Coming Back Home

Minutes later, she materialized beside the two of us.

"Hello, Avery. Where's Patrick?"

What?

"Wh-What?" Avery stuttered.

"Oh! Drew told me you guys were an item. Sorry."

Avery looked flustered. "No ... I mean ... we've gone out once or twice, but I wouldn't call us an item."

"Oh, my bad. Just me being stupid. I thought, like, after so long, it was something more."

Madison's "after so long" triggered a memory. I recalled being punched in the stomach, right after Patrick's gloating "You can't hold onto women." Plural.

Avery surely felt me stiffen slightly through her touch on my arm.

"I hope you're enjoying college, Madison," she said. "And, Joe, nice to meet you. Will, let's go get a breath of air. It's hot with all these people in here." Madison's eyes were knowing as I let myself be led outside.

"We're not an item," she said as soon as we were outside.

"But you're seeing him?"

"Occasionally."

"And were you seeing him when you were seeing me or did that come later?"

"That came later. Look, Will, I jumped to a couple of bad conclusions about you based on what everyone was saying. I'm sorry for that. By the time I realized it, you were with Madison, and I didn't think trying to mend fences was a good idea. But you two are over, obviously." She gestured toward the house and, presumably, Joe. "So now I'd like to do a little fence-mending."

"I thought you were seeing Patrick."

"I said occasionally. But I'd like to see you. We had some good times and we could have many more." She had her arm through mine and pulled me back in against her. Was that instinct with women, or did they learn it?

"Are you sleeping with him?" I asked without thinking.

Her lips tightened and angry spots of color appeared on her cheeks. "That's none of your business!"

I took that as a yes, though I couldn't be positive. Maybe the intrusion into her private life was enough to make her angry. She got angry easily. But she had always been forthright, and so I'd have placed my money on "yes, occasionally."

I wasn't sure why I had asked. Normally, I'm happy for people's private business to stay that way. Maybe I was trying to sort out an instantaneous gut feeling. There was something in her demeanor that said she'd agree if I suggested she come home with me right now, perhaps the arm still holding mine in a way that I could feel soft curves against my tricep. Maybe my unconscious wanted some context so I wasn't the one making a too-quick judgment.

Her face softened. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have snapped. I'm not going to talk about other men, but I get your concern because I did go out with Patrick right after we separated. But I didn't cheat on you. I've never cheated on anyone."

The thought of taking this woman back to my place right now and fucking the absolute shit out of her had, for one brief instant, a lot of attraction. A lot. Even though those voluptuous curves didn't measure up to far-more-modest ones in my personal scoring system—I shoved away the immediate thought of Madison naked—they still had ample power to make me forget the black mood I was in.

But only an instant, because tomorrow morning I'd wake up wondering how to divest myself of her. And I just wasn't a dick and duck type of guy.

We had no long-term future because I wasn't wired for a woman proven so quick to judge on so little evidence. For an idle moment, I wondered how Patrick was faring with her. He had a lot of rough edges for her personality to hang up on. Maybe being snarled at was an easy price to pay for what he got in return.

And then I realized why I'd asked that question.

I'd have bet her answer was "yes" by the time Patrick punched me. He wasn't just happy that Avery left me. His voice had been crowing too much. My mind was fuzzy on timelines that far back, but a couple of weeks maybe? I was willing to accept she never cheated on anyone, but that was a quick transition.

"I suspect why Patrick made an effort to go after you, but—" At her angry jerk, I held up my hand to stem the outrage. "No, I'm not talking about your breasts. I'm talking about the fact that Patrick couldn't resist the payback for me ending up with Anne. The gloat when he insinuated I'd lost you to him was too obvious. The fact that you're attractive was just a mega bonus.

"What I don't get is you. And no"—again my hand went up—"I'm not saying he's not a good-looking guy or fun to be with."

"Then what?" she said tightly.

"I don't get why a woman sleeping with me would be listening to a man she knows has every reason to talk shit and tear me down, and then not even ask for my side of it. That I don't get." I didn't bother to say, "and then fall into bed with him," because we both knew I thought it.

"You could have explained when I—"

I cut her off. "When you confronted me in the stable with your mind already made up?" I shook my head and disengaged from her arm. "Enjoy Patrick, Avery." I turned and walked into the house.

