Meet Me in Manhattan (True Vows) (19 page)

Like her exams in school, this was a test. But unlike her exams,
she had no idea what she was being tested on, no concept of how
to study for it, and no confidence that she'd pass.

Becky cruised into the short-term garage, took a ticket, and
drove up and down the aisles until she found a parking space.
You'll pass, Erika told herself, mustering the same poise and
steadiness that had seen her through so many riding competitions in her youth. You'll ace it.

"Do they sell margaritas in the airport?" Adrienne wondered
aloud as they sauntered to the crosswalk and into the terminal
building.

"Not to nineteen-year-olds," Becky told her.

Erika didn't want a drink. She just wanted to get this reunion
over with, so she could be sure she'd done the right thing in
breaking up with Ted. So she could get on with her life.

"Which airline is he on?" Becky asked her.

They studied the monitor and figured out which gate he was
at. Passing through security was easy, and they hiked down the endless corridor to his terminal. Erika ran her fingers through her
hair, casually, so her friends wouldn't notice that she was preening. If she'd been alone, she would have ducked into a restroom
to check her reflection in a mirror. But she wasn't alone. And that
was a good thing. She needed her friends with her for support.

Fifteen minutes of newsstands, souvenir shops, and food
courts later, they reached the gate where Ted would be arriving. "I
can't wait to see this guy," Becky confided to Anna and Adrienne
in a whisper loud enough for Erika to hear.

"Yeah, I bet you'd love Erika's castoffs," Anna teased.

"I just want to see if he's hot."

"Cut it out, you guys," Erika lashed out. Closing her eyes, she
took a deep breath. You're going to clear the fence, she assured herself. You're going to soar.

Then she opened her eyes and saw him, filing through the door
with the other deplaning passengers.

He looked ... good. He was dressed in a blue mock turtleneck
that clung to his torso, hinting at a chest that had added a bit of
muscle and heft. Nicely battered jeans-some newly gained
muscle in his legs, too. His hair was relatively neat, his smile
restrained. He was no longer the gangly high school boy she'd
had a crush on. He looked ...

Really good.

In his hand was an adorable stuffed teddy bear.

Oh, God. A teddy bear. Friends didn't give friends teddy bears,
did they?

Becky, Adrienne, and Anna must have noticed the teddy bear
when Erika did. Anna nudged her in the ribs with her elbow, and
Becky whispered, "Uh-oh. I think he thinks it's Valentine's Day."

"Isn't that special," Adrienne added.

Erika allowed herself a tight grin, acknowledging her friends' snide assessments even though she felt ... ambivalent. Torn. A
touch disloyal. The teddy bear was special-it looked like an
expensive one. And it was sweet. And kind of desperate.

She shouldn't have come to the airport. She'd broken up with
Ted, and she should have left things as they were: done. Finished.
No mas.

But now here she was, flanked by her friends as if they were her
seconds in a duel. Looking at Ted was like losing a duel. The
memories stabbed her, pierced her, cut straight to her heart. If his
stare had been any more pointed, she would have been literally
bleeding.

He veered away from the stream of passengers and approached
her where she stood among the rows of chairs in the gate waiting
area. "Hey, Fred," he said.

"Hey." Her stomach contracted with nerves. With sorrow.
Telling him to stop calling her had been easy enough when he'd
been two thousand miles away. Now he was just inches away.
Close enough to give her a brief hug, which he did. Close enough
to kiss her, which he didn't. "These are my friends, Anna,
Adrienne, and Becky," she introduced them. "And this-" she
addressed her friends "-is Ted."

He barely acknowledged them. His eyes remained on her, his
brows dipping slightly. "You cut your hair."

Behind her, her girlfriends laughed.

She gave her head a toss. She loved how light it felt without all
that long hair spilling down her back, and the way the clipped
ends fluttered like a silky fringe around her face. "Do you like it?"

Stupid question. His expression told her he didn't.

And she didn't care. She wasn't dressing or styling herself to
impress him. His opinion of her new coiffure was irrelevant.

She'd never had to struggle to talk to Ted before. But now the words didn't come. Her life was as altered as her hairdo, and he
wasn't a part of it. "So," she said brightly. "You're moving towhere was it? Tucson?"

