Wait For It Page 2

  “Will do,” I said. I wasn’t leaving him for her. I mean, creative director? That was a huge job. Sure, as a one-woman operation, I was essentially doing that already, but this was a large firm and the position would require supervising—I couldn’t even supervise a house plant—the art director and being in charge of the overall creative concepts and not doing the actual designing, which quite frankly was the fun part.

  I ended the call and ran into the building, realizing I was entering the danger zone of lateness where Jeremy was going to be peeved with me for making him wait, especially given that it was our un-anniversary and all. Damn it!

  The Top of the Hub sits on the fifty-second floor of The Pru. It’s a white tablecloth, fine china, heavy silverware sort of restaurant, which boasts outstanding views of the Charles River, Boston Harbor, and the surrounding city. Jeremy and I had been coming here to celebrate our un-anniversary ever since he landed in Boston a few years ago, shortly after I divorced Greg DeVane, aka the big disappointment, or the BD for short. Yes, he was a disappointing husband, but that’s a story for another day, preferably accompanied by a shot of three wise men with an IPA chaser.

  Jeremy Pettit and I met in Georgia when I was attending the Savannah College of Art and Design and he was at Savannah State studying engineering. I spotted him at a coffee shop on Broughton Street and had been a smitten kitten on sight. He was everything a college girl looked for in a boyfriend—shy, sweet, attentive, as snuggable as an oversized teddy bear, and it certainly helped that he looked like he’d just walked out of the Patagonia catalog wearing their fjord flannel.

  Jeremy had the distracted air of a guy with one foot in childhood and the other in adulthood, uncertain of which direction he wanted to go. I figured he just needed a good woman—i.e., me—to give him a solid shove in the right direction. I had not accounted for the realities that I was no readier to be an adult than he was, his mother hated me, and he had a host of issues that didn’t even start to appear until after we were married, which was a month after graduation.

  If I closed my eyes and listened, I could still hear my older sister Chelsea’s shriek of outrage echoing on the airwaves to this day. Our mother had passed away six months before I met Jeremy, and in hindsight, I could see that our relationship and subsequent marriage was an attempt to fill the gaping hole left by my mother’s passing, but what twenty-one-year-old has that sort of insight? Not me.

  I’d thought Jeremy was my soul mate sent to comfort and keep me just when I needed him most. I truly believed we’d be together forever and ever. Amen. We didn’t last two years. By the time he was finishing his master’s degree in biomedical engineering, the ink was drying on our divorce papers, which had been drawn up by his mother’s attorney. The only time she ever smiled at me was the day she came to collect Jeremy and his things from our apartment.

  Now five years later, we were in the same city, celebrating our un-anniversary at the Top of the Hub, while enjoying an “exes with benefits” relationship of which absolutely no one in my life approved. You’d think that would be more of a deterrent for me. Nope.

  The elevator opened and I strode into the lobby, pretending I wasn’t panting for breath and trying not to look sweaty. Jeremy, in a navy suit with his hair cut high and tight and sporting a blond bruh beard, was standing beside the hostess station waiting for me. He looked mildly panicked so it appeared dinner was going to start with tension. I decided to sink that battleship right away.

  I dashed across the lobby and threw myself at him. He caught me and I kissed him full on the lips, knowing it would melt his brain and make him forget he was mad.

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” I panted when we came up for air. Then I shrugged and said, “Artist.”

  To my relief, his shoulders dropped from around his ears, the tight lines around his mouth eased, and he laughed. Then he hugged me. “I suppose I should be used to it by now.”

  Well, yeah, you should, I thought. After all, my tardiness was one of the many reasons we’d divorced. Wisely, I did not say this out loud. Instead, I checked my coat and then curled my hand around his elbow while we followed the hostess to our table.

  She led us through the rows, to a table tucked beside a tall window. To my surprise, it was strewn with pink rose petals, and a bottle of champagne was in a bucket with two glasses already poured and waiting for us. I gave Jeremy a side-eye.

