Page 52 of Years in the Making

“Oh?” Izzy looks taken aback. “Is that why you practicallyskip out the door for tee time while you grumble the whole way out the door when you’re going to the hospital?”

“Balance.” He grins at her.

“It’s going to be a long fucking drive.” She grabs the bag of party decorations and heads for the door. “May as well get it started now.”

Despite Izzy’s mood as we walked out the front door, she laughs with Tom and me for most of the drive. She’s always been the most buttoned-up out of the three of us. Marley is the adventurer with the mouth of a sailor. Izzy is the adult, married with kids, and I’m the nerdy serial dater, unable to find the right guy. On paper we don’t work, but in practice there are no two other people I’d rather call my best friends.

“Are you and Teddy going to be weird again?” Izzy asks from the front seat as we pull onto the gravel road to Bennett’s.

“We aren’t weird.”

“You’re weird,” Tom and Izzy say in unison.

“There’s this strange energy with you two,” Izzy says, turning to look at me, her eyes narrowing as she studies me. “I’ve never seen two strangers act like scorned lovers who wanted to be loving lovers before.”

I sit up straighter and run my suddenly sweaty palms down my thighs. I haven’t told anyone a thing. Izzy doesn’t even know about how Teddy and I got hot and heavy in my car when I brought Marley back last winter. Yet she’s looking at me as if she’s been told about it.

Shrugging, I look her straight in the eye with as much confidence as I can muster. “I don’t know what to tell you, Iz. How should we act? Like old friends? Like current lovers?”

“You could talk?” Tom suggests from the driver’s seat, his eyes finding mine briefly in the rearview mirror.

“That is a good and normal start,” Izzy agrees. “Act less like he’s oil and you’re vinegar.”

“I can act as mustard for you if you want,” Tom says.

My traitorous imagination immediately flashes an oiled-up Teddy, which is appealing until Tom appears wearing a French’s yellow mustard costume and an inappropriate grin. “That sounds like a euphemism for threesome.” I cringe.

“She’s right, it sounds like a line they’d use in a porn about an orgy in a restaurant,” Izzy adds, turning back to face the front. “You know they’d use lots of oil too.”

“As a doctor, I’d have to advise against using mustard,” Tom says thoughtfully. “Especially Dijon.”

I sit back and listen to them as they continue discussing what edible things could be used in place of mustard as an emulsifier in a porn setting. Their voices fade the minute Bennett’s place comes into view, and I see a tall dark-haired figure walking towards the house, five dogs zigzagging around his legs.

If how I felt was visual, it would be TV static. Black and white dots vibrating below the surface of my skin, warming and cooling me at the same time.

Teddy stops just before he reaches the porch and turns to watch Tom park, then waves when we are all out of the car. I realize my hand is in the air, returning it before I know what I’m doing. A smile, albeit a small one, appears on Teddy’s face, and when I look away, I find myself greeted by Izzy mouthing, “Good start.” Doing my best to keep my face neutral, I start gathering stuff to bring inside, only then to discover that Izzy has dragged Tom behind the car to have what appears to be an intense private conversation. I glance back toward the house where Teddy is standing, hands in his jean pockets, head tilted ever so slightly to the left, eyes on me. His hair is shorter, as is his beard, and I can’t help but wonder if he’s tidied up his rugged appearance for me.

As much as I wish, or partly wish, that I could avoid himforever, he lives in the apartment in the barn now, and from the way Marley talks, Teddy and Bennett are the best of friends. I need to just suck it up and be an adult. Sure, Teddy and I had tried the friend thing once, and it bloomed like a rose bush on speed to something more, but I’d been there, done that, and could probably stay the course now. Then he has to go and pick up a dog who I now realize is one of the Christmas puppies, and I’m suddenly filled with an incredible sense of want.

I straighten as much as possible, plaster a cordial expression on my face, and walk toward Teddy with as much confidence as I can muster. The feeling only lasts for a few seconds however as my toe catches the edge of the flagstone path, and my confidence plummets only slightly faster than me and the porcelain bowl that has slipped out of my hands. I do manage to thinkNightmare, this is a nightmarejust before my body makes contact with the ground.

I look up just in time to see Teddy step on what I think is an escaped grape and watch helplessly as his arms windmill in a desperate attempt to grab air to stay upright. He fails, of course, on account of air being, well, air.

“Oh no,” I hear Tom say as he approaches. “The salad.”

Izzy, on the other hand, is holding onto the hood of the car as she laughs hysterically. “I’m going to piss my pants,” she manages to get out. I know she means it too; I’ve witnessed a few very close calls with her.

“Are you okay?” Teddy asks in the middle of jumping up like he didn’t just perform the most perfect comedic fall I’ve ever seen. He holds out his hand, but I’m more concerned about the dogs making their way over to investigate.

“I’m fine, but can you keep them away from the food?” Pointing at the dogs. Teddy looks back towards the dogs as they reach us. “There are grapes,” I shriek, scrambling to cover what little poison bombs I can reach.

“I’m on it.” Tom jumps into action, grabbing a couple of the smaller dogs and jogging towards the fenced-in field.

“Be right back.” Teddy gives a sharp whistle and the others immediately follow him.

“That was one way to make an entrance,” Izzy says from above me.

“Do you think anyone noticed?” I laugh, shifting onto my butt.

---