"Tempe. My friend Dave has a place lined up for us..." He dug
into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a scrap of paper.
"Here's the phone number where I'll be living."

Erika took the paper from him. Such a small piece of paper, yet
she nearly staggered from the sadness she felt when she gazed at
the digits. Why would she need his phone number? They could
barely speak to each other face to face.

She tucked the paper into her purse and forced a smile. "So
what are you going to be doing there?"

"I don't know. There are lots of job opportunities. I'll land
something."

"That'll be nice." God, this was agony. She'd meant what she
said. She wanted Ted to find a good job, something more stimulating-and financially rewarding-than working as a lowly gas
jockey at a service station. She wanted him to succeed, to be
happy, to figure out what he was meant to do and then to do it.

But nice? She and Ted weren't engaging in small talk. They
were engaging in microscopic talk.

Her friends must have sensed how uncomfortable she was.
"We really should go, Erika," Becky said. "I'm parked in the
short-term lot. I don't want to get a ticket."

Erika knew Becky wouldn't get a ticket as long as she handed
over whatever amount of money the parking lot attendant charged.
But Becky was giving her an excuse to leave, and she gratefully
grabbed it. "You've got to catch your next flight, too," she said
to Ted.

"Yeah." He still hadn't smiled. Not once. "Okay. You'd better
go." Belatedly, he seemed to remember the teddy bear in his hand. "This is for you," he said, passing it to her as if it were a hot
potato he didn't want to get caught holding.

The bear's surface was soft plush. She suppressed the urge to
give it a hug. "Thank you."

"Yeah. Well."

"Good-bye, Ted."

"Good-bye, Erika."

She peered into his face, searching for something. Not a
smile-she'd relinquished that hope. But maybe a softening. A
hint of forgiveness. An acknowledgment that things really were
finished between them.

Nothing. Just the steely coldness of his eyes, the grim set of his
mouth, the sharp angles of his nose and jaw. As cute as he'd been
in high school, he was cuter now. Hell, he was gorgeous.

But she didn't feel that warm tingle he used to stir inside her.
She felt only cold. Colder than the snow that blanketed so much
of Colorado. The cold of grief and loss and death.

"Erika?" Anna called to her.

She spun from Ted and walked resolutely away, her friends
flanking her. Anna bowed toward her and murmured, "Wow, that
was weird."

"Really awkward," Becky added.

"You okay?"

"Sure," Erika lied.

"What are you going to do with the teddy bear?" Adrienne
asked, and Anna and Becky started to laugh again.

"You could name him Lost Cause."

"Give Up," Anna suggested.

"Take a Hint," Becky chimed in.

"Take a Hike."

Erika joined their laughter. But none of it seemed funny.

Shit.

You watch her walk away with her friends, whispering and giggling. She doesn't even look like Erika anymore, with that short
hairstyle and the snug jeans and sweater and the stylish parka with
fur trimming the hood, and the fancy boots. Not her riding boots but
shin-high and constructed of some sort of rugged animal hide, like
what you'd expect to see on Eskimos. Who was she? Who had she
turned into?

And come on, what did you expect? That she'd see you in the airport and suddenly remember everything you'd been to each other,
every magical moment of your romance? That she'd race into your
arms and say, "Oh, Ted, I've missed you so much! I broke up with
you because I thought I'd never see you again-but now I've seen
you and I realize what a fool I've been. Take me back!"

Yes. That was exactly what you expected.

You are the biggest moron who ever walked the planet.

It's over, you tell yourself It's over, over, over. Get it through your
skull, man. It's over.

Tempe was not New Jersey. It was warm and arid and brown.
From the moment he landed in Phoenix, he knew he'd traveled
more than a bunch of miles. He'd entered another world, just like
Erika had when she'd left for college.

The apartment Dave found for them was cheap but clean, no
little six-legged critters scampering across the kitchen floor or
hiding in the bathroom. The furniture that came with the place
had clearly started its life elsewhere. Nothing matched. But there
were two beds in the bedroom, a sofa and a couple of tables in the
living room, a Formica-topped table and chairs in the kitchen.
And a phone. Just in case Erika decided to call him.

