Rachel Gibson: Tangled Up In You

Instead of getting the hell out of the park and getting home to avoid seeing Mick again, she forced herself to take her time. She’d been down for a few weeks, but she was better now, stronger than her broken heart. She paused at the Mad Hatter stand and stopped at the Spoon Man booth. Mr. Spoon Man sold everything from jewelry to clocks out of spoons, and Maddie bought a chime she thought would sound nice on the back deck.

She put the chime in the cat carrier and made her way out of the park. But like the pull of a magnet on a paper clip, her gaze was drawn to the beer garden and the man who stood at the entrance. Only this time Mick wasn’t with Darla. Tanya King, with her little body and little clothes, stood in front of him, and his head was bent forward slightly as he listened to her every word. Her hand rested on his chest, and the corners of his mouth turned up as he smiled at something she said.

He didn’t appear to be thinking about Maddie at all, and suddenly she didn’t feel stronger than her broken heart.

Through the lenses of his sunglasses, Mick watched Maddie as she crossed the street and left the park. His gaze slid down her back to her butt. The memory of her legs around his waist and his hands on her behind flashed across his brain whether he wanted to remember or not. And he didn’t. Hardly a day passed without something reminding him of Maddie. His truck. His boat. His bar. He couldn’t walk into Mort’s without remembering the night she’d arrived at his back door wearing a trench coat and one of his ties between her beautiful bare breasts. He’d like to believe that it had just been about sex with her, but she’d been right about that. It had been more than the smell of her skin and the taste of her in his mouth. At odd random moments he’d wonder where she was and if she’d gone to Boise for her friend’s wedding. Or he’d remember her laugh, the sound of her voice and her smart mouth.

Are you shitting me? Jealous of a low-exception dumb-ass? If you want to make me jealous, start dating someone with half a brain and a modicum of class , she’d said, as if there were a chance in hell he’d ever date Darla. He hadn’t had sex since that last night with Maddie, but he wasn’t hard up. He’d never been that hard up.

You know more than whether I like it on top or bottom. You know more than the smell of my skin or the taste of me in your mouth . Seeing her and smelling the scent of her skin, the urge to feel her against his chest once again, had been overwhelming, and for a fraction of one unguarded second, he’d actually raised his hands to pull her closer. Thank God he had stopped himself before he’d touched her.

You just can’t handle who I am. She was right about that. She was a liar who’d used her body to get him to talk about the past, and he’d fallen for it.

Darla wasn’t the only dumb-ass.

Maddie disappeared across the street and his gaze returned to Tanya. She was talking about…something.

“My new trainer is brutal, but he gets results.”

Oh, yeah. Tanya’s exercise. No doubt about it, Tanya had a good body. Too bad her hand on his chest wasn’t doing much for his body. He needed a distraction. His efforts to forget about Maddie, to put her out of his head and not think about her, were clearly not working.

Maybe Tanya was exactly what he needed.

The night before Clare’s wedding, the four friends got together at Maddie’s house in Boise. They sat in Maddie’s living room in front of a big fireplace made of river rock. The house in Boise was furnished in brown and beige tones, and moments earlier Maddie had cracked open a bottle of Moët. The four women raised their champagne glasses and toasted Clare’s future happiness with her fiancé Sebastian Vaughan.

A little over a year ago, all four women had been single. Now Lucy was married and Clare was about to get married. Adele continued to believe she was cursed with bad dates, and Maddie had fallen in love and gotten her heart broken. Adele was the only one out of the four whose life hadn’t drastically changed. Although Maddie had yet to confide to her friends about her feelings for Mick. This was Clare’s night. Not a pity party for Maddie. It had been a week since she’d seen Mick in the park with Tanya, and the image still made her sick.

“My mother has invited half of Boise to the wedding. She has been in her…” Clare paused and leaned to the left to look behind Maddie’s chair. “There’s a cat in your house.”

Maddie turned around and looked at Snowball, flagrantly disregarding the rules as she climbed up the satin drapes. Maddie clapped her hands and stood. “Snowball.” The cat looked over at Maddie and dropped to the floor.

“Do you know that cat?” Adele asked.

“I kind of adopted it.”

“Kind of?”

Lucy leaned forward. “You hate cats.”

“I know.”

Clare covered her lips with two fingers. “You named your cat Snowball. That’s so cute.”

“So unlike you,” Lucy added.

Adele tilted her head to one side and looked concerned. “Are you all right? You go away for a few months and come back with a cat. What else have you been doing up there in Truly that we don’t know about?”

Maddie lifted her glass and finished off the champagne. “Nothing.”

Lucy raised a suspicious brow. “How’s the book?”

“Actually, it’s going fairly well,” she answered truthfully. “I’m a little over halfway finished.” The next half was going to be the rough part. The part where she would have to write about the night her mother died.

“How’s Mick Hennessy?” Adele asked.

Maddie rose and moved to the coffee table. “I don’t know.” She poured herself more champagne. “He won’t talk to me.”

“Did you finally tell him who you really are?”

Maddie nodded and refilled her friends’ glasses. “Yes, I told him, and he didn’t take it very well.”

“At least you didn’t sleep with him.”

Maddie looked away and took a drink from her glass.

“Oh, my God!” Clare gasped. “You fell off the wagon with Mick Hennessy?”

Maddie shrugged and took her seat. “I couldn’t help myself.”

Adele nodded. “He’s hot.”

“A lot of men are hot.” Lucy took a sip as she studied Maddie. Her brows shot up her forehead. “You’re in love with him.”

“It doesn’t matter. He hates me.”

Clare, the most kindhearted of the four, said, “I’m sure that’s not true. No one can hate you.”

That was so blatantly untrue, Maddie couldn’t help a smile, while Lucy coughed on her champagne.

Adele sat back and laughed. “Maddie Jones got a cat and fell in love. Hell has officially frozen over.”

The day after Clare’s wedding, Maddie packed up her cat and headed to Truly. The wedding had been beautiful, of course. And at the reception, Maddie had partied and danced the night away. Several of the men she’d danced with had been good-looking and single, and she wondered if she’d ever get to a point in her life when she would not compare every man she met to Mick Hennessy.

She spent the rest of September writing and reliving the days before her mother’s death. She inserted parts of interviews and diary entries, including the very last:

My baby will turn six next year and will go to first grade. I can’t believe how big she is. I wish I could give her more. Maybe I can. Loch said that he loves me. I’ve heard that before. He says he’s going to leave his wife and be with me. He says he doesn’t love Rose, and he’s going to tell her that he doesn’t want to live with her anymore. I’ve heard that before too. I want to believe him. No, I do believe him!! I just hope he isn’t lying. I know he loves his children. He talks about them a lot. He worries that when he tells his wife he wants a divorce his kids will have to witness a big scene. He’s afraid she’ll throw things or do something really crazy like start his car on fire. I worry that she will hurt Loch and I told him so. He just laughed and said Rose would never hurt anyone.