Every Breath You Take (4 page)

“Oh, wow. I’m jealous.”

“Don’t be,” he snorted. “Really. I fly in, do business, and fly out. To me, Paris is the conference room of our office in Tour Gan.”

She leaned forward. “Is that a high-rise?”

He laughed. “It is. I still don’t look out the windows.”

The waitress set down their plates in front of them, and Natalie picked up her fork, tossing her salad around a bit. “I hope you like the grouper.”

“If I hate it, I may never forgive you.”

She giggled. “Uh oh.”

He took a bite and frowned, which made her heart leap. “Oh, no. You hate it.”

He laughed and reached across the table to jiggle her arm, an action that sent lightning bolts ricocheting through her. She picked up her water glass, hoping it would cool her off. “I’m just kidding,” he said. “It’s delicious.”

“Whew. Saved.”

They continued on, the conversation slipping into an easy banter that veered between the usual getting-to-know-you pleasantries and the playful chitchat that typically came with couples who had known each other for an untold length of time. His life sounded like a heartwarming weekly sitcom with a canned soundtrack that occasionally erupted into hearty guffaws; his mother taught eighth-grade English and his father had a dental practice. He’d grown up in the same house, had the same friends, and still went to Sunday dinner at his parents’ house each week. Jason Hudson had the kind of loving, stable childhood she’d always dreamed about and always thought was for people not like her.

As they continued to talk, Natalie found herself listing his superlatives. How wide and open his smile was. His rumbling, throaty laugh. His quick wit. His confidence. His quirkiness. Even the mild OCD didn’t bother her as she watched him continually rearrange the items on the table and banish imaginary crumbs to the floor—she found it a bit charming. The butterflies were running rampant across her insides, and dry mouth was wreaking havoc on her lips. Then there was the worry she was talking too much or not talking enough and the relief she had passed on getting the steak salad with its shards of pungent red onion, of being charmed when he asked what she wanted for dessert because he thought a meal wasn’t really finished until you had dessert. Of his smile when she said she’d split the cheesecake with him.

Natalie popped a piece of gum in her mouth while the waitress cleared the plates. She looked at her watch and gasped. “Oh, scheisse.”

“What did you say?” he said, laughing.

“Oh, um, scheisse . . . it’s German for . . . shit. Shit, scheisse.” Embarrassment flamed across her cheeks. “I’m sorry, it’s just . . . I really need to get going. I had someone schedule a last-minute conference call for three and it’s two-thirty.”

He choked on his water. “Oh, man. I didn’t realize we’d been talking so long. Sorry about that.”

“No, it’s okay, really.”

He laughed and signaled for the check. “Thank goodness. I want to make sure I stay on your good side.”

Jason paid and she shivered when his fingertips grazed the small of her back as he guided her out of the restaurant. Natalie cleared her throat and looked down at her shoes.

“Well, thank you for lunch,” she said. “I had a great time.”

“Good. I’m glad. And again, sorry for keeping you so late. Just don’t hold it against me.”

“I think you’re safe.”

“Good, good. Here . . . let me grab you a cab, and, uh . . . I’d like to see you again.”

Tingles somersaulted down her spine. “I’d like that.” She started rummaging around in her purse for her silver business card holder, hoping she didn’t look like a bag lady, before finally extracting a card and handing it to him. “My cell phone number’s on there and I don’t have a landline and . . . well, anyway, you can call that number . . . if you want.”

He grinned. “I want.”

She looked down, an embarrassed laugh bubbling from her lips. “I’ll look forward to it.”

He gave her another smile before stepping out in the street to flag down a cab, which screeched to the curb. He opened the door for her and pressed a ten into her palm. She looked down, surprised. “Oh, no, it’s okay. I—”

Jason smiled and shut the door. “Talk to you soon, Natalie.”

She turned around as he stepped back onto the sidewalk and put his hands in his pockets, watching the cab as it pulled away.

