Just What I Needed

  what gets me the most is that Ramon isn’t entirely wrong and that’s a hard truth to swallow.”

  Before I could jump in with, It’s hard to swallow because it’s total bullshit, Trinity was off on another tangent.

  “I haven’t been as focused as I need to be. I have to find a better way to jump-start my creative process than taking on random odd jobs and praying they’ll inspire me. I know myself. I know how easily distractions become excuses. You are this larger-than-life guy who takes over my thought processes, even when I’m not with you. And you can’t help that you’re”—her gaze flicked over me—“all that.”

  Jesus. Was that a compliment or an insult?

  “I can’t afford to blow this chance. I need to regain my focus. Eye on the prize, right? So can we just take a step back?”

  “A step back from what?”

  “From this.” She gestured between us. “I need to lock away the emotions you bring out in me and concentrate on my work.”

  My jaw might’ve dropped if I hadn’t been clenching it so tight. “You’re serious. You’re cutting me loose . . . on our second date?”

  “Not permanently. Just until I straighten out a few things.”

  “Well, that’s just great, Trinity. Of course I’d love to just hang the fuck around while you ‘straighten out a few things’ in your life. It’s not like I have a life or anything better to do.”

  She beamed at me. “See! I knew you’d understand.”

  Was she drunk? That’s the only way she could’ve missed my sarcasm.

  When she leaned forward to . . . pat me on the cheek, for Christsake, I noticed her eyes were expressionless. Like she’d checked out of her body somehow.

  “Gotta go.” She bailed out of the truck and ran—she fucking ran—up the sidewalk and into the house without looking back.

  Eight

  TRINITY

  Sunday morning I woke up later than usual and more refreshed than I’d expected. Ambien was good stuff. I had a momentary pang of guilt for popping a pill that allowed me to hide in sleep. It wasn’t something I did often. I wondered if Walker had ever tried medication for his occasional insomnia.

  Walker.

  Last night as I’d drifted off I’d tried to remember specifics of our conversation after the disastrous dinner party at Ramon’s. But I could only bring up silence and a few brusque words from his end. I’d chalked up the lack of recall to the Ambien.

  So being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning meant I should’ve had perfect clarity.

  Nope. Why couldn’t I have a normal social anxiety disorder like drinking too much? Maybe as the day wore on things would come back to me. That small sliver of hope allowed me to shove all of last night’s events aside and switch into work mode.

  I headed to my studio—leaving my cell phone in the house—and brewed a strong pot of tea. Then I slipped on my headphones and set my Sonos system playlist to random. I picked over the objects on the table that Esther had given me. She’d been considerate enough to label each one and rank the items in order of importance.

  Yesterday I’d assembled the three separate sections into one base piece, suspending it from the ceiling with wires and connecting the bottom to hooks in the floor, allowing me mobility while it remained stationary.

  The top half of the piece comprised distressed posts spaced an inch apart to resemble a fence. Each post represented a year in Mr. Stephens’s youth and a significant event. In the middle section, pieces of rusted barbed wire and lengths of shiny razor wire were stretched across a camouflaged backdrop. With molds I’d reproduce the medals he’d earned during his military service in Vietnam and hang them from wires. For the bottom—the largest section of the piece—I’d clipped a chunk of chain-link fence. Each open spot would contain memorabilia from the other stages of his life—husband, father, business tycoon, grandfather, retiree. I’d had a brainstorm yesterday about using ribbons, yarn, twine and tape to connect events and people from his childhood to correlating times in his adulthood.

  Right now the piece looked like a bunch of random junk the wind had bandied about and had ended up stuck to the bottom of a fence. Yet there was a pattern to the seeming randomness; it was neither indecipherable nor obvious. Art should make you think. And I thought this could be one of my best works yet.

  One good thing to come out of the fight with Ramon? I’d decided to take his suggestion to showcase my skills in other art mediums on this piece. But my reasoning for the change wasn’t to impress Dagmar Kierkegaard—it was to impress my client.

  This piece celebrated the life of Michael Stephens. He wasn’t a one-dimensional man and this commissioned art should reflect that. While Adele sang songs of rumors and redemptions in my ear, I cut out cardboard stand-ins for where I’d replace the photographs with traditional art. I’d add a small oil painting of the first house the Stephenses had purchased. In charcoal, I’d sketch images of their beloved pets over the years. With funky metallic markers, I’d craft stylistic renderings of his favorite cars. Using pen and ink, I’d re-create the picture of Esther gazing into the camera, a look of fear and pride on her face as she held their first child.

  With renewed excitement for this project, I spread out on my drafting table and got to work.

