Just Rules (6 page)

“When are you coming back from Paris?” Mac asked Tim, realizing what his best friend was about to do.

“I don’t know. It all depends on Amanda. I don’t have a return ticket.”

“What about the team?” Tim couldn’t abandon the Patriots now. “You’ll be back for next season, right?”

“I don’t know,” he repeated with a sigh. “And quite honestly, I don’t care. Be happy for me, Mac. You were the only one who supported me when it came to Amanda.”

Mac remembered how stupid they had been, both he and Tim, when they were twenty years old. He also remembered how happy his friend had been with Amanda.

“I’m happy for you, Tim,” he said to him sincerely.
And I envy you. You’ve got something to fight for.

“I’m going to ask you for a favor, Mac, and you can’t tell me no.”

“OK.” The pressure he had felt in his chest during the dinner at L’Escalier had come back and multiplied by one hundred.

“Go check on Susan and make sure that she is OK. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“I doubt it, Tim, but I’ll go see her.
She’s not going to want to see me.
Call me when you get to Paris.”

“Will do. Thanks, Mac. I have to go. We’re getting ready to board.”

“Call me, and don’t make me come looking for you in France.”

Tim didn’t answer, and Mac hung up the phone. He sat in that chair for a long while, his mind going blank from being so overwhelmed. Tim was a few years younger than Mac, and he had just become the father of an eleven year old child. Amanda, the girl he fell madly in love with, and the one he secretly married when they were practically kids, was still his wife, although judging by what Tim has just found out, a wife who doesn’t want to have anything to do with him. And now Tim just canceled his impending wedding to Susan and has gone to Paris without a return ticket.

What a way to start your vacation.

He got out of the chair and went back to bed. The best thing he could do would be to sleep for a while. If he was lucky, perhaps when he woke up he would realize that it had just been a dream, or that his mind was playing a bad joke on him. He turned off the light again and closed his eyes. The last thing he thought of before falling asleep was that Susan was going to have to face the scandal of having been left by one of the most eligible
bachelors
in all of Boston just a few months before the wedding all by herself, and that she didn’t deserve it.

Mac woke up six hours later, and for a second he thought that he had imagined the conversation with Tim, but when he saw the message his friend had sent him with the phone number and address for Susan, he knew that he wasn’t so lucky.

Mac didn’t need her number or address.

Although Tim probably didn’t know, almost a year earlier when he and Susan met, Mac accompanied her to her house one night, and he had her phone number since then. He set his phone on the nightstand and went to take a shower. The cut on his eyebrow had become infected and his torso and back were battered and bruised. The hot water helped, and he stayed in the shower until it started to turn cold. He got out and shaved, not paying too much attention to the way he looked; he didn’t want to feel old again. Back in his room, he put on a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and a black wool sweater, and he walked toward the kitchen. He poured himself a cup of coffee and took an antibiotic to help with the infection, and then he ate some toast because he didn’t want the medicine to upset his stomach. At that point, the last thing he needed was an ulcer. After eating breakfast, he went back to his room to look for his watch and his phone, and before he changed his mind, he called Susan. The faster he got it over with, the less it would hurt, he said to himself, just like pulling off a Band-Aid.

Susan’s phone rang and rang, but she didn’t pick up, and it finally went to her voicemail. Mac hung up without leaving a message; he never liked talking to those machines.

He called again.

It kept ringing and ringing, and once again went to her voicemail.

Third time’s a charm.

Despite the saying, Mac was convinced that the third time would be the same as the first two, but Susan’s voice proved him wrong.

“Don’t call me ever again. You got what you wanted.”

Susan hung up.

Mac stared at his phone, puzzled, and called again. This time Susan must have hit a button because he heard a busy signal. Mac hung up the phone, offended, and slammed it down on the dining room table. If he’d had Susan front of him, he would have shaken her until she listened.

The stubborn and stuck up woman that she was, wouldn’t even let him speak. Like always, Miss Steel Pants had judged him without listening and hung up on him.