  “You went all out this year,” I said.

  He shrugged. “It seems like a special un-anniversary, doesn’t it?”

  His pale green eyes met mine, and I felt a prickle of alarm. Had I missed a memo? What did he mean by “special”? My heart started to pound in my chest like warning shots being fired. I could feel my flight-or-fight response, okay, mostly flight, kick in.

  Jeremy and I had celebrated our un-anniversary ever since he moved to Boston three years ago. It was always low-key and fun right up until last year, when, in a bout of deep loneliness, I invited him to spend the night. He’d been “spending the night,” if you get my drift, a couple of times a month ever since.

  I knew Sophie was right that the relationship wasn’t doing either one of us any good, rather like glazed doughnuts, the occasional cigarette, or a three-day-long video-game-playing binge, but I didn’t want to give it up because then I’d have to go out there and find a real relationship, which felt like entirely too much work.

  He pulled out my chair, and I slid onto my seat. I felt out of step, like I was clapping on the down beat, and couldn’t quite get the rhythm of the room. I noticed that people at surrounding tables were covertly watching us. This was bad.

  The hostess put our menus on the corner of the table and stepped back. She was younger than me by a couple of years. She had that fresh-faced enthusiasm that could only be found on a person who hadn’t been paying their own rent for very long.

  She glanced between us, and then with a soft squeak, she stepped back, turned on her heel, and hurried away. The early warning system inside of me grew insistently louder.

  Jeremy picked up the two champagne glasses and handed me one. I debated downing it, sensing that liquid courage was going to be required. He lifted his in a toast. I wished he’d sit down. It felt as if he was looming over me.

  “Annabelle, you’re my best friend,” he said. Oh dear, this sounded like the opening of a speech. That couldn’t be good. Usually we just said, “Look at us,” clinked glasses, and down the hatch the beverage went. We didn’t do speeches.

  “And you’re mine,” I said. I lifted my glass, indicating the toast was over. But he didn’t get the message. In fact, he looked as if he was just warming up.

  “I know,” he said. “Despite the fact that we got married too young and you had that episode with what’s his name, we’re still each other’s plus one.”

  I stared at Jeremy. That “episode” was my second marriage. Jeremy knew the BD’s name, but even now, three years after my divorce, he still refused to say it. I knew he’d been in denial about the whole thing, but it seemed significant at the moment that he couldn’t say his name or mention my marriage.

  “You mean my marriage to Greg?” I asked. I blinked innocently.

  He made a face as if a fly had just flown into his mouth. He waved his hand dismissively and continued on.

  “Yeah, even then I always felt like we were meant to be together, you know.”

  I didn’t know. I had thought we were done except for the friendship and fringe benefits. The cold feeling in the pit of my stomach began to harden into a block of ice. If he was headed where I feared, we were not going to come out of this as friends, never mind friends with benefits.

  “I always believed we’d grow old together and end up on a porch somewhere in matching rocking chairs,” he said. His smile was adoring when he tilted his head and stared into my eyes. He was going to propose. I could see it coming as if it had the bright blaze of a meteor breaking through the atmosphere.

  I had to stop him. I didn’t want to marry him again, and I didn’t really believe he wanted to marry me. It would ruin everything if he asked because I’d have to say no and he’d be so terribly hurt. He did bruise easily just as Sophie said. I jumped to my feet. I clinked my glass with his and said, “Are you about to congratulate me?”

  He paused. He looked confused. I forged ahead, taking advantage of his surprise.

  “Sophie told you, didn’t she?” I asked.

  “Sophie?” He shook his head. “Told me what?”

  “She offered me a job as creative director for her company, and I accepted,” I said. “Isn’t it amazing? I’m moving to Phoenix. Promise you’ll come and visit.”

  His mouth hung open for a moment, then he cleared his throat and said, “Actually, I didn’t know. This was—”

  “So incredibly thoughtful of you,” I said. My voice was high pitched, a little manic, and my smile brittle. I felt as if I were throwing a drowning man a life preserver and he was refusing to take it. “Here’s to new beginnings!” I cried, hoping he’d get with the program and let go of his misguided plan to propose. “Bottoms up.”