It was hard for me to imagine that my mood could have gotten worse after seeing Madison with Joe, but now it was. I made my farewells to Tara and went looking for her mother. I bumped into Madison on the way.

"Was that deliberate?" I asked.

"Of course. Whatever stuff, like, you and me ... what she's doing isn't right." As I turned to go, she said, "Will, there's something."

That you're dating Joe? I know.

"I'm not coming back to Seylerton for the summer. I'm going to stay at school and power through the summer semester. Just thought you should know."

On one hand, her renewed interest in her future should have warmed my heart, and I guess it did very slightly. On the other, my mood bottomed into an absolute stinking cesspool of putrid slime.

I finally found Carrie.

"I'll walk you out," she said. She took my arm in a gesture that was becoming familiar despite being still somewhat unexpected. "She knows you're hurting, Will."

"Yeah? I could tell," I said sarcastically. "It was obvious from the 'I'm not coming back to live with you if I can avoid it' conversation."

"She knows," she repeated firmly, "because I told her. Right after I ripped into her for this stunt with Joe." At my startled pause, she smirked. "You're thick as a plank, Will. Adorable, but thick as a plank if you can't figure out what that was. Or the little scene I heard about from Douglas."

She leaned up and pecked me on the cheek. "You need to find some girl and go on a few dates."

A few feet away, she turned back. "Not Avery."

Ten feet later, she turned back again. "Not Tara for reasons I understand you now know."

Finally, right at her door, "There's more interest in you than you might suspect. Decent-looking guy with a good job who doesn't play around. The trouble is, you've either been married, in a steady relationship, or so damn touchy and grouchy that no woman in her right mind would consider it. Now that all three of those afflictions are cured ..." She winked and finally went inside.

Some minimal level of truce had been reached with Madison. The first phone call came a few weeks later, just to let me know she'd aced her way through her first semester's courses. The next, about a month after that, seemingly had no other purpose than to let me know she was alive and to make sure I was.

In July, she called to say, "I'm not coming home for the Fourth. Some friends invited me to the Jersey Shore. But I talked to my mom on her birthday."

That was interesting news.

"You'll never believe it. She's getting a divorce."

That was very interesting news.

"The pedo got caught."

She launched into an explanation about Tammy finding some browser history, which she ignored as just a guy being a guy.

"But then Dave got drunk at the block barbecue, and the next thing you know, they hear Sara Muñoz inside yelling that he better get his fucking hands off her. Sara was a year behind me in school," she explained, "so she's, like, eighteen.

"So now Mom is calling to say how sorry she is that she didn't believe me, and can I please, please forgive her." I could hear the satisfaction oozing from her voice. "I told her I'd think about it."

"And will you?"

"Think? Yes. Forgive? Still thinking. I don't see how I'll ever forget what she did. But on the other hand, I kinda miss having parents, you know?"

"Yes, I do." I'd lost my mother when I was twenty-two, my dad at thirty-four. I felt the hole horribly at times.

"I think I'm gonna start calling her Tammy like she's some other kind of relative. Maybe that will let me, like, work through it."

"Mmm."

"You don't approve?"

"I don't get a vote. You'll figure it out. You always do."

The calls settled in at about one a month.

"So, Will, you're single."

I looked left, then right, as two feminine forms dropped like bookends onto the stools on either side of me. Lauren Frey and Ashley Frey. Two of four sisters, and two of somewhere around eight cousins that most of the men within twenty miles would put up against anything Hollywood had to offer, I included. These two ... gorgeous they were, shy they were not.

"Why haven't you called one of us?" Ashley asked.

"Called one of you?"

"You broke up with Madison ages ago. Dr. Liaci struck out ... we figured we had to give her first shot at fixing her 'oops.' Not that we owe her anything. But still, sisterhood, ya know. And you've been seen with Tara but it's obviously just friends. So ..."

It seemed that the NSA had nothing on the STWG ... Small Town Women's Grapevine.

A month later, Lauren and I weren't having a love affair. We were having a bit-more-than-friends affair and both enjoying it. Me because Lauren Frey was funny and kind and the most drop-dead gorgeous woman it had ever been my good fortune to date. She because she liked the fact that I wanted to spend time with her that wasn't horizontal, which she said was a welcome change, and because I was someone she could talk books with.