And why does that surprise you? Her assumption is logical,
said a little voice inside his head. Maybe, he argued, but Susan didn’t even give him the chance to explain himself.
And how did she know it was me? Because you gave her your number as well.

Anyway, he already did his duty. He had promised Tim that he would call Susan, and that’s what he did. It wasn’t his fault that she didn’t let him talk. It was the first day of his vacation and he wanted to enjoy it. The first thing he would do would be to stop by the gym and book at least a two hour massage. Then he would get something to eat, and in the afternoon he would go home and focus on his project, and at night…at night he would go out with Kelly. Yep, it would be a perfect day. Done. He went to his room and grabbed his gym bag, but minutes later behind the wheel of his car, his conscience got the best of him and made him change plans.

“Shit,” he muttered.

He took the next left and started driving toward Susan’s house.

After Tim dropped Susan off at her house, she spent two hours sitting in bed completely shocked, incapable of crying or feeling anything. Her future just came crumbling down. Part of her was still in denial, and part of her wanted to kill Tim for having hid his past. Another part of her, a part that Susan always tried to deny, her romantic side, told her that it was better off this way, that Tim needed to be with the woman he loved, and that that woman obviously wasn’t her.

It was that phrase, having come to that conclusion that made the tears come pouring out.

Tim didn’t love her.

She had convinced herself that passion wasn’t their thing, simply because they were both intelligent people who knew how to control their instincts. But the harsh reality was that Tim didn’t love her. He loved some girl named Amanda, and apparently was crazy enough to get married young. With her, with smart and trustworthy Susan Lobato, he wouldn’t have done something so bold. They had been planning the wedding for months, she was on birth control, and he never forgot to use a condom when they were together! The craziest thing they had done was fall asleep with their clothes and shoes on after having gone out dancing one night.

One night.

Susan furiously looked at the lamp on the nightstand because that was where Tim used to leave his things when he went to see her. She threw it against the wall. Tim never forgot about anything, never did anything spontaneous, and he liked her, right? She wanted things to be that way. Or at least that’s what she thought until that night. She cried herself to sleep and dreamt that Tim came back after a few days and begged her for forgiveness. But apparently she wasn’t even able to control her own dreams, because when she dreamt that Tim was on his knees begging for forgiveness and telling her that he wanted to marry her, another man’s hands grabbed her waist from behind, pulling her away as if he would never let her go. And before she could see the face of the man in her dream, he kissed her. It was the best kiss in the world, a kiss that couldn’t even compare to any of the kisses that Tim or anyone else had given her. It was a kiss that made Susan grab the man’s chest, determined to rip his clothes off.

But then the phone rang and woke her up.

Not even in her dreams could she get what she wanted.

She didn’t even think about not answering. They could call her from the T.V. station at any moment, or it could even be Tim calling to say he was sorry. She went to get her phone that she had left charging in the entryway, and when she saw the name on the screen she was baffled: Kevin MacMurray

She was confused for a second because she had almost forgotten that he went by Kev. Nobody ever called him by his full name.

“But what the hell is he doing?” she said to herself out loud, realizing why he was calling her. Surely Tim had called his best friend to tell him that he was going to Paris and MacMurray was calling to take pleasure in her pain.

The call went to her voicemail and Susan let out a long breath she didn’t even realize she was holding. He called again in a matter of seconds. Susan looked at her phone as if it were a poisonous snake and didn’t even touch it. It went to her voicemail again and Susan figured that that was the end of it.

The stupid man called again.

“He’s not going to stop,” she muttered, remembering how stubborn MacMurray had always been, and she picked up. “Don’t call me anymore. You already got what you wanted,” and she hung up.

MacMurray got the message and didn’t call her again.

Susan breathed a sigh of relief and thoroughly went through her phone to make sure there weren’t any messages from Tim that she had missed.

