Heart Conditions (The Breakup Doctor Series Book 3) (4 page)

four

“Grab that mousetrap for me, Rae Ann, would you?” I asked my first client Monday morning after my radio show, as we sat opposite each other in my home office. Before she’d arrived I’d spring-loaded the trap and left it by the chaise where she sat.

She eyeballed the thing uneasily, the mousetrap primed to snap at the slightest movement. “Can you hand me a pencil or something to set it off first?”

“Just pass it over, okay?”

Rae Ann Wilson had been coming to me for several months now, after her ex had broken up with her, but Rae Ann wasn’t letting herself begin to move on at all. Even after almost six months she couldn’t stop contacting him and obsessing over his every move on social media as he dated seemingly half of Cape Coral.

She chewed her lip, looking around the office. “Do you have some gloves?”

“No. Can’t you please just get it for me? I want it.” I held out a hand.

To my surprise, Rae Ann took a deep breath and then reached for it, and for just a moment I second-guessed my little gambit.

At the last second she reared away.

“No, I can’t. It’ll snap shut on my fingers. I’m really sorry,” she said.

“So you know better than to reach out for something that is clearly set up to hurt you.”

She looked bewildered for a moment, and then her expression cleared. “Paul.”

I nodded, then leaned over and tapped the trap with my pen, and it snapped shut so fast and hard we both jumped. I lifted it, still dangling from my pen, and handed it to her. “Next time you pick up the phone or get onto your computer to call or monitor Paul, I want you to look at this mousetrap. Keeping tabs on Paul is only hurting yourself, and you’re too smart to keep doing that.”

“Well, now you make it just seem foolish.”

“Never foolish.” I shook my head. “You feel the way you feel, and you love him still—it’s natural to want to know what he’s doing.”

“God, yes.”

“But just because you feel this way doesn’t mean he still does,” I said as gently as I could. “It’s one of the hardest truths, the most difficult part of breakups—he’s moving on. You’ve got to accept that and let him go, so you can do the same—and be whole on your own. So you’ll be ready when the
right
guy shows up.”

She swallowed hard against the tears I could see in her eyes. “He
was
the right guy. There isn’t anyone else out there for me.”

“Oh, Rae Ann…Of course there is, honey.” The endearment slipped out, but I no longer worried about little therapeutic breaches like that. The Breakup Doctor practice wasn’t like my old practice.

She shook her head adamantly. “No. I was single for four
years
before I met Paul. Do you know how hard it is to meet people in this town?”

Oh, yes. I did. As a retirement, snowbird, and tourist hotspot, Fort Myers’s demographic skewed heavily older and transient. “I’ll admit this is a tougher town than some to find a relationship. But it’s not impossible. You met Paul, right? That proves it can happen.”

“We were working together! And now I work at home! How am I supposed to meet anyone sitting at my desk all day in my robe and slippers with my
cat
?”

I lifted my eyebrows. “Well, for starters, we need to get you out of your pajamas.”

“What’s the point?” she said dully.

“The point is how you feel about yourself, Rae Ann. No one feels their best sitting around all day like they just rolled out of bed. When you worked at an office, why did you get up and shower every day and get dressed and put on makeup?”

Rae Ann shrugged. “I had coworkers. I wouldn’t want other people to see me looking all sloppy.”

I feigned bewilderment. “Why not?”

She shot me an incredulous stare. “Because it hardly looks professional, does it? If I don’t look like I take care of myself, why would anyone take me seriously?”

I leaned forward in my chair. “So why isn’t your opinion of yourself, how
you
feel, every bit as important as your colleagues’?”

Rae Ann opened her mouth, and then shut it again.

“Do you feel confident in your robe, Rae Ann?” I asked. “Do you feel put-together? Competent? Pretty?” She shook her head. I waited for a few moments while she digested things, but when she had no further reply to make, I went on. “I have a little bit of homework for you, okay? This week I want you to pretend you’re going into work every day. Take a shower, do your hair, wear a nice outfit—whatever you used to do when you were based out of an office.”

“Okay,” she said slowly. “I guess I can do that.”

“I also want you to meet someone. One person—I don’t care if it’s your bank teller or the grocery store clerk or the UPS deliveryman. But I want you to find out just a little something about that person—their name, why they came here, a hobby, their favorite food—I don’t care. Can you do that?”

She looked doubtful. “You mean like a man? You want me to hit on a bag boy?”

“I don’t want you to hit on anyone, necessarily. And no, I don’t care if it’s male or female. We’re just going to get you back into the habit of engaging with people. It’s so easy when you work at home to fall into the rabbit hole. Some people don’t even leave the house ’til they’re desperate for groceries.”

For the first time all morning a tiny grin touched her lips. “Well, I’ll be honest—sometimes I think if I didn’t have Mr. Theodore, I could go days without ever speaking aloud.”

I smiled back. “We’re going to see if we can get you into the habit of talking to more than your cat, okay? I know you love Paul, but he’s moved on. It’s time you start to, too.”

“Yeah,” she said in a small voice. “I know.” Her eyes filled up again, but her spine straightened, and for the first time since I’d met her she looked a little less beaten and wounded.

When Rae Ann let herself out—tucking the sprung mousetrap into her purse—I leaned back in my chair, a breath escaping me like steam hissing from a kettle. Breakthroughs like this were the best part of what I did, but Rae Ann’s session had left me uneasy.

My plan all weekend had been to call Michael today and plan a time for us to meet one evening this week—somewhere neutral, away from the house I’d bought after he dumped me, and not any of the regular haunts we’d frequented in our two years together. I’d hear him out, find out why he bugged out so close to our wedding when I’d thought everything was fine, and then I could finally forgive him, let it go, and forever close that chapter of my life.

