The Other Man

  So, of course, when I’d met a man like that, who consumed, who dominated, who was stoic to the point of unreadable, I turned him into a romantic figure, his feelings for me far too complicated to be said in words.

  Foolish, I know. I felt it keenly.

  I’d taken in a wild animal. How could I be surprised I’d been bitten in the process?

  I rewrote the story in my mind, this time with Heath in his proper role, as more of a villain than hero.

  Even after my divorce, bitter and ugly as it was, I’d never doubted in my life that I was a complete woman, with or without a man. I’d never needed another person to complete me. That just wasn’t who I was.

  I loved myself, and my life, and being single hadn’t changed that.

  I found joy in the simple things, a perfectly composed picture, one of my children smiling.

  But now, unaccountably, there was a void, some hollowed out hole in me that needed filling, so much so, I found myself constantly looking for someone who could.

  I didn’t need a man, it was true, but if I wanted one, there was nothing wrong with that, either.

  Sometimes I felt a bit of clarity about the whole thing. That’s what I was calling it: the whole thing. Relationship hardly seemed an accurate description. Affair felt and sounded wrong.

  I started looking at it differently. Because that’s what you did when you moved on. And I needed to move on.

  Right after that woman had confronted me, I’d taken her at her words and swallowed whole the vicious things that she’d said to me.

  But, after a time, a bit of reason slipped back in, and it occurred to me, that, like all things, there wasn’t only one side to this story, and her bit of venom was just one piece of the equation.

  She was bitter. She felt scorned. Of course she’d try to twist things and shove them down my throat.

  I didn’t know what the full truth was. I figured I probably never would with Heath so definitively out of the picture, but I knew some of it.

  Regardless of his motives and his lies, I did believe that on some level he’d cared about me. And I did believe we’d helped each other in some way.

  He never could have been a permanent fixture in my life. It was naive of me to think so. But, despite feeling foolish at the end, he’d been good for me.

  So I took that and ran with it.

  We’d been good for each other. That was a fact. Regardless of what that bitter girl had said to me, something profound had happened between Heath and me.

  I helped him heal, and he helped me move on. The end of the thing didn’t negate the purpose of it.

  His name was Kevin. He was calm as still water and had the second most fascinating pair of eyes I’d ever seen.

  They were a deep blue flecked with little bits of green, but that wasn’t what made them so unique.

  First of all, he was an amiable guy, very go with the flow from our very first encounter, which happened to be a fender bender.

  It was his fault. I’d hit a red light in heavy traffic, which in Vegas could easily be mistaken for a yellow (we’re all color blind drivers in this town), and I’d had a brief moment of indecision, deciding whether to speed up or halt, when I’d stopped suddenly, and he rammed into my back fender. It wasn’t a hard hit, but it was jarring.

  It should have been an upsetting occurrence, but the way he handled the whole thing impressed me enough to actually cause me to give him my real number when he asked for it.

  He was just so unfazed. I was still catching my breath when I saw a lean figure emerge from the black Camry currently attached to the rear end of my Tesla.

  He made a handsome picture, wearing a nice suit and dark shades.

  I rolled my window down when he stood in front of it, looking at him, wondering how he’d react to the accident.

  Men usually had two reactions when they were at fault. One, which was how my ex-husband would have reacted, was to blame the other party, regardless of the facts. Two was to apologize and talk about how best to proceed.

  Kevin chose an extreme version of the latter.

  He crouched down at my window, not close enough to be in my personal space, but making a point of not looming over me.

  “My God. I can’t believe I did that.” His voice was soft and cultured and profusely apologetic. “I’m terribly sorry. I looked down for a second and didn’t realize I was right on top of you. Are you okay?”

  His cajoling, sincere tone had me at ease instantly.

  I nodded, attempting to smile it off. “I’m just fine. Accidents happen.”

  He took off his shades, giving me my first glimpse of his compelling eyes.

  They were ice cold. The rest of his face moved frantically into a smile meant to put me at ease, but the eyes, they were wrong, broken.

  I was caught fast.

  That incongruity, with him being so kind, but having those cruel eyes.

  I found myself drawn him.

  Of course I was. His very expression was at odds with itself.

  And needless to say, I’m a sucker for a complicated man.

  At the time, particularly that first, bemusing meeting, I didn’t connect the dots of just whom he reminded me of that made him so attractive, but it was right there all along.

  In many ways, though, he was the opposite of Heath, which was also a draw.

  Where Heath struggled to express himself, Kevin over-expressed.

  He smiled at me, a warm smile, to belie the cold eyes. He was a tall man, but lean with an attractive, angular face. He was dark in the way that I was dark, where you couldn’t have placed his race if you tried, a good mix of something Latin, I assumed. With the exception of Heath, I’d always been drawn to the tall, dark, and handsome type.

  With every contact, I found myself comparing them. It was hard not to. So much about them was either identical, or opposite.

  In spite of myself, I was working up a tally with two columns.

  Identical/Opposite.

  Heath/Kevin.