  His eyes went wide as I put my glass to my lips and upended the champagne into my mouth. The stress of the moment had me chugging the fizzy beverage, hoping to ease the tension. Instead something hard hit the back of my throat and got lodged in my windpipe. Just like that, I couldn’t breathe. I dropped my glass and clutched the front of my neck, trying to get some air. I made horrible gasping noises and staggered. Everything went gray and I started to see spots.

  “Annabelle!” Jeremy cried. “Oh my god, you’re choking on the ring!”

  Ring? I would have asked for more details but instead, I blacked out.

  2

  “This, too, as they say, shall pass,” Dr. Curtis said. He glanced from the clipboard in his hands to me.

  I was lying in a bed in the emergency ward of Boston Medical Center. My hospital johnnie was bunched up beneath my back and my throat was raw. This is what happens when you choke on a one-carat cushion cut solitaire in a platinum setting and then instead of spitting it up, you swallow it.

  “What does that mean?” Jeremy asked. “Is she going to be all right? No permanent harm?”

  To his credit, he seemed more concerned about me than he was the engagement ring.

  Dr. Curtis was a tall man, very thin, with a shiny dome for a head and glasses that perpetually slipped down his nose. He pushed them back up and smiled at me. He had a gentle smile that made me feel cared for, which helped exponentially, given the current ambiance of the woman in the bed on the other side of the curtain who kept moaning and the random profane shouts of some guy down the hall who sounded like he was being waterboarded.

  “I suggest a high-fiber diet, some prune juice, and patience,” he said. He unclipped a picture from the front of his board and handed it to me. It was a print copy of the X-ray. I glanced at it. Sure enough, there was a diamond ring in my belly.

  “If I make myself throw up, will that dislodge it?” I asked.

  “No, don’t do that,” Dr. Curtis said. “It could damage your esophagus on the way back up, and trust me, you don’t want that.”

  “So she’ll have to—” Jeremy began but stopped as if he couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “Poop it out,” I said. I figured I’d best be blunt so we were all on the same page. “Once it has, um, reappeared, I’ll get it cleaned and get it back to you.”

  I glanced away from Jeremy. While a part of me felt that I had every right to be annoyed that he’d put the ring in my drink—who does that?!—another part of me was well aware that I was rejecting his proposal in front of an emergency room doctor, as if I needed a witness, and his feelings were likely going to smart a bit. Okay, more than a bit.

  “Yes, well.” Dr. Curtis started edging away from the bed as if he didn’t want to be present when I crushed Jeremy’s plans under my bootheel once and for all. “If you have any questions or complications, be sure to follow up with your personal doctor.”

  “I will,” I said. “Thank you.”

  He shook Jeremy’s hand and then patted my arm in a gesture of sympathy. I wasn’t sure if it was for what was to come with Jeremy or my upcoming colon cleanse, but I appreciated the kindness either way.

  Dr. Curtis drew the curtain shut as he left. Suddenly the circle of cloth that separated us from everyone else in the emergency room seemed thick enough to suffocate. I smoothed the thin sheet that covered my legs.

  I could feel Jeremy staring at the side of my face. I knew I was being a coward by not looking at him, but the truth is I hate conflict, I despise making people feel bad, accidentally or on purpose, and he was my best friend. But there was no way to avoid hurting him because I was absolutely not going to agree to marry him again no matter how bad I felt.

  We both knew he’d been about to propose marriage when I’d tried to slap it down by announcing a move to Phoenix. I supposed the mature thing would be to tell him that I wasn’t going to take the job Sophie offered, that I had caught on to his proposal and had cowardly tried to avoid hurting him instead of being honest. Fortunately, I am not known for my maturity, and weirdly, once the words I’m moving to Phoenix had flown out of my mouth, the idea had taken root in my winter-bundled soul, and now the thought of being in a swimming pool, sucking down a margarita in February, was blooming inside me with all the fervor of an early spring.