But now I was wondering—was I doing exactly what Rae Ann was doing, reaching for something that had hurt me in the past, knowing it was probably going to hurt me again? I’d spent a long, hard couple of years getting over Michael, letting the slashing wound he’d left in my heart heal. Did I really want to reopen it?

It sounded exactly like something I’d advise my clients
not
to do.

My phone intercom buzzed.

“Delivery here for you. Also, your next client is running late.”

I let myself into the adjoining waiting room—formerly known as the front guest bedroom before my home-office renovations—to see an enormous beribboned potted plant perched on the reception desk I’d bought for the far corner.

“Paige?” I called out. I didn’t see the pretty petite blonde who should have been sitting at the desk.

“This just came for you,” said a voice from somewhere behind the plant, the body it belonged to completely obscured. She poked her head around the side. “It’s very big.”

I’d hired Paige—or Intern Paige, as I referred to her privately—early in the fall, when the logistics of managing my growing Breakup Doctor practice, with private consultations, my weekly newspaper column, the twice-weekly radio appearances on KXAR, and the support groups I ran, was becoming more than I could handle alone. A grad student in psychology at nearby FGCU, Paige had easily assuaged my initial fears about letting go of total control over the logistics of my practice with her competence, drive, focus, and intelligence. But she’d been working with me long enough now that I knew not to fire off my knee-jerk response to her observation (
Is it? I hadn’t noticed
). Comedic sarcasm flew right by my serious-minded assistant.

“Yes, I see that,” I said instead, coming closer to look for a tag. There was none, and I frowned. “I wonder who sent it?”

Paige stood and handed me a card. “He said to give this to you directly.”

My heart flipped over as I recognized the familiar handwriting: Michael. I looked up at Paige. “He brought this himself? It wasn’t a deliveryman?”

“I don’t know. He wasn’t wearing a uniform. Should I not have accepted it?”

“No, it’s fine.” I looked at the envelope in my hand again, and noticed the edges of it were trembling. I cleared my throat. “What, um…what did the man look like?”

Paige closed her eyes and began reciting as if he were painted on the back of her eyelids: “Tall—about six-one—average build, but on the thin side, brown hair, cut short—maybe a couple of inches—but longer in front. Green eyes. Really green.” She opened her eyes again. “Sorry I can’t be more specific.”

I was torn between amusement at her star-witness accuracy and an uncomfortable feeling I couldn’t identify at the thought that Michael had been standing out in my waiting room, feet away from me, as I debated whether or not to see him again.

“Thanks,” was all I said, and deliberately laid the envelope back on her desk. “I’ll read this later. How late did Mr. Westmoreland say he’d be?”

“Five minutes, but he was calling from College and Cleveland, so I think it’ll be more like nine to eleven.”

I’d have laughed, but she wasn’t joking. “Thanks, Paige,” I said. “I’ll be in my office.” I stopped in the doorway and turned to see she had disappeared again. “How about if I help you move this onto the floor?” I offered, coming back over to the desk.

She popped back up over the top of the plant. “Okay,” she said immediately. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to leave it here.”

This time I did grin, but I bent my head to help lift the plant before Paige saw.

Later that afternoon, once Intern Paige had left for the day and the door had closed behind my last client, I came out into the waiting room, where the envelope was balanced on the corner of the desk like a cream-colored tongue sticking out at me.

I’d managed to avoid thinking about Michael for most of the day, the way my problems almost always spiraled into their own compartments while I worked with my clients on theirs. But now I had to make some kind of decision—even if it was to do nothing.

I picked up the letter and traced my fingertips over my name in his bold scrawl, almost as familiar as my own. Holding it to my nose, I imagined I could smell Michael’s distinctive sandalwood scent on it.

In a sudden movement, I flipped it over and slid a finger into the gap at the edge, yanking it along the seal—and then retracting my hand with a hiss. Paper cut.

Figured. Holding the bleeding finger away, I gingerly opened the envelope and pulled out the card inside.

A forlorn-looking big-eyed LOL cat. Inside the printed message read,
I is sowwy
.

I grimaced, sucking on my finger, even as a strange kind of relief flowered inside me. Michael didn’t know me after all if he thought this card would garner anything but an eye roll.

But then I read his handwritten note:

There’s no card adequate for this kind of apology, so instead I went with the worst one I could find. Might as well continue my run of bad judgment.

Flowers start out beautiful and then they die, and that seemed like pretty horrible symbolism after what I did, so this is a peace lily. Unlike me, it doesn’t need much attention and will happily thrive on its own. And I like the name. I’m hoping for some peace between us, Brook. You were the best thing that ever happened to me, and you didn’t deserve what I did.

—M

I swallowed hard and lowered the card in cold fingers. If he’d sent some kind of justification for his actions I’d have been enraged. If he’d begged me for another chance I’d have thrown away the card he gave me and ignored all further contact.

Instead his note was perfect—just the right amount of mea culpa, asking for nothing, and making me laugh.

He knew me through and through.

And that was exactly why I needed to stop this right now—before, like Rae Ann, I reached for something I knew was going to hurt me. Opening up Pandora’s box with someone who’d betrayed me completely wasn’t going to lead to anything healthy. The best thing to do now was leave it alone.

But my situation wasn’t the same as Rae Ann’s, a voice inside reminded me. I wasn’t obsessing over Michael (or I hadn’t been, until yesterday). And I wasn’t in danger of opening up that wound—I just wanted to take the opportunity I’d been offered to lessen an old pain. My brain had already done the work of healing, but my heart still needed it—and lately I’d started listening when that long-neglected organ weighed in.

I picked up my cell phone and dialed the number on Michael’s card that I’d already memorized.