H
e wiggled his fingers and rolled his head around, delighting at the series of pops, like little explosions, releasing within the stiff joints of his neck. He gripped the edge of the shopping cart and pulled his baseball cap closer to his eyes, wishing he could wear his sunglasses. That would be too memorable, though. A man walking around inside with sunglasses when it was eighty-five and overcast outside would stick out in the worst way. He could just hear the peppy, thirty-something housewife in her hot-pink yoga pants, water bottle molded from recyclable materials bouncing on her hip, iPhone glued to her ear while she loaded her cart with organic tomato juice and gluten-free cupcakes, being interviewed on the news: “Well, I thought it was strange that he was wearing sunglasses inside when it was cloudy all day. I mean, who does that?”

He made soft clicks with his tongue as he waited a few seconds to round the corner of the aisle to ensure she wouldn’t see him. She was picking through the vast selections of olive oil, continually examining the labels, seeming to have a hard time selecting one. She finally placed a tall, slender bottle into her basket before strolling down the aisle and making a left toward what he was sure was the frozen food section to load up on her standby low-fat dinners. How she was able to stomach those, he didn’t understand. In solidarity, he’d tried one once—a so-called chicken breast swimming in a slimy sauce that promised to be spicy, but was really more sweet, accompanied by a limp snap pea and a handful of mushy pearl onions. He’d spit out the first bite of the pasty threads of meat, deciding those disgusting dinners would be the first thing to go when the time came.

He saw her check her phone before she hurried to the front to pay for her items. He hung back a few minutes before slipping into a line a few cashiers over, never taking his eyes off her as she threw a couple of magazines into her basket and kept looking at her phone. She paid for her groceries and told the cashier to have a nice day before picking up her three plastic bags and darting out into the damp, warm afternoon.

He, too, paid for his food, having picked up just enough items to make it look as though he was shopping and not spying. He jogged outside, searching the trickles of people streaming along the sidewalks, smiling when he spotted her ponytail swishing across her back. He swung his one plastic grocery bag, whistling softly to himself as he followed behind, stopping short as she disappeared behind the revolving glass door of her building.

He sighed as he settled onto the bench across the street. That was one thing Chicago seemed to have a never-ending supply of—benches. He set the plastic shopping bag down next to him as he reached into his back pocket to extract the ever-present little green spiral notebook. He licked his thumb and forefinger as he shuffled through the grubby pages to a blank sheet and uncapped his ballpoint pen, printing “Saturday” in wiry blue letters across the top.

“S
eriously? Do me a favor and stop trying to play matchmaker.”

“What? He’s cute, single. He’s been with the company for a few years. I didn’t know he was a jackass.”

“Yeah, well, I’m here to tell you he was beyond a jackass.”

“Oh, please,” Brandy scoffed. “What the hell else were you doing tonight?”

Natalie signed her bar tab for the lone glass of wine she’d had during the ill-advised but well-meaning blind drink where the guy declared all women to be gold diggers, that you had to be his girlfriend for at least six months before he paid for a date before finally asking her if she wanted to go back to his place and fuck because he’d had a really stressful week.

“Listen, I could have found about fifteen things more interesting to do tonight than waste my time on that jackhole. Pulling off my toenails one by one comes to mind.”

“All right, all right. Sue me for trying. Dating is a numbers game. I was just trying to increase your od—oh, oh, I gotta motor. Just saw Sam walk in the door.”

“Which one is Sam again? Never mind. Call me tomorrow.”

“You still love me, right?”

“Uh huh,” Natalie chuckled before hanging up.

She pushed out into the summer evening and started to hold up her hand for a cab before changing her mind and turning down State Street to take the long route home. Winter would come blowing through soon enough, so any chance to take advantage of the sticky summer nights was one she was always willing to take. Not to mention the long walk would help her decompress not only from the day but the bust of a date as well.