  One clearly meant for the opposite column: He stated from our first date that what he wanted was a serious relationship.

  Another opposite: He didn’t want to rush into anything physical. He was content instead to take things very slow, letting the anticipation build in its proper time, he said.

  “I’m an old-fashioned kind of gal,” I told him with a smile, “so I’m okay with that.” I was more than okay with it. It was, in fact, one of the reasons we got on so well so quickly. It made me feel comfortable with him, knowing he wasn’t expecting to get physical right away. I wasn’t ready for it. Not by a long shot. Heath had been an anomaly for me in that respect, to be sure.

  He was an accountant (one for the opposite of Heath column) and his schedule was as consistent as clockwork (another opposite).

  “Tell me something about yourself,” he’d say often, his tone imploring and endearing enough that I always obliged.

  “Like what?” I asked on our very first date. He’d surprised me by taking me to one of the best French restaurants in town. There was no way he could have known that was my favorite, so I chalked it up to the two of us having preferences in common. How lucky was that?

  “Anything, to start. I want to know it all.”

  I found that sweet. And refreshing. So I gave him something good. “I have slutty feet,” I told him playfully. Yes, I was flirting, quite shamelessly.

  He looked more than intrigued. He was delighted. “It just so happens, foot rubs are a specialty of mine. See how perfect we are for each other?”

  That first date, he didn’t try to steal a kiss. I was learning fast that he was a true gentleman in that way (opposite column).

  But he did come back to my house, shared a glass of wine with me, and rubbed the hell out of my feet.

  He was good with his hands (identical column).

  I went to bed smiling.

  If I was brutally honest with myself, Kevin was, more than anything, a tremendous stroke to my ego. He pur
sued me relentlessly, not leaving me guessing about anything, not his feelings or his intentions. It was just what I thought I needed.

  We’d been seeing each other pretty regularly for a few weeks when Kevin said out of the blue, “I’d love to meet your boys.”

  That made me uncomfortable, but I leveled with him as best as I could. “I’d rather hold off on that. Give it some time. I doubt they’re ready to meet someone I’m dating just yet.”

  Of course I hadn’t told him about Heath, but he did know about my messy divorce, and the fact that my boys were overprotective to a fault.

  He looked briefly annoyed, but his face smoothed of the expression so fast that I almost thought I’d imagined it. I’d never seen him show so much as a hint of annoyance before, so it threw me for a brief moment, and I stared at him.

  “That makes perfect sense, of course,” he finally said. “Whenever you’re comfortable with it.”

  This was more the response I’d expected from him, so I took it in stride and didn’t give the incongruous expression that he’d first shown another thought.

  I found out on our fourth date that he wouldn’t even consider letting me photograph him (identical column). Not for any reason. He was adamant about it, which surprised me. It was such an innocent request. What did he have to hide?

  But of course he had nothing to hide, I told myself. That was Heath baggage, clearly.

  A quality of Kevin’s that I was pretty shocked went into the identical column hit me on our fifth date.

  He was unreasonably enraged by phone calls from my ex-husband.

  Kevin didn’t even get a true preview of how unpleasant our actual conversations were, but he reacted nonetheless.

  My phone rang, I checked the screen, and shoved it back into my bag.

  “Who was that?” Kevin asked, his tone polite.

  My nose wrinkled up. “No one I wanted to talk to.”

  “Oh.”

  His baffled expression had me explaining further. “It’s my ex-husband, but there’s no good reason for the call. In general, he just says something unpleasant to me, and I hang up on him, so I just skip the middle part now and don’t answer.”

  He scowled, actually scowled, something I’d never seen him do before. “Want me to have a word with him?”

  I almost laughed out loud. What would mellow Kevin say to my volatile, asshole ex? I couldn’t even picture him confronting someone, let alone someone that hostile.

  “No, there’s no need. He doesn’t bother me. I just ignore him. Someday he’ll get the hint.”

  “He needs to get the hint sooner rather than later. You should let me handle it.”

  He was so menacing when he said this that I was taken aback. Clearly there was a side to Kevin that was unknown to me.

  “I can handle my ex,” I reassured him. “Trust me on this.”

  “Okay,” he begrudgingly agreed.

  I didn’t write the list down on paper, but I didn’t need to.

  It was branded into my brain. It was the strangest thing, how the opposites and identicals grew.

  And it was tedious, how fixated I was on it, though I tried not to be.

  I’d have myself talked out of it, determined not to think of it at all, and then something would come up to trigger it.

  Okay. Many things. There were just so many. That was the whole problem.

  Kevin spoke five languages. Heath barely spoke.

  Kevin called me five times a day. Heath had never called me once.

  Kevin could read me like a book. Just like Heath.

  Kevin knew his way around my house like he had it memorized. As had Heath, though Heath had spied on me.

  I found myself worrying the first time Kevin came to my house and made himself at home. He went right into the kitchen, grabbed my corkscrew, picked out just the perfect bottle of wine, and worked it open.

  I told myself firmly it was all a coincidence. The paranoia was Heath baggage, obviously.