  Did they make prune juice margaritas? Sign me up! But first, I had to hash this thing out with Jeremy and try not to lose our friendship in the process.

  “So Phoenix, huh?” he asked.

  I glanced up and my heart squeezed tight. Jeremy, with his precision-cut blond hair, bearded jaw, and kind eyes would always be my first love. Of that there was no doubt, but I imagined that would be cold comfort to him now.

  “Yeah,” I said. I slid my hand across the bed and put it over his. He didn’t pull away. I took that as promising. “A ring, huh?”

  He shrugged. “It was just an idea, unless . . .”

  I shook my head. He looked crushed and it took everything I had not to take it back and swivel my head into a nod. It was killing me to see his look of deep disappointment, but marriage between us hadn’t worked the last time and I sincerely doubted we’d changed enough for it to work now.

  I was an artist and he was an engineer. To him, on time was late, while I aimed for ish, as in if my appointment was at seven, I aimed for sevenish, which was a built-in buffer of fifteen minutes on either side of the appointed arrival time, and hoped for the best. He had a place for everything and everything in its place, and I had already lost years of my life looking for my house keys. We simply didn’t suit beyond friendship, and Sophie was right, I hadn’t been doing us any favors by pretending we could sleep together and just be friends.

  “What am I going to do without you?” he asked. He sounded plaintive, like a lost kitten, and my resolve started to wobble like a table with one short leg, but then his tone changed and became accusatory. “I came to Boston for you.”

  The wobbling stopped. I had never asked him to come to Boston. In fact, I had been shocked when he left Georgia, and his mama, behind. Suddenly, Sophie’s words rang true. I was a lawnmower! I had been making his life easier, going to functions with him, charming his superiors to compensate for his social awkwardness, clearing my calendar for him when he needed someone to talk him through his moods and his mother wasn’t available. Enough.

  “I have to go, Jeremy,” I said. I put every bit of resolve I had into my voice. Mercifully, it worked. He met my gaze for a moment and then glanced away.

  “I’ll leave you to get dressed,” he said. He slipped his hand out from under mine and walked to the curtain. “I’ll take you home when you’re ready.”

  * * *

  It took three days for the blasted ring to pass. I won’t go into the details because . . . ew. Suffice to say, upon its reentry, I had the ring professionally cleaned and delivered to Jeremy. I simply couldn’t face him.

  During the three days I spent afraid to leave the close proximity of my bathroom, I noshed on more prunes than was healthy, sublet my apartment to an eager grad student and his Labradoodle, packed and repacked my bags five times, and arranged for my other things to be stored in my dad’s basement.

  When I called Soph to accept the job and explained about the proposal giving me a change of heart, she told me I’d made the right choice, after she laughed herself stupid at the ring debacle, of course.

  My family was amazingly supportive, mostly. My dad was thrilled to have me in Arizona; I suspect it was because the golfing is exceptional there, and who doesn’t want to get away from winter in Boston? Sheri, my stepmother, was more in tune with my abrupt need to flee the city—and more accurately, Jeremy—and she came over to help me pack, along with my older sister, Chelsea, who, having just had her own life-changing adventure, was full of words of encouragement and support.

  Here’s the thing: Nothing makes me doubt my own decisions more than other people telling me that I’m doing the right thing. It’s as if their approval is a red flag warning me away from logic and reason. I think it’s my freewheeling impulsive nature that rejects positive reinforcement, as if because people approve of what I’m doing, then surely I must be making a mistake. My plane ticket had been bought, however. I was paddling in the rapids now.

  * * *

  Sophie and her husband, Miguel, met me at Sky Harbor International Airport. I’d left Boston before the sun was up and it chased us all the way across the country, catching up and passing us before we landed. It was midday when I stepped off the plane, wearing my thick knee-length wool coat and stylish black leather boots. Within minutes, I was sweating. It was glorious.