Her sister Ashley had been good-natured about my choice. She'd looked horribly offended for about two seconds and then burst into a belly laugh when I'd said, "Because your name starts with an A and those women are the devil."

Madison never returned to my house for more than the few days around a holiday. She spent winterims and summer terms at school, driving to finish first her bachelor's and then the MBA program at Berkeley she was accepted into. That took her even farther away and the visits became even less frequent.

I worried a little about affording those two final years; over sixty thousand a year would be a blow. But Carrie told me not to stress about it, and in the end, it turned out to be nothing because Tammy finally made some headway.

"I understand you've been paying for Maddy, Will," she said in a phone call that came out of the blue.

"Well, me and Carrie Schaeffer. We both—"

"I spoke to Ms. Schaeffer. She told me it's mostly you. Which, by the way, I spilled to Maddy accidentally. I didn't realize it was a secret."

Damn.

"Anyway, I haven't done much for her over the last several years, but I have a college fund. Now that I'm divorced from Dave, I plan to move to California so that Maddy can be considered in-state, and I'd like it if you allowed me to pay for her graduate degree."

Fair enough.

It cost me a Christmas and two Thanksgivings with Madison as the two women tried to salvage something of their relationship. I was okay with that; my devastation had eased with time as these things do, turning to fond memories.

And I still got a short visit here and there, friendly and full of news about school and then her first job. Never much about her relationships. She never again rubbed a boyfriend in my face, although I was pretty sure there were some. I didn't stalk her on social media, but Carrie would occasionally make a comment that was revealing. The two of them were still thick as thieves even though Carrie's house was no longer a hangout.

It had become full-to-bursting as Tara accepted Carrie's pleas to start taking over some of the stable. The house wasn't large, and as the boys grew, and then Tara moved in her girlfriend, Carrie would often show up at my doorstep, bottle or cookies in hand.

"Please, Will. I'm crying, 'Sanctuary!' from the chaos."

She and Doug became regulars. I sometimes wondered if the two of them ... but no, old friends they remained, but just old friends.

As for Lauren and me, life settled into a nice groove. Neither of us pretended we were Taylor and Burton or Bogie and Bacall. We were just two people who got along swimmingly well both in bed and out of it without trying to make more of it than that.

She never moved in, letting it be known without actually saying it that she valued her independence and that, while she considered exclusivity a non-negotiable must-have, we weren't married. I felt the same way.

She'd chase away my occasional moody wistfulness about the Summer of Love—in my case, '12 not '67—and recommend books off the bestseller lists with an almost perfect track record of approval on my part. I'd provide a bulwark against the horndogs and introduce her to the books that had slipped from the mainstream or the works in translation that I so loved ferreting out.

We shared a taste in music and food and solitude. But I knew it wouldn't last. She traveled for a living, and she'd eventually meet that guy who was everything she found in me plus the vital spark. It was good while it lasted, and I'd regained enough optimism to know another path would open once she moved on. It was something Madison had gifted to me without either of us realizing it at the time.

I heard the key in the lock. Madison had called and told me she was going to be coming through town and wanted to stop in.

"Lock hasn't changed," I'd replied.

"Where's Lauren?" she asked after giving me a quick hug.

"We called it quits months ago," I said. "She decided her clock was ticking, and we both knew I wasn't that guy for her but this lawyer in Chicago might be."

"Oh. Sorry." She didn't sound like she cared much. I guess our lives were diverging further and further apart.

"It's okay. We're still friends."

"I got a promotion," she said. "I'm a senior account manager now. If I crush the job ... and I will ... they say they'll talk about me taking over one of the named accounts that has international travel."

"Congratulations!"

She dropped into the chair opposite mine with the same boneless sprawl she'd had when I first met her. "I wanted to pay a last visit and tell you in person."

"Last visit? Why last?"

She wrinkled her nose. "Dropping in here once every three, four, five months just seems ..." She didn't finish the sentence, just waved as if to say, "You know."

Except I didn't know. It was like getting hit in the gut.

She saw my expression. "You really want to keep doing this?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

"Boredom."