  Loud banging on the reinforced steel door forced me out of my inner space. I drained the last of my hot tea—gone cold hours ago—stood and stretched. Then I clicked on the live camera feed on my monitor. I’d installed a security system not because I worried about theft, but so I could see, and choose to ignore, who was interrupting my workday.

  Genevieve leaned against the wall, rubber mallet in hand, glaring at the camera.

  This wasn’t a social call if she’d reached rubber mallet stage. She used it as a last resort when she couldn’t get my attention any other way. I slapped on a smile before I opened the door. “Hey, BFF.”

  She stormed past me into the kitchen area. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for hours. I hate that you don’t bring your phone into your studio.”

  I wasn’t tethered to my cell phone—anyone who had grown an umbilical cord to theirs didn’t understand my indifference toward mine. “What’s up?”

  Genevieve pulled a Coke out of the minifridge and cracked it open. “What do you want to talk about first? The fight with Ramon? Or how your Viking defender responded?”

  “How did you know about Ramon?”

  “He texted me. An epic text, broken into seventeen parts. I’ll admit it felt deliciously bitchy not to respond to him at all.” She swigged her soda. “What happened?”

  “I don’t want to talk about Ramon. Ever again.”

  “I don’t care. If the fight forced Ramon to lower himself to contact me, then it was major. And I can see that you’re still upset.”

  “Can’t pull anything over on you,” I grumbled, knowing she wouldn’t let this go.

  “So don’t even try. Start talking.”

  I detailed the predinner convo and the interrogation of Walker during dinner. “Ramon waited until I was alone to pounce. He didn’t even segue into ‘What’s wrong with Trinity’ part eight hundred thirty-seven. He cornered me and started in, first reminding me how difficult it was to be my friend and how exasperating it was to witness my near constant stupidity. How lucky I was to have his insight about my relationships and my career.” I snorted. “Lucky. Right. He’d made me sound like a bar hag, constantly trolling for new blue-collar meat. It was humiliating to listen to. But what made it worse? Walker overheard everything.”

  “So Ramon didn’t just break normal friendship boundaries; he annihilated them.”

  I nodded.

  “Was he drunk? Or high?”

  “Does that matter?”

  “No.” Genevieve lost her cool. “That little prick. And the whole time he ripped you to shreds, Davina just stood beside him with that stupid, smug smile?”

  “No, she was on the patio with everyone else during his diatribe. But she sort of egge
d him on during dinner.”

  “Why does Ramon feel he has the right to judge the men you date? I know you guys are more than professional peers, but it’s just strange that he’s so invested in your love life, T.”

  “I think it’s because when we first became friends, outside of being professional colleagues, he considered himself a big brother and gave me advice about men. Then, after he married Davina, he started harping on me not to waste time on guys that didn’t have long-term potential because hookups and breakups were distracting me from reaching the next level of success in my career.”

  “Whoa. Back up. Since when has Ramon wanted you to succeed as an artist?”

  That stopped me. “What?”

  “Are you sure Ramon hasn’t been trying to sabotage your career from the start? Constantly giving you bad advice? He has always seen you as competition, Trin.”

  “Not true. We don’t have the same types of audience.”

  “Because he has no audience. He might lord it over you that he has a prestigious fine arts degree, but the truth is he’s far more successful making tacos than creating art. That eats at him. He takes it out on you because you’re the only one left in your group of arty-farty friends that associates with him.”

  That’s why I hadn’t dumped him—everyone else had. I knew what that felt like and I saw how much it’d hurt him. I kept hoping Ramon would find his way back to being the guy he’d been when we first met. “I wouldn’t have made it through that first year if not for him.”

  “Yes, he was good for you then, but he’s not good for you now. Add in the drugs . . .”

  “It’s just pot. It’s not like he’s doing meth or coke.”

  Gen shook her finger at me. “This is the very definition of a dysfunctional friendship. You are excusing his drug use. Cut him loose. Block his number. Move on.”

  Or maybe publicly tearing me down was his way of cutting me loose. Tears pricked the backs of my eyes. I hated that it’d come to this. “Doesn’t it just figure that my friendships are more of a mess than my relationships?” I looked at her. “Present company excepted.”

  “Speaking of relationships, what happened when the Viking got involved? Ramon said he went ‘all protective caveman.’”

  “That’s another screwed-up situation.”

  “This doesn’t sound good.”

  “It’s not.” I sighed. “I sucked it up and didn’t shed a single tear at Ramon’s—because screw him. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. But the second I was alone with Walker, I lost it. Bad. I cried myself to sleep on his chest. I woke up in a panic, embarrassed as hell because he’d overheard Ramon’s spiel about my shitty track record with men, his accusation that I was a slacker in my career, and then Walker saw me bawling like a thirteen-year-old girl.”

