Rachel Gibson - Tangled Up In You

The hardest part of the book hadn’t been reliving the death of her mother moment by moment, as she’d always thought. That had been hard, to be sure, but the most difficult part had been writing the end and saying good-bye. In writing the book, she realized that she’d never said good-bye to her mother. Never had any sort of closure. Now she did, and it felt as if one part of her life had ended.

When she was through with the book, it was mid-October and she was physically and emotionally drained. She fell into bed and slept for almost twenty hours. When she woke, she felt as if a thorn had been taken from her chest. A thorn that she’d never even known was embedded there. She was free from the past and she hadn’t even known she’d needed freeing.

Maddie fed Snowball, then jumped in the shower. Her cat had yet to sleep in the bed Maddie had bought for her. She liked the video, and the carrier not at all. Maddie had given up on any sort of rules. Snowball liked to spend most of her time lying on the windowsill or in Maddie’s lap.

Maddie washed her hair and scrubbed her body with watermelon-scented sugar scrub and wondered what she was going to do with her life. Which was such an odd question, really, when she thought about it. Until she’d finished the book, she hadn’t realized how much of her life had been wrapped up in the past. It had dictated her future without her even knowing it.

Maybe she’d take a vacation. Someplace warm. Just pack a swimsuit and a pair of flip-flops and hit a nice beach. Maybe Adele needed a break from her cycle of cursed dating.

As Maddie toweled herself dry, she thought of Mick. She was thirty-four, and he was her first real love. She would always love him even though he could never love her back. But perhaps there was something she could do for him. She could give him the same gift that she’d given herself.

Mick’s gaze rose from the bottle in his hand to the woman walking in the front door. He set the Corona on the bar and watched her as she moved between the tables. Mort’s was slow, even for a Monday night.

Her hair curled about her shoulders like the first time he’d seen her, and she wore a black bulky sweater that hid the wonders of her body. She carried a box beneath one arm. He hadn’t seen her since Founders Day when she’d told him that he couldn’t handle the truth about her. She’d been right. He couldn’t, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t missed her every damn day. Didn’t mean that his gaze didn’t drink up everything about her. Trying to forget about her hadn’t worked. Nothing had worked.

Above Trace Adkins on the jukebox, she said, “Hello, Mick.” Her voice poured through him like warmed brandy.

“Maddie.”

“May I talk to you somewhere private?”

He wondered if she’d come to tell him good-bye and how he’d feel about that. He nodded and the two of them moved to his office. Her shoulder touched his, adding need to the warm mix spreading across his flesh. He wanted Maddie Jones. Wanted her like he was starving, wanted to jump on her and eat her up. She shut the door, and the urge got stronger. He moved behind his desk, as far away from her as possible. “Maybe you should leave the-”

“Please let me talk,” she interrupted and held up a hand. “I have something to say and then I’ll leave.” She swallowed hard and stared directly into his eyes. “The first time I recall being afraid, I was five. I’m not talking about Halloween and boogeyman afraid. I am talking sick-to-my-stomach afraid.

“A sheriff ’s deputy woke me up to tell me my great-aunt was coming to get me and that my mother was dead. I didn’t understand what had happened. I didn’t understand why my mother had gone away, but I knew she was never coming back. I cried so hard I threw up all over the backseat of my great-aunt Martha’s Cadillac.”

He remembered that night too. Remembered the backseat of the cop car and Meg sobbing beside him. What was the point of remembering?

“When I met you,” she continued, “I didn’t expect to like you, but I did. I certainly didn’t expect to like you so much that I ended up in bed with you, but I did. I didn’t expect to fall in love with you, but I did that too. From the beginning, I knew I should have told you who I was. I knew I should have told you a hundred different times. I knew it was the right thing to do, but I also knew that I’d lose you if I did. I knew when I told you, you’d leave and never come back. And that’s what happened.”

She set a Xerox copier-paper box on his desk. “I want you to have this. It’s the book I moved here to write, and I want you to read it. Please.” She looked down at the box. “The disk is with it, and I’ve deleted it from my computer. This is the only copy. Do what you want with both. Throw them away, run over them with your truck, or have a bonfire. It’s up to you.”

She looked back at him. Her brown eyes steady, calm. “I hope that someday you can forgive me. Not because I personally need your forgiveness. I don’t. But I’ve learned something in the past few months, and that is just because you refuse to acknowledge something, refuse to look at it or think about it, doesn’t mean it’s not there, that it doesn’t affect you and the choices you make in your life.”

She licked her lips. “I forgive your mother. Not because the Bible tells me I should forgive. I guess I’m not that good a Christian, because I’m just not that magnanimous. I forgive her because, in forgiving her, I am free of all the anger and bitterness of the past, and that is what I want for you too.

“I’ve thought about what I’ve done since I moved to Truly, and I’m sorry that I hurt you, Mick. But I’m not sorry that I met you and fell in love with you. Loving you has broken my heart and caused me pain, but it made me a better person. I love you, Mick, and I hope that someday you find someone you can love. You deserve more in life than a string of women you don’t really care about and who don’t care all that much for you. Loving you taught me that. It taught me how it feels to love a man, and I hope that someday I can find someone who will love me the way that you can’t. Because I deserve more than a string of men who don’t really care about me.” Her gaze moved over his face, then returned to his eyes. “I came here tonight to give you the book and because I wanted to say good-bye.”

“You’re leaving?” He didn’t have to wonder how he’d feel about her good-bye.

“Yes. I have to.”

Her leaving was best, no matter that it felt like she was reaching into his chest and ripping out his heart all over again. “When?”

She shrugged and walked to the door. “I don’t know. Soon.” She looked over her shoulder one last time and said, “Good-bye, Mick. Have a good life.” Then she was gone and he was left with the scent of her skin in the air and a big emptiness in his chest. The red sweater she’d worn the night she’d come into his office wearing a white halter dress still hung on a hook behind the door. He knew that it still smelled like strawberries.

He sat in his chair and leaned his head back. He thought of old drunk Reuben Sawyer spending three decades sitting on a barstool, sad and pathetic and unable to move beyond the pain of losing his wife. Mick wasn’t that pathetic, but he understood old Reuben in a way that he never had before he’d loved Maddie Jones. He hadn’t picked up the bottle. He owned two bars and knew where that path led, but he had gotten into a fight or two. A few days before he’d seen Maddie in the park, he’d kicked the Finley boys out of Mort’s. Usually he called the cops to deal with assorted assholes and numb nuts, but that night he’d taken on both Scoot and Wes. No one had ever accused the Finley boys of being smart, but they were fighters, and it had taken both Mick and his bartender to shove them out into the alley, where a knock-down free-for-all had ensued. The kind Mick hadn’t enjoyed since high school.