It's over, he told himself. He'd seen her and realized she was not
his Erika anymore. She was someone else, and it was over ... and
still, he looked at the phone and wondered if she would ever
make use of the number he'd given her.

Within a week of arriving in Tempe, he had landed a job as a
telemarketer. He sat in a tiny cubicle in a vast call center, wearing
a headset, making calls, taking calls. Not the most stimulating job
in the world, but it provided him with an income. He was getting
a regular wage and paying rent and utilities. Nineteen years old,
and he was a grown-up.

She's just a college kid living off the largesse of her parents, he
thought disdainfully. I'm a man, making my own way. Check this
out, Fred. I'm a man.

His days developed a routine, more of a schedule than he'd
had since graduating from high school. He woke early, showered,
shaved, slugged down some coffee, and went to the call center. He
put in his hours. He came home, sometimes stopping on his way
to grab some take-out fast food but more often preparing his own
dinners to save money. He wasn't eating the way he ate when his
mother did the cooking, but he got pretty good at grilling burgers and hotdogs, and peanut-butter sandwiches and salads fell
within his competency range.

Dave didn't adapt to Tempe as well as Ted did. Not long after
Ted started his job at the call center, Dave decided the desert
wasn't for him and took off, leaving Ted on his own. Day by day,
he went to work, he came home, he budgeted his money, he made
ends meet. Barely, but he did it. Yeah, he was a man. Putting in the
time and earning a living.

As soon as he entered the apartment each evening-before he
opened his mail, before he hit the bathroom, before he ate-he
checked the answering machine attached to his phone. Call me, Erika. Call and let me tell you how much of a man I am. I'm putting it all together. I'm an adult. You would be so impressed. You
would see that I've gotten my act together. I'm not a loser pumping
gas. Call me.

She never did. The rare times the light on the answering
machine flashed, he'd dive across the kitchen, punch the button,
and listen breathlessly to some stupid message from the landlord
about how garbage not tied in thick plastic bags might attract
vermin to the Dumpster, so please make sure you tie your garbage
bag before you toss it into the bin.

No calls from Erika. None.

Asshole, she's not going to call you.

Some nights he crawled into bed and lay awake for hours,
imagining the stars scattered across the broad desert sky. As a
child, he used to recite the poem, "Starlight, star bright, first star
I see tonight," and send his wishes into the heavens. Now he
imagined the stars as surfaces he could bounce messages off. If he
sent a message to a star, would it bounce at the correct angle and
somehow reach Erika in Colorado? He lay alone, listening to the
silence and sending his wishes skyward: Call me, Erika. Love me
as much as I love you.

The stars failed him. Or else they passed his messages to her
and she failed him.

On nights that he was too restless and lonely to lie in bed beaming messages to the stars, he would wander over to Arizona State
University. The campus soon became his destination of choice. It
took him little time to obtain a fake ID; when necessary, he became
Matt Hackett, born three years before Ted Skala. He could buy
liquor. He could hang out at frat houses, smoke weed, listen to
music, pick up girls.

None of them was Erika.

He tried to convince himself that was a good thing. If they
weren't like Erika, they wouldn't be able to touch him the way she
had. They wouldn't be able to reach inside him and claim his
heart. They wouldn't be able to hurt him.

He would never let anyone hurt him again. He would never let
anyone get that close to him, under his skin, into his soul.

Still, he wanted Erika to know how cool he was, how selfsufficient, how mature. She wasn't the only one going to frat parties. Not only was he going to frat parties, too, but he was also
working. Earning money. Paying freaking taxes. Contributing to
Social Security. He wanted her to know he was making something
of himself.

But he wouldn't call her. Somewhere inside him, he had a
teardrop's worth of pride, and that pride kept him from calling.

Instead, he waited for her to call him.

No calls. No messages. No contact.

It's over, Skala. She's gone. It's over.

The teddy bear was adorable. But Erika's friends had made fun
of it, and she suspected they were also making sense. A teddy bear
couldn't bring her and Ted back together. She didn't want them
back together.