  “So?”

  “So, I had the feeling Walker was about to dump the bucket of crazy train wreck that is me, so I think I sort of pre-dumped him first and told him we needed to take a break.”

  Genevieve’s eyes widened. “You think you said that?”

  “It’s a blur, okay? I vaguely recall saying something along the lines that Ramon was right in pointing out that I needed to concentrate on knocking this Stephens piece out of the park and I couldn’t do that when I was distracted by him being such a hot hunk of man flesh.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I did.”

  “No, I mean—dammit, I know you, Trin. Maybe in your head that’s what you wanted to say, but that’s not what came out of your mouth, is it?”

  “Uh, probably not because I sort of remember Walker being sarcastic and pissed off.”

  A beat passed and then Gen smacked herself in the forehead.

  I thought, Better her than me, a split second before she cuffed me in the arm. “Ow!”

  “That didn’t hurt.” Gen inhaled a deep breath and looked me dead in the eye. “You’re breaking my heart, Trinity. Honest to god, I could just curl into a ball in the corner and weep.” Her chin trembled and then I saw her jaw tighten as she gritted her teeth.

  “Gen—”

  “Zip it. I’m not done.”

  “Okay. But I really really really will go off the rails if you’re breaking up with me because you’re the only friend I have.”

  She rolled her eyes skyward and appeared to be whispering a prayer. Then she refocused on me. “I am not breaking up with you. I love you. Straight up, no conditions. Because that’s the way friendship is supposed to be. I’m here for you now and I’ll be here for you in forty years when we’re drinking Metamucil margaritas and bitching about our grandkids and our sciatica.”

  “But?”

  “No buts. I just wish . . . that one day soon you’ll stop focusing on what’s wrong with you and celebrate all the wonderful things that are right about you.” She set her hands on my shoulders. “I don’t know where you got the idea that you’re a train wreck—you’re not. You are not a bucket of crazy. You are not a stage-three clinger.”

  I smiled at that one.

  “I know I’ve told you this over and over, so how do I make you believe it?”

  I took her hands in mine. “I love that you accept me unconditionally. But even you have to admit that I’m a quart low on normal.”

  She sighed. “Okay. But that’s not a bad thing.”

  I raised my eyebrows at her.

  “Okay, it’s not entirely a bad thing. Your manic highs and lows could be considered aberrant behavior, but they’re cyclical.”

  “Like the phases of the moon? Kind of like what a werewolf deals with?”

  Genevieve stared at me. “A werewolf? Seriously?”

  “Crap. That’s my the-girl-boarded-the-crazy-train thought process showing, isn’t it?”

  “Uh-huh. So maybe you’re a . . . quart and a half low on normal, but you’re still not more than a smidge or two of crazy-pants.”

  “That’s encouraging.”

  “Now, when you get that panicked feeling? Like you did last night with Walker and things start to go fuzzy? Take a second to close your eyes and breathe. Do not just start talking, because it morphs into a nonsensical rambling stream of consciousness.”

  Great.

  “I suspect you react that way because that’s how you create. It’s a familiar switchover, but it doesn’t work in translation from images to words.”

  When I shifted into creative mode, I had a running montage of images in my head and I could call them up with perfect clarity. But when I scrolled back to my conversation with Walker? I saw images lined up, but the inside of the frame was blank. “I never thought of it that way.” I threw my arms around her and hugged her. “Thank you. You are one of the very best things in my life.”

  She squeezed me hard and whispered, “Samesies.” Then she retreated and wiped her eyes. “There are two things I wanted to mention before you get back to work.”

  “Hit me.” I held up my hands. “Not literally.”

  Gen laughed. “Connor wants me to meet his aunt and uncle this weekend.”

  I frowned. “Connor?”

  “Sexy Irish rugby boy.”

  “Oh. Okay. And you’re happy about that? I thought it was just hot sex with him.”

  “It’s gotten to be more.” She blushed. “He’s sweet and funny and he doesn’t care I’m a decade older than he is. Anyway, I have nothing to wear, so I need to go shopping. Can you take a couple of hours this week and meet me at Lane Bryant?”

  “Absolutely. Call me Tuesday after you get off work. I promise I’ll have my phone in the studio.”

  “Cool.” She studied me for a moment and I got a little worried about the last thing she wanted to discuss.

  “What?”

  “Buck up, cupcake, and apologize to Walker. In person.”

  The thought of that made my stomach flip. “Really? I can’t ping him via text and let emojis express my regrets? Then if he doesn’t send me the ‘fuck off’ emoji I can ask him out for a drink and try to explain?”