Did she really want Tim to call her and ask for forgiveness, now that she knew that he wasn’t in love with her? Sure, Tim had been very sensitive and had acted like a complete gentleman. In the limo when he began to talk, the first thing he said was that it wasn’t was her fault. The typical line
it’s not you, it’s me,
had never seemed so offensive to her. He took all the blame, true, but he also made it very clear that he was leaving and that she couldn’t do or say anything to make him change his mind, because the truth was that he didn’t feel a burning desire for her.

Of course he didn’t tell her that, but she was able to figure it out on her own.

Tim was going to throw it all away, not only his relationship, but probably his career as well, and all because he wanted to get the woman back who he’d been hiding all this time and who hadn’t divorced him. And if that didn’t prove that passion was complete non-sense, Susan didn’t know what she was going to do. She was right, she said to herself, passion and impossible love stories are only good for giving you a headache.

And for making you spend the night crying when you have to go to work the next day.

No, she was right. Life was not like the movies or the soap operas. She was a smart, intelligent woman who knew what she wanted. She had a good job and soon she was going to get her own program, and one day she would meet a sensible man who she could start a family with and share her life with. And if she never made love in the rain, better yet, she hated being cold, and surely she’d get sick.

She needed to take a shower, eat breakfast, get the evening program ready, but first she had to call her parents. She wasn’t sure how long it would take for the press to find out that she and Tim weren’t going to get married, although she was sure that it wouldn’t take long, and she didn’t want her parents to find out that way. She breathed deeply and dialed her mother’s number.

“Hi, Susana, honey.”

“Hi, Mom.”

“What’s wrong?”

“The only thing I said was
hi, Mom
and that was enough for you to know that there’s something wrong with me,” she asked stunned.

“You usually call me Lisa.”

Susan’s stomach turned a little, and she felt guilty just like she usually did when something reminded her of how bad she made Lisa feel in the beginning.

“Besides, you always call on Sunday afternoons and Wednesday mornings. Today is Monday,” explained Lisa.

“And that’s why you think there is something wrong with me? Maybe I just feel like talking to you.”

“That’s why you’re calling? Because you want to talk to me?” her mom said (Susan had earned her mother’s reaction over the years) with a smile that Susan couldn’t see, but one that she could hear.

“No. Well…yes.”

“Which one is it, Susan?”

Lisa spoke to her with a tone that reminded her of when she was a rebellious teenager and tried to confront the woman who had married her father, and who had the nerve to try to help her. It was a miracle that Lisa stuck around, let alone dared to give her two siblings.

That woman was the epitome of tenacity and patience, and had enough love to go around. Sometimes Susan even thought that her mother in heaven had handpicked that woman to do the job she had left unfinished on earth.

“Tim and I have called off the wedding.” She used the phrase that she was sure Tim was going to use for the press. Yes, it was obvious they weren’t in love, but nobody could deny that she knew him really well. “Mom?”

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry.” Despite the years that had passed, Lisa still got excited when she heard that word, and you could hear it in her voice. “Did you get in a fight? Surely it’s just wedding jitters and soon everything will work out, you’ll see.”

“No, Mom. Things aren’t going to work out.” Susan sighed. “Tim has gone to Paris to get back together with the woman he married, I don’t know how many years ago, which apparently he forgot to tell me about.”

“Oh my God.”

“You can’t tell anyone, Lisa. I promised Tim.” And Susan always kept her promises.

“I don’t get it,” said the other woman. “I can’t believe that Tim was unfaithful to you, Susan.”

“Technically he wasn’t unfaithful. He and that woman met years ago, and now he’s decided to go back to her. That’s all I can tell you, sorry.”

“What do you mean?” said Lisa, enraged. “If that man left you for another woman only months before the wedding, he can go to hell.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Complicated? Jesus Christ, no it isn’t, Susan.” If you love him and he loves you, it’s not complicated. Believe me, I fell in love with a man who was determined to never believe in love again and who also had a daughter that hated me.

“So what did you do?”