Natalie liked nights like this, when the humidity wrapped around you like a thick wool coat and belching, near-empty city buses, vacated in favor of bicycles and walking, rumbled past you—when women in expensive tailored suits or colorful A-line skirts and snug t-shirts, tiny purses and bulky leather tote bags slung over their shoulders, sparkly flip-flops adorning their feet (the symbol of Chicago summer; her own were in her bottom desk drawer, abandoned for this stupid date) hustled down the sidewalks toward home or happy hour. She passed a group of giggly girls, each armed with greasy brown bags of Garrett’s Popcorn, their fingertips glowing with thick, orange cheese, their voices pitching upward in the unmistakable screeching chatter that could only belong to teenagers. They stopped in front of a cluster of bucket boys, the furious pounding of their sticks against the dingy upturned white buckets reverberating off the luxury condos and high-end office buildings that comprised this pocket of the Loop. She smiled as she continued her journey down State, deciding to turn right on Wacker to hit Michigan so she could pass by the river. Her heart leapt a little as it always did as she rounded the corner and was swallowed into the crush of the city. She could still remember coming downtown for her first official sightseeing jaunt, about a month after transferring to Northwestern from Brown. Staring down North Michigan Avenue—the John Hancock building, Tribune Tower, and Wrigley Building looking back at her, the sidewalks teeming with tourists, cars, cabs, and buses screaming down the street—she knew she was home.

Natalie often wondered whether she would have found her way to Chicago had her parents lived. She could have possibly been a Texan with a big car, bigger hair, and a syrupy twang. Ricky and Laura had grabbed the brass ring out of Braxton, Arkansas, banking their future on his status as the newest Dallas Cowboy, a prized quarterback who was showered with signing bonuses, new cars, and predictions of glittering championship rings and Hall of Fame accolades.

Laura’s own sights were set on a career in nursing—motherhood most of all. Six-month-old Natalie was to be the first of many children. Ricky often joked he wanted to breed a football team, and Laura would shoot back she was getting her own cheerleading squad. Young, blissful, beautiful, with the world on a string. They had just closed on a house in the posh Dallas suburb of Highland Park before joining team management for a dinner that ran later than intended. Laura, eager to get home to her baby back in Braxton with her parents, had insisted they drive the five hours and six minutes home late Wednesday night rather than waiting until Thursday morning, which was Ricky’s preference.

Everyone used to shake their heads over the “Why Didn’ts?” of it all. “Why Didn’t?” Ricky put his foot down and insist they wait until Thursday morning. “Why Didn’t?” Laura realize the prudent thing would have been to stay put in their hotel that night. “Why Didn’t?” the bleary-eyed trucker, who’d been on the road for three days straight, pull over to a rest stop for the night. “Why Didn’t?” he refuse to take that extra shift, his seventh in as many days, so he wouldn’t have nodded off at the wheel for a few seconds before slamming into Ricky’s Honda Civic, a sixteenth birthday gift from his father and the one he planned to trade in the following week for a shiny new Cadillac.

Why Didn’t?

The collective hopes and dreams of Braxton had crunched up into that tiny ball of metal along with Ricky and Laura Scott. They would not be cheering their hometown hero on TV every Sunday as they’d done every Saturday during his storied college career and every Friday night the year he made All-State. Their bragging rights would no longer be laced with the pride of having known Ricky when but, rather, tinged with melancholy over having known Ricky when. Their piteous looks would come to be cast Natalie’s way anytime they saw the orphaned little girl around town. The tsk-tsking and hangdog expressions. It had become as familiar to Natalie as air.

At first, she stayed with her maternal grandparents, with frequent visits from her paternal grandparents. The four showered Natalie with kisses, hugs, and attention, hoping somehow to make up for the tragedy and erase the “Why Didn’ts?” The situation had been fine, though she could never shake the pervasive loneliness that dropped on top of her like a pile of bricks. Her grandparents gave her a nice, solid life. No frills. No fuss. No muss.

But the inevitable happened when Natalie was seven. In rapid succession she lost her grandparents one by one: cancer, stroke, heart attack, dementia.

Which left Zach and Cheryl.

In the early years following Ricky’s death, news reporters would come knocking on Zach Scott’s door, the eternal shame of the family, persona non grata with his parents and forever shrouded in the shadow of his handsome, popular, star quarterback brother. They were hoping for sugary nostalgia from the older brother of the football idol. What they got were drunken ramblings and profane tirades about the charmed life his brother led, even in death. It wasn’t long before people got tired of hearing Zach’s broken record of his sad, pitiful life. Soon, reporters no longer cared what he thought, preferring instead to seek out the fond reminisces of coaches, fellow players, and childhood friends.