the process. His omission was not something merely excused by being overwhelmed with wedding plans. Not at this point, not with his track record. I was guessing that Ray’s “oversight” had more to do with his desire to let the whole charade evaporate without ever having to give Neil a hint of what had transpired during his ten months of deployment. Ray knew me well enough to know that I would have pressed the issue even more if I was aware of the upcoming move, so not telling me was, in essence, a form of damage control.

Pulling into my parking space, I spied Ray’s beat-up little Honda Civic a few spaces down. Obviously, the man was waiting for me, which meant I could nail his butt to the wall without too much effort on my part. It would eliminate the need for me to hunt him down, at least.

I climbed the stairs two at a time, anxious to get up to my apartment and have some of my questions addressed.

“There she is,” Ray greeted me with a smile when I reached the landing. He leapt up from his place on the floor, where he’d been sitting cross-legged, propped up against my front door. Strangely enough, he didn’t look like a man on a mission to impart a confession. He looked guilt-free and excited. I noticed a box on the floor next to him, which he leaned down to pick up.

“Your dress came today,” Ray said, holding out the surprisingly compact box.

“Great! I was wondering when it was going to get here,” I replied, relieving him of the package, my mission momentarily forgotten in my own excitement. I stepped around him to unlock the front door and shove it open. “Come on,” I said, beckoning him into the apartment.

We walked in, and I flipped on a few lights, dropping my keys on the entryway table and striding toward the kitchen.

“I can’t wait to see what this looks like,” I murmured, more to myself than to Ray. Kate had found a website that sold jersey-knit bridesmaid dresses that could be worn multiple ways, one genius dress in one size for all of its wearers.

“So, Ray,” I called to him from the kitchen, where I stood slicing the tape on the box with a pair of scissors. “When were you planning to tell me that Neil was moving?” As offhanded as I was trying to sound, I knew he could detect the edge in my voice.

Ray took his time coming into the room, looking as though he was afraid of walking into a minefield. He shoved his hands into his pockets and leaned against the countertop, his eyes searching my face for some hint that I might be willing to show him mercy.

“I know I should have told you, but honestly—I was a little afraid to.” He ducked his head sheepishly.

“You thought you could get out of telling him what you did, didn’t you? And you thought if you told me, I would either make you go do it or take matters into my own hands and tell him myself, right?” I skewered him with my gaze and waggled the scissors accusingly to punctuate my hypothesis.