I didn't understand.

"You said you liked banging someone who was nineteen but that there really wasn't much in common with our lives. Remember?"

"I didn't say even a single one of those words."

"Maybe not, but that's the way I took it. You also implied that, once the thrill was gone, you were becoming bored with me. Are you going to try to claim that you didn't?"

I was embarrassed. "Well ..." She waited. Her expression said she wasn't going to buy an evasion. "I wasn't bored, but I knew I might have become bored eventually. Your world was exactly what it should have been at that point: hanging out with friends and Instagram pics. But it wasn't mine anymore. Well ... Instagram was never mine."

I smiled, trying to keep it light although sadness welled up at the memory of that time.

"I didn't want it to get to the point where I felt like that about you," I continued. "I wanted to end it while it was still good even if you were angry ..." I pushed past the awkwardness and said it even though it sounded saccharine. "And I wanted you to have a life. So, I overstated things a little."

"I figured that out eventually. That was really smart of you."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because it did let me walk away mad, which meant walk away cleanly. I think I'd have become bored with you but felt indebted, and that wouldn't have been clean." Her expression turned apologetic as she said that. She knew firsthand she was delivering an ego blow because I'd done it to her.

This was not turning into a good visit.

"Well," she amended hastily, "bored is the wrong word. I'd have felt confined. There were all these things I wanted to do even though I forgot. And if I'd stayed with you like that instead, I'd eventually have resented it."

"Then it's good we went our own ways."

"Yeah," she reflected. "College was a lot of fun, especially the semester abroad. And Tammy and I have built a kind of relationship. It's not ideal mother-daughter but better than it was now that Dave's out of the picture. My dad's still a loser, but screw him if he wants to be that way." She shrugged and I could see that she'd come to terms with the hurt. Yeah, screw him.

"I looked for my bio dad," she said unexpectedly.

"Did you find him?"

She nodded. "I have a name, but I haven't done anything about it. I need to work up the nerve. I thought about asking Tammy what she thought, but I think she'd go ballistic."

"Mmm."

"Do you think I should?"

"Up to you." I could see that she wanted more of an opinion than that. "If you'll always wonder if you don't, then reach out. But be prepared for rejection just in case."

She nodded.

"I don't think it will bother me like it would've before. I'm not a runaway who doesn't feel like she has any real center anymore. I've got a job I'm freakin' good at. I've found a few things I believe in and like supporting." She laughed. "Doug and I have a lot in common."

I smiled in return as she continued. "And I've lived on my own for a couple of years and found that I'm okay with that. Though, man! Was I, like, clueless about how not-easy that would be? I used to whine to my ex-boyfriend about it every month until I got a couple of raises." We smiled together.

"Ex?"

"Yeah. We ended it when I started trying to get this promotion. I knew I'd have to move for the job and why drag out the inevitable?"

"Where are you going?"

"My territory is the Pittsburgh area, so I'll be moving out this way."

"That's great! Where?"

"To 83 Pine Street."

"What!"

"I like the right side of the bed. Is that okay with you?"

I suddenly wasn't capable of saying anything.

She smiled. "Will, I'm not a young girl anymore. I've been on my own for years and can support myself without a guy. I've seen a bit of the world, though I'd like to see more ... a lot more ... of it if you're willing, and then come back to a house where we're the fourth generation to live.

"I don't like your music, and I don't expect you to like mine, but that's what headphones are for. You've got me hooked on reading actual books, and I even laugh at those stupid TV shows you watch. I promise I'll watch them with you if you'll promise to go to art openings with me.

"And I was being just a teensy bit disingenuous"—she grinned and held up her thumb and index finger to indicate—"when I asked you about Lauren. I've been keeping track. Carrie and Doug are good spies, and Carrie's been great at talking me out of occasional homicidal moods."

She got up and moved to the arm of my chair.

"Twenty-six and forty-three are a hell of a lot different than eighteen and thirty-five. And not for a single damn moment in those years did I ever stop caring for you. Yeah, I was pissed for a while until I understood and talked to Carrie. Yeah, I dated other guys. Yeah, I—dare I say it?—slept with a couple of them along the way. Not trying to rub your nose in it, just coming clean.