  ’Tato hated Kevin with a passion. So much so, that by the second week we were dating, I found an excuse to have Raf take my dog to his place for a few weeks.

  ’Tato had adored Heath.

  It was all breakup baggage, I knew. The comparing. The obsessing. Heath shouldn’t have made enough of an impact to leave me with baggage, but here it was.

  I tried my best to ignore it and move forward with my life.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SIX

  “I’d like to spend the night tonight,” Kevin told me over dinner.

  My whole body stiffened. I knew this was coming, eventually it had to, of course, but I didn’t feel ready for it.

  We’d been dating for almost a month. I probably should have felt ready.

  I just didn’t.

  “Kevin,” I started to say.

  His hand covered mine across the table, and he gave me what I thought was supposed to be a reassuring smile. “Not for that. I wasn’t trying to be crass. I’ll stay in your guest room or something. I just happen to have a day off tomorrow, and I thought it’d be nice to share breakfast with you. In your home.”

  It struck me as an odd request, it really did, but I was too relieved at what he wasn’t asking for to give it much thought.

  “Sure,” I said awkwardly and went back to eating.

  We were trying a new French restaurant that night, as we did on most of our dates. Kevin was a foodie, and his favorite just happened to be gourmet French cuisine. He even ordered in French.

  How lucky was that?

  The rest of the night went down basically how he had sold it.

  We made out for a bit on my sofa. We’d worked up to making out, but that was about it.

  He was a good kisser.

  I didn’t feel a Heath level of attraction for him, but I knew better than to expect that. It was not normal the way Heath got me going, and I didn’t plan to set myself up for disappointment with every future relationship by expecting such a thing.

  But kissing Kevin was nice. That was something.

  And then we went to bed. Separately.

  He’s a man of his word, I thought as I drifted off to sleep. He hadn’t even tried to take it further.

  I woke up turned on and to the smell of bacon.

  I recalled vaguely the feverish dreams that had my sheets twisted up around my hips.

  Stretching, I smiled and wondered if Heath could actually cook.

  And then it hit me.

  Fuck.

  That wasn’t Heath cooking for me. It was Kevin, and I felt guilty as hell for the slip-up.

  I got dressed and tried my best to forget how I’d woken up.

  We had breakfast. Kevin made a killer omelet. There didn’t seem to be a thing he was bad at.

  “I got us tickets for that romantic comedy you wanted to see. Matinee tickets,” Kevin said as we were finishing up.

  Kevin loved romantic comedies.

  I had that tick again. Opposite.

  We were leaving the house, headed to the show in Kevin’s car, which was parked at my front curb, when the strangest thing happened.

  Deborah of the Dickhead Dillons, my least favorite neighbor, crossed the street and approached us. She was a small woman, thin, with a haggard face and eyes that seemed never to blink. Today her dark hair hung lank and oily around her face, clearly in need of a wash.

  “Um, hey,” I said to her, awkwardly, because I’d stopped trying to greet her ages ago. She was one of those people that didn’t wave back. I’d never understood how you could do that, just ignore a wave or a greeting, but it seemed to be a consistent attribute for crazy people. I mean, how hard was it to stop pretending you didn’t see anyone around you and just wave? Why wouldn’t you want to be friendly in the most casual of waves with the people that lived next door to you?

  Because crazy.

  She didn’t hey me back, just launched into one of the strangest speeches I’d ever heard in my life.

  It was so disconnected and hard to make sense o
f that I didn’t catch what she was talking about for a solid two minutes.

  And when I did, I raised a hand and stopped her. “Are you telling me that my ex is suing me?”

  Eyes wide, she nodded.

  “For what?”

  “For money.” She said this part like it was obvious, which I suppose it was.

  “But how does he think he’s going to sue me for money?” I tried.

  “Remember when you beat him up, back when you first separated?”

  I sighed and nodded.

  “For that. Damages for that.”

  Kevin had been silent for the duration of our strange exchange, but I felt his hand on my waist tense when she said that.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I asked her. She was not the type to do anyone any favors without incentive. “What does any of it have to do with you?”

  “Well, he came straight to my house the day you beat him. Did I ever tell you that?” I shook my head. She had not, because we never talked to each other.

  Because crazy.

  “Well,” she continued, “he was bruised and bloody, and I saw him come out of your house that way. I’m part of the lawsuit. A witness, since I saw that it was clearly you that beat him up, since he came out of the house and only you and he were home.”

  “That’s hearsay,” Kevin piped in quietly. “You weren’t there for the event, so nothing you have to add has any relevance, in court or in life. You have no idea who else was in that house.”

  She glared at him and shrugged jerkily. “I guess we’ll see, won’t we?”

  “Why are you telling me any of this?” I repeated, my tone very careful, as it usually was when I dealt with crazy people.

  Her glare moved to me. “I’m telling you this because if you don’t want me to testify, I’ll be happy to stay silent . . . for a price.”

  I barely managed not to roll my eyes. “Not interested, Deborah. You have a nice a day. We were just on our way out.”