Breathing Room

Ren pecked her cheek. “Isabel asked him. I told her not to, but she thinks she knows everything.”

In another lifetime Isabel would have defended herself, but she was dealing with insane people, so what was the point?

“This seemed the best way,” Harry said. “I’ve been trying to talk to you all day, but you keep running away.”

“Only because you make me sick.”

He flinched but persevered. “Come outside, Tracy. Just for a few minutes. There are some things I need to say to you, and I have to do it privately.”

Tracy turned her back to him, wrapped an arm around Ren’s waist, and rested her cheek on his arm. “I should never have divorced you. God, you were a great lover. The best.”

Ren glanced over at Harry. “Are you sure you want to stay married to her? Because right now I’ve got to say I think you could do a lot better.”

“I’m sure,” Harry said. “I’m very much in love with her.”

Tracy lifted her head like a small animal sniffing the air, only to decide that what she smelled was unpleasant. “Yeah, right.”

Harry hunched his shoulders and turned to Isabel, the shadows in his eyes making him look like a man with nothing left to lose. “I’d hoped to do this privately, but apparently that’s not going to happen, and since Tracy won’t listen, I’ll tell you, if you don’t mind.”

Tracy seemed to be listening, and Isabel nodded. “By all means.”

“I fell in love with her the moment she dumped her drink in my lap. I thought it was an accident. I’m still not sure whether to believe her that it wasn’t. There were all kinds of good-looking guys at that party tripping over each other to get her attention, but it hadn’t occurred to me even to try, not just because of her physical beauty-and God knows she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen-but because of her… because of this glow she had. This energy. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, but at the same time I didn’t want her to know I was watching. Then she dumped her drink, and I couldn’t think of one thing to say.”

“He said, ‘My fault.’ “ Tracy’s voice caught on a little hitch. “I dump the drink, and the idiot says, ‘My fault.’ I should have known right then.”

He still paid no attention to her, focusing on Isabel instead. “I couldn’t think. It felt like my brain had gotten a shot of novocaine. She was wearing this silver dress that dipped low in the front, and she had her hair up, except it wouldn’t stay up and these curls had fallen down her neck. I’d never seen anything like it. Anything like her.” He gazed into his glass. “But as beautiful as she was that night…” His voice grew thick. “As beautiful as she was then…” He swallowed. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this.” He set his glass on the counter and disappeared through the garden door.

Tracy’s eyes were bleak, but she shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “See what I have to put up with? The minute I think he’s finally ready to talk, he shuts down. I might as well be married to a computer.”

“Stop acting like an ass,” Ren said. “No guy wants to spill his guts in front of an ex-husband. He’s been trying to talk to you all day.”

“Big deal. I’ve been trying to talk to him for years.”

Isabel glanced toward the garden. “He doesn’t seem like a man who’s too comfortable with his feelings.”

“I’ve got a news flash for both of you,” Ren said. “No man is comfortable with his feelings. Get over it.”

“You are,” Tracy said. “You talk about how you feel, but Harry has terminal emotional constipation.”

“I’m an actor, so most of what comes out of my mouth is bullshit. Harry loves you. Even a fool can see that.”

“Then I’m a fool, because I’m not buying it.”

“You’re not fighting fair,” Isabel said. “I know it’s because you’re hurt, but that doesn’t make it right. Give him a chance to say what’s on his mind without an audience.” Isabel pointed at the door. “And listen with your brain when you talk to him, because your heart’s too bruised right now to be reliable.”

“There’s no point! Don’t you understand? Don’t you think I’ve tried?”

“Try again.” Isabel gave her a firm push toward the door.

Tracy looked mulish, but she went outside.

“I already want to kill them both,” Ren said, “and we haven’t even had the appetizers.”

Harry stood by the pergola, hands shoved in his pockets, the frames of his glasses picking up the last rays of sun. Tracy felt that familiar dizziness that had first plagued her twelve years ago, right before she’d dumped her drink in his clueless lap.

“Isabel made me come out here.” Tracy heard the hostility in her voice, but she’d begged him once today, and she wasn’t going to do it again.

He pulled his hand from his pocket and braced it on the side of the pergola, not looking at her. “What you said this morning… Were you just throwing up another one of your smoke screens? About being fat and having stretch marks, when you know damned well you get more beautiful every day? And saying I don’t love you when I’ve told you a thousand times how I feel?”

Words uttered by rote. “I love you, Tracy.” No emotion behind them. Never, “I love you because…” Just, “I love you, Tracy. Don’t forget to buy more toothpaste when you go to the store.”

“There’s telling and there’s believing. Two different animals.”

He slowly turned to her. “It’s never been my love in question, not from the beginning. It’s always been yours.”

“Mine? I picked you! If it had been up to you, the two of us would never have happened. I found you, I stalked you, and I reeled you in.”

“I wasn’t that big a prize!”

Harry never yelled, and just the surprise of it silenced her.

He pushed himself away from the pergola. “You wanted kids. And I had ‘Daddy’ written all over me. Don’t you get it? For you, it wasn’t about us. It was all about your need to have kids. About me being the father you wanted for them. Someplace in my subconscious I always knew that’s what you were after, but I kept fooling myself. And it was easy to do when there were only Jeremy and Steffie. Even when Brittany came along, I could pretend it was still about us, that you wanted me for me. I might have been able to keep on pretending, but then you got pregnant with Connor, and you walked around with this cat-that-ate-the-canary smile on your face. Everything was about being pregnant and the kids. I tried to swallow it, to keep on pretending I was the great love of your life and not just your best source of sperm, but it got harder. Every morning I’d look at you and want you to love me the way I loved you, but I’d done my job, and you didn’t even see me. And you’re right. I did start shutting down. So I could keep going. But when you got pregnant this time and you were so happy, I couldn’t even go through the motions. I wanted to, but I couldn’t.” His voice broke. “I just… couldn’t.”

Tracy tried to take it in, but so many conflicting emotions were barreling through her that she couldn’t begin to sort them out. Relief. Anger at him for being so obtuse. And joy. Oh, yes, joy, because it wasn’t completely hopeless after all. She didn’t know where to begin, so she decided to start small. “What about the toothpaste?”

He stared at her as if she’d grown a second pregnancy from her forehead. “Toothpaste?”

“The way I don’t always remember to buy toothpaste. And the way it drives you crazy when I lose my keys. You told me if I screwed up the checking account one more time, you were going to take away my checkbook. And do you remember that dent in the fender of your car that you thought happened when you took Jeremy to Little League? I put it there. Connor threw up in my car, and I didn’t have time to clean it up, so I took yours instead, and I was yelling at Brittany in the parking lot at Target and drove my shopping cart into it. What about that, Harry?”

He blinked. “If you’d keep an organized shopping list, you wouldn’t forget to buy toothpaste.”

In typical Harry fashion, he didn’t get it. “I’ll never keep an organized shopping list or stop losing keys or get much better at any of those other things that drive you wild.”

“I know that. I also know there are a thousand men who’d line up for the chance to buy you toothpaste and let you run a shopping cart into their car.”

Maybe he did get it.

Isabel had told her to think with her brain instead of her heart, but that was hard to do when it came to Harry